We Own the Night

by Ashley Poston

  Micah mocks him and sits back in his seat. “Well fine then! Everyone’s giving me shit about my music. You’re all a bunch of haters.”

  “Charming haters,” LD corrects. Then she turns around to us from the passenger seat and asks me, “How’s Grams?”

  I shrug. “Fell asleep reading The Juice again while watching Jeopardy.”

  “We really need to get her better reading material,” she says, and shakes her head, pulling her purse from the floorboards. “Tell me it was at least a good issue?”

  “It was about that vigil.”

  “Oh, that girl who died from that band—”

  “Roman Holiday,” I fill in.

  “That one! What’s her name? I was listening to that radio show you like so much—the one with Quill—talk about her today at work. Gosh, what was her name?” LD looks at Billie for an answer. Holly Hudson I want to respond, because I listened to the same show, too. Every day at 6:00 p.m. sharp.

  Billie makes a face. “What the hell, you think I’d know?”

  “Never mind, you’re right. Whatever.” She fishes around in her gargantuan bag for a silver flask and takes a swig. She hands it off to Micah. “Maybe we can get Grams a subscription to People—Holly Hudson! There we go. God, that would’ve drove me crazy.”

  Micah takes the flask and throws his head back in a long drink. He makes a face. “We tried; she hates People. What is this, piss?”

  “Whiskey; close though.”

  He makes another face and offers it to me. I hesitate. “The Barn’s better when you pregame,” he says.

  Point. I take a swig, and the alcohol burns all the way down into my belly and sits there like hot coals. “Oh that’s gross. Billie?”

  He waves his hand. “Nah. Someone needs to stay sober for you guys.”

  “Oh, come on,” LD says, and pokes him in the bicep. “Don’t tell me a strapping young man like yourself doesn’t want a good time?”

  “I can have a good time sober,” he says. “Besides, someone needs to make good choices.” He gives LD a level look.

  “Pff. Killjoy,” she sniffs, and grabs the flask from me. The one drink is already making me warm. She takes another swig and starts passing it around again. “You’re just too good for the rest of us lowly humans.”

  “Some of us have college scholarships to not screw up,” Billie retorts.

  Ouch.

  LD gives him a sharp look. “Don’t worry, Golden Boy; I've already paved that road.”

  Billie’s grip tightens around the steering wheel. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Well that’s how I took it.”

  Micah and I glance at each other. We ride in silence the rest of the way through town, listening to the murmur of the radio. I glance out the window and watch the fields of sunflowers pass lazily by. The Barn is near the reservoir, a mile out of town. When I turn back to look at Steadfast, the radio tower stands like a stake in its heart, the red light at the top blinking.

  After a moment, a familiar tune begins to hum through the speakers, washing away the silence. I slap Micah in the arm to get him to listen, perking at the familiar tune. “Ooh, turn it up! Mick’s playing our song!”

  Billie shakes his head. “For the record, this is not my song.”

  “You don't have a say,” LD retorts.

  Billie sighs as LD turns up the speakers so loud, the music rattles the windows.

  “Shotgun Heartache” by Jason Dallas.

  I raise my hands and begin to move to the beat. The song is fast, rolling, like racing a car down a deserted road. It’s hard not to move, the lyrics infectious. We sing along, Micah and I sharing the flask like it’s a microphone. So close to him, I can smell his body spray. Coconut and motor oil.

  The smell of heaven.

  “I’m gonna bury my crown, let’s get the hell outta town, we gotta run, run, run before life drags us down!” we howl into the flask.

  LD rolls down the windows and howls the lyrics at the full moon, thrusting up her hands. The Cadillac crests the hill and the Barn, decked in lantern lights and surrounded by cars and tractors and bikes, comes into view.

  Let tonight be a good night, I pray to the moon, the sky—the red North Star blinking behind us. I pray to the night that it will be filled with nothing but good things, a summer of good things, before it all ends.

  We need good things—just a few.

  Just for tonight.

  Billie parks at the edge of the lot as the song ends. We all pile out and gather near the trunk of the car, waiting for the first one to take the treacherous steps across the gravel to hell. The Barn is, as the name implies, a huge red barn—the kind you see in Footloose or Dirty Dancing. You can easily fit two tractors, or about fifty high school seniors, in it. The doors are open tonight, letting in the sweet May breeze. There are Christmas lights strewn up across the rafters and a disco ball throwing pinpoints of light down onto the seniors dancing over the hay-speckled ground.

  LD sloshes the flask around. “There’s about a swig left, you sure you don’t want it, Golden Boy?”

  Billie eyes the Barn—and the country music rumbling from it—and then the flask. “Do your parents know you’re drinking their good whiskey?”

  “Of course not. I’m a properly sneaky lady when it comes to that sort of thing.” She sloshes the flask around. “C’moooon.”

  “Yeah, Bleaker,” Micah adds, calling Billie by his last name the way Coach Evans used to. He plants a hand on Billie’s shoulder and shakes it. “Be a good sport, bro!”

  Billie looks pleadingly back at me as if I’m the deciding factor. I shrug. “What could it hurt? It’s just a sip.”

  “You guys are the worst.”

  “Peer pressure!” LD and Micah crow, bumping fists.

  Rolling his eyes, Billie takes the flask and raises it. “You two are the death of me,” he cheers and takes a gulp. He makes a face, shoving the empty flask back at LD. “Happy now?”

  “Oh, Billie, I’m so happy I could fart rainbows.”

  “Please save yourself the embarrassment.”

  LD tosses the empty flask into the backseat and puts her arm around Billie and Micah. “Come on, boys,” she says, “we’ve got all our lives ahead of us and one glorious night to screw it all up with a pretty girl. Let's go find us some trouble.”

  I follow them, weaving through the maze of cars toward the Barn. I try not to look into any of the windows but I’m too nosy—especially after I see our senior class president hitting second base with our salutatorian, a tangle of hair and boobs and their half-off skirts.

  LD gives a low whistle. “Seems like we’re late to the party,” she remarks. “Hey, I thought Rachel had a crush on you, Golden Boy.”

  “She might be bi,” Billie says, and shrugs, “but she’s not my type anyway.”

  “What is your type?”

  “What’s yours?”

  She grins. “Touché.”

  Micah nudges his head toward me, signaling me to catch up. I do, and he bends in close to me to ask, “On a scale from one to Hell Freezing Over, how likely is it for me to score with Heather tonight?”

  The girl in question is sitting with her crew in the back of a six-foot-long pickup bed, sipping beer from a red Solo cup, shorts so short it makes me a little sick to look at someone who can pull them off.

  I shrug. “Maybe she’s just really passionate about saving horses and riding cowboys?”

  “I’ll be her cowboy.” He wiggles an eyebrow.

  “Oh, honey,” LD tells him, “anyone would kill to be her cowboy.”

  The closer to the Barn we come, the louder the car-shaking country music gets. A gaggle of girls sing along to Taylor Swift’s new single. Micah spots the line of kegs and excuses himself to get drinks for us. Billie goes with him.

  LD and I stop at the edge of the Barn. She scans the dance floor with hungry eyes—but we both know she isn’t going to find the girl she’s looking for. That ship sailed years ago, and she took
LD’s heart with her it seems.

  I sigh, folding my arms over my chest. “It sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Mmm.” She purses her lips. “What do you mean?”

  “Being hopelessly in love with someone who is hopelessly out of reach.” I stare down at my dirt-scuffed Chucks. “Do you ever talk to her?”

  Her—LD doesn’t like anyone to mention her name because it’s a constant reminder of the secret she wasn’t ready to reveal quite yet. It was sophomore year, nearly spring. LD was in love—she’d never been in love before, not like that. Not ground-shattering love, not mold-breaking, not secret-sharing love. They built a castle out of secret meetings and stolen kisses, because in Steadfast people might forgive you for being different, but they never forgot. It took only one guy seeing their hands brush in the hallway, their pinkies interlock, for the castle to come tumbling down.

  The girl she loved hated that she had to be different to be happy. Her family moved away that summer. In small towns being who you really are can be suffocating, and LD has been drowning for years.

  She shrugs nonchalantly. “Am I supposed to still talk to her?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. She’s easily the most fashionably dressed girl here, in a tight A-line skirt and an off-the-shoulder lacy blouse. Heather could eat her heart out—and that was probably the point. “You know, Iggy-Pop, none of this really matters anymore.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Because tomorrow, Hell will finally be over.”

  I mock whisper, “But tonight, all the demons are here.”

  She outstretches her arm. “Well, care to dance with these demons while the men are getting our sassy selves drinks?”

  I put a hand over my heart in mock outrage. I put on my worst southern drawl, “My word, Miss Darling! I thought you’d never ask.” I hook my arm into hers and we float to the middle of the dance floor. A few people turn to stare, but since spring our sophomore year, LD decided to like the attention. Her clothes are armor, her eyeliner sharp enough to cut a fool. She attracts their gazes like moths to a flame.

  The song fades into a line dance, and while other people begin to gather into circles and kick their heels up and all that Footloose nonsense, LD puts her arms around my waist and we begin to dance slow.

  “Get a room, lesbos!” someone heckles from the crowd. We don’t have to turn around to know who it is—Mike Labouise, quarterback and absolute douche.

  We keep dancing.

  “Yeah, Ingrid, I’ll give you ten bucks if you kiss her,” he goes on.

  A muscle in LD’s jaw feathers.

  “Couldn’t get a better date than old fatty there?”

  “A match made in heaven,” one of his cronies agrees. “They’re the best each other’ll ever get.”

  That stops LD cold. I feel her hands fist around my waist, and she turns to Mike. He’s wearing a polo shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, looking like he just stepped out of an American Apparel ad. How come bullies are rarely ugly?

  “Come again?” LD asks sweetly, a saccharine smile sliding over her lips.

  “You heard me,” Mike slurs. He’s more than a few drinks in. Closer, I can see lipstick already smeared across his collar. Classy.

  “All I heard was shit coming out of your mouth,” she replies, then turns to Mike’s lackey. “Mind translating?”

  Mike’s eyes flash dangerously. “You p—”

  A hand jumps out from the crowd and grabs Mike by the collar, forcing him back. It’s Billie. He turns Mike around and shoves him away. “Leave them alone, Labouise.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to insult your girlfriend,” Mike replies, readjusting his shirt. “Or, wait—did you mean the cow?”

  My fists clench.

  “Did she come for the moooo-sic?” someone else heckles.

  The crowd laughs.

  I can feel people beginning to stare, eyes like straight pins into my skin, skewering me like a moth to a corkboard. This is why I don’t come to the Barn. The joke began in middle school. It was a Monday in seventh grade. September twenty-third. I remember it better than any birthday or holiday I ever had. You never remember the good things the way you do the bad. I had a crush on Mike then, and I did a terrible job of hiding it. Everyone knew, like everyone knew Billie was in love with Rachel or that the sky was blue. I’m not sure what would’ve happened that day if I hadn’t worn a black-and-white splotched sweater. Or if I hadn’t accidentally run into Mike in the cafeteria and spilled milk all over his new bomber jacket. Sometimes I can still hear the cafeteria braying along like a herd of deranged cattle.

  It doesn’t matter that I lost a lot of my pudge or that I can run ribbons around Mike and his gang or that no matter how far I sprint I can never get far enough away from that sound in my head.

  Because Steadfast is so small, we’ve all known each other our whole lives. Me, my friends, my bullies. Like being crammed in a hotel you can never leave.

  A muscle in Billie’s jaw feathers. “I’ll give you to the count of three to walk away.”

  “Or what, Bleaker? I'm udderly terrified.”

  Billie jerks forward but LD catches him by the arm. “No fighting,” she hisses. “Remember your scholarship.”

  “Yeah, remember that scholarship of yours. Gotta milk it for all it’s worth—”

  Suddenly, Billie tears out of LD’s grip and leaps toward Mike. He grabs him by the collar, forcing him close. The crowd quickly moves back. “I swear to God, Labouise,” Billie snarls, his grip so tight on Mike’s collar his knuckles are white, “I’ll punch you so hard even Nebraska State won’t recognize you when you show up for second-string practice. It is second string, isn’t it? Or third?”

  “Go to hell, Bleaker!” Mike leans back and then cracks his head against Billie’s with all his might. Billie stumbles back but catches his footing and dives at Mike. They go tumbling to the ground in a flurry of punches and kicks. Mike’s goons, first-string linemen from the football team, gang up on Billie. Someone clocks him good, and blood gushes from his nose.

  He’s fighting a losing battle.

  He’s going to get butchered.

  Bless, even I’m doing those stupid jokes now—

  Stop it stop it stop it—

  LD forces my hands down from my ears. “Go find Micah. I’m going to try and not let Billie get killed.” Then she takes off her jewelry in one swipe, dumps it into her purse, and shoves her purse at me. She dives into the fray, heels and all.

  I stare in horror for a moment at the mess of arms and legs and shouts and screams and curses—until common sense slams into me like a brick wall. I sling LD’s purse over my shoulder and elbow through the gathering crowd.

  Micah.

  I have to find Micah.

  Chapter Three

  “Micah!” I call, stumbling into the back of the Barn, where rows and rows of horse stalls sit empty. It’s private, but only in the way public showers are. It’s where everyone goes to—you know.

  It’s just where they go.

  An arts groupie makes out with a stoner in the first stall, and in the second the drum major is feeling up the president of the KEY club. The third stall is empty—or at least at first it looks that way.

  But then I see him in the corner, the back of his head ruffled, curls askew. For a moment I think he's just looking into the corner of the stall like the weirdo he is, but then someone's hand runs through his curls. He isn’t alone.

  Hesitantly, I step closer.

  I wish I hadn't.

  He presses his hands against the girl’s shoulders, deepening their kiss. He’s taken one strap of her tank top off, she’s pressing her hands against his solid chest, drinking him in like a tall glass of lemon water.

  I take a step back.

  You know in those stupid rom-coms when the main characters see the inciting incident that changes their life forever? Time sort of slows down and everything turns gray around them, and the camera zooms i
n on their shocked, disheartened faces?

  Well, that’s complete bull.

  Because those bad moments are just as fast as the good ones—too fast.

  So fast you almost don’t feel your heart shattering.

  Almost.

  Neither Micah nor Heather notice me. Their world consists of two people. Their only history is this moment. The moment I always wanted to be in.

  Fisting my hands, I leave the stalls before they see me and return to the barn and the fight.

  Billie has Mike in a headlock and LD is wiping blood from a split eyebrow. The chorus of “Fight!” and the bray of cattle are too much. I can’t stand it. People stand away from me like who I am is catching.

  Like I’m a leper—or something worse. They’ve always known I could never be in that stall with Micah. Why didn't they ever tell me? Why was I stupid to think that I . . . that we . . . ?

  My eyes are blurring. I wipe them hard with the back of my hand, and my mascara smears across my face. I've had enough of this.

  “Get off him, Boo!” I shouted, using Mike Labouise’s nickname from elementary school. We used to be friends. His grandma and mine would go to poker nights together at the town hall. I don't understand why he hates me now—but I don't care.

  I march up to the fight, people moving out of my way like the parting of the Red Sea in that old movie, and I force my sharp elbow between Mike and Billie. He releases Billie from the headlock, and I shove them away from each other.

  “What would your grandma say, Boo?” I ask him.

  His face breaks into surprise. “She’s dead.”

  “Rolling over in her grave, too.” I drop LD’s handbag and turn to go. Billie locks eyes with me for a moment, begins to follow, but I don’t wait for him. I leave as fast as I can. He had this pity look on his face that I can't stand. Not right now. Not after . . .