A Dark Road

by Amanda Lance

  “Luke!”

  It is mere luck that I caught him on the one night he wasn’t drinking, or smoking, or high, or with some girl, because Sam is already gone and Ryan is just on the brink. I grab Grayson by one arm and Luke takes him by the other, for which Jenna promptly starts flipping a shit, but Luke dodges her swings easy.

  Luke just pulls her arms down and more or less carries her out the way we came in.

  When Grayson sees how easily Jenna is scooped up and hauled out by Luke, it sobers him up enough to stop struggling. He actually seems focused enough to follow me.

  Once we get them outside it’s like riding the top of a mountain. My ears feel like they’re about to pop from the noise difference. I ring them out, though it isn’t doing a lot of good. I can still feel the base in the pavement below us making little earthquakes, shaking the leftover glass in broken windows. I hope Hadley is all right. I hope she is sleeping soundly.

  In the second I haven’t been paying attention, Jenna and King Asshat got back to freaking out, and with both of them amped up, Luke is having a hard time handling them. I’m cursing out Sam and Ryan, but realize that their absence only bothers me because now if something happens to Luke, I’ll be responsible for that, too.

  Though Simon Grayson isn’t exactly big or anything, I know what it’s like to be on meth. Half the time when you’re revved up like that, you feel invincible, and besides, isn’t that why I brought Luke here in the first place? He’s the athlete, after all. So I try to grab Jenna’s wrists (it isn’t as bad it as sounds, I swear) as she aimlessly swings. It seems like Luke is having a hard time trying not to hurt her while pinning down King Asshat, but I’ll admit I’m not quite sure how to intervene here without making the situation worse.

  She scratches me a couple of times (girls need to get a hold on their claws) before I do manage to calm her down by sort of chanting her name. Then I’m wondering if she’s taken something else with my product, and she seems so tiny it’s hard to believe she could handle anything at all.

  “Jenna! Jenna, chill the hell out!”

  Her legs buckle but she blinks with the semi-awareness of her location and stops trying to knock my head off. Once she stops, King Asshat hesitates enough for Luke to pile-drive him onto the sidewalk, pinning his arms behind him as he lands on top of him.

  “Gotcha, bitch!”

  “Hey.” I was half afraid of Simon Grayson’s lack of movement. I know almost nothing about girls, but I’m pretty sure that if Luke railed him hard enough to kill him, Hadley would never smile at me again.

  Once Luke’s initial victory wears off I see his smile lapse. He looks at the horror on Jenna’s face and then mine.

  “Oh shit,” he says.

  “Simon?” Jenna’s voice is cracking and she starts to sniffle, and I’m thinking about manslaughter again and how long it would take to get to Mexico with Dog in the car.

  I let go of Jenna and push Luke off of King Asshat. I remember wrestling and throwing around with Luke when we were really little. Even then Luke hardly knew his own strength, cracking a kid’s rib one time outside of our tree house.

  Now I can’t see Simon Grayson’s face, so I can’t tell if he is conscious or not. At least I know he’s alive by the rise and fall of his shoulders. I poke him there, once, twice before he finally raises his head.

  “That was awesome!” He looks between all of us, before bouncing up on his feet. “Let’s do it again!”

  Ecstasy is dangerous for a few reasons. While it heightens mood for the first six hours or so, and alters reality, and makes sex phenomenal, because you’re feeling so amazing, you don’t think about your pituitary gland going haywire with all of the extra serotonin being released. You also don’t think about your core body temperature rising too high until your major organs start to shut down. And you sure as hell don’t think about the blood-salt imbalance, about getting thirsty.

  Horribly, God-awful thirsty.

  If you don’t drink, you’ll dehydrate. But another possibility (and most people don’t know this) is that you’ll end up drinking too much water. With water intoxication you can get hyponatremia, which is when your blood is so diluted it lets your brain swell.

  Either way you’re in some deep shit.

  It’s what people like about using, though. No thinking.

  And then I’m wondering why I don’t use my own stuff again.

  We get Jenna and Grayson out of there, though Luke is saying something to me about Sam and Ryan, but I think fuck it, they’re both big boys. Then again King Asshat is too, but he’s sweating and shaking, babbling and grinding his teeth together so bad I’m thinking he’s going to break his freaking jaw.

  We’re in the parking lot of a 24-hour Grab-n’-Go and they both want water, but I make them drink orange juice instead. They drink a carton between them within a few minutes and I struggle to keep them from running in and getting more.

  I should just take them home, but I know if King Asshat doesn’t get at least sober enough to stop twitching and rambling, then he won’t be able to hide this from his parents, from Hadley. Then there will be hospitals and cops. The same deal goes if I just dump them off at an emergency room somewhere. If both of them are higher than a kite and they even say my name to a nurse or an orderly, then I’m also fucked.

  We hang out in the parking lot for almost an hour while I try to convince Jenna we should all go back to her house to sober up (I hear her parents are never home). She spazzes at the mere mention of it, screams out loud, though that doesn’t bother the other loiterers.

  I stay with Jenna in the parking lot while Luke goes inside with King Asshat to use the bathroom. The drop hits him a little bit then because he’s starting to get sick. And it’s only after plugging up the toilet, and getting kicked out of the Grab-n’-Go that Jenna agrees to lead the way to her house.

  It is almost three in the morning by the time we get there. Jenna has a tolerance, so it isn’t too bad when she starts to sober up. Luke leaves me to pick up Sam and Ryan, who are stranded at some girl’s house somewhere, and I try to make Jenna eat some bread from the kitchen that’s bigger than my entire house. The only signs of life from King Asshat are the constant flushing of the toilet and the occasional chuckle of laughter. Whatever he’s doing in there, I don’t want any part of it.

  Jenna is winding down now, or at least I think she is until she starts crying (about what, though, I have no idea). She sits and I turn on the TV before looking around the house. In her Dad or maybe her Mom’s office, there is a generous liquor cart with expensive stuff I’ve never even heard of. Paintings on the wall that don’t make any sense…By the time I get back to her she’s bitten her fingernails almost down to the nub and is back to babbling. At least now I can understand a little of what she’s saying. I encourage her to take a shot of vodka but she starts panicking again when she realizes where the source must have come from. I think my headache must be worse than the one she’ll have tomorrow.

  It’s not ideal, but grain alcohol helps with the depression that immediately follows an ecstasy drop. The brain is flooded with serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine when you’re high; the crash coming down can be painful. A shot or two not only numbs this feeling, but also helps with the water retention.

  I calm her down. I tell her no one will notice its missing, and if they do, she can blame it on one of her friends.

  “Hell,” I tell her, “you can blame it on me if you want.”

  King Asshat hears her crying and comes out from the bathroom wearing nothing but a bathrobe that looks like it belongs to Jenna. He wants to save Princess Overachiever and tries to hit me but misses, stumbling over the sofa and tumbling head first until he’s flat on his ass.

  For the first time all night, we laugh. I laugh mostly because anger is a sign that he’s coming down, too. He takes not one, but two shots and even seems coherent when I explain to him about electrolytes and serotonin and all that jazz.

  It’s four in the morning
and I’m so tired I would sleep for days if I could. King Asshat, though, is suddenly determined to get his car. He’s saying something about cows and his parents but I tell him I’ll take care of it if he calls his sister and lets her know he’s okay.

  So I do just that.

  Chapter 21

  Hadley

  I kept my mouth shut the rest of the weekend, occupied in my own thoughts about James and Dog. Every time I closed my eyes I saw them sleeping outside in a tent in the rain, and I was racked with guilt for not inviting him to spend the night on the sofa. Circumstances aside, I knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind. Then I kept remembering how I had seen the semi-trailer in the front yard of his house.

  If James’ dad had been home, then where was he?

  ***

  In Econ on Monday morning I barely heard a word Ms. Mason said. I only wrote down enough to be considered notes, missing nouns and ideal verbs that would have the notes actually make any sense. By the time class ended my brain felt like Swiss cheese. Simon hadn’t said more than three words to me all morning, though other than his unusual quiet demeanor and seemingly endless need for water, he acted fine. I thought maybe something happened between him and Jenna on Saturday night, but when I asked, he avoided the question.

  I watched Simon laugh with his new friends and tried to figure it out. If Simon was in real trouble he would tell me, wouldn’t he? I started at the bulletin board and pretended to re-read the same advertisements over and over again. I had heard from one of the places I had e-mailed about volunteering, the local animal shelter, though I hadn’t bothered to call them back. I didn’t have much motivation to do anything. The announcements and flyers turned to mushy letters in my head even after I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “Hadley Grayson?”

  I jumped at the sound of his voice. I had half expected to find him suffering from pneumonia by now, but judging by his clear demeanor and flawless expression, he wasn’t having any trouble with his health.

  “I don’t have any broken flashlights.” I could have kicked myself.

  His expression reflected my awkwardness. “I’ll alert the proper channels.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Without realizing it, I think he was more awkward than he intended to be, but I liked it. He wasn’t trying to put on a show like my brother or some of the other guys I knew. He was confident enough to do what came naturally, and for that I was almost envious.

  “Shouldn’t you be with your friends?” He gestured to the cafeteria but I just shrugged. I wasn’t in the mood to lay all of my problems on someone else. If I was in Connecticut I might have complained to Aimee or Jordan, but here I was alone. Though the more I compared my life in Ravel with my life in Connecticut, the more similar they seemed. Had I always been so alone?

  “What about you?” I nodded in the direction of Fuller and Anderson, who leaned against a snack machine and eyed us. James craned his head to look at them but otherwise did not acknowledge them.

  “Those guys are…um—I help them with homework.”

  “Oh, are you sure?”

  He tilted his head to the side, making me think of that theory that dogs and their owners inadvertently begin to resemble each other.

  “Just teasing you.” Lame, Hadley. Where was a deep dark hole to crawl in when I needed one?

  I lunged for a quick recovery. “Do you tutor a lot of people or—

  “I—uh, don’t really…it’s just a special, out-of-school thing…”

  I perked up considerably. Just the idea that he had fewer potential females in his life made me feel better than I wanted to admit.

  “As a recipient of your help then, I must be part of an elite group,” I teased. “I suddenly feel so special.”

  He smiled and kicked invisible dirt on the ground. “Trust me, you’re special.”

  I stared into the ash of his eyes. It looked like a volcano had exploded there, leaving a hard layer of something cold and beautiful over the middle.

  “Why aren’t you with your friends?”

  “I hate eating at school.” It wasn’t a whole lie but it wasn’t the whole truth either, so I gave him as much as I could. “In my old school, we could sign out and leave for lunch. During the season, I just went to work out, but it’s still nice to get away in the middle of the day.”

  He nodded in agreement. “A break from the monotony.”

  “Exactly.” I sighed.

  James looked me up and down in a way that gave me the shivers. “D-do you want to go somewhere with me?”

  My heart did a switchblade and doubled back again. “Like where?”

  He shrugged. “Trust me.”

  We walked to the front of the lobby, where a sign on the secretary’s door indicated she would return in 15 minutes. A woman I recognized as the school nurse stood near the sign-in sheet, talking to one of the custodians and sipping a cup of coffee. Around the bend in the hall were the principal and vice principal’s offices and what I thought were probably the school counselors. But because it was lunch, there weren’t any kids around.

  I dumbly followed James down the school’s front steps, even when he started running. I felt like a little kid, chasing after a balloon in the sky. Once we were past the row of staff parking , we slowed our pace to a steady beat.

  “What was that about?”

  He laughed. “The secretaries take their lunch together and the security guards all take a smoke break around the same time. So there’s a fifty-fifty shot that no one is in the lobby at all between 11:45 and 12:05. Do you want to go back?”

  “Back is for retreat, I’m on offense.”

  We walked to the end of the parking lot before I realized the reason I was cold was because I had no jacket. My long-sleeve shirt wasn’t doing much to protect me from the chill. James must have realized it the same moment I did, because he took off his gray hoodie and handed it to me. I was somewhat hesitant to accept it, but as another gust of wind came by, my pride left and I slipped it on. He looked away bashful, as I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and pulled out the strings.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” If Mom and Dad didn’t kill me for ditching, then that adorable dimple would be the death of me, I was sure of it.

  “Tell me.”

  Reaching the end of the sidewalk, we stopped and looked back at the school. A particularly strong gust of wind hit my face but James tightened the strings of the hood just as it was about to fall off.

  “You look like Little Bo Peep.”

  I backed away, the feel of his hands so close to my face suddenly strange. The skin at the end of his fingers were peeling orange, they looked dry, sore. “So, now that we’re free, what are we going to do?”

  He shrugged. “You have a car.”

  “So do you.”

  “I never applied for a parking space permit.”

  “You walk here every day?”

  “My truck isn’t r-real reliable.” I almost brought up the first time I saw him on the side of the road, half-drowning in car fluid and gnawing on a flashlight but decided not to, figuring he’d go back in his shell again.

  “Well, I can’t just ditch Simon.” I rolled my eyes, though in truth I wanted to do far worse to him for making me worry the other night.

  He mumbled something under his breath, but I only heard, “He seems to do it to you plenty enough.”

  “He’s a boy. Boys are stupid. They can’t help themselves.”

  I earned a smile for that one, his dimple a star that blinded me..

  “Should we go for a walk then?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I mocked. “Dog will get jealous.”

  We walked along the highway in silence. James wordlessly took my backpack from me and I let him. No boy had ever offered to carry my books for me before. He was like something out of a book, something mysterious and wonderful.

  “How’s your brother?” he asked suddenly.

  I hesitated. Other than small talk and fencing, I was hardly a
n expert at conversation, and it was a little weird for me to discuss personal elements of my life.

  “He’s um—weird. Thanks for asking, though.”

  When I heard him laugh, something in me gave way. Like knowing I could produce that sound in him was enough to let me defy gravity. If I could make him laugh, then I could just as easily swim an ocean or live through a lightning strike.

  “I assume he came home safe and sound the other night?”

  “Safe but hardly sound…do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  He shook his head.

  “Be glad. My parents say they only wanted one kid, guess they overshot it.”

  We reached the end of town, where the worn out sign that welcomed newcomers was chipped away by the elements.

  “Welcome to Ravel,” I murmured.

  “You miss Connecticut.” It was less of a question and more of a statement, but the tone of voice was harsher than I would have liked it to be. I also tried to think of when I had told him where I was from, but I couldn’t remember.

  “I miss fencing more than anything else.” When I said it, I knew it was true. I barely thought about my friends or the house I had grown up in. What I missed more than anything was the feel of a foil grip in my hand and the thrill of training.

  “Dry or electric?”

  My eyes widened in surprise. Few people knew about fencing terminology and the options in play. Considering he never dressed out for gym, I didn’t suspect he’d know anything about sports.

  “Ah—both. Most matches are electric but a couple of tournaments at the end of the season are always dry.”

  “What weapon do you play?”

  “Foil usually but sometimes the epee. How do you know about fencing? It isn’t exactly a popular sport.”

  He turned away and blushed just a little. “I looked it up.”