A Dark Road

by Amanda Lance

  I wasn’t even mad that he lied. I didn’t care about that. We didn’t know each other, so why should he owe me the truth about his personal business? But what I did want to know was why he refused my friendship when I so openly handed it to him? The few times I had tried to approach him after the science center, he skittered away faster than an alley cat, and just as afraid. In English, he was always at least five minutes late and the first one to leave. It had occurred to me that maybe he preferred solitude, but then I had that sense of him trying to reach out, that desperation…but then again, maybe I had just been reflecting my own loneliness. Either way, I had to know for sure.

  “Is this thing a big event?”

  Tim perked up at my interest. “Oh yeah, everyone goes.”

  “Everyone, huh?”

  Chapter 24

  McKay

  I know Louie will be at the Shae party. All the normals and sheep between 15 and 20 within a twenty mile radius go there every year. I put on an old hat and a really big jacket that it is way too warm for, but I don’t much care. I haven’t spoken to Hadley all week and every thought of her is like rubbing my tongue over a cut in my mouth: it hurts to pick at, but I can’t control myself.

  I’m also leave pretty late. If I’m extra lucky, then maybe everybody will already be drunk or the damn thing will be over (courtesy of the cops). Right now, Dog is giving me that whining whistle, with a “why don’t you love me?” look while I put my shoes on. I swear Caesar is right and all canines are telekinetic, because he always knows when I’m going somewhere in my pickup. I feel like a royal asshole, but I can’t take him with me, not when there’s a chance I could get picked-up. I could just see some asshole cop shoving him in a cage overnight, or Dog getting his ass chewed up by a pitbull in a shelter, while I, respectively, am getting my ass chewed up in jail.

  “Sorry, boy. We’ll go for a ride tomorrow.”

  This doesn’t make him happy. Not even a little bit. I know the second I pull away, he’ll cuddle up against the only clean piece of laundry and sleep there until I get back.

  Furry bastard.

  By the time I get there, the party is in full swing, and I wish I could turn into a liquid so I can wash down the pavement grates. I’d even be happy to be a gas, evaporate in the atmosphere so no one could ever see me…But wishing doesn’t change anything, so I hide the pickup among the other crappy cars. I’m glad that it’s not any more noticeable than anyone else’s. I do wait, though, until a group of people clear out from in front of the house before I cross the street and wander over.

  Just like last year the place is a circus, complete with lion-tamers and acrobatics. Kids are drunk, half-naked girls are dancing on picnic tables (not that I mind that part), terrible music offends the senses, and just when I’m trying to figure out what that smell is, I see the porta-john has been tipped.( I guess that explains the blue grass.)

  I head over to the path that isn’t quite lit and keep my eyes to the ground. I want to look over to my left where some girl is moaning like her freaking life depends on it, but that feels a little too perverted even for me, so I keep on walking. I’m wondering what Hadley Grayson would sound like in the dark, in the woods…under my fingers. And suddenly I’m regretting not getting a beer or two. And I’m wishing it was colder out. And I’m wishing she was with me, and I’m wishing everything wasn’t so hard, and I’m wishing and wishing and wishing.

  At what looks like the end of the property, Louie, Nicky, and somebody else I’ve never met before are already waiting for me. I can see Nicky and the other guy are already pretty tweaked out, but Louie is as sober and cool as any other time I’ve met with him. Though he scares me, I’m at least sure now there aren’t any cops around. No wires being worn.

  “Dude, you’re late.”

  I look around to make sure no one is around. I know I’m not late, but I’m not about to poke a rattlesnake; a rattlesnake who has lots of tweaked up people willing to do just about anything for him, a rattlesnake with older relatives in prison, a rattlesnake who probably has guns…

  “Let’s go, guys. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Why? You got a hot date tonight?” The guy I don’t know is scratching his arms through his shirt, and if he keeps it up, I’m sure he’ll have to get skin grafts.

  “Yeah, he probably does,” Nicky says between laughs. I can smell his breath from here. The tooth decay. It makes me nauseous. “You shoulda seen that tight little piece he was with the other day.”

  And I’m wishing I was bolder, and I’m wondering how likely it is that they are each carrying or if they can aim. And I’m wondering how many times I can hit each of them in the head with a log before they take me down. And I’m thinking about a bullet in the head.

  I’m thinking and wishing that it would hardly hurt at all.

  Louie hits him in the stomach. Nicky and the other kid shut up within seconds.

  We look at each other like we’re both thinking the same thing: “Can’t attract attention. Must be covert, secret operation kind of shit.”

  Faster than any athlete I’ve seen move at school, I’m stuffing the batches in Louie’s jacket pocket. I hate that I instantly know he’s wearing the real kind of cologne and that his leather jacket is probably worth more than I’ve spent on food in months.

  For a second I think it’s the crinkle of the baggy. But then it happens again and it occurs to me that the sound is coming from the bushes behind us. I hope it’s an animal, because animals can’t talk to cops. My guts feel like they’re being pressed by a steam roller and that only happens when one person is around. I imagine my lungs deflating and shriveling up and it hurts to breathe. There are a thousand eyes watching me from between the trees and I have no idea how to make them stop.

  “I have to go.” I try looking over my shoulder without being obvious, but I’m thinking it’s unavoidable.

  “Yeah, well, last thing I wanna do is get in the way of your busy schedule.” Louie is looking around just like I did before, tucking a large wad of money in the open-ended pocket of my sweatshirt. He makes a gesture with his hand and Nicky and the other guy hurry along ahead, leaving Louie and I and the noise in the bushes alone.

  “Never trust a tweaker, McKay.” He sighs and looks in the direction Nicky went.

  I’m trying to laugh. It isn’t working. “Hard to find good help these days, isn’t it?

  “I swear to Christ.” He takes out his phone and starts hammering away. “If they weren’t family, I’d hack their asses myself.”

  I nod a good-bye and Louie does the same. Now, I realize that the other kid is one of his cousins.

  The sound from the bushes startles me again. I wait until Louie and his guys are out of sight before turning around.

  “Hadley Grayson.”

  Chapter 25

  Hadley

  We left Jenna’s house around nine. The lot of us piled in the Bull, because it could theoretically hold six people. Sylvia lent me a shimmering purple dress and a thin pair of transparent fairy wings meshed in wire. Rachel ignored my complaining and smeared my eyelids and ponytail with glitter, though I did decline the high-heels and wore my sneakers.

  I caught Jenna rolling her eyes while Sylvia drew her whiskers. At least I wasn’t the only one who had grown out of playing dress up.

  The house that hosted the party was closed off to its guests, but long strings of green and purple lights had been thrown up in the trees and wrapped around the branches, some more intricately than others. Torches decorated with plastic skeleton heads flared, drawing girls in like moths to light their cigarettes. Someone had already begun smashing pumpkins, and the ground was littered with the seeds. Beer cans were strewn about carelessly.

  “Looks like fun,” I shouted.

  I was only feigning excitement and knew I was pretty crummy at it. Playing pretend all the time at school and at home—maybe that’s why dress up wasn’t fun anymore. But I was the only one there who knew my genuine intention was find
ing and confronting James, and if I had to fake a little enthusiasm to blend in while doing it, I could live with that.

  “Goddamn right it does,” Simon cheered, then honked his clown nose.

  I mainly stuck around Simon and Rachel, playing the spectator while he played beer-pong and made friends with pretty much every single person there. Yet as more people arrived and Simon became more obnoxious, he was easily distracted and I lost him in the crowd.

  “Hey guys, the band is here!”

  A small herd of people pushed me out of the way with minimal effort, though I had no trouble elbowing them back. I moved over to the side where the backyard ended and the woods began, but only stayed there for a second before a girl with a broken heel accidently stumbled into me and promptly began puking into the bushes.

  The band plugged into extension cords sticking out from the windows of the house and turned on the amplifiers from the back of a pickup. Loud screeching followed, but people still clapped and cheered. I watched a teenage mutant ninja turtle time Uncle Sam while he burped the alphabet and briefly listened to a racecar driver try to convince a ladybug and bumblebee to make out.

  It wasn’t like I had never been to a party before. But then, the only time I enjoyed them was post tournament with my fellow fencers, when I was high on the thrill of victory or the anger of defeat. Everything else felt like a cheap thrill. I was no angel, to be sure. I had indulged in one too many wine coolers last 4 of July with Jordan, and there was a night or two last spring with flat champagne and warm beer with a few of Simon’s friends, but I didn’t enjoy it the way a lot of people my age seemed to. Alcohol only made me sleepy and the smell of pot made me retch. Maybe there was something drastically wrong with me. Maybe I was broken.

  Music (at least I think that’s what you’d call it) blared from tiny speakers hanging in the trees and even bigger ones by the side of the house. The sound infected my ears and I tried ringing them out, but just ended up moving from the bench and further away from the crowd. Simon hadn’t responded to my text and I didn’t see him around the porta-johns or the keg. All the while I kept my eyes open for James and his crazy villain hair, but I didn’t any sign of him. I wandered to the bonfire where an astronaut and a gangster were throwing poppers and sparklers into the flames. The sparks flew up into the sky and disappeared after a few seconds, spiraling away like ash.

  “Hadley, there you are!”

  I almost smiled, until I realized it wasn’t the boy I was looking for. “Hey, Tim. Lost your eye patch, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  I reached up and wiped off a furrowed line of eyebrow that Sylvia had drawn on with eyeliner. “Much better.”

  He huffed. “Thanks.”

  I pointed to the grass stains on his shirt. “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing much. You want something to drink?”

  “No thanks. I’m the designated, remember?”

  “Right.”

  Oddly enough, I was saved from the awkwardness by Fuller and Anderson, who pointed me out. I remembered the irritation James showed towards them, his reluctance to even acknowledge them. Other than Luke, all three boys were impossibly skinny, they all had a touch of acne—Ryan Fuller’s seemed to be getting worse every day. Then again, maybe it wasn’t even acne. Acne couldn’t make him itch like that, or be on his hands, could it? I’d heard rumors that the wrestling team had caught ringworm. Simon made a big fuss about not changing in the boy’s locker room, so that could make sense…

  I watched the three of them chug beers and look at the figures of stewardesses and devils. I thought about the kid who wanted to talk to James about “that thing.” I thought about his house being exterminated. I remembered Simon’s all night bender he wouldn’t talk about. I remembered the D.A.R.E. program in grade school and the dots drew a conclusion I already knew.

  I looked around me at the party-goers. Who around me was a user, and would I even recognize them if I knew?

  I coughed, staring at nothing in particular. “Hey, ah, can I catch up with you later?”

  “Definitely.” He nodded.

  I tried not to be too obvious as I walked over to them. Luke was trying to distract Sam so that Fuller could tie his shoe laces together. When Sam noticed, he threw down punches and began trying to kick Fuller in the face. None of the boys were dressed up for the party, but I couldn’t see anyone giving them a hard time about it. Even now, I wouldn’t be talking to them unless I could think of a better way to learn something about James.

  “Try double-knotting it next time.”

  They were startled by my presence, and the way they looked at me suggested they were unfamiliar with girls in general. I tried my best to be amicable, but as I stared at the volcanic craters on Ryan’s face, I couldn’t help but flinch. Maybe I didn’t want to know anything about them after all.

  “You!” Fuller laughed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. “Aren’t you McKay’s girl?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah,” Sam added. “What were you doing talking to that douche bag over there?”

  “McKay is our boy, you know? You better not give him any grief.”

  Fuller and Luke abruptly began wrestling on the ground, nearly knocking out a small picnic table at our feet.

  “His girl?”

  But Sam joined in on the play like a cat on catnip. I felt like I was watching a sideshow act. Fuller got out from under Luke and landed a body slam directly on his head, prompting a dog pile from Ryan, who insisted he beg for submission.

  “Um, okay then. I’m just going to…go over here.”

  Though it was still relatively early, I was beginning to think of excuses about why we should leave. I could fake sickness, or lie to Simon and tell him we were being summoned by the parental units. Anything to get out of there at that point would have been a blessing. I had a headache and most definitely did not want to catch up with Tim or deal with giggling girls or smell the smell of vomit or cheap beer or listen to static from a couple of jerk-offs who called themselves a band…most of all I didn’t want to see James with the possibilities of what I knew.

  I wandered around, cultivating the dialogue in my head of how I would tell him off when I spotted Jenna. Her cat ears were long gone and her whiskers were smeared, but she still managed to pull off the body tight black turtleneck and skinny jeans.

  “This kind of sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Jenna looked considerably more relaxed with the pink drink in her hand, her hips swaying from side to side absentmindedly.

  “Meh, just not my scene.”

  “Yeah, not much of mine, either. But whatever.” She laughed and began spinning around slowly, pretending to chase the tail pinned to her belt buckle. A car pulled into the lot, barely missing a sycamore. The people who piled out of it were noticeably older than anyone else here, dirty and dank, jittery, and of course, without costumes. I shook my head and returned my attention to Jenna. Her pupils were dilated and her breathing was coming in rapid bursts.

  “Jenna, are you all right?”

  She laughed and held my elbow for leverage. “Better than I’ve been all week.” Her expression was wild, completing her overall cat look, but I didn’t think she was acting. “I’m just so tired, you know?”

  “Uh, let’s sit for a little while, okay?”

  I retraced my steps and managed to find an empty space on a bench and convinced her to sit there. She was mumbling in between her laughter, her head drooping with the stupor of her intoxication.

  “Jenna, I’m going to drive you home.”

  “No, no…I’m…fun.”

  I sighed but didn’t argue and doubled my search efforts for Simon. He wasn’t answering his phone and I didn’t see a sign of him, or any other member of our gang.

  “I’m going to go and look for Simon, okay? Will you just, ah—stay here for a minute or two?”

  Her face lit up at the mention of my brother and she began tugging on the end of my wings, more aw
ake suddenly than before. “Oooh, would you find him for me? He’s so nice to me; no one is really nice to me…”

  “All right, Jenna, just—relax here a second.” I was talking to a small child, a lonely kid afraid of the dark.

  I swarmed through the cliques calling out for Simon but there wasn’t a response. At one point I saw Sylvia’s beehive, but she disappeared into the woods with a serial killer a moment later, giggling with his hand up her shirt.

  “Sylvia! Tim!”

  I wasn’t heard over the cheering and drum set of the band. A few girls screamed at the end of the yard as the porta-potty was tipped over, and I rushed, thinking I might find Simon’s handiwork there, but whoever caused the damage had fled the scene. Then I saw the flashlights in the dark. Remembering Simon had brought one, I walked off in that direction. Other than a couple more tiki torches, there wasn’t much light there, but the woods were well spaced, so I didn’t feel any immediate fears.

  “Simon! Are you out here?”

  Branches broke behind me, and an animal cooed from somewhere beyond. I listened to my sneakers crunch the dead leaves beneath my feet, but could hear nothing else. Almost like an alternate universe, the party disappeared behind me, leaving a cloud of trees and eerie lights behind me.

  “Hello? Has anyone seen Simon Grayson?”

  Females giggled under the clusters, the embraces of their young lovers like fairies under the twinkle of stars. I excused myself and turned away as I saw the strap of an undergarment drag across a rock to my left. I continued on the trail ahead. If Simon was out here with some cheap tart when he was supposed to be hanging out with Jenna, I would squish his tiny brain. It seemed like Jenna suffered from more than a little social anxiety and needed some assurance that was more than a simple self-esteem booster. If Simon cared for her as much as I suspected, then he should show it instead running away.