The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

by Lauren Kate

  As Mike and I headed toward the need-to-know stash of library liquor, we could hear Rex turn back to the scantily clad pubescents in the foyer.

  "Now before I grant you beauties entrance to the party," he was saying, "I just need one small token to prove your undying Rexfection--"

  Mike was shaking his head and laughing, but when I caught a glimpse of the two of us ascending the curved staircase, I stopped us both in our tracks.

  "What's wrong?" Mike asked.

  I pointed at our reflection in the massive gilded mirror spanning the wall. We'd been so rushed leaving my house for the party--so as to avoid Mom's wobbly camera-wielding hand--that this was my first full-length view of our ensemble.

  My tastefully sequined soft-pink flapper dress was capped off by long white gloves and strappy silver kitten heels. Mom had spent an hour curling my dark hair into ringlets that fell a few inches below my shoulders. Every girl here would be likely sporting an over-sprayed updo, but Mike liked to be able to run his fingers through my long hair. Plus, I always felt more elegant with it down. The thick brown waves framed my minimally made-up face and the one gaudy indulgence I'd allowed myself for the party--fake eyelashes. I batted them demurely at Mike in his black top hat, tailored tux, and ruffled French-cut chemise, and in the mirror, he gave me a sexy wink.

  Hand in hand, we looked like royalty. The perfect couple.

  I still hadn't figured out how to respond to--or sufficiently avoid--my dad's disturbing text from the night before, but this glimpse of Mike and myself on the stairs was the first thing that had made me feel any better about the black cloud of problems past now hanging over my head.

  Look at me. Look at us. I had come too far to get pulled back down.

  "I'm so glad it was my idea to go classy this year," Mike joked.

  He took the opalescent feather mask out of my hand and twirled it around on its stick before holding it up to my face.

  "Yes, you're a real mastermind." I smirked, mounting the top stair and pushing open the curved wooden door to the library.

  Inside the plush-carpeted room was your basic made-to-order rich folks' library. Floor-to-ceiling shelves showcased all the big classics of the western canon with their gold-embossed titles on thick, faded spines. Two maroon leather shrink's couches faced each other in the center, and a rolling ladder gave the whole place that extra touch of class. You got the feeling that the actual books were more of a backdrop to the library's main event, which was, of course, the crystal liquor cabinet near the windows.

  It was a pleasant surprise to find that Mike and I were alone. Maybe Rex had been more discerning than I gave him credit for about who comprised the need-to-know set. While Mike uncorked a bottle of champagne, I stepped out onto the balcony for some air.

  "What should we drink to this time?" he asked, coming up behind me with two brimming glasses.

  I looked down at the yard below us where the party was in full swing. Rex had set up the same beaded canopy he used every year. And the same drunken silhouettes were clustering around the pool. There might have been something comforting in such familiarity, but tonight I just found it boring.

  I looked at Mike and raised my glass. "To shaking things up."

  "I have always wanted to shake things up with you on a balcony," he whispered. We kicked back our flutes of the primo champagne, and Mike swooped me up in his arms. He dipped me low, and his hand moved up my dress. I tipped my head back and moaned. The air was crisp and cool out on the balcony, but the heat emanating off of Mike made me feel lightheaded--or maybe that was the champagne's contribution. His hands felt so warm, so firm, so familiar, so--

  "Lights, camera, action," a thick southern twang interrupted us. We looked up into the bright-white bulb of a video camera.

  "Don't you know how to knock?" I asked, yanking my dress back down.

  Baxter Quinn, dressed all in black, loomed over us with a camera perched on his shoulder. To add to my annoyance at being interrupted, I couldn't help frowning at the fact that Baxter was noticeably Kate-less. His light hair contrasted starkly with the creepy bags under his eyes. He was heroin-hot, and I could see why Kate would go for him, though he was miles from my taste. He looked like a vampire with that long coat of his flapping lightly in the breeze.

  "Now how am I supposed to get the good stuff on tape if I knock?" he sneered. "Anyway, the last time I checked, this library was open to anyone Rex gave the green light to."

  I raised my eyebrows and crossed my arms over my chest.

  "The rich," Baxter said, gesturing at Mike. "The royal," he continued, turning to me. Finally, he pointed at himself. "And the relief." He opened up his black trench coat to expose a pharmacy's worth of powders and pills.

  Mike nodded at Baxter's trench coat. "Are you so stoned you forgot it was a costume party?" he asked.

  Baxter went to punch Mike's shoulder playfully, but instead he stumbled into the coffee table and ended up sprawled on the couch. Anyone else, I would have helped to his feet, but since Baxter's next stumbling fall would only be a matter of minutes away, I decided to save my energy.

  "Don't you recognize my costume?" he slurred at Matt, making himself comfortable on the couch and crossing his legs on the coffee table. "Every dude knows that the best part of Mardi Gras is Girls Gone Wild. Since I dabble in filmmaking, I'm shouldering the task. All the top tits are out tonight."

  I rolled my eyes, suddenly glad Kate wasn't here. "I didn't think Rex would give the library liquor green light to such a strung-out drunken pig."

  "Feisty, Nat," Baxter said, leaning over and attempting to run a finger up my thigh from the couch. I swatted him off.

  "Let's see that crotch shot again," he said. "Usually, things don't get that hot and heavy till at least midnight." He fiddled with the camera to play back some of his footage. "So far the juiciest thing I've got from down below is Justin Balmer tripping over his boa."

  "What?" My ears perked up. "Let me see that. What's J.B. doing?"

  "Asking to get punked is what he's doing," Baxter said, rewinding his footage to show us. "Someone should cut that kid off. He's one drink away from being worth the price of admission."

  "You said it," I muttered as Mike and I leaned down to look over Baxter's shoulder. The camera was so wobbly that it was hard to see much, but J.B. was definitely making an ass of himself. He was poolside, flashing a sock-stuffed lacy bra he must have borrowed from some Bambi. He was sporting red lipstick and a short leather skirt with fishnets--pretty much the opposite of classy.

  My eyes narrowed.

  "Let's get down there," I said.

  Mike nodded, happy for a reason to get away from Baxter. He made a last run for the good champagne.

  "Royal road pop," he said, handing me the refill. "Who knows what the plebs are drinking down there?"

  "You sure you don't want to do one more sex scene for the camera?" Baxter called out. "I could make you big on the Internet."

  "Bye, Baxter," I said, leaving him slumped on the studded leather couch. "Thanks for the preview."

  On the staircase, Mike and I paused again for another pose in front of the gilded mirror. Why was it that every time I caught a glimpse of myself looking so good, my father's trashy text flashed into my mind?

  I started down the stairs again, but Mike pulled on my hand.

  "Don't stray too far when we get down there," he said. "Can't have some masked man swooping in on you."

  "Promise," I whispered back, glancing once more into his dark eyes.

  In the kitchen, we passed the crawfish-boil buffet and the sign above it reading, Bite the Tail and Suck the Head. We paused behind a crowd of guys that had formed in front of the refrigerator. They each had a beer in one hand and a string of beads in the other. They were attempting a very drunken drum roll on their thighs.

  "What do we have here?" Mike asked.

  "Ask and you shall receive," one of the guys answered, tossing Mike a strand of beads.

  Soon, a line of girls
filed in to stand in a row before the crowd. Their hands were poised at the hems of their shirts.

  "And . . . flash wave!" one of the guys cued.

  The girls all whooped, and one by one, they lifted up their shirts in a contagion down the line. When all the lacy bras had been shown off, everyone was rewarded with exchanges of beads and saliva.

  "Encore!" the guys shouted.

  "Moving on," I said to Mike, and pulled him out to the tent.

  At least the party outside was a step up on the classy scale. A band played old New Orleans blues songs on a rotating stage in the middle of the dance floor. Most of the upper-classmen were getting freaky around the band, holding giant feathered masks up to their faces.

  From the bar, Kate waved in her hot-pink negligee. Her hair was in a high braided bun, and she seemed to be the only girl at the party who hadn't bothered to cover up her face with a mask. Her feathered heels clacked on the parquet as she dashed over to us.

  "Don't you two look all regal?" she asked, giving Mike a once-over and me a solemn nod of admiration.

  "We ran into Baxter upstairs," I said, watching her face light up as she tugged the negligee lower on her hips. I leaned in and cupped her ear. "He looks like he could use a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

  "Say no more," she purred, then pounced past us towards the house. I wasn't sure why she was after Baxter at all, but I was nothing if not charitable to the deserving. I wouldn't stand in their way. And anyway, I had more important things on my mind. Like finding J.B.

  I scanned the rest of the crowd, spotting some senior girls in the far corner. They were serenading each other with massive multicolored boas. It was one big cloud of feathers flying over variations of tight black dresses.

  "You want to go dance with the girls?" Mike asked.

  I looked around to see what else was going on. I did love to dance, and there was something pretty sexy about everyone being incognito behind his or her mask. But I also wanted to be cognito when Mike ran into J.B.

  An unwelcome hand on my ass told me I didn't have to wait any longer. I spun around and lowered my mask.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," J.B. purred. "I thought you were someone else. A girl I used to know. My mistake."

  I raised my palm to slap him, but Mike was standing right behind me.

  "Hands off," I muttered to J.B.

  "C'mon, doll face. Don't you know flesh is fair game on Mardi Gras?"

  "Don't call me that," I hissed, my stomach seizing up at the sound of the nickname. "And for the record, my flesh is never fair game for you."

  "Hey," Mike said, joining the conversation. "Balmer, you are one fugly woman."

  "And you didn't dress the part," J.B. said, taking in Mike's tuxedo. From the self-conscious look on his face, it might finally have occurred to him how ridiculous he looked. "I thought you were going all out with me."

  "Change of plans," I shrugged, thinking back to what Baxter had said upstairs about J.B. asking to get punked. "You look like you need another drink. Maybe it'll make you forget how unflattering those fishnets are." I turned around and spotted a crowd gathered next to the pool. "Look," I said innocently. "Keg stands. That looks fun."

  "You want to do a keg stand?" Mike asked.

  "No," I said. "J.B. does."

  J.B. looked me up and down. His eyes were glassy and drunk. I couldn't figure out why I suddenly felt more naked than I had when Mike had my dress hiked up around my waist.

  "Well, that sounds like a dare," he said.

  Within minutes, Mike, Rex, and a couple of their JV football runners had J.B. lifted in the air. His legs were splayed out, and his mouth was poised over the keg to take it. I didn't even have to lift a finger to get the crowd to gather around.

  "Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!" the whole party cried out in unison.

  J.B. spent a reputable amount of time sucking off the keg, and I sidled to the front to see his swollen face lurch with beer. When he made the mercy cut-off sign, the guys lifted him back up, then set him down. A cheer rang out across the party for the green-faced victor. I stood among my senior girls and waited for him to do something lewd enough to shock the crowd. Everyone knew Justin Balmer was no peach when he got trashed.

  "Clear out," J.B. yelled, stumbling toward the bushes. "I'm gonna puke."

  "Vile," my friend Amy Jane Johnson said, offering the senior girls swigs from her grandmother's old flask. "Keg stands are so bourgeois. Why is J.B. doing that?"

  "That's not what you said when you made out with Dave Smith right after he did a keg stand last summer," Jenny Inman teased her, tugging on her uncharacteristically short black shirt.

  "That was different," Amy Jane said, fanning herself with her mask. "Dave Smith played at Wimbledon. He gets carte blanche."

  "Encore," someone hollered at J.B. I looked up to see Baxter and Kate's silhouettes huddled together on the library balcony. "Boot and rally!" Baxter yelled.

  Amazingly, J.B. answered the call to binge-drinking duty. Disgusted as my friends and I claimed to be, we cheered with just as much enthusiasm when the whole thing started up again.

  After the guys had set J.B. shakily back on his feet, Rex got up on the microphone and clanked a fork to his crystal goblet.

  "Okay, merry makers," he called. "As master of this party, I decree a skinny-dipping convention. In the pool. ASAP. You've got five minutes to get these heinous costumes off." He gestured at a junior guy's ripped gold-lame tank top. "Find a dry place for your feathers, and get these gorgeous bodies in the water." For emphasis, he grabbed a Bambi's ass. "Rex's orders--or get the hell out."

  Instantly, the whole mood of the party shifted as everyone flowed toward the pool. Seniors staked out lounge chairs for their clothes, while Bambies, who were virgins to Rex's party rules, squabbled over whether it was dark enough to feel okay about getting naked.

  I felt Mike's hand take mine. "C'mere," he whispered.

  "No way, I'm not skinny-dipping," I said quickly.

  "Yes, I'm aware of your weird inexplicable aversion to skinny-dipping," he said, pulling me toward the bushes. "That's not what I had in mind."

  I grabbed Mike's hand and smiled at him. He'd totally picked the right time for a private rendezvous in the side yard.

  But when we got there, I was surprised to see J.B. slumped over against a dogwood tree. A cloak of Spanish moss hung down like a curtain separating us from the rest of the party.

  "That second keg stand did him in," Mike said. He looked worried.

  "So he let loose. What's the big deal?" I said. "He's a big boy; he can handle a little bit of--"

  "Alcohol poisoning?" Mike finished.

  I sighed. The pool party had gotten so loud, I could barely hear myself think. If everyone was already skinny-dipping, this soiree was playing out just like any other. If we stayed here, shaking things up might be a lost cause.

  I squatted down in front of J.B. He was pretty catatonic.

  "He probably just needs some air," I said finally. "Let's take a drive, just the three of us. Maybe we can bring him back to life."

  CHAPTER Six

  TOIL AND TROUBLE

  "Ugh, he's total dead weight," I complained to Mike minutes later as we hauled J.B.'s limp body out to the driveway. "Why'd we park so far away?"

  "I don't think we planned on this development," Mike said, looking unconcerned, like his end of the load was about as heavy as a feather boa.

  He was holding J.B. under the armpits, and I had him by the legs. I was staggering under the weight, but that didn't stop me from enjoying a prime view of how green our patient looked around the gills.

  Mike clicked the unlock button on his Tahoe. It was a good thing we'd brought his car tonight instead of the tiny, slightly used Miada that my mom's new beau had just bribed her with.

  "Let's haul him in," Mike said.

  We laid Justin across the backseat, and Mike rolled down the windows to let in some cool night air.

  "I think I've got a water bottle in my foot
ball bag somewhere," he said, walking around to the trunk to rummage through his stuff.

  Alone, more or less, with J.B. for a minute, I looked down at his face. He was going to feel like crap in the morning, but for now, he looked so peaceful. Even under all the makeup, you could see his fair skin and the freckles that gave him that deceiving boyish charm.

  His red lipstick had faded to a brassy stain that crept out around the corners of his mouth, his eyelashes were clustered together by a pretty sad mascara job, and there was glitter, well, everywhere. Before I realized what I was doing, I ran my hand across his forehead to smooth out a gluey clump of the glitter from his eyebrow. I brushed a lock of blond hair back from his eyes.

  They opened.

  "Nat," he whispered. "Is that you?"

  "Found it!" Mike called from the trunk of the car. He walked around and delivered an old Nalgene bottle with the Palmetto High School crest decaled in white. "Here," Mike said to J.B. "Drink this."

  "I can't drink anything else," J.B. groaned. "I'll puke."

  "Wouldn't be the first time tonight," I added, hoping to undermine whatever weird moment J.B. and I had just had.

  "Where are we?" J.B. asked. He looked so helpless.

  "Getting you away from that party," Mike said.

  J.B. nodded, took a messy drink of water, and passed out again on the seat.

  Mike chuckled and shut the door behind him. Then he leaned me up against it, stroked my hair, and pressed his body into mine. I could feel the familiar warmth spread through me, but I was thinking about what this would look like through the window if J.B. came to right now: my dark hair spread out against the glass, my arms pinned over my head, Mike's broad shoulders covering mine.

  Mike kissed me, then looked into my eyes.

  "Where to?" he asked.

  "Just drive."

  Mike started the car, and soon we were rolling out of Rex's long circular entryway, past what seemed like a never-ending row of our classmates' sports cars and jacked-up SUVs.

  "Is it weird that this was our last Mardi Gras party?" I said, thinking about what was still going on at the pool. I didn't usually skip out on a social gathering until . . . well, until I was sure there was no more drama to be missed and gossiped about back at school the next week.

  "What do you mean our last Mardi Gras party?" Mike asked. "What about next year? And the year after that? You know, I hear some people celebrate Mardi Gras every year."