So we went up to my room, where I managed to hook Henry up with a pair of acceptably worn jeans, an old vintage-looking t-shirt and a plain black hoodie. I stepped back to take a look at him. “Well, it’s definitely an improvement.”
He looked at himself in the mirror, and giggled. “I feel so emu.”
I had to swallow back my laughter. “I think you mean emo, Henry. An emu is a large, flightless bird. Like an ostrich.”
“Yeah, emo. I like it.”
Just then I heard a car pull up to the house. I looked out my window; it was Tristan’s Jeep, idling in the driveway.
“Our ride’s here,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Fourteen
Henry was visibly nervous as we descended the stairs, and went out into the night. I whispered, “Just relax. It’s going to be fine,” as I climbed into the front seat and he got in the back. “Hey Tris,” I began, closing the door behind me. “This is Hen—” but I stopped short when I saw her. She looked up from the steering wheel, her eyes red and filled with tears, her face flush.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, breaking down into a torrent of shivering sobs.
Now what was I supposed to do? I mean, this poor girl was obviously distraught—devastated, even—and all I could do was hope that she wouldn’t totally lose it before we made it to the party. But I had to do something. So I reached over, touched her shoulder. I said, “It’s okay, Tris. We don’t have to go you don’t want to.”
She turned to me, then, with a sort of desperate heaviness in her eyes. She said, “You just sounded so much like your brother right then.” She let out an abbreviated chuckle. “You’re even starting to look a bit like him, too, as you get older.”
I could feel myself blushing—to hear somebody (and, of course, not just somebody—Ryan’s girlfriend) tell me that I was becoming more and more like him, well, let’s just say it felt pretty huge. I said, “Thanks, Tris. But really, if you’re not feeling up to this, we can get up there on our own.”
This made her laugh. “Oh really, how? You’re going to skateboard up a three-mile hill?” And with that she shifted the car into drive and pulled onto the street.
***
It wasn’t until we pulled into the field next to the radio tower that I turned around to see how Henry was doing in the back. And he was not doing well.
To say the kid looked scared would be an understatement of enormous proportions. He looked horrified. Panic-stricken, even. He was pale, wide-eyed, and almost totally unresponsive. His little wire glasses were about to chatter off the end of his nose. Whether it was the car ride up with such a wreck of a girl, the apprehension of the party, or the fact that he was about to be face-to-face with Alistair, I can’t honestly say. But whatever it was, it had Henry thoroughly spooked.
Lucky for us, Tristan needed a minute to compose herself, so I got a chance to shake some sense into Henry before we ventured into the wilds of the party. As soon as we were out of earshot, I grabbed him by the shoulders. “What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re about to have a heart attack.”
Henry didn’t move a muscle; he just stared at me.
“Okay, Henry. Take a few deep breaths, and tell me what’s going on.”
He did as he was told (reluctantly), breathing in deeply though his nose, and out through his mouth. Then, barely whispering, he said, “It’s just that…at the party…I know that there’ll be…”
“What, beer? It’s a keg party, Henry.”
He shook his head.
“Drugs? Are you worried about drugs. Because no one’s going to make you do—”
“No,” he whispered.
“Is it Alistair and those guys? You know they’d never do anything here, with all these people, right?”
Again, he shook his head, “No, there’ll be…”
“What?”’
“Girls.”
Okay, so I know that laughing hysterically was probably not the most sympathetic or kind response I could have had to Henry’s statement. But it was the one that came to me first, so I went with it. Practically choking, I said, “Girls? You’re this freaked out about girls?”
“That’s what they have at parties,” he shot back, almost angrily. “They have girls that will want to talk or flirt or make out or who knows what, and I don’t know how to do any of it!”
I let out one final chuckle and then I started to feel bad for the kid. “Listen Henry,” I said. “Yes, there will be girls up there, and yes, one or two may even attempt to talk to you. But I assure you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with one-thousand percent confidence, that none of them will try to flirt or make out with you.”
Now I know that sounds a bit harsh, but I think it was just what he wanted to hear. “Really?” he said with a smile. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. And besides, we’re here to work. We’re here as detectives, not pick-up artists. We need to get something on Alistair that we can bring to the police. Just one piece of evidence, or proof, or whatever. You have to keep your eye on the ball, okay? Can you do that?”
“Okay,” Henry said, looking very serious. “I can do that.”
Our plan was simple:
Step 1: Walk up the hill to the party, mingle (inconspicuously).
Step 2: Figure out if Alistair or any of his asshat friends were missing a piece of a number on any of their jerseys.
Step 3: Measure their feet (also, inconspicuously).
Step 4: Catalog which of them did (or did not) wear a class ring.
Just like everything else, though, it didn’t quite work out how we planned.
First, let me set the scene of the party: you walk up a dark wooded hill smelling faintly of gasoline and garbage, and just at the halfway point you begin to hear a low roar coming from the top, but you’re still too far away to see anything. So you climb and climb until you finally reach the crest and see, not the crowded gathering you’d expect, but nothing. Just trees and darkness and noise—lots of noise. It sounds like a thousand people screaming at once, but you can’t see any of them, so you walk straight into the darkness until you find yourself in a clearing, roughly the size of a tennis court, with maybe a hundred teenagers packed shoulder-to-shoulder beside a hundred-foot tall steel tower, just standing around with their red keg cups, yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs.
But here’s the thing—there is almost no light whatsoever. Really, it’s practically pitch black, with just a faint red glare coming from the top of the tower, and the occasional flicker of a phone screen or a camera flash.
“Shit,” I said to Henry. “This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.”
Henry nodded his agreement. “I know. How are we going to see anything?”
Just then, as if in response to our complaint, a great beast of a pickup truck came roaring up the access road, shining its headlights over everything, and stopping a few feet from the edge of the crowd. A few kids shifted and whispered nervously, ready to make a break for it, but most just stood there, waiting.
The doors opened, and like a politician at a funeral, out popped Alistair St. Claire with a wave and a solemn nod, followed by one of his usual shitforbrains friends. The whole party turned to face him as he climbed on the hood of his truck, Budweiser tall boy in hand. He hushed the murmuring crowd with a sweep of his arm.
“I know it’s fitting, on the night before the year’s first game, for the captain to get up here and give a little speech.” He paused for a practiced tear. “But our real captain couldn’t make it.”
Again Alistair paused, but this time for a bit longer. I looked around at the crowd and saw a few real tears shimmering in the headlights, which just made his little show all the more despicable to behold.
He continued, “Ryan was our leader. He was our inspiration. He was the best damn quarterback in this whole co
unty.” Again, more fake tears. “And he was my best friend.”
Now this was just too fucking much. Was he kidding? There’s no way Alistair was ever Ryan’s best friend. I knew Ryan’s best friends—Jake and the twins. I looked around for one of them to speak up and refute Alistair’s bullshit claim, but then I remembered what Tristan told me, and of course they weren’t there.
So Alistair went on with his speech, wiping his eyes for effect. “But the best way we can honor Ryan is keep him in our minds, keep him in our hearts, and beat the living hell out of Portsmouth!!”
And with that, a great roar of support rose from the crowd.
Alistair began to chant: “Go Soren! Go Soren! Go Soren!”
My dinner began to rise in my throat.
“Go Soren!” the crowd chanted with him.
“Flip one for Ryan!” Alistair yelled, turning over his tall boy and spilling its contents to the soil.
“For Ryan!” the crowd yelled back, spilling their beers in an idiotic chorus.
Then, as if all of this wasn’t disgusting enough, Alistair spotted me.
“Hold on a second,” he said, waving his hand over the cheering, yelling, crying crowd; hushing them all. “There’s someone here I want you to meet.”
No, I thought. No no no no no no no!
“This is his first year at Soren, and though I know you’ve all heard his name by now, I think we should all welcome him with open arms.”
Shit, I thought. Shit shit shit shit shit!
Alistair pointed over the heads of the crowd, directly at me and Henry. And like a sea of penguins, two hundred heads turned and stared at us with sad and curious eyes. “So much for incognito,” I whispered.
Henry did not reply; He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
“That there is little Jonathan Stiles. Ryan’s younger brother.” The crowd became instantly silent. “And I just want you all to welcome him, make him feel at home here and at school.” Then he met my eyes. I looked straight through his drunkenness and his bullshit, and all I saw was a heart of the purest evil. “You’re so brave, Jonny. To come up here. So soon…You’re so brave.”
I whispered to Henry, out of the corner of my mouth, “What the hell do you think he means by that?” But Henry, I think, was far too terrified to hear me.
Alistair raised his tall boy one more time. “To Jonny Stiles!” he yelled.
The crowd erupted into applause, and cheers, and whistles. Junior and senior guys raised their keg cups to me in reverence, as if I were some kind of celebrity, and more than one girl in the crowd had a tear in her eye and a shy smile on her lips. Honestly, I couldn’t stand it. It was all bullshit; they didn’t know me. Hell, they didn’t even know Ryan…at least not the real Ryan. And what the hell did Alistair mean, anyway? What was so brave about me going up there? What kind of danger did he think I was facing?
After about a minute of applause (which, believe me, felt a lot longer) everyone turned their attention back to Alistair, who changed the subject of his speech (thankfully) back to how the Soren Seagulls were going to absolutely annihilate the Portsmouth Pirates (or whatever) in Saturday’s big game.
Seeing that no one was staring at us anymore, I whispered to Henry, “I think now would be a good time to try to blend in a bit.”
“Blend in?” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that? We’re now the most recognizable people at the party. The dead kid’s brother and his little Asian sidekick!”
That stung a bit, and I shot Henry a look to let him know it.
He stared down at his shoes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I just—”
“It’s alright. Anyway, you’re only half right. Everyone’s going to be looking at me, but I think you can still slip in under the radar.”
“How?”
“We’re going to have to split up.”
Prior to speaking these words, I wouldn’t have thought there was anything I could’ve said to make Henry more scared or uncomfortable than he already was. Clearly, I would have been wrong.
“What?” he screamed. “Split up?! No! I mean, that’s not smart, or reasonable, or even really possible, when you think about it. What are we going to do, just wander around aimlessly? We’ll look ridiculous, just walking around staring at football players’ footprints and fingers. We’ll stand out even more than we do now!”
I put my hand on Henry’s shoulder. Again, I felt sort of bad for him. “No, Henry. You’re going to have to mingle, a little.”
“Mingle?” he questioned, as if it were some strange word in a foreign language.
“Yes, mingle. Talk to people. Get a beer and just hold it, if you don’t want to drink. The point is that you need to blend in.”
Henry paused for a moment, collecting himself. Finally, he nodded, slowly and carefully, as if he were a soldier who’d been ordered to throw himself on a grenade.
“Think of yourself like James Bond. Do you like James Bond?”
“No. His whole character is too implausible.”
“Well, then…Whatever. Just imagine you’re like a better James Bond, and you’ve snuck into some fancy party, and you have to be all suave and cool so that nobody will notice that you’re planting the secret homing device, or whatever.”
Henry swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said at last, forcing a smile. Then he took one more breath, turned on his heels, and slunk—slumped shoulders and hung head—into the center of the party.
For my part, I did what seemed to be the most natural thing upon arriving at a keg party: I went to get myself a beer, and tried to attract as little attention as possible.
Fifteen
As soon as I walked into the crowd, though, it became very clear that “not attracting attention” was a task that I was destined to fail before I had begun. Everyone knew who I was. Everyone. And they were all staring at me. All of them.
At least, everyone except the guy guarding the keg.
Let me take a second to describe this guy for you. His name, according to the back of his jersey and the many whispers of frightened underclassmen, was Monster. And that was not a nickname, mind you—that was his actual name: Monster Michael Jones. He was about six-foot-seven, 300 pounds, had a big curly mop of black hair, and a straggly beard that appeared to start under his nose and continue all the way over his chin, down his neck, into his shirt, and straight out the bottom of his denim cut-off shorts.
Anyway, Monster didn’t notice me at all until I picked up a red cup and reached for the keg. Then he saw me, all right. He promptly stopped talking to the comparatively minuscule linebacker beside him, reached his beefy hands to grab my shirt, and violently tugged me away from the beer. “Five dollars,” he growled, “freshman.”
“Oh.” I reached into my pockets, hoping to find a few crumpled bills. “Sorry. Just, um…hold on one second.” Monster let out a self-satisfied snort, and stared at me menacingly. I pulled out my hand; I only had three bucks. “I don’t think I—”
“Well if you don’t think, then…” he began, when the linebacker tugged on his shirt and whispered something in his ear.
Instantly, Monster’s entire demeanor changed. He looked at me with grief-stricken eyes, as his comically large and greasy lower lip stuck out like a circus clown. “Jonathan,” he said. “I, I, I’m sorry. I didn’t know….”
Still feeling a bit cautious, I decided it was probably best not to say anything. So I just tried to seem friendly, waiting to see what would happen next.
Monster grabbed a cup, knocked some kid to the ground who was headed for the tap, and poured me a beer. “You’re money’s no good here, anyway,” he said.
And then he hugged me—a big, strange, awful-smelling hug. It was gross, and a little disturbing, but at least it got rid of any remaining fears that he was about to pummel me. I thanked him for the beer and began
wandering around the party, desperately trying to find someone I knew enough to talk to.
I was, however, completely unsuccessful. Sure, everyone was quick to make eye contact, say hello, and tell me how sorry they were and how much they liked Ryan. But inevitably, within thirty seconds of my entering a group’s conversation, everyone became so painfully uncomfortable that I just had to move on. And I don’t know, maybe it was me; maybe I was putting out a sort of awkward, outcast-vibe (that’s certainly how I felt). But whatever it was, it happened again and again until I finally found myself standing beyond the very edge of the party, right beside the radio tower, alone. I decided to climb up a little and sit on an overhanging rail, to look out over the town and the crowd. The view was phenomenal from up there. You could see out for miles. I figured I should be able to see all the way to the high school, but I couldn’t quite make it out in the distance.
I sat there for maybe ten minutes, all alone. Squinting into the dusty night. All I ever did make out were the lights of the interstate, a few neon-lit shop signs, and the great black ocean behind everything, stretching out toward the invisible horizon.
I was just about to give up looking for the school when I was startled by a girl’s voice, calling out from directly beneath my feet, “Hey, kid.”
From where I was sitting, her face was almost completely obscured in shadow. I squinted to see if I could recognize her, but it didn’t help. “Um. Yeah?”
“What are you looking at up there?”
“I’m trying to find the school.”
“Well you’re looking the wrong way.” She pointed back toward the party. “School’s that way.”
I turned to look where she was pointing. I still couldn’t make anything out. “Where?”
“It’s over by the highway, near the—just hold on a second.” And with that she grabbed the first bar, hopped deftly onto the tower, and climbed up to my perch. As soon as she hoisted herself beside me, her face came into the moonlight, and I had to grasp the rail a bit tighter to steady myself.
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