I didn’t want to look at her face. I didn’t want to see her red, swollen eyes or the way her bottom lip trembled. I didn’t want to see the way she kept staring at the paper, like she was memorizing the details or looking into a mirror to inspect her makeup. But I couldn’t stop. It was like the stairs; all I could do was face forward. It made me wonder how many other notes and pictures had made it into Alana’s hands throughout the years, and how many times she sat quietly in the corner of the cafeteria examining our creations like she was looking at her reflection.
But the worst prank we played was last year, when Sunny gave Alana an invitation to her birthday party with the wrong address printed on it.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry, you know, for teasing you so much,” Sunny said when she handed the cream-and-pink swirled envelope to Alana. “Would you like to come to my birthday party on Saturday?”
Alana hesitated for a second before taking the invitation from Sunny, then opened the envelope slowly, as though she expected something to jump out and bite her. She flicked her eyes over to me, looking for reassurance.
Sunny glared at me expectantly, but my lips were suddenly thick and useless. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I couldn’t even look Alana in the eye.
“It’s going to be fun, isn’t it Taylor?” Sunny prodded, then she mouthed “What is your problem?” at me while Alana waited for my answer.
I could’ve said nothing, and maybe Alana would have understood from my silence that it was a prank. Or I could have grown a pair and told Alana the truth. But I didn’t want to fight with Sunny. It was easier to play along.
“Sunny’s parties are legendary,” I finally offered.
It wasn’t exactly what Sunny had asked me to say, but she stopped giving me the stink eye over Alana’s shoulder, so it must have satisfied her.
“Seriously, you should come.” Sunny added.
My heart squeezed when I saw Alana smile and take in the swirly pink font and glittering picture of a champagne glass printed on the front of the invitation. I felt sick.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her words soft and fragile. “I’ll ask my mom if I can come.”
I’ve had my own idea of what happened the day of Sunny’s birthday party playing inside my head.
In my version, Alana took the invitation home and ripped it into tiny pieces, tossing them into the air like confetti. She stomped the flakes of paper into her bedroom carpet, taking care to twist her shoe over the top of each piece while picturing Sunny’s face. She never gave the party another thought.
It’s what I wished happened, but my heart and the Alana-ghost who gave me the pristinely wrapped gift told me that’s not what happened at all. Her eyes bored into mine, and even though I wanted to tear my eyes from hers, I couldn’t.
She blinked once, purposefully, and then suddenly the day spun through my head the way Alana experienced it, the way it really happened.
At first, Alana’s mom said no, rightfully suspicious of Sunny’s sudden niceness given the years she’d spent ridiculing Alana.
“Why would you even want to give that horrible girl the time of day, Alana?”
“It’s different this time,” Alana promised. “Please, please, please … ” she begged over and over again, tears spilling down her cheeks until her mother finally agreed to let her go to the party.
They went shopping after school the next day, and Alana spent hours at the mall pouring through racks of clothing and accessories in search of the perfect gift and the perfect outfit that would finally let her fit in with Sunny’s perfect friends. She settled on a Coach wristlet, and even though it was more than her mom thought she should spend and it meant depleting her allowance savings, it was too perfect to pass up.
The night before the party Alana barely slept, tossing and turning as the butterflies flitted around inside her stomach, her mind spinning with possibilities. The meticulously wrapped present was perched on her nightstand, a glittering reminder of the exciting day ahead.
In the morning she woke up early, taking care to do her makeup and ensure that every pleat of her dress was perfectly placed. Once she was flawlessly coiffed, she climbed into the car and readied herself for the afternoon at Sunny’s house.
“Stop here,” she said to her mother when they were a few houses down from the address on the invitation. Her mother frowned at her daughter’s attempt to dispel embarrassment, but she agreed, driving off after Alana grabbed the shining package and adjusted her new party dress.
The smile on Alana’s face was enormous, slipping only slightly when she saw the “for sale” sign sticking out from the front yard of Sunny’s claimed address. Maybe they’re getting ready to move, she told herself. Even after she took in the curtain-less windows and empty living room it didn’t register that the address was fake. It was only after she rang the bell three times and heard the chime echo inside the empty house that she realized she’d been tricked. There was no party, no Sunny, and no one to appreciate the carefully selected gift that Alana was so sure Sunny would have loved.
The long walk home was blurred with tears, but Alana was too embarrassed to call her mom. She walked until her new shoes rubbed blisters onto her feet, the pain barely comparable to the ache of disappointment.
The Alana-ghost didn’t move, her sad eyes watching me with a heaviness I didn’t want to understand. She reached forward and took Sunny’s present back from me, her hands clinging to it like it was a buoy that could save her from our cruelty.
All this time I’d told myself she stayed home, that she knew it was a trick. But as I watched the shadow from my past, I knew with certainty that she went to the empty house. Maybe she doubted Sunny when she first gave her the invitation, but it was my words, or lack of words, that reassured her. All because I was too much of a coward to stand up to my friend.
There was a song lyric from a band that Justin liked: “Words don’t sink, they swim.” I used to dream about those lyrics; I dreamt about a sea of glittering invitations, paper cranes and origami flowers with pictures and hangman puzzles scribbled across them. Alana James was in the center of them all, trying to bury her head under the massive pile of notes so she didn’t have to look at them. But every time she tried to drag herself under she was pulled back to the surface of the paper sea, the words swimming all around her.
The Alana-ghost faded into the stairs, leaving me with one thought: maybe the stairs didn’t need to lead me to hell, because I was already there.
CHAPTER NINE
BLIND MAN’S BAR
Competition does funny things to people. Like my mom at Christmas. Every year our neighborhood held a competition, giving out awards to the houses with the best decorations. Pretty much every participating house got some kind of award, like “Best Use of Reindeer,” or “Best Paper Luminary Display.” But only one house got the coveted “Holiday House” award for best overall display. Every year my mom turned into a crazy person obsessing over that stupid prize, which incidentally was nothing more than a metal sign stuck in the winner’s front yard a few weeks before Christmas.
It was the only thing my mom could talk about for the entire month of November, and my poor father spent the better part of his weekends on a ladder stapling crap to our house while my mother shrieked at him from the safety of our yard. A little more to left, Todd. No left! I said LEFT!
One year someone stole the baby Jesus from the Cumberlands’ nativity set and poked a hole in the Schmidts’ giant inflatable Santa. I never could prove it, but I swear I heard my mother sneaking back into our house late the night it happened. And it always seemed a little coincidental that our house was one of the few on the street that didn’t get vandalized, or that the Cumberlands and Schmidts were the two previous “Holiday House” winners.
But that’s my mom. Perfection at any cost.
I never really understood how you could want something so badly you’d go all crazy like that, at least not until the whole Justin/Sunny debacle. To clarify, I didn
’t want to break Sunny’s legs or anything that insane, but something shifted in me and I didn’t like the way it felt. I didn’t like the competitive glances we’d started giving each other after Sunny made her interloping crush announcement, or the way I’d started comparing myself to her. So when I showed up at Sunny’s house the night of The Fields, I made a silent vow to be cool about everything. To relax. Sunny was my best friend, I reminded myself, and I couldn’t let a guy come between us. That was almost as dumb as stealing a plastic Jesus to win a yard sign. I vowed that all the drama I’d sensed between us would end the night of The Fields.
We were standing in the kitchen waiting for Jenny Schlitz and Amber Grossman to arrive, passing the time with a game of Blind Man’s Bar. Jenny was perpetually late. She was the only person who could rival Sunny when it came to tardiness, but Sunny’s lateness was considered fashionable. With Jenny it was annoying.
Miss Violet Beauregard was in her usual state of panic at my presence, circling protectively around Sunny’s feet as she snarled in my direction. Her ears were large and bat-like, surrounded by tufts of matted yellow hair. The rest of her tiny body was splotched with bald patches, as if someone attempted to give her a haircut but the hyperactive dog couldn’t sit still long enough to let them finish the job. When she growled at me (which was pretty much any time she saw me), she exposed a row of ragged, half-missing teeth, and her tongue lolled out the side of her snout, making her look like a half-crazed jack-o-lantern.
“That dog is going to give itself a heart attack,” I said, eyeing the hideous creature as it bounced around Sunny on its hind legs.
“She’s just excited. Aren’t you excited Miss Violet Beauregard? Aren’t you? Yes, you are. You are excited, my sweet girl. Such a sweet girl.” Sunny cooed at her as she bent down to pet one of the dog’s oversized ears. It looked back at me with its bulging eyes, one of them veering off to the left slightly so I couldn’t tell for sure if it was looking at the wall or giving me the stink eye.
“Are you ready to play, or what?” I asked, nodding at the sweating glasses waiting for us on the counter.
The rules to Blind Man’s Bar were simple: each person got thirty seconds in the liquor cabinet to create a mystery concoction for their competition. The first person to puke was the loser.
“Drink up, bitch,” said Sunny, clinking her glass against mine with enough force to crack it. I held my nose while I chugged, thinking if I couldn’t smell the drink I stood a better chance of keeping it down. I still almost yakked the mixture back up twice.
Sunny slammed her empty tumbler down and made a gagging noise. “That was disgusting! Are you trying to kill me?”
I made a face and set my glass down next to hers, some of the mystery drink still sitting in the bottom. There was no way I could finish it all.
“Please, you’re the one trying to kill me,” I said between chaser sips of orange juice. “That was your worst one yet!” I tried not to laugh because I could barely hold on to my stomach. Laughing too hard would most definitely make me puke.
“Yeah, you don’t look so good,” she said, making a sympathetic face as she bent down to pat one of Miss Violet Beauregard’s bald patches. “Do you want to know what was in your drink?”
I shook my head. Ignorance was always best when playing Blind Man’s Bar. At least it was in my case; I didn’t have the stomach for it.
“Do you want to know what was in yours?” I leaned over the sink a little because I still wasn’t sure I was in the clear from barfing. I puked about half the time we played. Sunny, on the other hand, never seemed phased by my concoctions. The only time I ever made her yak was when I mixed pickle juice and bourbon together. Man, I got her good that time. She had to take a shower, re-do her makeup and everything.
Sunny sniffed her empty glass and made a thoughtful face while pretending to slosh something around in her mouth. “Was it tequila and Crème de Menthe?”
I nodded. “How do you do that? It’s disturbing.” I wrinkled my nose and stuck my tongue out at her.
“I have the nose of a fine wine connoisseur,” she said in haughty voice, sticking her chin in the air and her chest out with pride. We both laughed at the truth of the declaration. Nine times out of ten she could identify my mystery mixes by smell alone.
“So how did Logan take it when you told him you were meeting him at The Fields instead of riding with him?”
I shrugged, trying to feign indifference, but the truth was he’d been pissed as all get out. He always got annoyed when I made weekend plans with Sunny instead of him, but this time he practically jumped through the phone when I told him. If he wasn’t being such a douche, I might have agreed to go with him instead, but I didn’t want to reward his childish behavior, so I held my ground and said I’d meet him there.
Sunny pulled the vodka out of the pantry and passed it to me so I could make us each a screwdriver. No doubt someone would bring a keg to The Fields, but we always pre-gamed in case. Plus, we never knew what kind of crappy beer we would get.
The doorbell let out a loud gong, sending Miss Violet Beauregard into another panicked fit as Sunny ran to let Jenny and Amber in. I added two more glasses to my line-up on the counter and filled them each with a fifty-fifty mix of juice and vodka.
“Howdy, bitch!” yelled Jenny, waving her cast in the air as she joined me in the kitchen. I noticed it was bare that night—no scarves or jewels decorating the surface, just the blue hospital-grade sling and the white bandaged surface of the cast. Amber followed closely behind in a cloud of perfume, swinging her hips and raising her arms in the air like music was blasting.
Jenny sidled up next to me, backing away from the half-crazed dog that snarled and yipped at her from the protection of Sunny’s arms.
“I think that dog might be retarded,” she attempted to whisper to me, but in usual Jenny form her “whisper” was audible from a mile away. Sunny scowled at us and kissed the writhing creature on the head.
“Stop talking shit about my dog. She’s not retarded, she’s just excitable.” She gave us both a dark look even though Jenny was the one who doled out the insult. “Don’t you worry, Miss Violet Beauregard. The big bullies won’t hurt you. Nobody’s going to hurt my sweet girl. No they won’t. I won’t let them. Why don’t you go through your doggy door and play in the backyard, hmm? That’s a good girl. Who’s my sweet girl? Who’s my sweet, sweet girl?” She tossed a few dog biscuits through the flap in back door, then gently set the animal down so it could yip its way into the back yard. The dog’s lazy eye wobbled in my direction one final time before she slipped through the door.
“Where’s my drink?” Amber yelled, skirting past Sunny so she could grind against my backside like I was her date. It was obviously a question, but pretty much everything Amber said sounded like a question. Her voice tipped up at the end of every sentence, as though she was contemplating a riddle rather than making a statement. Like: “I’m having a really good day? The grass is green? My name is Amber? You have two legs and I have a face?”
“If you keep humping me like that you’re going to have to buy me a drink,” I said before turning to the rest of the group. “Start your livers, ladies!” I handed the drinks out as we all gathered in a circle and Sunny lead us in our standard pre-game toast.
“Here’s to the king!” she said.
“What king?” I asked.
“Fuh-king!” We all said in unison, clinking our glasses and sloshing some of the orange mixture onto the floor. Sunny hit play on her iPod, and we started dancing around the kitchen, swinging our hips and screaming song lyrics while we emptied our glasses. It was our customary start to any evening.
Jenny and Amber were already dressed in the standard uniform: black skirt and slinky top. Jenny, as usual, had crammed herself into a skirt and top two sizes too small, making her look like a Christmas ham shoved into a Ziploc sandwich bag. It’s not that Jenny was big per se, but her stocky frame and mound of brown curly hair made her look bigger than
she really was. Her penchant for tight fitting, too-small clothes only exacerbated everything, forcing her to wobble and jiggle her way through a room as her limbs struggled against the constricting fabric.
Amber was Jenny’s exact opposite, so tall and willowy that a strong breeze could probably knock her over. She wore her long dark hair straight down her back, and her wide-set doe eyes made her look constantly surprised and/or perplexed. Sunny used to call her “the seashell,” swearing that if you pressed your ear against Amber’s ear you could hear the ocean. I used to think it was funny, too, until I found Amber crying in the parking lot after failing yet another test.
I was surprised Jenny and Amber weren’t totally pissed that it was almost nine o’clock and Sunny had yet to select her outfit, but they followed happily when she invited us all upstairs to help. I grumbled as I trailed behind them, mumbling my concerns about the time because Logan was waiting. Plus, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Sunny’s ensemble for the evening, especially since I knew who the outfit was for. But I tried not to think about that given my vow to be cool about everything. Relax.
“I couldn’t pick which one I wanted, so I bought all three,” she said about the dresses laid across her bed. “Somebody left me high and dry to shop by myself yesterday, and I couldn’t decide on my own.” She gave me a pointed look.
“You should have called me,” cooed Jenny as she plopped down onto the massive stack of black and lavender pillows at the top of Sunny’s bed. “I totally would have joined. Next time Taylor ditches you should give me a call.”
Jenny flicked her eyes to where I was seated on the floor. I shifted my attention to my freshly painted nails, scratching at a place on my thumb where I’d painted outside the lines and onto my skin.
“Not that you needed us at all,” Jenny added, looking at the dresses like they were slices of birthday cake. “They’re all so cute. I don’t think I could have picked between them either. You did the right thing buying all of them.”
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