by Megan Sparks
“Holly!” she shouted, banging on the door with her fist. “Holly, are you in there?”
Nothing.
Annie knocked again, even harder. “Holly?”
The door swung open, and there was Chad, bare-chested, leaning with one hand on the door frame. He smiled at her. “If you’re looking for Little Miss Jail Bait, she’s not here.”
Annie blinked, not sure if she should believe him. After all, he probably wouldn’t admit to having an underage girl in his room. “Would you mind if I came in and checked?”
Chad’s smile went icy. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I would mind.”
That was when Annie heard a sound behind him – it was the sound of sheets rustling.
Holly was in there.
“Let me in,” she demanded.
Chad shook his head, stretching his other arm out to the opposite side of the door frame, barring her way. “I’m busy,” he said.
Annie’s chest tightened; her mind whirled.
And suddenly a word flashed in her head: juke!
She stepped forward, to Chad’s right. Instinctively, he leaned to block her path, but in one swift movement, Annie dodged to the left, ducking under his arm and into the shadowy room.
“Holly!” she cried to the figure sprawled on the bed.
“It’s Ashley,” said the girl, sitting up to glare at Annie. “And I don’t know who you are, or who Holly is. So if you don’t mind, get lost.”
Annie could only gape. She turned to Chad, who was still lounging in the doorway.
“Last I saw, Holly was with you on the dance floor,” she said firmly. “Please, tell me where she went.”
Chad sighed, clearly bored with the whole episode. “While we were dancing she let it slip that she was only sixteen. I may be buzzed, but I’m not stupid. No girl’s worth getting arrested for, not even one as cute as your friend.”
It was all Annie could do to keep from slapping him across the face. Or better yet, kicking him in the groin.
“So where is she?” she demanded.
“Check the front lawn,” Chad said. “She looked like she was gonna puke, so I walked her to the front door and told her to go outside and barf in the snow.” He shrugged. “Then I met up with Ashley, and I kind of lost track of your friend after that.”
Annie didn’t waste another minute. She bounded out of the room, down the stairs, and outside.
“Holly!” she called. “Holly, are you out here?”
There was moment of pure panic before she heard the low groaning coming from behind a tree. She hurried through the snow in the direction of the sound.
Holly was huddled in a ball at the base of the tree trunk, shaking uncontrollably, half of her face resting in a pool of vomit.
“Oh god.” Annie’s knees buckled first with relief, then with fear. “Oh god! Holly!”
Holly lifted her face to look at Annie, but her eyes rolled back in her head. Her stomach heaved and Annie watched in horror as she threw up again.
The sound and the smell were atrocious, but Annie somehow managed to hold down her own supper. She dropped to her knees and stroked her friend’s back.
“Holly, we’ve got to get you back to the dorm.”
“OK,” said Holly, her voice hollow and small. She lifted her head again and attempted to stand, but her legs crumpled beneath her.
Again, she vomited – even more violently than before. When she was finished, she lay still and silent.
Annie nudged her. “Holly?”
No response.
“Holly?”
Still, no reaction. Annie had never felt so helpless in her life. This time she shook Holly hard.
Nothing!
Hands trembling, Annie dug in her pocket for her phone. A tear rolled down her cheek, landing on the touch screen. Her fingers quivered, both from the cold and fear.
What should I do? She didn’t really know. Annie’s whole brain felt numb.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she should call Holly’s mother. But Holly’s mum was too far away to be of immediate assistance. Telling her that her sixteen-year-old daughter was passed out in the snow outside a frat house would only cause the woman to panic. At the moment, Annie simply didn’t have the strength to deal with anyone’s hysteria but her own, which was bubbling inside her now like a volcano, ready to erupt.
Maybe she could run back to the dorm to get one of the coaches, but she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Holly here all alone.
She didn’t even know if Holly was still breathing. Oh god, Holly, please, please be breathing!
Annie couldn’t think straight. Even the most basic emergency procedures seemed to evade her. Her head spun.
“Pull yourself together, Annie,” she told herself, shaking her head vigorously. “Your teammate needs you.”
As if on autopilot, her finger pressed buttons on her phone. The phone chirped softly and then it was ringing. Annie pressed the phone to her ear.
As calmly as she could, she told the emergency services operator what the problem was, and where the paramedics could find them.
The operator told her to check to see if Holly was breathing.
Yes, thank god, she was.
She stayed on with the operator until she could hear the sirens approaching. When the ambulance came speeding up in front of the frat house, the snow glowed red and blue in the flashing lights.
She told the EMTs exactly what had happened. That Holly had had a lot to drink, in a very short time.
“Has she taken any drugs?”
Not that Annie was aware of.
“Could someone have slipped her something?”
Maybe. Annie hadn’t been watching Holly the whole time. So, yes, anything was possible.
Annie’s tears were flowing freely now. She didn’t even bother to brush them away.
She was suddenly overcome with a wave of guilt. She should have insisted Holly stop drinking, or threatened to report her to the coaches. She should have stayed with her the whole time, instead of talking to Sasha for so long...
Annie was aware of the party-goers looking on as the paramedics loaded Holly onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. Annie climbed in beside her, wondering vaguely where that jerk Chad was right now.
This was all his fault, after all.
But, no. It wasn’t his fault any more than it was Annie’s. He’d contributed to the situation, certainly. But this was Holly’s fault. She’d made terrible choices tonight.
And now she was unconscious, on her way to the hospital.
Annie heard the siren wail as the ambulance sped off into the night. She felt as though she were in some kind of toxic fog as she called Sue, told her the whole miserable tale, and asked her to relay it all to Cherry Bomb.
Exiting the campus in the speeding emergency vehicle, Annie peered out of the small square window in the rear door.
As she watched Fraternity Row growing smaller in the distance, she could see that the Omega Alpha party was still going on.
An underage girl was being driven away in an ambulance, but no one seemed to care. Students were still dancing and drinking. The ambulance’s arrival hadn’t even put a dent in the festivities for five minutes.
Even though she hadn’t had so much as a sip of alcohol, Annie felt sick to her stomach. Suddenly, all she wanted was to go home.
Chapter Seventeen
Annie spent the rest of the night in a hard plastic chair at Holly’s bedside.
She may have dozed, but she never really slept. When she did manage to close her eyes for more than ten minutes, she was assaulted with terrible images:
Todd pressing himself against her as though he had a right to.
The girl in Chad’s bed who wasn’t Holly.
Holly, face down in her own vomit.
Blue and red lights in the snow.
The doctor telling Annie and Cherry Bomb that Holly was having her stomach pumped.
Holly, looking pale and fragile, when
they finally rolled her into the hospital room on a trolley.
At five in the morning, Annie gave up trying to sleep. She tiptoed out of the hospital room into the dimly lit corridor and took her phone out of her pocket. Scrolling down her contacts, she phoned Dad.
She knew he’d be awake, probably already in the shop, baking fresh muffins for the day ahead. He picked up on the second ring.
“Annie?” Dad’s voice was tight with panic. “Annie, what is it?”
“I’m all right,” she assured him quickly. “I’m fine.”
“Nobody calls at five in the morning to say they’re fine,” he said, still sounding frightened. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s not me, it’s Holly,” she began, leaning against the cold wall. “See, there was this party...”
The story came out in a long rush, and Dad listened as she explained to him every last detail of the worst night of her life.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she finished finally. “I knew it was wrong to go to the party. We should have never been there.”
“Damn right you shouldn’t have been,” her father agreed, but his tone was more relieved than angry. He rarely cursed, which told Annie how much her story had upset him.
“I really am sorry.” She let out a long sigh. “I just want to come home.”
“I’ll be there by ten,” Dad promised. “And you can expect a long lecture about all this on the way home.”
“I guessed as much,” Annie grumbled. But she knew she deserved it.
Because as bad as things were, she understood that they could have been worse.
Much worse.
She went back into Holly’s room and was surprised to find her awake.
“I’m not dreaming?” she asked in a croaky voice.
Annie shook her head. “Nope.”
Holly pressed her lips together as her eyes flickered to the IV tube in her arm, then to the monitor, pulsing with coloured lights in the shadowy room. Her eyes glistened with tears that spilled over onto her cheeks. “How could I have been so stupid?”
Annie had no answer. She could only shrug.
“I’m such a jerk! I should have listened to you. I just wanted to have a wild, crazy time, something to talk about when we got home.”
Annie allowed a tiny grin. “Well, you definitely accomplished that.”
Holly laughed, but it ended in a sob. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for forcing you to go to that stupid party, and for putting you through this.”
“I know,” said Annie.
Holly put her hand to her forehead and winced. Annie could only imagine the headache Holly was experiencing at the moment. Maybe a hangover was nature’s way of reminding you to be more careful in the future.
“How can I ever thank you for sticking by me?” said Holly softly, her bottom lip trembling.
“You don’t have to,” said Annie. “I’m your friend. You would have done the same for me.”
“I wouldn’t have had to. You wouldn’t have been idiotic enough to get yourself into that situation in the first place.” Holly broke into a fresh burst of tears. This time they came in deep, shuddering sobs.
Annie held her hand and let her cry. She understood that Holly was filled with more feelings than she could process at one time – regret, guilt, humiliation.
When Holly was finally calm again, Annie took a tissue from the bedside table and wiped her cheeks. “Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again,” she whispered.
“I swear.”
“OK, then.”
Annie grinned and sunk back down into the hard plastic chair. “And for the record, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted to be your roommate.”
Holly laughed weakly. “Yeah, well, my derby name is Holly Terror for a good reason.”
They fell into a companionable silence, each lost in her own thoughts.
After a few minutes, Annie heard the sound of slow, deep breathing that meant Holly had drifted back to sleep.
She closed her own eyes, the exhaustion overtaking her.
But this time she didn’t conjure up any unpleasant visions of sweaty dancers or hospital trolleys.
She couldn’t wait to crawl into her own bed. She wanted to be home right that instant. But weirdly, when she thought of home, the first image that popped into her head was Jesse’s face. She pictured him pushing his black hair out of his intense blue eyes and greeting her with his wide, slow smile.
At long last, she slept.
* * *
“Hey, you party animals...”
Annie opened her eyes slowly and saw Luna and Sue smiling down at her. The room was now filled with bright winter sunlight and it took her a moment to remember where she was. When she did, she turned quickly in the direction of Holly’s bed to see if she was still in one piece.
She was ... and she was smiling awkwardly at her visitors. “I bet you guys think I’m a total screw-up, huh?”
“Ten different kinds of stupid,” said Luna cheerfully, popping herself onto the edge of Holly’s bed. “But nobody’s perfect.”
“I’m going to assume you learned your lesson,” said Sue, leaning down to place a loud kiss on Holly’s forehead.
“You bet I did.”
“How are you doing, Annie?” Sue asked, handing her a tall cardboard cup of hot tea.
“Tired,” Annie said, yawning.
“Well, I hear being a hero can take a lot out of you,” Luna observed.
Annie blushed. “I’m not a hero.”
“I disagree,” said Holly. Her voice was still raspy from the tube that had been down her throat when the doctors pumped her stomach.
Annie took a long, grateful sip of her tea. “So how much trouble are we in?”
Luna and Sue exchanged glances.
“Mad Donna drove us over,” Luna explained. “She and Cherry Bomb are down the hall, handling the discharge papers. On the way here, Mad Donna was talking to the camp director on the phone.”
“And...” Annie prompted.
Luna shrugged. “The bad news is, they’re all pretty angry.”
“But the good news,” Sue added quickly, “is they’re going to let you off with just a strong reprimand. Camp’s over, so what else could they do? Except...”
Sue trailed off, clearing her throat.
“Except what?” Annie prompted.
“Well,” said Luna, with a frown, “let’s just say there’s no point in signing up for next year’s camp. Because neither of you will be allowed back.”
Annie’s cheeks burned. The idea of being banned from boot camp – or anywhere else for that matter – was very upsetting. But then again, it could have been much worse.
“I think the coaches figure they’re partly responsible for not keeping close enough tabs on us,” Sue continued. “If they make a big deal about it, other parents might find out and complain about insufficient supervision and stricter rules and junk like that.”
“When we left them at the nurse’s station, they were grumbling something about not letting one bad apple spoil it for the bunch.”
Holly grimaced. For a girl who liked to be seen as tough, Annie was beginning to understand that Holly Terror wasn’t all that happy about being thought of as “bad”.
Luna improved the mood in the room by withdrawing a pair of rainbow-striped skate laces from her pocket. “These are from Sue and me,” she said, handing the colourful laces to Holly. “A little get-well gift.”
“Thanks,” said Holly.
“Yeah,” said Sue, sheepishly. “We figured it would soften the blow...”
The next thing Annie knew, Holly’s mother was thundering into the room.
The first thing she did was throw her arms around her daughter and hug her for a good two minutes, crying softly and murmuring how much she loved Holly.
Then she got down to business.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded, her face flushed with anger, her voice sombre.
Holly looked down at her hands. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re grounded for the foreseeable future, young lady.”
Annie was incredibly uncomfortable. This conversation really should have been taking place in private. In Holly’s mother’s defence, though, she was so upset Annie suspected she hadn’t even registered the fact there was anyone else in the room.
Now Holly’s mother took a deep breath and delivered the final verdict. “I hate to do this to you, Holly, but I feel I don’t have a choice – you won’t be trying out for the All-Star team.”
Holly’s mouth dropped open and her face went white. “Mom! No!”
“I’m sorry, Holly, but you need to learn your lesson.”
Annie’s heart broke for Holly. She wanted to point out that a stomach pump and a hangover from hell would surely be enough of a lesson for anyone. Taking away roller derby, the thing Holly loved most, seemed so extreme.
It was hard for Annie to understand Holly’s mother’s reaction. Back in the UK, attitudes were more relaxed. The drinking age was eighteen, and teenagers as young as sixteen could drink alcohol with a meal at the pub. Lots of Annie’s friends had been allowed to drink at home. Annie had never really tried alcohol, because she’d always been a serious athlete – she’d never wanted her gymnastics performance to suffer. For the same reason now, she wasn’t interested in drinking because roller derby was too important to her.
A feeling of dread began to creep up Annie’s spine as it occurred to her that maybe Dad would hand down the same punishment to her. If he did, she knew she would be just as devastated as Holly was – maybe even more.
“The coaches are waiting for me to sign some paperwork at the nurses’ station,” her mother said. “They’ve brought along your skate bag and your luggage, so we’ll be leaving for home from here.”
Holly nodded.
Then her mum was out of the door, and stomping down the hall.
“Well, that sucks,” said Luna, sighing.
“God, what’s the big deal,” said Sue. “It’s not like you’re the first teenager who’s ever had a drink.”
“Tell me about it.” Holly leaned against the pillow and closed her eyes.
“We should probably get going,” said Sue. “The coaches want to leave as soon as they hand over your bags to your mom. Annie, they told us to tell you to come back to campus with us.”