Winning

by Lara Deloza

  “Whoa,” I say, pushing him away. “Not gonna happen.”

  “You’re such a tease,” he says. “Why’d you bring me in here if you didn’t want to hook up?”

  “I need space,” I tell him. “You can’t be on top of me tonight.”

  “That’s what she said,” he quips.

  Well, what did I expect from a fourteen-year-old boy?

  Answer: probably more than I should have.

  “Listen, James. I know you like me. And I . . . am getting used to you. But right now, I can’t have people thinking I’m your girlfriend. Or your date. Or your friend with benefits.”

  “Why not?” he says. Is he pouting at me?

  “Because I’m a senior.”

  “I know,” he says. “You’re making me a legend.”

  I can’t help but laugh. He’s so serious about it, too. He looks at me with eyes not unlike Matt’s. Only difference: these eyes want me. They undress me. He’s not a bad kisser, if I’m going to be honest. A little too eager, but he’ll grow out of that. Two years from now, James Leitch is going to be breaking girls’ hearts all across Spencer High. But right now, he’s social poison, at least to me.

  “Tell you what,” I say. “You back off tonight—you don’t even talk to me the rest of the party—and Monday, after rehearsal, I’ll let you take me for a milk shake.”

  “By milk shake, you mean I get to touch your boobs, right?”

  “No! I mean you get to take me for an actual milk shake.”

  “Oh. Then can I touch your boobs?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “If you’re a good boy.”

  “You make me want to be a bad boy,” he says, and it’s such a cheesy line that I should laugh in his face. But this kid wants me. Like, badly. Technically there’s only a two-and-a-half-year age difference between us. I’m young for my grade; I don’t even turn seventeen until next month.

  Oh, fuck it. I grab James by the T-shirt and pull him in close. We kiss, with tongue, for a breathless minute or two. His hands are everywhere, but I don’t mind so much until they land on my ass.

  “Okay,” I say. “That’s enough. You leave first. I’ll come out in a few.”

  I pull the string to turn the light off. James exits. I check the time on my phone. Three minutes later, I crack the door open. Seeing no one, I start to slip out.

  “You naughty thing,” says Alexandra Miles. She’s standing by the kitchen island, mixing some drinks. “You were totally in there with Matt’s little brother, weren’t you?”

  “He has a little thing for me,” I say, then instantly regret the words.

  “I bet it’s little.”

  “Grow up.”

  “Hey,” she says. “I’m not the one scamming on a freshman.”

  “I’m not— He’s not— We’re not—”

  She gives me a look that tells me she’s clearly not buying what I’m selling. You know the look: lips pursed, head tilted to one side, eyes boring into you, exposing you for the fraud that you are.

  “Whatever,” I say. “Why do you even care?”

  “I don’t,” she informs me. An evil little smile twitches on her lips. “But the rest of the senior class might find it amusing. Matt’s baby brother, getting nasty with the infamous Sloane Fahey.”

  I ball my fists tightly at my side. “You wouldn’t.”

  She considers this, then says, “Probably not. After all, we’re friends, right?”

  There’s that word again. Friends.

  I don’t buy it for a single second.

  “We both know we’re not friends,” I say flatly. “And I know you’re up to something. I don’t know what it is, but I know—I just know—it’s no good.”

  The twitchy smile disappears and is replaced by a frown. She steps out from behind the island and walks over to me.

  “We could be friends,” she says, “if you knew how to play the game. But you’re always overstepping. Even though you know exactly what I’m capable of.”

  Alexandra Miles can be mean. But never have I seen her do it so blatantly.

  I say nothing, because I can’t even think of how to respond.

  Alexandra reaches up and tucks a lock of my hair behind one ear. The move sends chills down my spine.

  “You have an unusual face,” Alexandra says. “But if you learned how to put makeup on the right way, you might actually be pretty. Play your cards right, and I can do for you what I’ve done for Ivy. You know how much I like charity work.”

  She smiles her standard, good-girl smile. It makes my stomach churn.

  A couple of younger girls stumble in, sophomores, I think, looking for more alcohol. They see the drinks Alexandra was mixing and squeal.

  “Don’t!” she says, her voice surprisingly sharp. “Bar’s in the den. This is private stock.”

  “Stock?” one of the girls echoes.

  “You. Don’t. Touch,” Alexandra says. “Get it?”

  “Ew,” says the other girl. “You don’t have to be, like, such a beyotch. We don’t want your stupid drink anyway.”

  They toddle off, and Alexandra resumes her place behind the island. “There’s something so trashy about a girl who doesn’t know how to hold her liquor,” she says to no one in particular—or maybe to me, I don’t know. “Here, try one of my special cocktails. I think you’ll like it.”

  She proffers the red Solo cup in my direction, but I shake my head. “No thanks,” I say. “I don’t drink anything I didn’t mix myself.”

  “Your loss.”

  I smooth my skirt and head out the other side of the kitchen, which leads to a formal dining room. It’s dark and it’s empty—or almost empty, that is.

  Because who do I find sitting in a ball in the corner, burying her head in her knees?

  True story: it’s Ivy Proctor.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Ivy

  “Are you okay?”

  Sloane Fahey stands six feet away from me. The room is mostly dark but she has very distinct hair, long and red and wavy, like she just stepped off the pages of a Marvel comic. In other words, she is hard to miss.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Just needed a breather.”

  This is not entirely a lie. I did need to breathe. This party—it is beyond overwhelming.

  Everyone is looking at me. Not through me. At me. Their eyes are like hungry fish mouths nipping at my skin. It makes me itch.

  Before some jokester decided to make me a candidate for Homecoming Queen, I had perfected the art of invisibility. I blended into the background. This was by choice. By design.

  I became less invisible after the nomination, of course, when Alexandra decided to take me under her wing. But even then, I was able to hide in her shadow. Hell, I could even hide in Sam’s shadow.

  But tonight, with my new hair and my new makeup and my clothes and my new shoes, one thing has been made abundantly clear.

  I do not have a new personality.

  I am still me.

  I am still the same, fucked-up little girl who smashed her hand through that window two years ago. The one who wants to puke when a boy looks at her a certain way, because her older cousin took advantage of her in ways he never should have. The one who used to slice the insides of her arms to let his poison out.

  What I want to do right now is cry. It hurts, being me. I do not know why I thought I could handle all of this newness, all of this attention.

  Walking around this massive house, Bobby Jablonski’s hand on the small of my back, I felt like an impostor. A fraud. Like at any second, they were all going to start laughing at me.

  But no one laughed. No one pointed. No one called me out.

  They smiled at me. They talked to me. And when Bobby Jablonski leaned in close to me, my back against a living-room wall, and whispered in a beer-heavy breath that he was really glad I came tonight, I actually believed him, even though my instinct was to recoil from his touch. (Thanks again, Sean.)

  Bobby scared me so much that I had to run away. I
told him I needed to use the bathroom. Then I ran in here, crumpled to the floor, and tried not to lose my shit.

  Sloane sits down next to me. I wish she would go away. I need to be alone. How can she not see that?

  “These people are the worst,” Sloane says, apropos of nothing. “They are beautiful and popular, but they’re also shallow and self-absorbed. Some are even mean. Really mean.”

  I do not respond. Sloane does not seem to mind.

  “But even though I hate them, I want them to like me,” she says. “I want them to want to be my friend. When they’re nice to me—which, believe it or not, happens on occasion—I feel better about myself.”

  “Why are you telling me these things?” I ask.

  “Because I think we’re a lot alike,” she says quietly. “I think you hate yourself for wanting them to like you, but hate yourself even more when they don’t. Like me.”

  It is Alexandra’s voice I hear in my head: Don’t listen to her. She’s a loser. She’s just jealous of you. Walk away. Now.

  “Thank you for your concern,” I say, scrambling to my feet. “But like I said, I’m fine. I just need to get something to eat.”

  But I do not leave her to look for food. I make a beeline for the bar. Liquid courage, Alexandra called it. That is all I need right now. Just a little, just to loosen me up.

  “There you are!” Alexandra says brightly. She is holding three plastic cups, each bearing one of our names written in Sharpie marker.

  “What’s in it?” I ask as she hands me mine.

  “Butterbeer,” she says. “Like from Harry Potter.”

  “Does it have alcohol?”

  “A little,” she admits.

  “I think I need more than a little.”

  A slow grin spreads across Alexandra’s flawless face. “I’ve got just the thing.” She sets the other two cups down on a shelf and pulls her flask from her purse. “I’ll just top it off.”

  I drink the entire thing in one long gulp. It burns, but in a good way.

  “More,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  I nod.

  She pours the contents of her own cup into my now empty one and adds another splash from the flask.

  “Pace yourself,” she says. “You don’t want to be the girl puking on the front lawn. And make sure you get some snacks before you drink this one. It’ll slow down the absorption in your bloodstream—keep you from getting sick.”

  But I am not really listening. Instead, I am scanning the room for Bobby. He is talking to some other guys from the team. Erin Hewett is standing a few feet away, in a group of cheerleaders, watching him like a hawk.

  “I want him,” I tell Alexandra. I am surprised by my own bluntness. “Do you think he could like me?”

  “I think he already does,” she says. “But pace yourself there, too. You want to flirt, but you don’t want to come off as easy. See how Erin’s party-stalking him?”

  I nod.

  “That’s a turnoff. He knows he can have her. She’s making it too easy.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Look at everyone but him,” Alexandra instructs. “Talk to everyone but him. Dance your ass off. He’s already noticed you, right? So have a lot of fun tonight. He’ll be drawn to you like a moth to a flame.”

  I slam the second cup of spiked Butterbeer almost as quickly as I did the first.

  “Snacks,” Alexandra says. “You have to eat something.”

  “Or do I?”

  Without another word, I join a group of senior girls who’ve turned the middle of the den into a makeshift dance floor. My skirt is perfect; it puffs out with every twirl.

  I am electric. I am on fire.

  I am the girl I was always meant to be.

  Within minutes—or at least what feels like minutes—Bobby Jablonski has joined our little group. He is dancing close to me. I give him what I think is a flirty smile. He shoots one back.

  We dance for the duration of a techno remix. Then, heeding Alexandra’s earlier words, I dance away from him. He follows shortly after.

  I am feeling warm and tingly from the drinks, and also kind of sleepy. I need another drink. And maybe some chips. Maybe.

  Bobby follows me to the snack area. “Are you party-stalking me?” I ask, using Alexandra’s earlier phrase.

  “Could you blame me if I was? You’re the hottest girl here tonight.”

  “I might be the hungriest girl,” I say. “But not the hottest.”

  “Trust me,” he says. “I’m not the only one thinking it, either.”

  For the first time tonight, I do not mind being visible. Not if it means having Bobby Jablonski look at me like he wants to devour me. His attention feels good. Normal. Nothing like Sean’s.

  “We should hang out,” he says.

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  “Naw,” he says. “I mean like the kind of hanging out where I pick you up, we grab some dinner, maybe catch a movie.”

  “That sounds an awful lot like a date.”

  “Would you like that? Going on a date with me?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I might, if you weren’t already dating someone.”

  “I’m not,” Bobby insists. “Hewett and I are just friends. She’s new, you know? I was being nice. But you . . .”

  “What about me?”

  “I don’t want to be ‘nice’ with you.”

  The rational part of my brain recognizes the absurdity of his pickup line. But the irrational part is tickled just to have a boy use a pickup line on me in the first place.

  I tell Bobby that I need to find my friends.

  “That’s cool,” he says. “See you around?”

  I respond with a smile. This playing-hard-to-get stuff seems to be working. So does the Butterbeer.

  Time to find Alexandra to mix me another.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Sam

  Erin Hewett is a little drunk. No, she’s more than a little drunk. She’s practically wasted.

  I followed her into the basement, holding a drink that Lexi mixed for her. There’s something in it, but I don’t know what. Lexi said, “Don’t drink the one marked for Erin. Trust me on this.”

  At first I thought she just spit in it or laced it with a laxative or something. But after Erin had a few sips, her cheeks got really red, and she started to slur her words a bit. By the time she finished the thing, she was wobbling when she walked.

  “We should sit,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “Sit,” I say more loudly. There’s different music in the basement, louder music. It’s dark down here but with neon party lights flashing. I half expect someone to have a seizure.

  It’s clear that this is the place where most of the people are going to hook up. There’s a huge L-shaped couch that takes up a big chunk of the room, plus a double-wide chair, a couple of beanbags, and two video game rockers. Hayley Langer is taking advantage of one of them; she’s straddling this guy Brent, practically sucking his face off while his hands make their way up her skirt.

  Erin is watching the Hayley Langer spectacle, too, only she looks more sad than disgusted.

  “I want to kiss somebody,” she tells me.

  “Oh?”

  “Don’t you ever feel like that? Like there’s this ache inside of you, and you just . . . Never mind.”

  I want her to keep talking but I don’t know how to tell her that and not sound like some sort of perv.

  “It’s hard to talk in here,” Erin says. “Wanna go somewhere else?”

  I nod. She starts to walk away and motions for me to follow.

  We find a door that leads to a walk-in closet. This must be where Matt’s family stores all of their sports gear. There are shoulder pads and skis and basketballs and about half a dozen pairs of sneakers. The whole room smells like feet.

  Erin locks the door behind us. Interesting.

  “Can I ask you something?” she says, her voice thick with what
ever cocktail Lexi had me pump her full of.

  “Sure.”

  “Why does she hate me?”

  “Who, Lexi?”

  “Yes. Her. Why?”

  “She doesn’t,” I lie.

  Erin shakes her head. “She totally does, Samantha. It’s so obvious. And she doesn’t even know me!”

  “She’s threatened by you,” I say before I can stop myself. I regret the words even as they’re leaving my lips. If this ever got back to Lexi . . . I’ll just have to deny it. Who’s Lexi going to believe anyway?

  “No, she straight up hates me. I don’t know what she said to Bobby, but now he’s trying to wiggle his way out of Homecoming. It’s so humiliating.”

  Erin kicks some shoes out of the way and plops to the floor in a decidedly ungraceful move. She reaches up and tugs on the bottom of my sweater. “Sit with me,” she says.

  So I do.

  We sit side by side on this cold, stinky floor, so close that we’re practically touching. The air crackles around us. I have to keep reminding myself that I must be misreading the situation. She likes Bobby, after all.

  “It’s hard being new,” Erin says. “I really liked my old life. I had the most amazing friends, a super-cute boyfriend, and, you know, the whole Homecoming thing. There’s a really good chance I would’ve won. And I know it’s stupid, but, like, who doesn’t want to win a crown?”

  “Me,” I say, holding up one hand. Erin chuckles. “And you could still win a crown,” I point out. “That part hasn’t changed.”

  “No, no, no,” she says, shaking her head too hard. “I won’t.”

  She starts to cry. Tears actually fall from her eyes, her head bobbing around like she’s a floppy rag doll.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Erin buries her head into my shoulder. I let my right arm reach around her in a side hug of sorts. She snuggles in closer, crying more quietly now.

  She’s sad, I remind myself. She likes Bobby. Not you.

  “You’re so nice,” Erin says, her words muffled by my sweater. “So, so nice. And so pretty, too.”

  Okay, there’s no mistaking that. Why is she commenting on my level of attractiveness? And lying about it?