Bad Taste in Boys

by Carrie Harris

  “Well, you did,” she started, but then Kiki walked back down the driveway juggling a stack of towels and a couple of plastic cups. Thank god. Rocky knew I didn’t like talking about my moronic Mike moment but persisted in bringing it up anyway. I felt pretty stupid for hooking up with such a loser, even if I had been under the influence at the time. And to make matters worse, now he was convinced I was easy.

  I turned away from Rocky, hoping she’d get the point and shut up about it already.

  “Somebody take one of these cups before I spill all over the place,” said Kiki, walking carefully over to us.

  “I don’t think you want that stuff on your towels, Kiki,” I said, taking the cups. “It really reeks.”

  “They’re destined for the garbage bin anyway. Be right back.”

  I thought Jonah really was going to pee when he saw Kiki walking toward him. He managed to trip over his own foot instead. He put a hand out to steady himself—right in the middle of the black glop on my hood—and shrieked like a little girl. I couldn’t exactly blame him. I had a good stomach for that sort of thing, but it still grossed me out. Kiki held out a towel and murmured something soothing as she helped him clean up. I couldn’t watch anymore; he was practically panting.

  Rocky took her cup and gulped down half of its contents. I stared at mine. I didn’t even like beer. Parties were so not my thing. I wondered if it was too early to leave.

  “Kate!”

  Aaron sprinted toward us, shouting my name. Maybe parties were my thing. I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or frightened.

  “Uh … yeah?” I dropped the beer out of sheer nervousness. It sprayed foam all over my shoes. Brilliant, Kate. Just brilliant.

  “We need you,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Medical emergency.”

  And then I was running through the yard hand in hand with Aaron. It was very romantic except for the part where I yelled, “Rocky, get the first-aid kit out of my car! And make sure you don’t get any puke on it!”

  spent the first minute of our sprint trying not to squeal in Aaron-induced excitement and the next minute trying not to trip over anything. Then it occurred to me that I was hurtling toward a medical emergency. It would be smart to gather a little more intel before we got there and I actually had to do something useful.

  “What happened?” I gasped. I was not the running type. Aaron was doing most of the work and dragging me along behind him.

  “We were standing by the fire, and he just collapsed. I didn’t know what to do, so I came looking for you.”

  “Who?” I asked, but it was barely audible. Not enough airflow to my lungs. So it was no surprise when he didn’t respond.

  Aaron led me across an expanse of manicured landscape and into a barren field behind the house. The bonfire loomed in the middle, stacked high with wooden pallets and shooting sparks into the air. The space was ringed with lawn chairs and packed with people who should have been busily making fools of themselves but instead were standing in a silent, sober cluster.

  I’d been out in the semidark for too long; the light from the fire completely blinded me. Little red splotches danced across my field of vision. I managed to dodge the black shadowy things that I was pretty sure were my classmates but promptly tripped over a prostrate figure at my feet.

  The moment I looked down, I knew something was very, very wrong.

  It was Mike. His entire body was bent backward in an unnatural arc; his hands were curled into stiff and unmoving claws. His eyes bulged from their sockets. His face was a rictus mask, his mouth a frozen, leering grin.

  He was dead.

  A dead body was definitely more than I was prepared for. I stood there and gaped until Rocky and Kiki ran up with my first-aid kit.

  “What do you want us to do?” said Kiki, panting.

  The complete confidence in her voice snapped me out of it, and I started moving. It was all gloriously instinctual once I got started. Or it would have been glorious if not for the dead guy.

  “Kiki, I need crowd control,” I said. “Keep them back so I have room to work.”

  Before I even finished speaking, she was on the move. The crowd parted for her like the Red Sea for Moses, and she started to herd them like sheep. I couldn’t remember if Moses was a shepherd or not, but I was under a lot of pressure, so I felt entitled to a mixed metaphor.

  “Rocky, my kit, please,” I said.

  She set it on the ground in front of me before I even finished the sentence.

  “Did anyone call nine-one-one?” I asked, snapping on a rubber glove.

  No response; I looked up at a bunch of blank, wide-eyed faces. Now they really did remind me of sheep, the way they were milling about aimlessly, useless under pressure. Maybe Mike wouldn’t be dead if they weren’t so sheeplike. Someone could have done something to help him instead of standing around and waiting for the Kate cavalry.

  “I don’t think so,” said Aaron, pulling out his cell.

  I put my nongloved hand on his wrist to stop him. “No, I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Rocky, you call.”

  She nodded and took a couple of steps back, whipping out her phone. I reached down to feel for Mike’s pulse with my gloved hand. The glove might have been overkill, but I had no idea what was wrong with him. I didn’t know if it was contagious.

  “I already told you what happened.” Aaron knelt beside me and let out a strangled whimper. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  I couldn’t feel a pulse. I didn’t think CPR would help, but if I didn’t at least try, I’d always wonder if I gave up too soon. No way I could live with that.

  I was so glad I’d asked for a CPR mask for Christmas; I popped it into shape and held it out to Aaron.

  “I need you to do this for me,” I said.

  “But isn’t he dead?” Aaron looked at me desperately, wanting reassurance I couldn’t give. His bare arm brushed mine. It was like an electric shock; even my toes tingled. What kind of pervert gets all worked up in the presence of a corpse? I was pretty sure I needed therapy.

  I shook my head and tried to focus. “We’ve got to try. Put the mask over his mouth and nose.” I thrust it at him insistently. “Hold it tight against his face so it seals. When I say, give two breaths through the valve. I compress; you breathe. You got that?”

  He stared at the mask.

  “Take it!” I snapped, and this time he listened.

  He couldn’t get the mask to seal. Mike’s face was too contorted, his teeth bared and jaw stretched wide. The expression freaked me out. I tried to close his mouth, but it was like trying to move a marble statue.

  I knew rigor shouldn’t set in that quickly. I tried to push his hands out of the way to do the compressions, but they were frozen in place too. The only way I’d move him was by breaking his bones.

  I heard a siren in the distance. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. Best of all, now I had something to listen to other than my idiot classmates. Kiki was doing a great job of keeping them out of my way; too bad they wouldn’t shut up.

  “Oh my god!” said a girl to my right.

  “Is he dead?” asked another.

  “What are you doing, Caden?” A shocked voice from the left.

  “Video, dude. This is going up on YouTube.”

  “That’s so tactless.”

  I blocked out the commentary and tried the mask again. And again. I would not give up until someone pronounced Mike dead; then I would go somewhere and cry, and then I would vow not to attend another party for the rest of my life.

  I have some very bad history with parties and Mike Luzier. The first time Kiki talked me into going to a party, I drank one too many glasses of “punch” and decided it would be a good idea to hook up with him. At the second one he up and died. It was quite apparent that I was not meant to go to parties. Or to be anywhere near Mike Luzier.

  I tried shoving the mask on this time, as if brute force ever solved anything. I was so determined to make the stupid thing wor
k that it took me a minute to realize Aaron was shaking me. I’d actually forgotten he was there.

  “Kate?” He pointed at Mike’s arm. “What is that?”

  I didn’t see anything at first, not until Aaron grabbed Mike’s arm and showed me the black dot on his tricep. It was surrounded by a halo of greenish-yellow flesh.

  I instantly knew what it was. An injection site.

  Before I could say anything, two paramedics sprinted into the backyard.

  “Dude, over here!” someone yelled.

  They ran toward us. I stood and was just about to brief them on the situation when Mike sat up and, for the second time that night, groped my butt.

  I couldn’t help it. I screamed.

  he EMTs looked back and forth between Mike and me, trying to determine whether they ought to be treating the butt groper or the screaming hysteric. Mike got to his feet with a noise somewhere between an exhalation and a moan and threw the CPR mask at me. It bounced off my forehead with a hollow pock and spiraled into the fire.

  Everyone except Aaron started applauding. Mike didn’t clap either; he was too busy staring at his hand like he was wondering what it was and if he could eat it. His skin looked gray in the firelight. It was an improvement over the psychotic death grin of a minute ago, but not by much.

  “Water,” Mike mumbled, shambling toward the house.

  The EMTs finally did something useful. One intercepted Mike at the back door, and the other came over to talk to us.

  “Good work,” the EMT said.

  “Excuse me?” I took off my glove and threw it into the fire. I kept expecting the adrenaline to hit, but I just felt numb.

  “Looks like you did the job for us, Ms.…?”

  “Grable. Kate Grable.”

  “Gotcha. Well, we’ll check him out, but I imagine it’s just another case of alcohol poisoning. Was he drinking?”

  “I, um, don’t know. I just got here.”

  Normally, I would have been bouncing at the chance to brief an EMT on a medical emergency, but not after what had just happened. I couldn’t believe Mike had walked away. Not after what I’d seen. Dead people don’t get up all of a sudden. How could I have been so wrong?

  “We’ll give the guy a once-over just in case,” the EMT said. “Thanks again, Kate. You ought to consider a career in the medical profession.”

  I ought to consider a lobotomy if I couldn’t even tell if someone was dead or not.

  Rocky escorted me into the living room, where I let myself fall onto a leather couch that probably cost the national budget of some small island nation. Maybe that was where I should go to practice medicine. Places like that were so starved for medical assistance, they wouldn’t mind if I was a complete hack.

  She sat down beside me. “Kate?”

  “Yeah.” I covered my face with a pillow. I wanted to die.

  “What’s—” She stopped, and then in a completely different tone of voice, said, “Do you think he should be doing that?”

  I inched the pillow away from my eyes. Rocky pointed through a set of French doors toward the dining room, where one of the EMTs was smacking some kind of fancy medical scope like he thought that might miraculously make it work. Then he tossed it into his kit and kicked that closed. You aren’t exactly supposed to throw those things around. Even I knew that, and I was a complete idiot.

  “No. He shouldn’t.” I buried my face.

  “Uh, Kate? What’s wrong?” Rocky asked.

  “I’m mentally defective.”

  “You saved Mike’s life!”

  I lowered the pillow. “I thought he was dead, Rocky. And what’s worse? Even though I thought that, I still got a thrill out of rubbing arms with Aaron.”

  He walked in with a glass of water just in time to hear that. I really wanted to die now.

  “Drink this,” he said, like I hadn’t just made a total fool of myself.

  I covered my furiously red face again. “I don’t want it. Thanks.”

  Aaron took the pillow away. It was really tempting to hide behind my hands, but that was a little too immature even for me.

  “Look,” he said, setting the pillow on the floor. “My best friend just collapsed, and I could tell by the look on your face that you recognized the mark on his arm. You’re smarter than all of us put together. Help me figure out what just happened. Please?”

  I gazed at the little cut above his eyebrow. And then I told him everything I knew about the vials.

  “It could be nothing, but it seems like a tremendously big coincidence to me,” I finished, hoping I came off as semirational.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Aaron said.

  “Me either,” I replied, trying not to sound as relieved as I felt. He didn’t think I was nuts. “And Coach locked himself in his office after the game. He was probably getting the steroids. Maybe Mike’s allergic to them.”

  “Or they’re contaminated,” Aaron said. “They’re not exactly regulated by the FDA.”

  “Okay. So we have a possible explanation, but what about opportunity? Were you with Mike all night? Did Coach have the opportunity to give him the drugs?”

  “Yeah, he did.” Aaron ran his fingers through his hair. “He met with each of the players after the game. One by one, in his office. It took forever.”

  “Really? What for?”

  “He said he wanted to give us individual feedback, but all he told me was not to get tackled so much.” Aaron frowned. “As if I needed someone to tell me that. Honestly, the whole thing seemed pretty strange to me.”

  We were sitting with our heads close together, practically whispering. If I had a diary, I’d write all about this later and probably dot all my is with little hearts out of sheer romantic starvation.

  It was a good thing I didn’t have a diary.

  Rocky spoke up. “Uh, guys?”

  I jumped. I’d forgotten she was there.

  “Aren’t you overlooking something?” she said. “If Coach was going to give somebody steroids, wouldn’t he dose the quarterback first? I mean, that’s what I’d do if I wanted to win.”

  “Maybe he wanted to test it first,” I said. “Like, he gave them to a couple of guys to see how they’d react before doing the whole team? Or maybe he knew Aaron would say no, and he picked the guys he thought would be least likely to ask questions.”

  “That’s true.” Aaron looked kind of embarrassed, but he smiled at me anyway. “I may suck, but at least I suck honestly.”

  “You’re assuming that Coach is the one who shot him up,” Rocky said. “Maybe Mike’s taking them on his own.”

  “Nah.” Aaron shook his head. “Mike can be a moron sometimes, but he’s a good guy once you get to know him. And he’s no user. I’ll ask him what happened, and I’ll see what I can learn from the other guys while I’m at it. If Coach gave them something, they’ll tell me.”

  “I’ll check in with Kiki to make sure no one else has been sick tonight,” Rocky said.

  They stood up and looked at me like they were waiting for me to add something brilliant. “I’ll stay here, if that’s okay with you guys,” I said.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Aaron asked, patting my arm.

  I nodded. I just needed a minute to chill. It was too much to handle: Mike’s collapse, the CPR, the steroids … not to mention the fact that Aaron had spoken more words to me today than in the last three years combined. I knew, because I’d counted.

  Maybe I should have felt guilty about not helping them, but I’d already done my part. True, my part had consisted of fiddling with the CPR mask, but still. I’d done it. Besides, I was afraid I’d bump into Mike if I ran around investigating, and he was the last person in the world I wanted to see.

  Unfortunately for me? He walked into the living room five minutes after Aaron and Rocky left.

  Mike stopped a few feet away, staring me down with an expression that said he was trying to figure out if I’d taste better with ketchup or mayo. I had this irrational urge
to burrow into the smooth leather of the couch and pretend I didn’t see him.

  “Hi, Mike. Are you, um, okay?” I sat up straighter, hugging my pillow like it might offer some protection. From what, I didn’t know.

  He nodded slowly.

  I hadn’t thought it was possible for me to get more nervous, but I did. Now I couldn’t stop chattering.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you. You had us worried for a second, you know. Everybody, I mean. We were all pretty worried there. But the EMTs gave you a clean bill of health, huh?”

  “No.”

  He just kept staring. I actually found myself wishing for his usual Neanderthal behavior. His fixation on me was almost pathological.

  “Well then, maybe I should, uh, check you out instead. I mean, would you mind if I checked your pulse and stuff? Just in case. Not like I think there’s anything wrong with you, of course, because obviously there isn’t,” I babbled.

  He nodded again. I stood up, my heart beating erratically. The EMTs weren’t going to give protected medical information to a high school student, and it looked like Mike had refused treatment anyway. If I wanted to know anything, I had to find it out for myself.

  There’s nothing to be afraid of. My instinct to run shrieking out of the room was ridiculous. I placed two fingers on the side of his neck. I didn’t like how his skin felt, chilled and slightly stiff. Given the fact that I had thought he was in rigor about fifteen minutes ago, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I didn’t have to like it.

  I couldn’t find his pulse. I couldn’t concentrate.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked nonsensically. Of course he wasn’t okay. If he was, he wouldn’t be staring at me like he was a lion and I was a nice juicy antelope.

  I looked up at him and his face was right there, blank eyes devouring me. The corner of his mouth curled up in a smile more predatory than friendly, and he raised a hand to stroke my cheek. It was time to run away, but I froze. And then? He swooped down, pressing his cold, fishy lips to mine.

  He tasted like old bile and rotten meat. I caught the faint smell of vomit, undercut with spicy cologne that only made the stench even more disgusting.