“Do you really think so?”
“Didn’t you see the look in his eyes? He’s hot for you.”
As we walked out of school, Fanny and I made plans to talk later about Owen and the party. Jake hadn’t met us at the lockers like he usually does. I made a point to worry about what was up Jake’s butt later, but right then, I had more urgent things to think about. What should I wear to a senior party?
I’d been to another dimension and traveled through time. But me hooking up with Owen Breen seemed more fantastical than all of that.
“He’s hot for you,” Fanny had said.
I wanted to find out if Fanny’s words were true.
2
I called Fanny as soon as I got home. As usual, she got right to the point and spoke what was on her mind.
“So, why do you think ‘The O’ asked you out?”
“Why? Wait … are you saying I’m not good enough for him?”
“No! Hell no. You’re too good for him. It’s just, you’re not exactly his type.”
“What’s his type?”
“You know. A bit dull in the skull, big boobs, and easy.”
Fanny made a good point. I liked to think I wasn’t a moron, my chest had arrived, but not exactly in a big way, and I knew I wasn’t easy.
Fanny’s question began to gnaw at me. Why had Owen taken a sudden interest in me?
For that matter, why had I taken a sudden interest in him? Sure, he was smoking hot. Yes, he was popular. But he was also a bit of a conceited jerk. Not exactly my type. So why was I so drawn to him? More than drawn to him. Compelled to him, like I just had to be with him, no matter what.
“I don’t know, Fanny. Maybe he’s just curious about the Cafeteria Circus Freak.”
“Maybe.”
She didn’t sound convinced.
I could hear Fanny crunching and chewing in my ear.
“Can you stop chewing for a minute, it’s disgusting, and I’ve got something to ask you.”
“Oh, okay. What?
“What’s up with Jake lately?”
“Whad’ya mean?”
“He stormed off today at lunch, and he didn’t meet us at the lockers. He seems mad at me.”
“Maybe he’s on the rag.”
We both laughed.
“Seriously, has he been that way to you too?”
“No, but I’m not the one going out with Owen.”
“So?”
“God, Emily, you’re thick sometimes. You and Owen? Jake crushing on you? Follow?”
I was beginning to follow, but it didn’t make sense. Jake was my best friend. We’d been friends since we were four, but I didn’t feel that way about him. I just assumed he didn’t feel that way about me. And it wasn’t like he’d ever asked me out or tried to make a move on me. He hadn’t even so much as held my hand.
“Since when has Jake had a crush on me?”
“Since like … forever!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I figured you knew.”
“No. I didn’t know.”
I searched my memory for signs of this – the thing that I’d missed. It just wasn’t there. I assumed that Jake hung out with me because he genuinely liked me – as a friend. But as I thought about it, I guess it should have seemed strange to me that Jake never asked any other girls out. I was so content with hanging out with him, it hadn’t occurred to me that neither one of us was dating.
“What am I going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Whad’ya mean nothing? He’s one of my best friends. I don’t want to hurt him …”
“Yeah, he’s your friend. And as a friend, he should be happy for you. He never asked you out, did he?”
“No.”
“What’s he think – you’re going to just pal around with him your whole life, sitting around on your dad’s couch with you, watching dumb-ass movies?”
We both laughed at the thought.
“Don’t worry about Jake. We’ll go to Austin’s party on Friday and have some fun. Jake’ll come around. He cares about you too much to stay mad long.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Of course I am.”
* * *
Fanny and I went to the game together Friday. We’d asked Jake to come with us, but he declined. He’d hardly spoken to me since lunch on Wednesday.
After the game, we hung around waiting for Owen. When he saw me, he smiled wide, and his dark eyes twinkled in the bright lights of the football field. My insides began to flutter as he swaggered over to me.
“Hey, Miss Magic,” he said.
Miss Magic. I loved the way his husky voice said that.
“Hey, Owen.”
“Sporty Spice, looking good,” Owen said, looking Fanny up and down. Her face turned red, and she looked like she wanted to punch him. I was glad she held herself back. It would be a rough beginning to our evening if Fanny started a fistfight with Owen.
Owen opened the front door of Austin’s house and waltzed in as if he lived there. The stereo was cranked, but you couldn’t make out the song over the noise. Just the deep THUMP, THUMP, THUMP that was more of a feeling than a sound.
Austin lived in the nicest part of Wheaton, and his parent’s house was massive. Everywhere I looked it was packed full of seniors, most holding a red, plastic cup. I did a quick scan and didn’t see a single person that I knew. I was so glad that I’d dragged Fanny along.
My insides were a jittery ball of nerves. I could feel the sweat dripping down my sides from my pits. Don’t raise your arms and show your pit stains.
And it wasn’t just the proximity to Owen and his delicious smell that had my insides all boiled up. I was nervous about being at a keg party. I’d never drank alcohol before, except for a sip of my dad’s beer or wine sometimes. It wasn’t like I was morally opposed or anything. It was mostly that I’d never had the opportunity. I knew I shouldn’t drink, but I didn’t want to look like a loser in front of Owen. What would he think of me if I didn’t have a drink?
As soon as people noticed Owen, they all looked in our direction. There was lots of ‘O’ and ‘Owen, over here’ and people trying to get his attention. And there were lots of catty sneers from the girls there, but they were thrown in my direction, not his.
What the hell am I doing here? If ever there was a place that I didn’t belong, that was the place. Owen started to walk into the crowd, but I hung back, clinging to the door behind me for safety. Owen looked back and gestured for me to follow. I walked up to him, and he took my hand. The warmth from Owen’s hand spread through my body, and I began to relax a little.
Owen led me and Fanny to the kitchen, where there was a keg in a large tub full of ice. An ape of a guy was standing at the keg, with the tap in his hand. As Owen walked up, the guy put out his hand, and they did this guy hug thing and slapped each other on the back.
“O, my man. Late start so you gotta chug this one to catch up,” he said as he poured Owen a beer. Owen took the beer, but he didn’t chug it.
“You chug, you puke, so The O doesn’t chug,” Owen said as he raised his glass and took a long drink. “God, this stuff tastes like toad piss.”
“Yeah, good, huh?” the guy at the keg said. “Damn, O, you robbing the cradle these days,” he said as he caught sight of me and Fanny. “Do your – um – girls want a beer?”
“They’re juniors, you cretin. You ladies want a beer, right?” It was more of a statement than a question, punctuated with a plastic cup full of foul-smelling foam pushed into my hand. When Owen tried to hand one to Fanny, she declined.
“Game tomorrow,” she said. Apparently, it was jock language, and Owen seemed to understand perfectly because he didn’t try to talk her into taking one and just nodded.
We followed Owen like ducklings following a mama duck as he weaved his way back through the crowd and into the dining room, where there was some kind of game going on with bouncing Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer. H
e then led us into a large family room.
There were two girls standing on a coffee table, dancing with each other and grinding their hips together while a bunch of people standing around were cheering them on. Some guys I recognized from the football team were chanting, “Kiss, kiss, kiss,” to the dancing girls. One of the girls grabbed the other around the waist with one arm (the other hand occupied with her cup of beer, which was sloshing out all over the carpet), and the two girls obliged. They kissed each other as the guys whooped and hollered for them.
Fanny grabbed my hand, and as I looked back at her, her eyes were wide. I felt like I must have looked green. I don’t know how drunk those girls were, but I don’t think there’s enough alcohol on the planet to make me want to kiss Fanny.
My throat was dry, so I instinctively took a swig from my cup, forgetting that it was full of the nasty swill from the keg. Like I said, I’d sipped my dad’s beer before and didn’t like it much. But he drank decent stuff with labels with European sounding names. This tasted like … toad piss. Owen was right.
I tried not to make a weird face as my tongue recovered from tasting the cheap beer. Owen was talking to some guys, and he introduced me to the crew who had cheered the drunk girls on to girl-to-girl kissing.
“This is Emily, you know, Miss Magic,” he said with a smile as he introduced me to his friends. “And this is her friend,” he said as he nodded to Fanny.
“Oh, the magic girl,” one guy said. They all checked me out, especially my chest. Before that week, I don’t think I’d ever noticed a single guy so much as pay any attention to me. Now I had about six guys with their eyes glued to my boobs. What were they expecting, for them to talk or something?
“Nice rack,” one of the guys said.
“Shut up, pig,” Owen said as he flicked the guy on the head. “What’s the matter with you?”
“He’s drunk, man,” another one of the guys said. “He meant it as a compliment,” he said to me.
“It’s okay,” I said. Truth was, as piggish as the clump nugget was, it was still flattering to have someone say something meant as a compliment instead of a dig.
We stood there for a while, just listening to Owen and his Neanderthal friends talk about their game and relive it play by play. Boredom caused me to keep sipping the nasty crap in my cup, and before I knew it, my cup was empty. My head felt swoony.
“I need more,” I said a bit too loudly. Owen laughed and said, “Look at that, you’re a partier, huh? Sure, go for it, you know where the keg is.” He went right back to talking football with his friends.
I grabbed Fanny’s hand, and we walked back toward the kitchen and the keg.
“What are you doing?” she whispered to me.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting another cup of toad piss.”
“You’re getting drunk.”
“So. What of it? Are you my mother or something?”
“No, but I don’t want you passing out somewhere and getting gang-raped by those apes.”
I stopped and turned to her then. “What are you talking about? They’re not going to rape me! You’re such a worrywart. You and Jake both. Lighten up, Fanny, or just leave.”
We both stood there, facing each other and not saying anything. I’d had a growth spurt over the summer and stand nearly five feet ten while Fanny stands about five and a half feet tall. I had to look down at her to meet her gaze, her brown eyes large, her fists balled up and planted on her hips.
Finally, she said, “Fine, I won’t say anything. But if you pass out, so help me, I’m not carrying your ass home.”
“I won’t pass out,” I said as I circled my arm through hers and walked her back to the kitchen.
When we pushed our way through the bodies and to the keg, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw her standing at the keg with two other girls.
Greta. What is she doing here? I bent down and whispered in Fanny’s ear, “Look who else is here.” Fanny had to stand on tiptoe to see over people in order to get a look at Greta.
“What’s that skank doing here?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go,” I said as I continued on to the keg. I wasn’t going to let Greta ruin my night.
As I walked up, the keg guy said, “Hey, Magic, ready for another round?” as he turned the tap lever and let the gold liquid flow into my cup.
“What are you doing here?” Greta said, with her ever-present smirk. God, I just wanted to slap that look off her face. Sometimes I fantasized about getting her into Madame Wong’s training room and seeing how long she’d last.
“She’s here with The O,” ape guy said.
That wiped the smirk off her face. Greta and her two friends looked like they’d just been told that Abercrombie and Fitch had gone out of business.
“Is that right? Well, where is he, huh? He’s already dumped you, hasn’t he?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but for your information, he’s talking to his friends while I get a beer.” I turned around and left her standing there looking like she’d been hit in the face with a pan.
“Come back when you run dry, Magic,” called out the ape guy at the keg. He was starting to grow on me.
When we got back to the family room, the two girls that had been table-dancing were laying on the couch, passed out. Owen was still talking to his friends, and they were still talking about the game. I had a feeling they’d do that all night.
I sidled up next to him, not sure if he’d even notice that I’d been gone or that I was back.
“Miss Magic is back,” he said and grabbed my free hand in his. His hand was larger than mine and a bit rough. My hand in his felt small and delicate. I liked that feeling.
“Hey, O here says that you can move things with your mind and stuff. Is that true?” one of the Neanderthal gang asked.
I just nodded.
“Just small stuff, or can you move big stuff too?”
“Size doesn’t matter,” I said. They all guffawed.
“Hear that, O, size doesn’t matter to her. You don’t have to worry about your teeny junk, then,” one of the guys said.
I blushed about thirteen shades of red and purple. I’d been thinking about kissing Owen and having him hold me close. But my mind hadn’t even gotten low enough down his body to think about the size of his …
“Man, you guys are a bunch of assholes,” Owen said; his eyes flashed anger.
“Ah, don’t be mad, man, we’re just joking. She’s a good sport, aren’t you, Magic? You can take a joke.”
“Sure, I can take a joke,” I said. I’ll show them one of my jokes.
Within a few seconds, the guy who had made the joke about the size of Owens … er, private parts … started to rise into the air. He was so drunk that at first, I’m not sure he even noticed. But then he started yelling, “Hey! What the hell?” Everyone started looking over at us, and it got quiet. I raised him up, up, up. What would he look like spinning? He began twirling like a top, faster and faster. He still had a cup of beer in his hand, and the beer was spilling down on the rest of the Neanderthal crew.
Owen joined everyone else in laughing.
“You can take a joke,” Owen whispered into my ear. The feel of his warm breath on my ear made me just about lose it and drop the guy on his head. But I held it together long enough to bring him down gently. All the twirling must have been a lousy combination with the beer because he ran from the room and tried to make it out the front door. We could hear him ralphing in the hallway. Didn’t make it.
A round of applause rose, and it was Owen who started it.
“A round of applause for Miss Magic,” he said as he beamed. Chants of, “Again, again, again,” rose up from the crowd.
I shook my head and tried to fade away from Owen. I don’t know if it was the beer or what, but my stomach wasn’t feeling so good, and I felt a killer headache brewing.
“I can’t right now,” I whispered to Owen. “Not feeling well.” Maybe booze a
nd magic don’t mix.
“Peeps, calm down,” Owen shouted then. “M’lady isn’t a performing seal.” He put his arm around my waist then and ushered me through the crowd, down the hallway (away from the now stinking puke pile) and out the rear slider door into the yard. Fanny was right behind me.
The shock of the crisp October air felt refreshing. It was chilly and smelled of fallen leaves. The moon was high and large, about three-quarters full. The trees were almost bare. There were a few couples in the yard; most of them pressed close, their lips locked, hands roaming. I tried not to look because it felt creepy to watch people make out.
Owen walked me to a swinging seat hung from an enormous oak tree in the middle of the yard. I sat down and felt glad to have the wood swing beneath me.
“Hey, Sporty, why don’t you go inside and get yourself a drink or something,” Owen said to Fanny.
“Nah, I’m good.” Fanny stood her ground in front of the swing. I glared at her hard, trying to get her to take the hint and give me some alone time with Owen. Either she couldn’t see me glare in the dark, or she chose to ignore me because she didn’t budge.
I was getting pissed as hell at her. I didn’t need Fanny acting like a mother hen, hovering over me all the time. It’s like sometimes she and Jake don’t get that we’re growing up. It’s like they still want everything to be like it was when we were ten or something.
Owen just shrugged his shoulders, sat down next to me, and he put his arm around my shoulders. He leaned his lips close to my ear and whispered, “So, you ever go anywhere without the pest?”
I threw my head back and let out a huge laugh. He hit the nail on the head.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good to know,” he whispered back then gently flicked his tongue into my ear. The flames of my passion were licking upward from my loins. I was thinking hard to Fanny to scram. But Fanny has zero telepathic skills, and she pretty much sucks at reading body language, too, so she didn’t get the hint to scram. Is she hoping to watch us make out or something? Fanny sticking around was starting to feel like prying, not protection.
Owen kept his arm around my shoulder but removed his tongue and lips from my ear. Suddenly, my ear felt cold, and a shiver ran through me. Owen seemed to know the effect he had on me. He wore a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 29