The tattooed bartender came out and began stacking glasses at the table next to us. He watched us intensely as he did it. No one spoke. The two men next to us had stopped talking to one another. Now they were looking between him and us, smiling in a sort of pitying way. The barman stopped stacking, straightened up and stared at us, eyes challenging. Mel slowly finished her cigarette. It felt like everyone was watching her do it, waiting. Finally, she stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“Let’s get out of here, guys. This place smells like piss.”
We rose up and slowly walked back toward the door. Once we were back out onto the street they all starting laughing again.
“I can’t believe you said that!” Cass beamed at Mel.
Mel put her arm around me. “Come on, let’s go fish these things out.”
My insides felt like they were blistering the whole way back to Saanvi’s, but I didn’t rush. I stayed in step with the others, trying my hardest to smile.
When we got back inside, I didn’t race to the toilet. I followed them quietly up the stairs. No more complaining. Once we were in Saanvi’s room, I went straight into her en suite and locked the door. Trying to pull my jeans down I staggered on the spot. Finally, I sat heavily onto the toilet. The smell of the vodka stung my nose. It made me want to gag. I pulled the string and for one sickening moment, I thought it was stuck. But finally, the thing began to slide slowly out. I didn’t want to even look at it as I opened the bin next to the toilet to throw it away, but I did notice the contents of the bin.
On top of a pile of screwed-up tissues and cotton swabs were three brand-new, unused tampons.
16
“Do you have any booze?” Saanvi asked. She was sitting in my window, staring out at the sheet of black. It was two weeks later, the night they stayed over at my house.
“Nope,” I said.
She sighed dramatically and pulled out her iPhone. Saanvi was the only one in our year to have one, and she didn’t waste an opportunity to show it off.
There was no way I was going to let her have any of the bottle of gin my mum kept in the back of the kitchen cabinet for special occasions and really bad days. Weeks had passed since the day we’d done the tampon experiment, and I was still feeling a bit confused about the whole thing. The way they’d told and retold the story since, we’d all done it, we’d all felt it burning, we’d all gotten really drunk. The way they talked about it made it seem true. Every time I remembered those three white little tampons, I told myself that they could have been there for ages, that they didn’t mean anything. After all, they wouldn’t lie to me; they were my best friends.
Mel and I were lying shoulder to shoulder on my bed working on her invite list. Her party was the next weekend. We were rewriting the list in order of who we wanted to come the most to the least.
“Not Veronica, she’s a skank,” Mel said.
“I thought you liked Veronica,” I said. “Anyway, Laura is boring—that’s way worse.”
“Cass?” asked Mel.
Cass was sitting on one of the mattresses on the floor, on her laptop. Chucky was asleep against her leg.
“Skank beats boring,” she said, not looking up.
It was overwhelming having them in my room. It was both intensely wonderful and excruciatingly nerve-racking. There had been always been an ache in my chest. I hadn’t known it was there until now, when it was gone. I knew all I had to do was relax, not say or do the wrong thing, and every moment would be entirely perfect. Ever since the tampons, they’d been even nicer to me than before. As long as I didn’t muck it up, things would stay golden. Mel’s hair tickled my cheek; her warm arm rested against mine. I wanted to pause this moment, because I knew, inevitably, I’d somehow do something to ruin it.
“What about your mum, does she have any booze?” Saanvi seemed suspicious, like somehow she knew about the gin. But that was impossible.
“Nah, I doubt it. She’s always on call at the hospital, so she can’t really drink.”
“I didn’t know your mum was a doctor.” Mel turned to me.
“She’s not. She’s a nurse.”
“What about your sister? She must have something.”
“I dunno—we can ask her.”
“Oh my God!” Cass shrieked, waking up Chucky.
“What?” asked Saanvi. “Please, entertain me! I’m dying of boredom.”
That taste rose up again in the back of my throat. I had been sure we were having fun.
“Shut up, Saanvi,” said Mel.
“Look.” Cass flipped her laptop around and we all dropped down onto her mattress to see.
Cass pressed Play and the all too familiar scene appeared. The shadows of the underneath of the stage. The square of yellow, lighting up Mr. Bitto’s face. The back of my school sports shirt. Hip-hop played over the top and it’d been edited so Mr. Bitto lunged in and out for the kiss in time to the beat, that horrible hungry expression on his face.
“It’s a mash-up!” said Cass. “It already has thirty thousand views.”
“That’s awesome,” said Mel.
“You’re famous.” Saanvi looked at me. I smiled back at her, and tried not to watch it. I hadn’t seen Mr. Bitto again after he got off the bus that day. Counselors descended on the school almost instantly. All the girls got pulled out of our classes in small groups to “share their feelings.” The counselors wanted us to talk about whether we’d ever felt uncomfortable with any of the teachers. They always referred to what had happened as “recent events,” or “the current situation.” They never said his name. Outside of those groups, his name was everywhere. It was like he was famous. The only one eclipsing him was me. The Girl in the Video. She was a celebrity, a mystery. She was all anyone could talk about. They all had a theory on who the girl was. I could tell the counselors were dying to know as well.
When the clip was finally over, Saanvi leaned her head onto my mattress.
“Let’s go out,” said Mel, a flash in her eyes.
* * *
It was different being out in the dark with them. My morning scamper to the bus stop was nothing like this. Now the estate hummed with an energy, a feeling of possibility and adventure. Cass and Saanvi walked ahead, looking into windows of the empty houses and laughing, making ghost noises, “OOOOoooooo OOOOOoooo.”
The three of them were just shadows out here. Black shapes. The gloss of their hair reflected the moonlight. The cold air made my skin prickle under my jacket.
Mel kept in step with me. She linked her arm with mine.
“You know I love Cass and Saanvi more than anything—” even a whisper was loud out there “—but it always felt like something was missing.”
“What was missing?” I asked.
“You, stupid!” she said.
I never thought it would be this good. Never, in my most ludicrous fantasies had I put those words in her mouth.
I couldn’t speak.
“There was something uneven about us—we would fight sometimes. Three is a bad number. You’ve evened us out. Plus, I know you understand me in a way they can’t.”
“How?” was all I could manage.
“What went down with Mr. Bitto—that was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And now it’s the worst thing that ever happened to you too.”
Mel pulled my linked arm closer to her body. I could feel her warmth through our jackets.
“Guys!” Saanvi’s hushed call.
She and Cass were squatting in the bushes outside a house. It was the one where the man lived by himself. He’d driven past me a few times on my walk up the hill in the evening. There was a very faint silver glow coming through the curtains. Mel’s arm unlinked from mine. She sprinted forward and ducked down behind them. I followed, crouched down next to her, the wet leaves prickly around me.
“Look,” said Saanvi.
>
Mel and I raised our head slowly to the window. It was like looking into my own living room; it was identical. Same cream carpet, same white walls—I could see the corner of the kitchen through the doorway, tiled in the same drab gray. The television was on, casting silvery-blue shapes across the room. A man sat on the sofa in front of it. The way he was looking at the screen was strange. His eyes were so empty, like he was dead. I ducked back down.
“Did you see the pictures?” asked Cass.
I sneaked another quick look. On the wall were framed pictures of a family. A man, his wife and two young children. They were formal photographs, the family’s smiles slightly strained. They looked Middle Eastern, but I didn’t know from where exactly. The clothing they had on was traditional. Then I noticed that the man in the picture was the man sitting in front of the television.
“Have you ever seen his family?” Mel asked, as she ducked back down.
“No, just him.”
“He probably killed them,” said Cass.
“Their bodies are probably buried under the house.” Saanvi’s eyes were sparkling.
“Don’t say that!” That wasn’t something I wanted to have to think about on my walk to the bus stop in the mornings.
“Come on, let’s keep going,” said Mel.
“Okay,” I said, getting up to walk next to her.
We made a beeline for the next occupied house. Where the two women lived. Nancy and her great-aunt, but I didn’t know that then. Our hushed giggles echoed in the silence. Saanvi was having fun now, I could tell. They were all having fun.
We looked in through the window. But all their lights were off. They must be asleep. Mel stood up.
“Get down!” squawked Saanvi.
“Shh!”
“I want to see inside.” Mel strode around to the back, looking through the windows as she went. I watched the way she walked so confidently in the dark. I would never look like that.
“She’s crazy.” Saanvi shook her head.
I snorted. “I thought you wanted to have fun?”
“Yeah, getting done for breaking and entering wasn’t what I was picturing,” she hissed.
Cass gasped. The sound of it bounced around the silence. I jumped, trying to see what she had. A face was looming on the other side of the window. Two inches from my nose. I jolted backward, then I heard the cackle of Saanvi’s laughter.
It was Mel behind the glass. She grinned at us and pointed to the left. Cass and Saanvi got up and went the way she did. I froze for a moment. Going into the house seemed too far. But Mel was still watching me through the window, her face hovering in the black. I had no choice.
The back door was open. I guessed they must have forgotten to lock it.
The women had picked a slightly different model out of the catalog. Their house still had the same walls, the same carpet, but even in the dark I could see the living room was bigger. The countertops in the kitchen were stainless steel, and there was muck and splatter all over them.
“Let’s go.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” Saanvi hissed at me.
I bit back my reply as I followed them. It wasn’t that I was scared; I had to live with these people. I didn’t want to see accusing faces every day. I didn’t want to ruin this place for myself already. We came to the stairs. Saanvi placed her foot onto the bottom one, and then hesitated.
“Go on,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t.
She turned back to me, but as she opened her mouth to say something, a light upstairs flicked on.
“Nancy?” a woman’s voice called.
We stared at each other, frozen.
“What are you doing down there in the dark, you twat?”
Cass slapped a hand to her mouth like she might laugh. That did it. We ran out of the house. By the time we rounded the corner to my street, we were giggling breathlessly.
“Look what I got.” Mel pulled a large brass statue of a cat out from under her jacket.
“You stole it?”
She passed it to me. It was heavier than I expected.
“A gift,” she whispered.
I tucked it under my jacket, trying not to let my emotions show on my face. I could feel the cold brass pressing through my T-shirt onto the skin across my ribs. No matter what happened after this, even if we drifted apart after high school or she moved away, I had something now. Something that proved that this was real. Every time I looked at it I would remember how amazing our friendship was, how lucky I was.
“Thanks,” I whispered back.
A boy was standing under the front light of one of the houses, looking over at us. Evan. I’d heard Aiden call his name so I knew it, but I’d never spoken to him before. Every time I’d seen him, I’d quickly looked away.
Mel slowed down as we approached him, and so I did too.
“Hey,” she called over to him.
“Hi.” His voice was deeper than I had expected.
“Hi.” I hoped like hell he hadn’t seen anything. “I’m Ava. Do you live here?”
“Nah, I just heard this was a really fun place to hang out.”
I blinked at him. “Yeah, you do. I see you all the time.”
“Then why did you ask?” he said.
“Why did you lie?”
He shrugged.
I pulled at Mel’s arm. I didn’t want this weird guy getting involved in our night. I didn’t trust Mel not to do something unexpected, like invite him to my house or dare me to kiss him.
“He’s hot,” Cass murmured.
The guy looked at her, then back at me, and smirked.
“See ya,” I said, and kept on walking. Eventually the rest of them followed.
17
I could hear the sounds of their breathing. All deep and long and out of time with one another, filling my room with a peace I hadn’t ever felt before. Cass was on the mattress on the floor. Mel, Saanvi and I were squashed into my bed all together, with Mel in the middle. I didn’t think I would have been able to sleep this way, but I had. The tiredness I carried with me now was greedy. If I closed my eyes for even a few minutes, its tide would pull me into unconsciousness.
The sun was starting to creep through the blinds, just touching the edges of things. The light made the sheets around me look like sand dunes, the crinkles becoming peaks and crevices across the mountains of my body and Mel’s next to me, and the ravine of the gap between us. It made the black glass eyes of the cat statue glint.
Mel’s breathing must have changed, but I hadn’t noticed. It was something about her stillness, a sudden rigidity of her muscles next to mine that made me look up at her face. She was lying on her side, hair across her face, but her eyes were open. She was looking at me in that same way she had that day with the tampons, with that strange cold flicker in her eyes. I smiled at her and pushed her hair back onto the pillow. I was thinking she’d laugh but she didn’t. She closed her eyes, as though my touch was doing something to her. She grabbed my hand before I could pull it away and held it to her face.
I watched her eyes blink back open, looking at the little speckle of gold that was in one iris but not the other. She leaned forward, and grazed her lips against mine. It wasn’t at all like Mr. Bitto. Her mouth felt soft. Her lips pressed onto mine, holding there for one long second, and then she pulled back to look at me again. Her expression was still cold. It was a dare, another trial, like she wanted to see what I would do. She leaned over again. This time her lips parted and I felt the hot wetness of the inside of her mouth. She gripped my bottom lip for half a second between her teeth.
She wanted me to kiss her back, so I did. I reached my hand under the sheet to touch her waist. She gasped against my mouth as my skin touched hers. I let my hand slide up until it touched the bottom of her breast and the tiniest of whimpers escaped her. I liked that, hearing the soun
d that she made.
Movement. Saanvi was stirring in the bed next to Mel. We didn’t move. Then, very softly, I stroked my thumb over her nipple, just to see what she would do. Her mouth opened next to mine, but no sound came out. My whole body felt like it was throbbing with a new energy, like I was hyperawake. Her hair was in both our faces now, and we weren’t kissing. We just stared at one another, my thumb still resting on her nipple. Her leg moved, her knee prying itself between mine. I didn’t resist. Her thigh rose up until it was between my legs and I pushed myself against it.
I closed my eyes, rocking myself into her, letting my hand brush down toward her belly button. I found the elastic of her pajamas, and slid my hand beneath them. I wanted to put my hand inside her underpants, but I was too scared. I’d never done anything like this before. I could feel the pressure of my heart thudding against my ribs. The outside of her underpants felt clammy. I pressed my fingers down between her legs for just a second and I felt her whole body tense. A groan escaped her, too loud.
“God, what time is it?” Cass’s voice.
Mel’s knee disappeared, I pulled my hand away.
“I don’t know,” Mel said, and she sat up. “I think Ava’s having a sex dream. She’s making the weirdest noises.”
“Really, who about?”
“I’m not!”
“You were. I could hear it.”
I could still feel the sweaty heat of Mel on my hand, but she was looking around the room as though nothing had happened.
“Shut up, guys!” Saanvi said.
“Ava was having a sexy dream,” Cass said.
“Gross!”
Mel pulled herself out of the bed, wriggling out between the two of us. She climbed over to the end of the mattress and went to the window, leaning against the frame and looking out at the cold morning light.
“The wife killer’s gone out,” she said.
“Really?” Cass jumped up to look. “It’s like 7:00 a.m. Where would he have gone?”
“Maybe there is a secret mistress.”
The Spite Game Page 9