“S’cuse me, Rach,” a male voice says from behind us, and when I glance to my right, there is a guy moving Rachael to the side by guiding her with his hands around her waist. “I was wondering if you’d show up tonight.”
“Trevor!” Excitedly, she throws herself into his arms and pecks his lips.
Trevor moves around her and fetches himself a beer as she gazes at him the way a three-year-old gazes at a puppy.
“Boyfriend?” I mouth to Meghan, but she shakes her head.
“Catch up with you guys later!” Rachael yells, despite being right next to us all. “Have fun, Eden!” The two of them head out of the kitchen together, Trevor with a beer in his hand and Rachael with the vodka still in hers.
“Rachael’s a total lightweight,” Tiffani says while lining up two new shot glasses, her back to us. “She’s been drinking cocktails since the second she turned up at my place.” True, Rachael did slip out to the kitchen every so often while we were getting ready. Until now, I thought she was just making excessive toilet trips.
Closely, I watch as Tiffani fills the glasses with tequila. “Who’s that Trevor guy?” I ask.
“Her party fling,” she answers in monotone, as though it’s no big deal at all. “They hook up at parties and that’s all it is. Okay, here.” She twirls around, her lips quirked up into a huge grin, and she hands me a glass of Cazadores tequila. I glance at Meghan for help, but she shrugs and holds up her car keys.
I’ve tasted tequila a couple times before, back home in Portland with my limited group of acquaintances, but it didn’t do anything for me besides leave a sour, bitter taste in my mouth. “Oh,” I say as I study the glass. It’s filled to the brim. From the corner of my eye, I notice Tiffani licking the back of her hand. “Oh?”
Meghan laughs softly and rolls her eyes as she reaches for the random saltshaker lying on its side on the countertop. She passes it to Tiffani. “Have you done this before?”
“Tequila?” I ask.
“Tequila done right,” she corrects, arching her brows. “You know, with the lime and all.”
“Oh,” I say again. Back home, all we drink is beer and rum. “Our parties aren’t so…”
“Cool?” Tiffani smirks. She pours some salt onto the back of her hand. “You can teach them this when you go back. Now lick the back of your hand between your thumb and forefinger.”
I feel dumb all of a sudden. It’s like I’m in freshman year all over again, where I’m subject to scrutiny by the much older, much cooler students. But this isn’t high school and they aren’t other students. This is a party, and they know exactly what to do and what to say and how to fit in. I, on the other hand, have no clue. “Okay,” I say, and lick my hand. I feel ridiculous, and I’m beginning to wonder if Dad and Ella are home yet.
“Salt.” Tiffani passes me the shaker, and I pour a small amount onto my skin, mimicking her. It sticks. “Okay, there’s gotta be limes somewhere.”
“Tiff, they’re right there,” Meghan says and laughs as she points to the basket of limes that has clearly been provided for this exact purpose. I don’t even like limes.
Tiffani presses her hand to her forehead and then sighs. “I haven’t even had one drink yet, and I’m already going blind. Alright, grab a slice. Eden, hold it in the hand with the salt.”
I do as instructed, placing the lime slice between my thumb and forefinger and then staring back at her, waiting to hear what my next move should be. “Now?”
“Salt, tequila, lime,” Meghan answers instead. She steps back to examine Tiffani and me, and when Tiffani nods, she cheers, “Go, go, go!”
I panic but lick the salt anyway and throw my head back as I attempt to force the tequila down my throat. I fight the urge to gag. It’s so gross and so bitter. I remember the lime in my hand and bite into it, despite how screwed up my face is, but the juice only squirts all over my cheeks, and I make a dive for the kitchen sink, spluttering the drink all over it.
When I get home, I am so dead.
“You know what they say,” Tiffani says with a grin. I must look horrified, and she quickly passes me a can of beer, as though it’ll help clear the taste. “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.” Several people file into the kitchen to fill up their drinks, and she decides to seize this opportunity as her getaway. “I’m gonna go find Tyler. You guys have fun.”
The music gets louder all of a sudden, bouncing from the walls and drilling into my ears. The intense beat drops are giving me a headache. Meghan reaches for my free hand and pulls me out of the kitchen and into a large—but cramped—living room. She talks to a couple people on our way, but thankfully none of them ask her why there’s a loser by her side.
A bulky guy approaches us from the opposite side of the room, and Meghan instantly yells “Jake!” over the sound of the music.
“Hey, Megs,” Jake says. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with a huge slogan scrawled across the front of it, which I don’t bother to read, and his blond hair is gelled messily in all directions. “Where are Tiff and Rach?” Jake, I discover, likes to cut names short.
“Rachael’s with Trevor,” Meghan says, and she rolls her eyes, as does he. “And Tiffani’s looking for Tyler. Seen him?”
I notice the way Jake’s expression hardens slightly. “Yeah,” he says a little stiffly. “Doing what he does.”
Meghan glances sideways at me, bites her lip, and then moves the conversation on. “Where’s Dean?”
“He was looking for you guys.” Jake laughs, his expression softening as he takes a sip of his beer. As he swallows it, he stares at me. “Who’s the new girl?”
“Eden,” I answer before Meghan can. I already know which questions are coming next, so I go ahead and throw the answers out there before Jake can even ask. “I’m Tyler’s stepsister. I’m here for the summer.” There go his hardened features again. He shoots Meghan a glance, and she shrugs in return. “What?”
“Um,” Meghan says. “I’m gonna go check on Rachael. Gotta make sure she doesn’t get knocked up.”
“Want some rubbers to give ’em?” Jake smirks. He pats his pockets in a joking manner and then chuckles. Meghan giggles, adjusts her hair, and leaves. “So you’re Tyler Bruce’s stepsister?”
I want to shake my head no, but that would be bullshit, so I murmur a quick “Yeah,” and change the subject as quickly as I can. I ask him the first thing that pops into my head. “Are you all seniors?”
He tilts his head. “Aren’t you?”
“Junior,” I say quietly. Yet another reason why I’m so out of place here. I’m a junior attending a senior party. There’s no way Amelia is going to believe this. In Portland, seniors refuse to associate with the rest of us. The guys are too cool for us, the girls too busy acting like adults. It’s almost as though they believe they’re a superior race. Kind of like New Yorkers.
“Where did you say you were from again?”
I reel my attention back to Jake. “Um, Portland.”
“Portland, Maine?”
“Portland, Oregon,” I correct. Jake takes another swig of his beer, and the silence and blunt conversation is making the entire thing awkward. “Sorry, where’d you say Tyler was again?”
He stops drinking and raises a brow. “Why does it matter?”
Because I want to go home and we just so happen to share the same one. “I’ve got to get a beer for him.” Sold.
Jake hesitates for a long moment before finally saying, “He’s out back. Watch yourself.”
“Thanks.” I take a quick sip of my own drink and head out into the hall, following it down toward the back of the house and through the mass of bodies. Bodies that do not include Tiffani and Rachael and Meghan. And right now, I could really do with having them with me. I’ve been abandoned among a crowd of strangers in a brand-new city, and it certainly doesn’t feel great.
At the end of the hall, there’s a back door left open with people slipping in and out of the house, so I squeeze by and step outside i
nto the yard, laying my beer down on the patio table. There’s a guy throwing up by the fence and a girl passed out on the lawn. I contemplate helping her, but my attention is immediately diverted to the eruption of laughter from the shed in the corner. The laughter sounds as though it belongs to a group of guys, so I build up some courage and head over there. If I don’t, I’ll be stuck at this party until some unearthly hour of the morning.
As I get nearer, I notice the smoke in the air. There’s no window and the door is shut, so I reach for it and pull it open. Immediately I’m hit with the most overwhelming smell of weed, so overwhelming that as the smoke escapes into the night air all at once tears well in my eyes. I clasp a hand to my mouth and cough, squeezing my eyes shut and taking a step back.
“Is that weed?” I blurt.
“No, it’s cotton candy,” someone shoots back, and the shed rings with howls of laughter. But there’s nothing funny about this at all.
I open my eyes again as the air clears, and I find four guys staring back at me. One of them is Tyler. There’s a joint in his hand and he’s attempting to hide it behind his leg, but it doesn’t make a difference. I can still see it, the same way I can see the panic and alarm crossing his features. “Are you serious?” I ask in disbelief.
“Dude, get this chick outta here,” someone mutters. I don’t even know which one of the other three is talking. I don’t care about the others. My eyes are locked on Tyler. “Unless she wants to come in here and keep us company.”
“Bro,” Tyler says, but it’s hard to ignore the shake in his voice as he swallows and forces a small laugh to escape his lips. His eyes are glazed, pupils wide. “You really want that kid in here?”
There’s more laughter, but Tyler doesn’t join in with the combination of chuckling and coughing. He’s just gnawing on his lips and glancing between me and his friends, not quite sure of the best way to handle the situation. For starters, he should get rid of the joint that’s still in his hand.
“Who the hell is she?” the same guy asks. More smoke wafts toward me as someone exhales, but I quickly wave it away from me. “Has no one taught her the rules?” I squint through the dispersing plume of smoke until I spot the pair of bloodshot eyes struggling to focus on me. The black guy that they belong to is grinning. “No interrupting, babe. Get the fuck out of here unless you’re here to ball with us.” He takes a step forward and holds up the glowing joint in his hand. It’s almost burned out, but he offers it to me nonetheless.
As though I’d actually consider taking it from him, Tyler steps in between the joint and me. He licks his index finger and presses it to the cherry of his own joint, extinguishing it and then stuffing it into his pocket before straightening up and glowering at the guy in front of him. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, nodding to the jay in his hand. “C’mon, Clayton, where’s your common sense?”
Clayton moves the hovering joint back to his lips, drawing on it for a long moment before exhaling the smoke toward Tyler’s face. “Offering her a hit is common sense. It’s called good manners. It would be rude not to,” he says. He peers at me over Tyler’s shoulder. “Am I right, new girl?”
The other two guys stifle a laugh again, but they’re not paying too much attention anymore. I think they’re too baked to even care. They’re just standing around at the back of the shed, laughing, grins wide. Tyler, on the other hand, is not so easily entertained.
“Dude, take the damn hint,” he hisses. He takes a step backward, and his body nudges against mine, forcing me to back away too. “She doesn’t want it. Look at her.” He glances over his shoulder at my expression of revulsion, and he ends up staring at me for a moment longer than I feel comfortable with. Even when Clayton speaks again, Tyler’s just looking at me.
“Alright, alright,” Clayton says. “Just get her outta here then. Why do we have some random kid in here anyway?”
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Tyler murmurs. Suddenly he turns to face me. Completely disgusted by the smoking, I shake my head at him. I wonder if Ella knows about this. Is she aware that he’s out here spending his night getting high?
Tyler takes a step toward me, but as he shifts, his curled-up fist knocks against something. His eyes fall to his right, and my stare follows until it lands on a small metallic table and the tiny lamp perched on the corner of it. I’m about to look away when I notice what’s on that table and beneath the light. There’s a stack of dollar bills and some credit cards scattered around, and, most importantly, a row of neat lines. White powder lines.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, blinking as fast as I can, because I have no idea if the smoke I’ve just inhaled is having an effect on me or if I’m really seeing what is truly there. “Oh my God?”
“Dude, seriously, I’m not kidding.” It’s Clayton. “Get her out of here before she calls the cops or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s leaving,” Tyler replies. At the same time he reaches for my elbow, gently pushing me away from the shed. I’m surprised he follows, pulling me across the yard until we’re away from everyone else and out of hearing range.
“You’re unbelievable,” I hiss while I shake his hand off me. “Coke? Really, Tyler?”
He appears helpless before me, like this is the first time he’s ever been confronted about it, because he just presses his hands to his face and groans. “This isn’t the place for you,” he says once he drops his hands. He stuffs them into his pockets and kicks at the grass. “You should—you should go back inside.”
I grind my teeth. I’ve never been in a situation like this before, so I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to handle it. Do I try to talk to him about it? Do I call Ella? The cops? Eventually, I just decide to storm off. I push him out of the way, my pulse racing and my blood hot. I’m infuriated by what I’ve just witnessed. I want to kick something, punch a wall, tear someone’s limbs off. I’m so mad.
Tyler heads back over to the shed, and I don’t know what he says to his friends when he gets there, but all of a sudden they burst into howls of laughter. I can hear it echoing behind me, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s me they’re laughing at.
“Dude, come on,” someone calls. The laughter in the shed stops. “That’s low. Chill out.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dean,” I hear Tyler say, but I don’t bother to turn around. I’m too pissed off to even look at him.
I hear footsteps running, and I glance up to the guy when he catches up to me. “You’re Dean?”
“And I’m going to have a wild guess and say you’re Tyler’s stepsister,” he says. There’s a hand resting in his brown hair as he looks at me. “You’re the only person here that I’ve never seen before and Meghan says that this mysterious stepsister just so happens to be at this lame party. So am I right?”
I force a smile. “Yeah. Hey, you don’t happen to know which number Tyler’s house is? The one on Deidre Avenue? I need to get home, but I…I don’t know the address.”
“Would I happen to know where my best friend lives?” Dean grins. “329.”
“Best friend?” I glance back over to the shed. Five seconds ago, they were cursing across the yard to each other.
“Complicated,” he says, and then points to the house. “I can give you a ride home. My car’s parked just down the block.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“If I’d had anything to drink, I wouldn’t be offering to give you a ride.”
I heave a sigh. “Thank you.”
He heads back to the house, and I follow by his side, my mind awhirl. And to think I thought Tyler couldn’t get any worse. I slow down for a second to look back at the shed, and with the door still open, I get a clear view of him reaching back into his pocket and pulling out the remainder of his joint. Just as he presses it to his lips and sets it alight, he notices my stare.
For the briefest of moments, he grimaces and drops his eyes to the floor. Someone forces a beer into his free hand, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead,
he just stands there as though he’s frozen in place and can’t possibly move, his shoulders sunken and his head low. And then he breaks free of his paralysis and shifts his way to the back of the shed, as far away from me as possible, so that the only thing I can see is an orange glow blazing in the darkness.
* * *
As Dean is driving me home, it suddenly hits me that I’m about to have a lot of explaining to do. Not only did I bail on Dad’s plans by convincing him I was sick, I also left the house and went to a party instead. Right now he’s probably already calling the cops to report me missing. And to make matters worse, I’m returning home in a dress that barely covers half my body.
“My dad is gonna kill me,” I murmur as I rest my head on the window. “I was supposed to be sick.”
Dean glances at me. “Did you make a miraculous recovery or something like that?”
“Something like that.” I sit up and reach for my phone—it’s second nature—but I discover I have no pockets and no phone. I left it at Tiffani’s. “Crap.”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.” I heave a frustrated sigh and scour the dashboard for the time. It’s almost eleven. I stuck around at the party for barely an hour. If I’d stayed any longer, I would have only found more reasons to despise Tyler and even more reasons to question my sanity. “Are you heading back there?”
“Yeah,” Dean says as he pulls onto Deidre Avenue. “I’m kind of Jake’s designated driver.” He chuckles. “Gotta make sure the guy gets home.”
“What about Tyler?” I ask, and then I mentally curse myself out for even caring.
Dean smiles a little. “Tyler doesn’t really go home.”
“What does he do? Does he just pass out in the street or something?” I fold my arms, contemptuous but also slightly curious. “Spend the night in a jail cell?”
“Not exactly,” Dean says. “He normally just goes back to Tiffani’s place with her.”
“Oh.” Gross. “I can’t believe he does drugs.” Even grosser. “Did you know?”
There’s a long silence. “Everyone knows.”
Did I Mention I Love You? Page 6