Betting Blind (Betting Blind #1)

by Stephanie Guerra

  Kyle got busy picking out tracks and setting up a candy buffet. The colors had to be in order from light to dark: Lemonheads all the way to Junior Mints. Kyle was like that. He seemed chill, but he was actually a freak about organization.

  I sipped a beer and mostly let him do it. I was feeling kind of messed up about the talk with Ms. T. College. That word was eating through my brain.

  Ms. T. had looked so shocked when I said I wasn’t going. I’d known for a while, and I was fine with it. But being around all these trust-fund kids was messing with me. You could just tell they would stick their head in an oven if they didn’t get into college—and not just any old college, but Stanford or something.

  FDF. Fucking Dimwit Fool. I looked at Mr. 4.0 Rower, setting out a drug buffet, and I wanted to know how he did it. How did he stay focused? Remember what he read? Fill in the right bubbles? Were there tricks?

  But it wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask.

  I drank my beer fast and opened another. Kyle put on some tunes, and pretty soon the girls arrived in a pack—Erin and Becky and three others, who were mad fine but off-limits because Becky had staked me out. Girls have secret laws like that, and it screws things up for us guys pretty good.

  We all took our pills right away and just hung around, waiting for them to kick in. Everybody except Matt. Dude was straighter than a ruler. I knew he’d leave in a little while; he didn’t like being around trashed people.

  Kyle went into Host Boy mode, handing out candy and party favors. Forrest and Matt got into some argument about MIDI, and what would have happened if somebody had invented a different computer language for music first. This girl Samantha was practically sitting on Forrest’s lap, and another girl, Melanie, was leaning against Matt, but they might as well have been pillows with boobs and hair for all the attention Matt and Forrest paid them.

  Becky was getting pretty friendly, too. You could tell she was starting to roll. She kept running her fingers through her hair, and then petting the carpet like it was a cat, and smiling at me. I wasn’t feeling anything myself, only a little buzzed from the beer.

  E wasn’t my drug. I didn’t like that fake-happy feeling, acting as if I loved the whole world—because I didn’t. I only loved a few people. Even when I was rolling, there was a little voice whispering, This is bullshit. You don’t feel this way. It’s just the drug.

  Crank was another story. I felt like myself on crank, only better. But that scared me, because they say feeling that way is the surest sign a drug can hook you. Besides, I’d seen what the stuff did to Tim’s friend Julio, who was tweaking so hard, he ripped the skin off his face because he thought there were bugs crawling underneath. Missy and me were there—it was sixth grade—and we couldn’t stop him. Tim wouldn’t let us call 9-1-1 because he didn’t want Julio getting arrested, but Julio said we should have. He had nasty scars after that.

  Becky scooted closer to me and laid her head in my lap. “Tickle my hair.”

  I started running my fingers on her scalp, and she made little moaning noises, which made me and Kyle look at each other and crack up. He gave me a look, like, All yours, but I wasn’t feeling it yet.

  Then a good song came on, with a phat beat, and I started to feel waves of sensation. But I was so weird, I kept fighting them.

  Feels so good right now—

  Bullshit.

  All these cool people, your friends—

  Won’t remember you once they’re in college.

  Nice girl, take her in a bedroom and—

  Wish it was Irina.

  Chill out, you bastard, and have fun—

  I’m a loser. I don’t belong here.

  Finally I got so sick of my own stupid brain that I stopped tickling Becky’s hair and leaned down and whispered, “I heard there’s a concert in one of these bedrooms. We should go check it out.” She giggled and stood up and took my hand, and we went upstairs, found a good room, and shut the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Saturday morning, I woke up lying on carpet as thick as a mattress, under a giant wood shelf with mirrors. There were rows of shiny circles hanging over my head like spotlights, and it took me a second to realize they were upside-down glasses. I rolled over and knocked into … an empty bottle of maraschino cherries.

  The cherries triggered my memory. When Becky and I had come back downstairs the night before, everybody was acting like idiot candy ravers, sucking on lollipops and listening to trance music that sounded like somebody’s three-year-old got hold of a synthesizer. I wanted to get away from Becky, who kept stroking my hand, so I went bar hunting and got into some wack scotch that tasted like motor oil. Then I got hungry, so I started eating the cherries.

  After that … I didn’t remember.

  I scraped myself off the floor and stumbled to the living room, where some of the others were passed out. Binkies and candy wrappers and Christmas lights were everywhere, like baby elves had a party. Kyle was snoring, lollipop-colored spit trickling out of his mouth onto the white couch. The girls were lying in a heap like puppies. I tiptoed so I wouldn’t wake anybody up.

  “Hey,” said a weird voice.

  I almost jumped out of my skin.

  It was Forrest. He was wrapped in a blanket and leaning against the sliding glass door. He’d been sitting so still, I hadn’t realized he was there. His eyes were vampire red and he was holding an Orange Crush.

  “Hey,” I said. “You have fun last night?”

  “I’m still having fun.” He pulled his other hand from under the blanket and shook a pill bottle at me. It was the Oxies.

  I frowned. “How many did you do?”

  “Five or six. I don’t know. This shit is awesome. Can you get me more?” There was a hungry look on his face.

  A surge of warning jumped into my chest. “That might be hard to hook up,” I lied. I knew tweakers; I knew junkies; I knew addicts; and suddenly I could tell that Forrest had that in him.

  He shrugged. “That’s cool. I’ll find it somewhere else.”

  “Okay, man. See you.” I walked out the front door. The sunlight felt like it was cutting me open. I got into my car and had to sit a couple minutes so I wouldn’t heave whatever was left of that nasty scotch. I pictured Forrest lying dead on the pavement after an OD. Living under the bridge. Screwing men for drugs. It would be my fault because I got him started.

  No, wait. He was rich. Okay, he’d be in rehab in some dope spa with Hollywood hotties and fresh carrot juice and massage.

  Still not that cool.

  I felt like hitting the steering wheel. I was being paranoid. Forrest wasn’t doing anything I hadn’t done myself, so I needed to stop acting like his grandma. And Becky would understand that we just hooked up because we were rolling, and not because I liked her or anything. Right?

  And college could go to hell.

  I needed aspirin. Something. I hit the gas and peeled out.

  Guess who was there when I got home? I walked inside, and as I headed up the stairs, I heard giggling, footsteps, and the bathroom door slamming shut. My favorite man in the world was at the kitchen table, chowing down on eggs and bacon.

  “Um, Phil?” my mom said through the bathroom door.

  “Hi, Gabriel.” Phil took a sip of orange juice, looking pleased with himself.

  “Phil?” my mom said again.

  He glanced at the closed door. “Yes, honey?”

  I stood there. I had a quick fantasy of walking over and slamming his face into his plate.

  “Could you bring me … something from my closet?” said my mom.

  Phil stood and headed upstairs to the bedroom.

  I ran myself a glass of water and drank it fast. I had that good warmed-up feeling I get before a fight. I made a fist, imagined crashing it into Phil’s meaty face. I walked to the other side of the table, in the narrow part of the kitchen where it opened into the living room. He’d have to walk past me when he came back down.

  There were steps, and Phil turned
the corner of the stairs. He was holding my mom’s clothes. The ready-to-blast feeling drained out of me like sand. If I hit him, my mom would come running out naked, and … I couldn’t do it.

  “Smells like you’ve had quite a night,” said Phil as he passed me, Mom’s dress dangling off his finger like a prize.

  “Fuck you.” I stalked up to my room.

  I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Life was messed up to the googol degree (I had learned what a googol was the other day in math). I was trapped. I would never be one of the smart, rich ones. I would always be the piece of shit getting stepped on. I couldn’t even protect my own mom. I probably wouldn’t graduate high school.

  And if I did, what would I do then? Keep dealing and do a bid and get turned into some gang member’s bitch because I was a pretty boy? Work roofing or construction and jack up my body by the time I was thirty, then get screwed out of workman’s comp like they all do? Before I moved to Redmond, those things seemed like normal possibilities. Now they felt like low-life bullshit for suckers.

  Screw feeling depressed, I decided, and tried to think of something good. I had a fat honey roll in my pocket; that was good. I was going over to Irina’s to watch a movie later; that was good. I pictured her resting her head on my shoulder, cuddling on that big white couch and talking. When I was with her, I didn’t stress about anything (except maybe her dad).

  I checked the clock. It was way too long until I could go to her house. And Phil was like a two-hundred-pound turd in my living room, sending waves of stink right through the ceiling. But I felt too torn up to leave.

  I looked around my room and saw my schoolbooks staring at me from my dresser. Kyle and Matt and Forrest spent hours every day hitting their books. It was the first time I’d had friends who actually studied.

  I made myself get out of bed and pick up my science book. I used to be okay at science. I even liked it, especially the stuff about human bodies. Maybe that was why I’d lied and told Irina I wanted to be a doctor. In a magical world where I could focus, it might be true.

  I opened my bio textbook to chapter four. I had a test in microbiology on Wednesday. Mr. Newport said it was 15 percent of our grade.

  Bolded words jumped at me like thugs: Taq polymerase. Thermostable. Protein denaturing. Cloning vector. Plasmid. I lay back down and tried to read for a second, but the letters kept getting smaller and sliding off the page. It was like aliens talking. Greetings to your queen.

  I closed the book. I wasn’t made for this. I should drop out.

  I felt relieved just thinking about it. But Mom would die. And I only had a year left …

  Maybe I could transfer back to Jefferson, where you could swing Cs if you could write your own name. I knew Mom wasn’t about moving, but what if I crashed with one of my boys in White Center, just on weeknights?

  I started mentally scrolling through the choices: Jerrod’s parents fought too much; Andy’s mom was a head case who saved everything, so you had to walk around stacks of magazines to get through their house; but Mike’s dad would let me crash with them. They had that space heater in the garage. I got excited for about a minute, and then I started thinking about having no place to bring girls, no hot food, no furniture. Plus, Mike had three little brothers, and they lived on government cheese and weight-gain shakes. It would be wrong to step on their food or their space.

  My brain crawled in circles. Live in a shed so I could finish high school so I could get a piece of paper that said I wasn’t a complete dumbass so I could work a job that I hated so I could come home to my sad digs so I could wake up the next morning and do it over again.

  High school wasn’t worth it. I’d stay at Claremont, and if they wanted to flunk me, let them.

  Once I decided that, I felt better. I chucked the book off the bed, set my alarm, and went to sleep until it was time to go to Irina’s.

  I got to Irina’s house at seven, because I slept through my alarm. She was mad, even though I was only an hour late.

  “I was just getting ready to leave,” she said when she answered the door. She was all dressed, with shoes on and everything. I was relieved to see her mom wasn’t behind her.

  “I’m sorry. I was sleeping, and I didn’t hear my alarm.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You were sleeping at six p.m.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to beg. “I went out late last night. Come on. You’re not even going to let me in?”

  She sighed but stepped aside.

  I hung up my coat on the coat tree and caught her watching me. “I knew you liked me,” I said.

  She huffed. “What are you talking about?”

  I looked into her pretty brown eyes and took a step toward her. “Friends can be late and it doesn’t matter.” She backed up, and I took another step. “It’s okay. Just admit it.”

  She pushed my chest. “Gabe, cut it out! You’re so conceited!” But she was grinning.

  I didn’t let her move me. There was about an inch between us. “Admit it.”

  “I do not like you.”

  I put my hands on her waist and leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Well, I wish you would.” I could smell her sweet, clean shampoo and see the corner of her mouth trying not to smile. Then I straightened and said, “You gonna show me this subtitle thing or not?”

  “If you mean one of the greatest films ever made, yes.”

  “Do you have anything to eat while we watch?” I had that hollow, thrashed feeling you get after a night of too much partying and not enough food.

  “Sure. Come on.” Irina led the way to the kitchen, which was so big you could have stuck a couch in it and called it a living room. Everything was wood and tile, and there were pots hanging from the ceiling and paintings on the wall. Who hangs paintings in the kitchen?

  Irina pulled stuff from the fridge and cabinets: white ball-shaped cookies, and cookies that looked like squashed donuts, and Cokes, and a chunk of grayish stuff that I was worried might be cheese. Also a box with foreign writing on it—some kind of Russian food.

  “So how did your recital go?” I asked while she was getting out plates. She’d told me the week before that she had a big-deal recital on Friday night.

  She opened the box. “Terrible.”

  “What happened?” I tried to see her face, but her hair was hanging like a curtain.

  She started setting thin white crackers on a plate. “I didn’t practice enough, and I didn’t play as well as I should have.”

  I frowned. “You practice six hours a day. How much more could you do?”

  “More. But I’m tired, and I didn’t.” Irina closed the box and turned to face me. The bright kitchen lights made her look extra pale.

  “Of course you’re tired. You work too hard. I mean, seriously, how could you practice more than six hours a day?”

  She shrugged. “Other professionals work eight or ten hours a day at their jobs. It’s no different, really.”

  “Okay, but you’re not a professional. You’re seventeen. And anyway, normal people spend like half their work time texting, getting coffee, or whatever. You’re alone in some room with your violin.”

  She opened one of the Cokes and took a drink. It was regular, not diet like most girls drank. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “I’m getting kind of sick of it.” Her voice had an edge.

  I was about to tell her to chuck the stupid thing, but Mom says sometimes girls don’t want advice; they just want to talk. So I said, “Uh-huh.”

  She fiddled with the pop-top. “I’m worried that … I have this feeling I’m going to be, like, thirty? And I’ll look back and think I never got to be a teenager.”

  “That sucks,” I said.

  “Yeah. And I don’t even know if it’s worth it.” She was staring at me, eyes big, and I could tell she’d thought a lot about this. “Do you know how many prodigies just fail when they get to be adults? It’s called the Icarus effect. You fly too high, and your wings melt.”

  I opened
my mouth to remind her she wasn’t a prodigy, and then I realized maybe it wasn’t the time. “You should take a break,” I said instead.

  She leaned against the counter next to me. “My parents would freak. They’ve been building me toward this my whole life, and if I mess it up, it’ll be like I totally failed them.”

  “That’s harsh. Sorry they’re like that.”

  Irina frowned. I should have known better than to say that. People can complain like crazy about their own parents, but if you agree with them, it’s a slap.

  “They love me,” she said, kind of sharp. “That’s why they’re pushing me. Americans don’t understand that. They think loving kids means being easy on them.”

  I felt annoyed, because I was getting tired of the Americans comments, and yeah, my mom had always been easy on me, and here I was, a total screwup, and there Irina was, a genius. But my mom loved me. I never had to wonder about that for a second.

  Irina must have seen something on my face, because she added quickly, “There’re a lot of different ways of loving kids, that’s all I’m saying. I just don’t want you to think my parents are horrible.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “I just … I need a break. I feel tight in here.” She touched her chest. “And I know it’s hurting my music.”

  “Have your parents send you to Hawaii,” I told her. “That’s like, what, one day’s salary for your dad?”

  “Yeah, a vacation would be nice,” she said. “Except it wouldn’t really be a vacation if they were there.”

  I picked up her hand and started playing with it. “I’ll take you on vacation. We’ll go to Vegas and lie by the hotel pool. I’ll teach you to play poker.” I was only half kidding. Vegas had always been my vacation fantasy. I’d seen the ads; those dudes always looked like they were having the times of their lives. And they were doing stuff I was good at: drinking, playing cards.

  Irina didn’t take her hand away. “That sounds fun.”