When the Beat Drops

by Anna Hecker

  My entire body goes rigid. My head starts to spin and I grab one of the dome’s supports to steady myself … and then I hear gagging. I turn just in time to see Britt lunge over the side of the camp chair and launch a sticky green stream of vomit on the ground.

  CHAPTER 36

  I race to Britt, yanking her hair from her face as jets of puke splatter around her. The woman who’s been helping us jumps back, silently handing me the water jug. I rub my sister’s back as the streams turn to trickles and finally dry heaves, then help her take a long, shaky sip.

  “Told you she got some whack-ass shit,” the man says. He sounds smug, and even though I know he’s only trying to help I kind of want to wrap his white-guy dreads around his neck.

  I crouch next to Britt. “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  She looks up at me from under sweat-slick spirals of hair. Her face is damp and pallid, but the terror is gone from her eyes. “Like shit,” she says.

  “Think you can make it to the parking lot?”

  She gives me a jerky nod. I get directions from the hippies and try to return their water jug, but the woman tells me to keep it. Britt leans heavily on my arm as we trudge through the forest. I’ve never been happier to see the LeSabre in my life.

  “Think you’ll be okay here for a sec?” I ask once I’ve settled her into the passenger’s seat. “I just need to grab something real quick.”

  Britt moans, leaning her head against the seat. “Leave the doors open,” she begs. “I need air.”

  I settle the water jug at her feet, kiss her waxy cheek, and tell her I’ll be right back. The party feels like it’s pressing in on me as I fight past the main stage, bushwhacking through a thicket of churning dancers. I finally spot Derek hanging out by a smoothie bar at the edge of the forest, talking to a pair of girls in leather halter tops. The three of them are laughing, the colored feathers in the girls’ hair catching the light as they throw their heads back. I plow into their conversation, grabbing Derek by the wrist.

  “I need to talk to you.” My voice is low, urgent. As soon as he sees me his smile drops, and his eyes go wide and soft. The girls exchange a look and melt away.

  “Mira!” He grasps my shoulders. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  I shake his hands away. “What the hell is in your molly?”

  His eyes harden. “What are you talking about?”

  The fury inside me grows molten, overflows. “My sister’s out there puking her guts out from the shit you sold her! What the fuck, Derek?”

  “Oh, Mira. I’m so sorry.” He reaches for my hand. “It must be dehydration. Did you get her water? Where is she now? We should make sure she’s okay.”

  “It wasn’t dehydration.” I spit the words in his face. “I know you sell bad pills.”

  His face darkens, and I feel the air around us tense. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “You’re totally new to this.” His voice drips with disdain. “You’ve never even done molly.”

  My hands are shaking. I ball them into fists, holding them tight at my sides so he can’t see. “Have you ever even tested it?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

  “Yeah, well … Britt’s complaining. And Yelena probably would be, if she were still alive.” Tears rush to my eyes and I turn, stumbling on a root and righting myself, desperate now to escape him and get back to the parking lot.

  “Mira, wait.” His voice is close behind me, pleading. It’s the same tone he used when he told me about his mom, that wide-open vulnerability that puts the two of us in a bubble and shuts out the rest of the world. “Talk to me.” His fingers catch the sleeves of my dress. “I want us to be okay.”

  I rip away and push forward, tears streaming down my cheeks. The light from the parking lot peeks through the trees and I run to it. I can see the LeSabre, the toe of Britt’s boot kicking at the dirt.

  Derek catches up to me, his breath hard on the downbeat. He doesn’t try to touch me this time, just stands there with his chest rising and sinking, his eyes wide and blue and lost. I try not to see how beautiful he is, to tamp down the tiny sting of longing that still pierces my skin.

  “Just tell me what you want,” he begs. “Whatever it is. I’ll do it.”

  Britt turns slowly toward us, her eyes more black than gold.

  “Whatever I want?” I ask.

  He nods. He looks broken. Not that I care.

  I gather in air, the breath shuddering through my lungs. “Stop selling shitty drugs.” I climb into the driver’s seat, go to pull the door closed.

  “Mira, wait.” His wedges his hand in the door. I turn back, steeling myself against his eyes.

  “I love you,” he says. And then he releases the door and I slam it shut, my body shaking harder than the LeSabre as it shudders to life and kicks up a plume of dust peeling out of the parking lot.

  CHAPTER 37

  I’m still shaking as I start down the dirt road. Derek’s face looms in my memory, his final words screaming in my ears.

  He told me he loved me.

  He poisoned my sister.

  He called me a waste of time.

  He might have killed Yelena.

  Enough is enough. He can’t keep doing this to people. I need to stop him.

  But what if he really didn’t know what was in his pills? What if the whole thing with Shay was just a misunderstanding, if he really does love me, if what he said was true?

  Maybe he meant what he said. Maybe he’ll stop now. Maybe he’ll do it for me.

  The LeSabre’s wheels clatter against the washboard road. I wait for Britt to say something, anything, but she just rests her head against the window, her breath making a small circle of steam against the glass. I don’t know what I expect from her—a tearful confession? An apology?—but I can’t deal with her silence. Now that the danger is past, all my fury from the past week comes bubbling up, roiling just below the surface like hot lava in a long-dormant volcano.

  “Molly?” I finally erupt. “Really, Britt?”

  She digs her nails into her leg. “You’re seriously going to judge me for that?” Her fingers release, leaving pale halfmoons on her skin. “Seriously, now?”

  I clutch the steering wheel tighter. “It just seems like a really weird choice to keep taking drugs after they killed your best friend.”

  We hit the end of the dirt and the car jolts over the concrete lip, wheels smoothing out on pavement. Britt sighs and lifts the backpack from the floor, cradling the doll to her chest. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t understand.” The lava inside me froths and blisters, filling my voice with fire. “Please, help me understand.”

  Britt tucks her chin over the doll’s head, rocking the two of them back and forth. She mumbles something, but all I catch is Yelena’s name.

  “What?” I snap.

  “Yelena would have understood.”

  I smack the steering wheel. “So you’re going out every night getting high because that’s what Yelena would have done?”

  I expect Britt to flinch, or cry, or apologize. But she just looks away from me, resting her head on the window. “It’s like she’s there sometimes.” Her voice is so thin I have to strain to hear. “Dancing with me. Holding my hand.”

  She sags against the window, looking small and frail as a wisp of smoke. I open my mouth to scream at her to stop chasing ghosts, that all the molly in the world won’t bring Yelena back. But then it hits me—nothing I can say or do is going to change Britt’s mind. She’s still in denial. She never made her way to the next stage.

  It’s why she keeps wearing Yelena’s clothes, why she carries Emma wherever she goes, why she listens to DJ Skizm’s set on repeat. It’s why she keeps partying, even when everything else in her world is screaming at her to stop.

  And I can’t keep pretending this is a normal stage of grieving, I can’t keep hoping she’l
l snap out of it and life will just go back to normal. I can’t keep ignoring what this is doing to our family, to my future … to my sister.

  It’s time for the lies to stop, I decide as I pull onto the highway and point the LeSabre back toward Coletown. Our parents need to see that Britt isn’t their golden girl anymore. I need them to understand what’s happening. I need their help.

  Our wheels roll smoothly over pavement and Britt goes slowly limp in the passenger’s seat, her back rising and falling in gentle waves. I’ll do it tomorrow, I think, cracking the window and letting ribbons of crisp night air slice across my face. Our parents close the gym at eight on Sundays and I’ll make us all sit down as a family as soon as they get home. I’ll make Britt tell the whole story, starting with the soccer team at Pepperdine. I won’t let her leave anything out, and I won’t let her lie.

  My sister’s asleep by the time we pull into our driveway, tiny snores drifting from her lips and puttering against the windowpane.

  “Wake up,” I say, gently nudging her. “We’re home.”

  “Hmmmm?” She startles, her eyes drifting open. “Aw. You let me sleep.”

  “Come on.” I help her out of the car, keeping a hand on her elbow as we go up the stairs. “Let’s get you into bed.”

  I maneuver her into her room and she sighs in the darkness, lying back like a rag doll as I unlace her boots and pull them off her feet.

  “You’re a good sister,” she murmurs, snuggling into her pillow.

  But am I?

  CHAPTER 38

  Are we cool?

  I ignore the text and pick up my trumpet. Derek’s been blowing up my phone since last night, sending strings of texts and leaving long voice mails.

  He says he’s sorry about what happened to Britt.

  He says he’ll stop dealing.

  He says he loves me.

  He says a lot of things. I wish I knew what to believe.

  I ignore my phone and go back to the trumpet, trying to improvise along with my metronome. I want the music to quell the jitters about what I have to do when Mom and Dad get home from work today, but all it’s doing is magnifying my anxiety: not just about what will happen, but about Derek and molly, about Fulton and my music and my future.

  Crow and Nicky come from camp tomorrow and our audition is in three weeks and two days. I should feel ready by now, but instead everything feels uncertain, like I’ve stacked my dreams on a fault line and the slightest tremor could send them tumbling to pieces.

  My phone lights up. Derek again.

  You promised me you wouldn’t do this. You said I could trust you always.

  My hands shake as I fling the phone back onto my bed. That had nothing to do with molly. That was before my sister puked her guts out from his pills.

  “That was about Shay!” I scream into the mouthpiece of my trumpet. It blasts through the bell as a series of angry blurps.

  Then it hits me. Derek didn’t want me talking to Shay about him—he didn’t even want us hanging out. At first I took his fears at face value, another symptom of his trust issues. Now I wonder if it was something else.

  I pick up my phone and text Shay. I need to talk to you, I message her. Can I come over?

  She sends me back a GIF of a gnome riding a unicorn and screaming YES!

  I laugh to myself as I grab my car keys. This is the person Derek called bitter and jealous?

  Before I leave I peek inside Britt’s room. She’s curled around Yelena’s backpack, her eyes closed and a chunk of the doll’s hair in her mouth. What’s going to happen to us after tonight, I wonder? Will she start resenting me like I’ve always secretly, just-a-little-bit resented her? Will she hate me for yanking the life she chose out from under her? In a way, I want her to know how that feels. But a tiny kernel of doubt also nudges me, burrowing beneath my skin. What if our parents don’t believe me? What if they still take her side?

  The chorus of doubts and worries sings in my head as I drive to the Bronx, where Shay greets me wearing a zebrastriped bikini and carrying a beach bag. I follow her up to the roof and she lays out two towels and puts on an Ibiza-style house mix that sounds like blender drinks and palm trees and miles of white sand.

  “It’s not quite the beach, but it’ll do, right?” She stretches out on a towel and works sunscreen into her legs, squinting at the Manhattan skyline. “At least the view’s almost as good.”

  I sprawl out on the towel next to her as she fills me in on the rest of the DJ sets from last night, who killed it and who cleared the dance floor. It’s so nice to be with someone who doesn’t seem to want anything from me, someone who isn’t damaged or injured or just inherently fucked-up.

  “Personally, I feel like we had the best set. Not that I’m biased or anything.” She rummages in the bag and hands me a Sprite, popping a second for herself. “We should tag-team again. That was fun.”

  “I’d like that.” We fall into a comfortable silence, listening to music and catching rays until my skin starts to feel warm and tingly from the sun. I wish I could stretch this moment forever, not just to enjoy the music and sunshine but to postpone the conversation I have to have with my family tonight: the one that could destroy my relationship with my sister forever, and also maybe save her life.

  “So,” I say, turning to Shay. “I need to ask you something.” I take a deep breath and force myself to continue. “About Derek.”

  “Uh-oh.” She props herself up on her elbows. “Is he being shady with you?”

  “Shady.” I turn the word over in my mind. “Yeah, I think so. Was he shady with you?”

  “Oh yeah.” Shay laughs. “All the time.”

  My stomach tightens. “Like, how?”

  “I don’t know.” She stretches, reaching for the sunscreen again. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “I’m ready now.”

  “Okay. I don’t know if it was me or what, but … anyway.” She pours lotion into her palm, rubbing it into her shoulders. “At first it was just little things. Like, he wouldn’t text me for a week, but then he’d get mad if I didn’t text him for a day. Like he was doing these little mind-control tests to see if I’d go for it.”

  I think about the beginning of our relationship, how he went a full ten days without texting. I’d assumed he was busy, or I wasn’t the first thing on his mind. But maybe it was something else.

  “Then he started getting weird about my friends,” Shay continues. “He said they were losers and were holding me back. Like, these people I’ve known since ninth grade—you met them all. Later I figured out it was because they hated him and he could tell.”

  The bubbles in my Sprite sting my throat. This is all too familiar. It’s almost exactly what he said to me about Shay.

  “I should have just listened, you know?” She sighs and caps the sunscreen. “They told me he was creepy, but—I mean, you know how he is. He’s got those eyes and those tats and he’ll tell you a whole sob story about his life. Did you ever meet his mom, by the way?”

  “No.” I lean forward, shielding my eyes against the sun. “Is she as awful as he says?”

  “Oh my god, no.” Her brows levitate over her sunglasses. “She’s like the nicest lady and all she could talk about was how proud she was that he goes to NYU and how much she liked my hair. Then she figured out Instagram just so she could like all my pics.”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped. I set my Sprite down hard. Some of it splashes on my hand.

  “You okay?” Shay asks.

  I shake my head, wiping Sprite on my towel.

  “He pulled that shit with you too,” she says gently. “Didn’t he?”

  I try to speak around the lump in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask finally. “If you knew what he was really like?”

  “Girl, I’m sorry.” She hugs her knees. “I thought maybe it was just me. Maybe we were just bad together. And you seemed so happy, and then everything happened with Yelena and I just thought it
would sound petty if I started bad-mouthing my ex, and … yeah, you’re right.” She sighs. “I should have said something.”

  “It’s okay.” I laugh softly. “I probably wouldn’t have believed you anyway.”

  “He gets under your skin, right?”

  “Yeah.” I look past my toes, out at the city. “I lost my virginity to him, you know.”

  “Holy shit.” Shay sits up straighter. “When?”

  “At Summerfest.” I wiggle my toes against the skyline. “The night we played the Silent Disco.”

  “Dude,” she says. “I saw him that night. He was rolling balls.”

  My toes stop wiggling. “What?” I ask.

  “He was high as fuck. On molly. I saw him backstage at the Lip Smacker stage. He sold a bunch of pills and took like three and then he stole a bottle of champagne and ghosted.” She laughs. “That champagne was supposed to be for the DJ. What a dick, right?”

  My head fills with static. “He was on drugs that night?”

  “Yeah, you couldn’t tell?”

  I think back to Summerfest, the most magical night of my life. Derek’s eyes just a rim of blue around huge pupils. How I made fun of him for chewing gum while drinking champagne.

  “I’m an idiot,” I groan, hiding my face in my hands. It was a lie, all of it: how he said I was different, his whole line about how he could tell me anything. About how everyone in the world was a pain in the ass but me. That was the drugs talking, not him—he probably would have said the same thing to the guy selling Belgian fries.

  And I was too dumb and naïve and in love to realize it.

  Fury rises in me, breaking through the layers of sadness and confusion and humiliation, leaving a rich copper taste on my tongue. Suddenly I have too much energy, too much anger, to sit for another second. I leap to my feet and pace to the edge of the roof, the wind finding my hair and lifting it around my face.

  “Fuck you, Derek,” I say, almost to myself.

  “Yeah!” Shay leaps to her feet and scrambles to join me. “Fuck Derek.”