I made it to my house at eight minutes to three. I had four hours before the bonfire started. Hannah had a game and Mom was shooting Labradors. Dad was the unpredictable one. I would make a preemptive strike.
The lawn hadn’t been mowed since the Night of the Roast Pork Migraine, and it showed. In fact, our entire yard looked trashy. It wasn’t just the overgrown grass or the dying marigolds or the scraggly boxwood bushes. It was the gutters where rotting leaves had spilled onto last year’s broken Christmas lights, the paint flaking off the shutters, and the mailbox that tilted to the right.
I couldn’t fix all of that now. I just had to mow the lawn and sweep the cut grass off the sidewalk. I accomplished both in record time. After I showered I wrote a note to Mom explaining that I was spending the night at Yoda’s. I took off before anyone got home.
The Warrior tradition of holding a bonfire before the Halloween football game used to be a big deal. They say you could see the smoke for miles, that kids would party like crazy in the cornfields behind the school, that there were rivers of beer and the occasional sacrifice of virgins. Then the lawyers got involved.
Now the whole thing was closely monitored by the fire department and the police. The bonfire itself was almost big enough to cook a couple hamburgers on. The cornfields had been plowed under and turned into McMansion developments. The Key Club sold cider and fresh doughnuts. The fear of litigation had turned a pagan rite of passage into a pathetic shadow of its former glory.
Some of the kids were wearing Halloween costumes, but most of us had on winter jackets. It felt cold enough to snow. I opened a twelve-pack of spearmint gum. A few teachers mingled in the crowd, friendly-like, standing close enough to students to smell their breath and stare in their eyes. I chewed stick after stick and tossed the silver gum wrappers in the fire. The lights went on in the stadium and the marching band warmed up. The Key Club closed down the cider stand.
Bethany and her friends finally arrived as the bonfire was dying down, and people were hustling from the parking lot to the stadium so they wouldn’t miss the kickoff. The girls were wearing matching Halloween costumes—a cross between an angel and a fairy, with black leggings, tiny skirts made of fabric leaves, low-cut skintight shirts, and wings. A couple girls wore devil’s horns in their hair, which spoiled the effect. Not Bethany. Her white-feathered wings fluttered as she walked; her hair caught the breeze and played around her head like magic. She looked like she could fly away to the stars if she wanted.
“Tyler!”
She danced ahead of the other fairy angels and ran up and put her arm through mine. Her eyes sparkled in the firelight and her cheeks were red.
“Ohmigod you wouldn’t believe it Stacey’s mom’s car got a flat tire and we didn’t know what to do so then we called Triple-A and Stacey called her stepdad and some guy came out of his house and he had the wheel off before anybody could say anything and then he said we could go in his house, but we were all like, Whoa, strange guy, I don’t think so, and then the Triple-A guy and the stepdad showed up, and anyway, that’s why we’re late. God, it’s freezing. Did you miss me?”
Somehow my hand slipped behind her head.
Somehow I bent my face down to hers. Somehow her lips opened. Somehow I kissed her and somehow she kissed back.
The bonfire roared and reached for the sky.
44.
Apparently we lost the football game. I didn’t notice.
Bethany started shivering right after we sat down on the bleachers, so she took off her wings and put on my jacket. I was frozen within minutes, but it didn’t matter. I kept her wings on my lap. I counted the freckles and the sparkles on her cheeks. I bought her popcorn and hot chocolate. I did not lick the spot of chocolate off the corner of her mouth. I did not make passionate love to her on the bleachers. Thought about it, but didn’t do it.
When I bought the second round of hot chocolate, she confiscated my wallet and went through it, snorting at the picture on my student ID, cooing at the photos of Hannah when she was little, and arching an eyebrow at the patient condom that had lived in there for years.
It wasn’t like we were going out. Not exactly, not officially. But we were at the she-gets-to-go-through-my-wallet stage, and I had kissed her—in front of police, armed with guns—and she had kissed back instead of having me arrested.
There was a chance that somehow this was really happening. I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t going to question anything.
The whistle blew. Game over.
I walked her to Stacey’s car, which was jammed full of girls.
In the middle of a crowded parking lot, Bethany kissed me again. It was a quick kiss but it was a) public, and b) her initiative. Two kisses in one night. I was on a roll. (There was also a chance that I was hospitalized in a deep coma and that this entire night had been a hallucination, but so what?)
Stacey hit the horn.
Bethany handed me my jacket and took her wings back. “I’ll see you at the party, right? Sorry we can’t give you a ride, but there’s no room.”
“No problem,” I said. “No, wait—problem. Where is it again?”
She rolled her eyes. “Rawson’s house? You doof, don’t you know?”
“Urn, no. How do I get there?”
She grabbed a pen out of her purse and wrote the directions on my palm. She blew on it to dry the ink. My knees buckled. She giggled and gave me a quick kiss good-bye on the cheek.
“Don’t be late,” she whispered.
45.
Okay, so maybe I should have admitted that I didn’t have a car, and that my father had confiscated my license when I was arrested for the Foul Deed, and that technically, going to a party like this would be a massive violation of my probation. But that’s the kind of thing you have to build up to in a conversation, and there wasn’t time for that, not with Stacey blowing the horn and cars squealing out of the parking lot.
I figured it would take me a half hour to get to the party on foot.
Idiot. Moron. Cretin. Fool.
Two hours and a couple of blisters later, I finally made it.
I’d heard of Josh Rawson (who hadn’t?) but never had classes with him so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Standing on his front porch, it was obvious the place was crowded and noisy, but I didn’t know the guy and wasn’t exactly invited, not by him, so was I supposed to ring the doorbell, or knock, or sneak in the back?
I rang the doorbell.
Nobody answered.
I reached out to press the button again. The door flew open and I jumped back. Two guys hustled a third guy down the steps as fast as they could. They made it to the driveway before he started ralphing. They yelled at him for splattering their shoes.
I walked in.
“Bacchanalia” summed it up nicely: a party that smelled in equal parts of cologne, beerpuke, peppermints, and weed. Rawson had better pray his parents decided to relocate to Jamaica permanently, because this one was going down in the history books.
The living room was on the right. That’s where the speakers were set up. They had already blown a woofer but kept the volume cranked so that the ragged edge of the sound made the walls shake. Girls were dancing with each other and boys were loving it, dancing behind them and snapping pictures with their camera phones. I saw a couple of the fairy-angel gang, their tiny leaf skirts flirting with being torn off, but no Bethany.
On the other side of the entryway was the dining room jammed with bodies packed around a table overflowing with bags of chips and pretzels, bowls of Halloween candy, and cartons of onion dip that had been used as ashtrays. On the far side were steps that led to a sunken family room that contained mostly horizontal bodies. I hoped she wasn’t in there.
The kegs were in the kitchen. Chip Milbury was, too, with Parker and the other nitwits. They were starting to scowl in my direction when Bethany stepped out from behind them.
“Tyler!” she squealed. “Tyler, Tyler, Tiger-Tyler!”
My fairy angel stumbl
ed towards me carrying two red plastic cups sloshing with beer. Her wings were gone and she was wearing a Warriors sweatshirt that reached to her knees and had a wet stain on the front. Her hair was tangled and tucked behind her ears and she was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.
“You’re 1-1-late,” she slurred.
“I got lost. Having fun?”
“Oh, yeah.” She handed me a cup. Her left eye drifted towards her nose. “Drink,” she commanded. “You need to catch up.”
I sipped and tried not to shudder. Cow piss. I set the cup on the counter.
“Want to go outside?” I asked.
“What?”
“It’s noisy!” I shouted.
The crowd around the keg chanted, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” as a guy dressed as a pirate put his mouth on the tap and pulled the handle. I took her hand and motioned for her to follow me.
My plan? What plan? I was winging it.
Parker moved quickly behind the crowd and cut off our exit. He stepped in front of me. “What are you doing with her?” he demanded.
“Out of my way,” I said.
He put his hand on my chest.
Oh, crap. Now I have to shove him and he’ll have to shove me, and I’ll trip and he’ll jump on me and people will scream and pour beer on us and I won’t get to kiss her.
Bethany grabbed Parker by the thumb and twisted it painfully. “He’s with me.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me away.
I grinned at Parker and winked.
To be honest, I had never been at a party like this. I mean, I’d been at parties, I had done a little drinking, but this was off the hook and I was off balance. Bethany was totally at home. She wanted to dance, we danced. Well, she danced—dirty danced—and everyone watched. I moved nervously from one foot to the other. Part of me wanted to kill all the other guys in the room, part of me wanted to keep them alive so they’d have to deal with the fact that she was dancing with me. Me. Tyler Former Loser Miller.
She wanted to go down to the basement, so down we went. She wanted to play pool, we played. She wanted to watch some kids on the PS2, we watched, with my hand on her hip and her hand in my back pocket. She wanted to drink. I got her another beer, but I didn’t get one for myself because out of the corner of my eye I was always seeing Chip and Parker, and they were not happy with the way the night was turning out for me.
When Bethany went to the bathroom with two of her girlfriends, I wandered back to the kitchen in search of real food. Yoda was pouring a cup of foam from the keg with Hannah wrapped around him like a bloodsucking leech.
Yoda was at the party, with my sister.
My sister did not belong there.
She belonged at home, in her bed, alone, asleep, with one arm around her Raggedy Ann and the other under her pillow. My brain and hormones slammed into reverse, and I had to lean against a wall because the room was spinning.
Hannah looked up and pointed at me, her mouth hanging open in horror. “What are you doing here?” she shrieked.
“What are you doing here?” I answered.
“Hello? I was invited.”
“Liar.”
Yoda put his hands up. “Okay, you two, that’s enough.”
“Shut up,” Hannah and I both said.
“Take her home,” I told Yoda.
“Get over yourself,” Hannah said. “You are not going to ruin this for me.”
“Urn, guys?” Yoda asked. “Can’t we just get along? It’s a big party.”
Hannah chewed her bottom lip. “You don’t tell, I won’t tell.”
“Deal.”
“I don’t know who you are tonight.”
“Fine with me.” I leaned closer to Yoda. “Keep her out of trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” Hannah butted in. “We have other things planned.”
“I’m going to pretend you did not just say that.”
Bethany snuck up behind me, slid her cool hand into mine, and pulled me away. The look on Hannah’s face was totally worth it.
We danced to two more songs, then my angel started drooping. When she led me up the stairs, I suspected we were headed for the Pearly Gates.
She opened the door.
46.
I flicked on the lights. It was a little boy’s room, with Lego monsters and kid-sized sports equipment and a Nerf basketball hoop.
Bethany turned the lights off. She sat on the bed. I sat next to her.
“So,” I said.
She leaned against me with a sigh. “Yeah.”
People downstairs broke into a round of applause.
She rubbed her hand up and down my arm. “I’m glad you came.”
“You are?”
“Yep. Chip’s not glad.” She turned and looked at me, her eyes dark and serious in the glow of the Harry Potter alarm clock. “He thinks you’re a loser.”
“I get that a lot,” I said.
This was so funny it sent her to the floor in giggles. When I helped her up, she somehow landed half on the bed, half in my lap.
Take me now, God, take me while it’s perfect.
“Did you know that you used to sound like a chipmunk?”
Hold on, God.
“I did?”
“Oh, yeah. Remember? Earth science? Ninth grade. We used to laugh about it all the time.”
“You mean you used to laugh at me.”
“Well, yeah. But that was back when you were a dork.” She ran her finger along my jaw. “You changed.”
I took her hand in mine, turned it over, and kissed the palm. I was breathing hard and hoping she didn’t notice. “I didn’t change,” I said. “Did I?”
She snorted. “Oh my God—you? You were, like, the quietest guy in our class, and boom! You surprised everyone.”
“Getting arrested? That surprised me, too.”
She snuggled (yes! snuggled!) against my shoulder for five full seconds. “When I saw you at my parents’ party? Oh. My. God. Big difference. But you’re still sweet, right?”
“That depends. Do you want me to be sweet?”
“Yes,” she said with a grin. She reached up and brushed my hair out of my eyes. “Sweet and harmless and—” She pushed me down on the bed and pinned me in the hottest liplock of my life.
“Dangerous,” she whispered.
My brain stopped functioning. My hormones kicked into overdrive and grabbed the steering wheel.
I was Wolfman, the Hulk, Casanova, the last man on earth with the last woman, ready and willing and very, very hot. Her lips were warm and sweet, and if her breath was a little nasty, well, that didn’t bother my hard-on one bit. Her hand moved down my chest (yes! yes!) and she pressed herself against me and suddenly my arms were around her and the noise from the party was fading away and my hand traced the curve of her back and I realized that under her fairy leaf skirt she was wearing those tights and under those tights absolutely nothing and then, and then…
And then, because I suck, my brain came back to life.
And started wrestling with my hormones.
Brain: You don’t want this.
Hormones: Dude, this is EXACTLY what I want.
B: No, not like this—she’s wasted.
H: What’s your point?
B: She won’t remember this, and if she does, she’ll be angry.
H: Do you see where her hand is? God, that feels good. Can’t you feel that?
B: She’s drunk. You can’t do this. It’s wrong.
H: I want to do this.
B: Really? You want to go to school and say you scored with Bethany Milbury when she was so drunk she barely knew her name?
H:
H:
H: You’re an asshole. I hate you.
B: She needs to eat something and drink some water. Don’t let her drink any more beer.
H:
H: Yeah, I know.
B: She’ll love you for taking care of her. She’ll love that you respected her.
H: Five more minutes? Just five?
; B: Now.
H: Ican’t believe you’re making me do this.
Yeah. I did it.
I rolled away from her. I counted to twenty. Then I counted to fifty. I sat up, carefully, and rebuckled my belt.
“Wha’s wrong?” Bethany—sweet, wasted Bethany–muttered into the pillow.
“I want to see if they have any nachos. I love nachos, don’t you?”
(H: I cannot believe you just said that.)
(B: Shut the hell up.)
“Don’t you like me?”
I turned on the overhead light. “You know I do. I just…come on, let’s go.”
She squinted and held up her hand to shield her eyes from the light. “You’re walking out on me?”
“No, it’s not like that at all. It’s just—look, Bethany, you’re totaled. Shit-faced, no offense. You know I really like you and I want to be with you, but (someone please shoot me now) not like this.”
She blinked and shook her head a little as the words sunk in. “You’re blowing me off.” She tried to stand up, lost her balance, and flopped on the bed. “I can’t believe you’re blowing me off.”
When I reached out to help her she pulled away and pouted. “What are you, too good for me? Gay? You don’t like sex?”
“It’s not that,” I sighed. “Not at all. You don’t get it.”
“Oh, no, I totally get it.” She stood up again, slower this time, and lurched towards the door. “You’re weird, you know it, Tyler? I kinda liked you, because you’re different, but you’re not different, you’re just weird.” She steadied herself on the door frame. “Stupid freak.”
47.
I followed her down the stairs. I was worried about her tripping, but it wouldn’t have mattered because she would have fallen on piles of bodies. A couple hundred people had crammed inside. The party had turned into a tsunami of teenagers floating on noise, smoke, and beer.
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