I lost her in the crowd.
I could have stayed right behind her, I guess, but my stomach felt like she had just stomped on it with combat boots, and my hormones were ready to rip my brain out of its skull. I should have followed her because she wasn’t thinking straight, and she looked innocent and vulnerable and she didn’t know what she was saying or doing. But I didn’t.
Yoda saw me wandering and had me follow him to the room where a bunch of guys were playing video games. I kept my eyes on the screen, but I wasn’t really watching. He asked me what was wrong. I told him, for a change.
“Wow,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Do you want to get drunk?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t help.”
We turned to the game. Half an hour later, some girl I didn’t know asked me if I had seen Bethany and I told her no. A few minutes after that, Hannah turned up.
“You need to talk to Bethany,” she said.
“No way.”
“She said you guys had a fight. She’s upset.”
“Good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. I’m not talking to her. You shouldn’t, either. Let her solve her own problems.”
The sound of breaking glass came from the living room, followed by angry voices.
Two bodies, fists flying, fell against the archway, bounced, then hit the floor. The crowd surged behind them, hollering and snapping photos.
Yoda and I hustled Hannah out the side door.
“We should go home,” Yoda said.
Hannah frowned. “It’s just getting good.”
“It’s only going to get worse,” I said.
She looked back through the window, wincing as one of the guys landed a punch on a fragile nose. “All right,” she sighed. “Are you coming with us?”
I looked inside. No Bethany in sight. I had no obligations. She invited me, yeah, but then she blew me off. She could go home with her girlfriends or her brother. It was none of my business. She was none of my business.
“I’m going to stick around for a while,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. We’re not telling Mom about any of this, right?”
“Duh.” Hannah gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Love you, Ty. Stay out of trouble.”
The power went out an hour later.
Some guy started screaming like a madman, running through the house telling everyone to get out. It was Josh Rawson. Yes, the party was at his house and, yes, his parents were in Jamaica, but Josh had been at a family dinner at his girlfriend’s. That was him throwing the circuit breaker to cut off the electricity; that was him hollering and punching his buddies in the head.
When the lights were turned back on, I searched all over until I found Bethany curled up on the floor of the rec room. I shook her awake and told her we had to leave. She looked at me with confused, sleepy eyes. My stomped-on stomach fluttered.
“We have to go,” I said gently. “They’re kicking everybody out.”
“Don’ wanna,” she pouted. She was beyond wasted—she was headed for incoherent.
“We don’t have a choice.”
I helped Bethany to her feet. She mumbled something about her shoes, but I had a bad feeling about where the night was headed, so I basically dragged her out to the curb.
Now what?
“Where’s Stacey?” I asked. “Bethany, open your eyes. Where is Stacey? The girl you rode with?”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Left early. SAT prep.”
“Great.”
We were eight miles away from home, she was barefoot, and even with my jacket on over her sweatshirt, she was shivering. I could carry her, but eventually I’d collapse from exhaustion. She might be able to get enough warmth from my dying corpse until some early-morning commuter saw her and called an ambulance. She’d cry at my funeral and keep a bunch of silk flowers and a cross at the spot where I laid down my life for her.
That would work.
“No, wait.” She started towards the road. “There’s my brother. Chip! Chip!”
Chip was driving his Jeep along the white line on the side of the road at three miles an hour. He coasted to a stop on the shoulder, and Bethany opened the door.
I looked inside.
Crapcrapcrapcrap.
Chip smiled at me and passed out cold, his head on the steering wheel. Bethany didn’t notice. She was already crawling into the backseat, where Parker Zithead was sitting, eyes unfocused.
It wasn’t a hard decision.
I dragged Chip out, marched him around the car, and poured him into the passenger seat. I took the driver’s seat. I buckled the seat belt and turned the key. So the night hadn’t turned out the way I’d planned. It had turned out better, because I was a stand-up guy, righteous. When she sobered up, Bethany would realize that. Even Chip would have to back off, because I pulled his nuts out of the fire by getting him and his Jeep home in one piece.
The first mile went well. Then Chip began moaning—those deep, low, guy moans that meant he was in serious pain and about to—
—yep, puke his guts out in the foot well.
I rolled my window down and tried breathing through my mouth. Chip moaned again, leaned forward, and passed out with his head against the dashboard.
I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if the Zithead was going to blow, too.
I hit the brakes.
Bethany had crawled into Parker’s lap. They were playing tonsil hockey, with her hands in his hair and his hands where I couldn’t see them.
“Hey!” I screamed. “Leave her alone.” I yanked the car to the side of the road and threw it into park. I spun around in my seat and tried to peel Parker’s arms off the body of my angel. “Get your goddamn hands off her, you pig!”
They separated with a loud smack of their lips.
“Wha’?” Bethany slurred.
“Don’t do this, okay?” I asked. “Just—let me get you home.”
She gave me the finger, turned, and attacked Parker’s face again. Parker chuckled.
I pulled in the Milburys’ driveway at 3:47 in the morning. I shut off the engine, got out, and threw the keys on the roof of the house. Chip was snoring, his chin against his chest. His shirt was disgusting.
Bethany and Parker were still at it. The back window was completely fogged up. They hadn’t noticed that the car had stopped.
I thought about getting back in the car and driving it into a concrete pillar at ninety miles an hour.
But I had thrown away the keys.
48.
I existed on cruise control all weekend—home, bed, sleep, shower, looked at food, threw food out, bed again, stared at ceiling.
Nothing worked. The short independent film Bethany Milbury Hates Tyler Miller was playing on a constant loop in my head. I tried everything to drive it out: watched MTV, did a thousand jumping jacks and five hundred sit-ups, listened to music as loud as the volume dial would let me. I even tried beating my head against the wall. It left a dent, but it didn’t stop her voice mocking me, her fingers in his hair.
I didn’t bother with a jacket. If I was lucky, I’d catch pneumonia and die before dinner. As I walked through the gates of the Eternal Rest Cemetery, a flock of crows exploded out of a tree. It was just a matter of time before one of them dropped a depth charge on my head. I did not pull up the hood of my sweatshirt.
The crows followed me up the hill.
Grandpa Miller had been a traveling salesman, selling seeds and equipment to farmers. He got screwed out of a John Deere franchise back in 1965 and never got over it.
He picked out the plot himself, at the top of the hill. Grandma was not next to him. Forty years of marriage was bad enough, she said. She’d rather spend eternity alone.
The crows called back and forth. The trees shivered. The wind was blowing a cold front across the graves, preparing us for winter. When the nursing home called to tell Dad that Grandpa had
finally died a couple years ago, he hung up the phone and said, “Thank God.”
I sat on the damp ground next to his grave. His stone was white as bone and as hard as he was. It was so freaking pathetic that this was the only place I could think of to visit.
I cried like maybe it might help something.
It didn’t.
49.
By Monday morning I had almost convinced myself that a) it hadn’t happened, or b) if it had happened, everyone concerned was so drunk they wouldn’t remember, or c) if they remembered, they’d be too embarrassed to talk about it.
It’s going to be great; everything is fine. I’ll say something clever and witty to show that she hadn’t hurt me at all—no, that’s not my heart’s blood dripping on the floor. Bethany who? Yeah, she was hot for me, but I had to let her down gently. You know. She’s not really my type.
I cut homeroom.
A hall monitor caught me hiding in the men’s room and wrote me up.
In Calc we had a pop quiz, which we then got to trade with our “neighbor” for an instant jolt of public shame. I got a 37.
I kicked a soccer ball a little too hard in gym. It nailed some guy in the stomach and he had to go to the nurse. I didn’t do it on purpose, but the teacher still yelled at me.
Viral rumors about the party were incubating in the halls. They said a gang fight broke out. They said the house almost burned down. They said Bethany Milbury blew me off in a major way. They said I was one of the kids who went to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. They said Josh’s parents were sending him to military school.
They said there was another party, a bigger one, this coming Saturday.
My head hurt so much by the time English started, I had to keep it on my desk. Mr. Salvatore was not sympathetic. He was all fired up about a few papers that turned out to be word-for-word identical. I tried to listen but all I heard was “plagiarism,” “academic integrity,” and “cheating” fifty million times.
Nobody looked him in the eye.
When he had worked himself up to the point where it looked like he might punch the whiteboard, he handed back our papers, announcing who had earned zeroes because they cheated. I hadn’t copied my essay, honest. It compared the themes of Paradise Lost to Crime and Punishment and came in at exactly five hundred words.
He stood over me, essay in hand. I had a zero, too. “Time to start playing by college rules, Mr. Miller. You need to actually read the book before you pretend you know what it’s about.”
My mouth opened up before my brain kicked into gear. “In college the teachers don’t care if you show up to class as long as you pass the final. Do we get to play by that rule, too?”
The class went quiet.
Mr. Salvatore licked his lips. “Are you asking for detention, Mr. Miller?”
Choice: say “yes” and pay for it, or say “no” and look like a weenie.
“No.”
“Have your parents sign your paper. And don’t forge their signatures, okay? Be a man.”
I waited until he launched into a discussion about the layers of meaning in Punishment, then I raised my hand and said I felt sick. When I walked in the nurse’s office, the kid I hurt with the soccer ball (by accident, I swear, I swear) freaked out. The nurse gave me two Turns and a hall pass and made me leave.
The bell rang. Eleven o’clock and I’d already gone three rounds with a heavyweight without headgear. I cut lunch. I cut French, too.
Didn’t cut study hall. Not much point in that. I sat next to the window and watched the wind stripping leaves off the trees.
The attendance office called me down at the end of the period. I was hoping that they’d punish me by chopping off my head in the courtyard, but no. I was instructed to serve detention for cutting my morning classes.
I ran into Bethany as I came out of the office. Literally. The bell had rung, the halls were packed, and I misjudged my entry into the traffic flow. We smacked into each other right in front of the glass walls. She dropped her books, and I bent down to pick them up before it registered what I was doing.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah.” I handed the books to her.
She turned her head away. “Thanks. See ya.”
They were watching, the kids who fed the rumor mill. I should have walked away right then, right there. If we had been alone, maybe I would have. But they were watching.
“See ya.”
I was a train wreck with a runaway mouth.
“Did you have a good time at the party?” I called.
She clutched her books tightly and walked down the hall.
I followed. “I mean, what was it you loved the most? Was it drinking yourself blind or throwing yourself on every guy there?”
She sped up, bumping into people at their lockers.
“How many guys did you drag upstairs, huh?” My voice cracked.
Bethany did a one-eighty in the middle of the hall and headed back the direction we came from. “Leave me alone,” she said loudly.
“That’s not what you said Friday night!”
“Leave me alone!”
People were openly staring, circling, taking bets.
Chip Milbury peeled off a group of guys coming out of the stairwell by the office. He looked at me, at his sister, then back at me again. “What’s going on?”
Bethany ran over to him and said something under her breath. Chip glared at me. “Where do you get off talking to my sister like that?”
Mr. Hughes stepped out of the office. The voices in the hall died down. “Is there a problem here?”
“This guy is harassing Bethany,” Chip said.
Mr. Hughes motioned to the crowd. “Go on, everyone, that was the bell. Nothing is happening here. Move along. You three, get to class. We’ll sort this out later.”
I caught a glimpse of Bethany’s face just then. There were tears in her eyes, real tears, because I had hurt her, I had been a jerk, I was scum. She wiped the tears away with the palm of her hand and disappeared down the hall.
50.
I went to Hell right after dinner.
Level Twenty-Nine and rapidly descending. Like most games, Tophet was a test. You had to suffer through weeks of mind-numbing boredom on the early levels to get to the real deal. I was ready.
Gormley had finally stolen enough of Mammon’s fortune that he could buy the protection he needed to blast through the Shields of Moloch. If this kept up, I’d be battling the Lord of Darkness within days.
Hannah burst into my room, shoved me off my keyboard, and opened a browser window.
“Hey!” I said. “I’m about to napalm a horde of succubus.”
She concentrated on typing. “Shut up and watch.” She hit the ENTER key and stood back.
The browser screen went black for a second, then three small photos popped up, and above them, the word SLUT.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Take a deep breath, Tyler.” She clicked on the first photo and it enlarged.
Bethany. My Bethany. The quality of the picture was poor, but that was definitely her face. It was Bethany on a bed, wearing that little leaf skirt from her Halloween costume and a bra. That was all she was wearing. No tights, no sweatshirt. No wings. She was curled up in a ball, her hair spread out on the pillow, her eyes closed.
Hannah clicked on the next photo.
Almost the same pose, except the bra was missing.
“Oh, God,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” she said grimly. She clicked.
I only looked for a second, but I’d never forget. It was her and she was naked, turned on her side so that some things were covered by shadows. Her eyes were closed. A guy’s hand was at the side of the shot, reaching for her butt.
“Who did this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Call Yoda. He’ll figure it out.”
“Why do you care?” she asked. “I thought she blew you off.”
“How do you kno
w that?”
“Dude, she told the whole world.”
I clicked on the browser window to close it. “How’d you find this?”
“Somebody IMed me the link.” Hannah stood up. “Sucks to be her.”
51.
Bethany did not go to school on Tuesday.
They said she did the whole team. It didn’t matter the sport. The whole team.
They said she posed.
They said there was a secret Web site that showed every girl at the party on that bed.
They said it was a hoax.
They said the FBI was investigating.
They said she was dead.
They said she engineered the whole thing herself to get into Playboy.
Or to get out of midterms.
They said she drank so much that she fried her brain and was on life support.
They said she left the party in an ambulance.
They said she had it coming.
They said her brother was going to kill whoever took the pictures. He wasn’t in school on Tuesday, either.
I tried. I butted my way into conversations all day long, in the halls, lunch line, at the urinals. I wrote notes. I whispered during the alienation lecture in English. I was yelled at in French, in French. I told everyone that I drove Bethany home. I said she was with me all night long. I said the whole thing had to be fake.
By the end of the day, they were saying that I did it.
52.
They called me down first period on Wednesday.
I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have. Wouldn’t have. No way. No how.
I kept telling myself that over and over as I walked to my doom, to Mr. Hughes’s office. Every door I passed was open. Thousands of eyes watched me.
I did it, they said. I couldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have. But I was the one who destroyed the school. No. No, I didn’t. It was just some spray paint. And I did not take her picture. God, if I had I wouldn’t have shown it to anyone. I’d never put it on the Net. I mean, I’d thought about her looking like that, lying like that. But no. I did not take a picture. And I didn’t destroy the school, either. It was just spray paint.
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