“Out!” he said, mostly to Charlie.
“You’re acting like a child, Gray,” Charlie said.
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear you. You’re going to have to find someone else to do your shit work from now on.”
I didn’t know what that meant, didn’t even think that much about it. I was still dazed, wondering where it had come from. That anger. That violence in me. And then, the high, better than alcohol, the high of having hurt someone else for once, instead of the other way around.
Lara escaped the burial chamber and was attacked by seven henchmen. The fragmatch was on. Lara fragged them with her Uzi. The last one dropped the Jeep keys. More bots came after her, toting machine guns. She tried the Uzi again. Click. No ammo.
“Uzis really eat ammo,” I said.
“Drive over them with the car,” Charlie urged.
That worked. I got the keys and advanced to the next level. Then, I saved the game before anything else could attack me.
“You can keep playing,” Charlie said.
“Won’t your dad be home?” I glanced at the clock.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Charlie said. He walked to the bed and fell facedown onto it, a dramatic move, showing his boredom with everyone and everything. He lay there, ten seconds, twenty seconds. More. Just when I thought he was napping, his voice came, muffled by the mattress. “Could you ever really kill someone?”
I must have heard him wrong. “What?”
He lifted his head just enough so I could see brown eyes looking at me from under his hair. “Do you ever wonder how it would feel to kill someone for real?”
Yes, my mind screamed before I could stop it. When everyone at school was picking on me, picking on me, picking on me. Or St. John, the other day. Even Mom sometimes. The idea of vaporizing them. Imagine the power. The power. But I shook my head. “You crazy?”
Charlie sat up and laughed. “Don’t you know when I’m screwing with you, Einstein?”
I laughed too. “Sure.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The next day, I saw Binky again in the hall. Though we had three classes together, we’d been talking less and less. That day, though, I found her before school. She sat on a bench, reading.
I stood beside her, waiting. I couldn’t say why. Maybe guilt. When she didn’t look up, I said, “Hi.”
She still didn’t look up. I was thinking about walking away, but I didn’t. Binky finished the page, turned the next one, then marked it with her silver bookmark. She stood. “Richmond, do you ever wonder why, when birds fly in formation, one side’s always longer than the other?”
I played along. “Why?”
She smiled. “Because one side has more birds on it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, sometimes something’s really obvious, Richmond—if you think about it.”
“Like what?” Though I knew she was talking about Charlie. Charlie and me. She was jealous, of course.
“He’s using you.”
“For what?”
She wavered. “I don’t know yet, but he is.”
“So you’re saying no one could be friends with me without some sort of … ulterior motive.”
“I didn’t say that. I was friends with you.” I noticed the word was.
“Then what?” I demanded.
“Charlie Good doesn’t operate like that. He doesn’t have friends, he has…” She looked down at her book but, finding it closed, she stood. “Just think about it.”
“About what?”
“This … this … hold he has over you. I see you in the halls with him, following him like the guy at the circus who sweeps up after the elephant. What is it?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t have a hold over me. We’re friends. Just friends.”
But I knew what she meant, and it wasn’t true. It wasn’t that. Somehow, I had to prove that to her. So, I leaned over, right there in the hall, caressed her coarse, rough hair, then pulled her toward me in a clumsy kiss—my first. I didn’t really know how to do it, so I held her close, willing myself to be into her, be attracted to her. And I tried not to admit that it was because of Charlie, because I was so out of my league with his group. No. I just felt bad about Binky. She’d been my friend, after all, when no one else had. I kissed her again.
She pushed me away. For a second, I thought she’d slap me, spit at me. Punch me, even. I’d have deserved it. But instead, she looked about to cry. She started to walk away, then turned back and gathered herself so she could speak.
“I thought you were different,” she said. “But you aren’t. You think you can use people’s feelings against them. You’re exactly like the rest of them—you belong together.”
“But—
“Go to hell.”
I started to protest, but she hit me with a look that hurt and was gone. I knew we wouldn’t speak again. I’d lost her. Now, I only had Charlie.
The next day, I found a paper stuck through the slats of my locker. A note.
Ask Charlie who killed the dog.
I crumpled it. I figured I knew who’d sent it.
Charlie and Meat picked me up Friday night. “Mr. St. John is no longer part of our set,” Charlie said with no trace of regret. Sometimes, he sounded like rich guys in cartoons. We took Meat’s car to Sunset Place, an outdoor mall near school, and I watched Charlie and Meat try to pick up these dark-haired twins outside Bath & Body Works. Meat even went inside and let one girl spray stuff all over him.
Then, their parents showed up.
“Shoot.” Meat displayed his body-glitter-covered biceps. “I smell like watermelons, and I didn’t even score a phone number.”
“No love tonight,” Charlie said, laughing. “That cat marked her territory.”
A reggae band was playing on the second-floor landing, and Meat bobbed to the music. I tried to, but I always felt like a dork, dancing. We hung over the railing a while and watched the girls go by. Charlie said, “How goes it with Mandy?”
“It’s not going.”
“Why? You’re not into her?”
“It’s not that. That would be impossible. She’s sort of … out of my league.”
Charlie’s eyes followed a girl below, a blonde whose tank top gave an almost unobstructed view of her breasts. I wondered if I’d ever touch a girl’s breast. But he said, “You’re in the big leagues now, Paul. No girl’s out of reach.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
Meat interrupted. “But me—I’ve got no chance with this glittery watermelon crap on.”
We laughed. It was after eleven by then, so we decided to leave. It was raining, and the road shone. We passed a massive church, then stopped for a light. The red glowed off the slick pavement. Charlie gestured toward the roadside.
“Some girl bought it here,” he said. “Where that ficus is. She was skating on the bike path and got nailed by a car. Died on impact.”
“I remember that,” Meat said. “Girl from Sacred Heart was driving with her friends. She had, like, ten shots of vodka and a joint, and it was still broad daylight. They say the skater saw the car coming, but there was nowhere to hide.”
The light changed, but we stayed there. We watched the ficus tree turn green in the reflected light. When Meat pulled out, he drove slower.
Charlie said, “And the moral of this story, children, is: Don’t get caught.”
Meat laughed, but I didn’t. I looked back at the tree until long after we’d disappeared around the curve. I couldn’t tell whom Charlie had meant. The driver? Or the skater?
We drove in silence. Finally, Charlie said, “The Mailbox Club is dead, men. We need new material.” When no one responded, Charlie turned to me. “Any ideas, Einstein? Got to start contributing sometime.”
I didn’t answer. We were near Binky’s house. And her church. The perfect place for Charlie to trash—with the open door, we wouldn’t even have
to break in. But when I started to say it, my mouth wouldn’t move. I remembered my wish that night. God. It had come true.
“I’ve got nada,” I said. “Sorry.”
Charlie gazed at me a second, like he knew there was something I wasn’t telling. Then, he smiled. “It’s okay, Paul. I know I’ll get some return on my investment in you someday.”
And since he was smiling, I smiled too. At least that meant he planned to keep me around.
That night, lying in bed, I thought about the note I’d gotten about Trouble. Thing was, I’d seen Binky’s handwriting before. The handwriting on the note wasn’t Binky’s. But it had to be Binky who sent the note. Everyone else loved Charlie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I never truly felt comfortable with Charlie’s friends. What St. John said was probably true—the people who were my friends were the same people who’d hated me before. They only tolerated me because of Charlie. So I was surprised, on the way home from school the next week, when Charlie said, “Party at Pierre’s Friday. On the beach.”
“So?” I felt a twinge in my stomach.
“So, you’re going, right?”
“No. He didn’t invite me.”
“I’m inviting you. Same thing.”
“But it’s his party.”
“So what? He’s going to swoop down and throw you out?” Charlie laughed. “I want you there. Everyone else respects what I want.”
I chewed on that a minute, watching Charlie’s hands on the leather steering wheel. It was flattering, him wanting me there so much. Of course, I wanted to go. And Charlie was right. I was safe with him.
“Besides,” he said, “Amanda will be there.”
He smiled, watching my reaction. I shook my head. But I knew I was going. Charlie always knew just what to say to convince me.
“I can’t stay too late,” I told Charlie at lunch the day of the party. “My mom … she’s weird about stuff like that.”
An exaggerated sigh from Charlie. “Can’t spell smother…”
“Yeah, yeah, without mother.”
Later, Charlie suggested I stay over his house that night. That way, my mother wouldn’t know how late I stayed out. “And what Mama doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Charlie said.
It sounded like a great idea. To cement the deal, I approached Mom in the attendance office with the news. “Catch them off guard,” Charlie had said. “Don’t give them time to think of reasons to say no.”
I chose the passing period between fifth and sixth. Four minutes. One of the other secretaries stood at Mom’s desk when I entered. I pushed through the swinging half-door to where Mom sat.
“Hey.”
I’d barely spoken to her since the day with the sweatshirt. But I gave her a kiss on the cheek before starting. That was Charlie’s suggestion. Then, I started in.
“It’s okay if I stay over at Charlie’s tonight, right?” Always phrase the question to suggest a “yes” answer, Charlie had said.
Mom looked up, then down, distracted. “Paul, you remember Mrs. Vega, don’t you?”
I put out my hand, did the polite-boy thing.
“Charlie’s house?” I said.
She pulled a hair. “I don’t know.”
“Charlie Good?” Mrs. Vega piped in, her face going all warm and fuzzy. “Are you friends with Charlie?” Then, to Mom, “Laura, Charlie Good is a sweet boy. A straight-A student. He helped us rearrange the file system last year—on a Saturday.” She looked up at me again, like she hadn’t really noticed me before. “You’re friends with Charlie?”
I nodded, wondering if helping in the office was how Charlie knew so much about everyone. Mrs. Vega and I both looked at Mom, awaiting her response.
“Well… I suppose I can’t forbid it.”
“Great. I’ll go home with him, then.” I leaned to give her another cheek kiss, pumped Mrs. Vega’s arm again, and I was gone.
But when I got to the party, I sort of wished Mom had forbidden me. The day had been fun up to then. We’d gone to the beach, then to Meat’s house for dinner. But when we got to Pierre’s house, everything changed.
It wasn’t the house—though that was part of it. Pierre lived on Key Biscayne, this island connected by a bridge to downtown Miami. “Where the rich people live,” Meat said in the car.
They were all rich to me, so I kept quiet.
The house was about the size of our whole building. We were late. Still, Charlie managed to maneuver his car into the last close parking space. He pushed open the front door, and we followed through the scattered beer bottles and the stench of beer and what I figured was grass.
“You said his parents were home,” I said.
“Why would anyone have a party when his parents are home?” Charlie said. Then, “Relax, Einstein. I’ll get you home safe to Mommy.”
I started to protest, but he motioned us onto the patio, where Meat immediately joined a clump of jocks swapping sports stories in the corner. I followed Charlie. He fished two beers from a cooler and handed me one. “You need it,” he said.
I started to open it. The rough metal top bit my hand. I tried not to show it, but Charlie saw. He took the bottle, popped it open against the counter—which was some kind of rock—then, his own. He handed mine back.
I drank it fast. Charlie held his, not drinking. He eyed a group of cheerleaders, juniors I didn’t know. They all wore thong bikinis, and one blonde looked back at Charlie. She waved.
Charlie laughed. “Need me to open one of those for you too?”
I laughed too long, felt sick. I downed the rest of the beer, and Charlie handed me his untouched one.
“You okay awhile?” he said.
No, I wanted to say. Are you kidding?
But I said, “Sure,” and he walked off to join Meat and his friends by the Jacuzzi.
I went the other way. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amanda. She wore a red tank suit, the kind swimmers wore, and her hips gyrated to music from inside the house. I thought she saw me. She didn’t smile or wave, though. I walked closer, past the pool, to the patio railing overlooking the beach. When I passed her, I said, “Hey.”
“Hey.” She turned back to Kirby.
Down below, the waves broke, white foam against black. Could I go back to where Amanda stood? No way. I twisted my head, searching for Charlie. Nowhere. I edged closer to Amanda’s group and stood on the perimeter a second. When she still didn’t turn, I moved on, to the coral steps that led down to the beach. I watched the white foam again for what seemed like hours. Where was Charlie? Why was I even there?
“Hey.”
I turned.
The girl was pretty, with long, dark hair and a tiny bikini. I’d seen her around school, but we’d never spoken. She wasn’t part of Charlie’s group. A butterfly tattoo spread its wings between her breasts.
“Hello?” she said.
I realized I’d been looking at her breasts. I forced my eyes up. “Hey.”
“Want to dance?”
“No one’s dancing.”
“So? There’s music. We’ll start something.”
She took my arm and led me closer to the steps. Her body locked onto mine. She was tall too, and her long, bare legs brushed mine, hips close, leaving me breathless. She smelled of the beach. She swayed to the music’s beat. My left hand stole down her back. The other hand was trapped between us, close, so close to her breast. My knuckles brushed the outline of the tattoo. It was a fake. Why was she dancing with me? I felt so buzzed, not just from the beers, but from the music and the surf, the heat of her.
“What’s your name?” I asked finally.
“Caroline.” She leaned closer, breasts pressing into my hand. Oh, God.
“I’m Paul.”
“I know.”
The song ended, and she pulled from me. “Gotta go. Thanks for the dance, Paul.”
“But—”
But she was gone, faster than she’d been there, running down to her group of friends. I began
to follow. When I reached the top of the stairs, I heard her say, “Did it.” She laughed and pretended to brush herself off. “Not that bad. He only drooled a little. Your turn, Courtney. Truth? Or dare?”
“I’ll take truth. Can’t handle that kind of dare.”
My fist clenched around the handrail, the beach swimming below. Their shrieks of laughter burned in my ears. I turned and went into the house.
I had to find Charlie. It was his fault I was there, so he had to take me home. In the living room, I looked left, then right. Finally, I saw him on the stairway. With a girl. The cheerleader who’d waved at him, Lauren, the tiny one who topped the pyramids. They kissed. She laughed and untucked Charlie’s white tank top, letting her hands slide across his chest. Charlie kissed her again, led her upstairs. I went for another beer.
This time, I chose a can, reaching through the ice and water and slush until my hands hurt from the cold. I found a lounge chair in the dark near the wall and settled down to drink it. I hated being there. I hated Gate. I hated them all, even Charlie. I thought of the note, Ask Charlie… But that was just Binky, being jealous. I lay back. My feet felt heavy. I tried to will myself to get up for another beer.
“Hi, Paul.”
In the dim light, her face took a second to register. Just a second. It was Amanda.
“Want to walk on the beach?” she said.
“Is this a dare?” Instantly, I was sorry I’d asked.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I pretended to take a sip from the empty can, then crumpled it.
“So, do you?”
She was so pretty, even in the dark. She held out her hand. I took it, stood. Then, we were across the patio, going down past the laughing group and Caroline. House music faded. Surf music took over. Our feet hit sand, and she removed her sandals, so I took off my own shoes too. I gripped Amanda’s fingers. Was I hurting her? I loosened up. She laughed and pulled me a few steps down the sand.
“Saw you dancing with Caroline Rodgers before.”