“Cool! Come on Alex, let’s go.” Val followed Aaliyah into the basement, and Alex followed her.
Sitting around a mahogany card table sat a few older boys Val didn’t recognize; “I brought another girl!” Aaliyah announced as she plopped the deck on the table.
Val took the last empty seat, “Hey Aaliyah, can Alex play too?”
Alex shook his head before Aaliyah could respond, “It’s cool. I’ll just go upstairs and mingle. Have fun.”
“Oh, ok,” Val looked at her friend apologetically, “You too.”
“So, are we playing regular poker or—?” Val recognized the face of the boy who had spoken: Josh.
“What do you mean?” Val asked; judging by the looks Josh and the two other boys gave her, it was a stupid question.
“Well, we were talking about maybe—if everyone was up for it—upping the stakes,” Aaliyah said. When Val still didn’t quite understand, she clarified, “Josh was suggesting we turn this into a game of strip poker.”
“Oh—“ Val frowned, “But I’m only wearing a dress! I’d lose in like a second.”
A tanned boy to Josh’s left laughed, “That’s the point, cutie. You gals take your clothes off, we watch. If you wanna just skip the game we could—“
“Perhaps we should just start off playing regular poker,” Aaliyah suggested, “For chips. Then if that goes well we can discuss the prospect of strip poker.” She shuffled the deck and tossed them each a pair of cards, “Ian, you’ve got small blind, and Josh, you’re big.”
“That I am,” Josh agreed; the three boys all laughed. Val watched passively; she was busily trying to come up with an excuse that would allow her to leave the game before she got forced into a game of strip poker.
Down the line everyone made their bets; the boy to Val’s right folded. Val leaned over to Aaliyah, showing her friend her cards, “Is this a good hand?”
“Val! You’re not supposed to show anyone else what you have!”
“Oh, um, okay. But is it good?”
Aaliyah shrugged, “It’s alright. You do know how to play Texas hold ‘em, right?”
“Not really,” Val confessed, “My family was never big on poker.”
Aaliyah frowned, “Alright then, I’ll teach you. Here, let’s just turn this round into a teaching round.” She took Val’s cards and set them down near the deck. Aaliyah made her own bet, “And now Ian can call up to the big blind or fold.” Ian called. “And now it’s Josh’s turn. Since he’s big blind, he can either raise the bet or check.” She continued explaining as the hand went on, and to her credit managed to win while maintaining her stream of explanations.
“Do you want to sit out one more round? Or do you think you get it?”
“I think I get it now.” Val held out her hands as Aaliyah pushed a pair of cards her way.
“Remember,” Aaliyah said, “Doubles beats high card, two doubles beats one double, triples beats that, then comes a straight, then a flush, then full house, four of a kind, and a straight flush beats everything.”
“Hold on,” Val frowned at her cards, “What’s a straight?”
“A straight is like five cards in a row—like five, six, seven, eight, and nine. No one will probably get anything higher than a triple here, so that’s all you need to keep in mind.”
“Ok,” Val looked at her cards and put in the bet Aaliyah told her to.
They played a few hands, and Val started to gain confidence; Texas hold ‘em was, as Aaliyah explained, a game of trickery. It didn’t matter what cards Val had; the goal, she discovered, was to make the people she was playing with think whatever she wanted them to think. If she had a bad hand, she tried to convince the others that she had good cards, while if her hand was a good one she tried to act like she was disappointed.
Valentina felt like she was really getting the hang of the game; she even started having fun trying to trick Aaliyah and the others. It came as a surprise when Val’s chips ran out, but she sensed her opportunity to excuse herself, “Well, I guess that means I’m done.”
“Not necessarily,” Josh said, “It just means it’s time for some new rules.”
Val grimaced, “Yeah, I definitely think I should go if that’s what you guys want to do.”
“Scared?” Ian—the tanned boy—asked tauntingly, “What’s the problem? It’s just the five of us—even if you lost all your clothes we’d be the only ones to know.”
“But you’d still know,” Val pointed out, “Plus it would be embarrassing.”
“Why? Do you have a tramp stamp or something?” Josh leaned back in his chair, smiling.
“Well, no.”
“Look guys, she doesn’t want to do it,” Aaliyah came to Val’s rescue, “And to be honest, I’m not exactly one-hundred percent behind the idea either. Let’s just play normal poker.”
“But that’s boring,” Josh complained, “Let’s have some real stakes. If not clothes, how about money? Actual money.”
“No, I don’t think so. Actually, let’s just play again another time.” Aaliyah got up from the table.
“Okay okay, I’m not gonna force you to do anything you don’t want to,” Josh frowned, “Even though you did promise.”
Aaliyah shrugged, “I don’t always keep my promises.”
“Damn, I wanted to see some titties!” Ian joked.
“Ewh,” Val wrinkled her nose at his language.
“What?”
“I just don’t like that word.”
Ian laughed, “It’s not like a curse word or anything.”
“Yeah, but I still don’t like it.”
“Well you’re just a prude,” Ian accused.
“Am not.”
“Yeah you are, and you convinced Aaliyah to be a prude with you. If you weren’t such a tease, maybe you wouldn’t be so afraid to play an innocent game of strip poker. We wouldn’t even make you go past your underwear, and we’ll count your dress as three clothing items.”
Something about being called a prude, even by a boy she’d only just met, irked Val. “Fine, we’ll play.”
Aaliyah sat back down, “If Val’s okay with it, I suppose I am. Besides, we all know I’m not gonna lose any hands, so it doesn’t matter.”
A crash from overhead cause them all to start; “What was that?” Aaliyah asked, panic in her voice. She was up the stairs before anyone else at the table had even gotten up; Val followed her, anxious to see what the commotion was about.
“Oh my gosh!” she cried out when she caught a glimpse of what was going on; such a large crowd had gathered between two boys who were obviously fighting that Val could hardly see what was happening, but she saw that one boy was on top of the other, and was busily beating him into the ground. “Someone has to stop this!” Val cried out to no one in particular; nobody moved to intervene or even acknowledge her request.
Aaliyah was the only other one who seemed to be trying to do something; she pushed through the mass of bodies, and Val followed her. Together they broke through to the five foot wide hole left by the onlookers; with a look at each other they each grabbed one of the arms of the boy on top.
“Let me go!” the boy yelled, pulling furiously against Val’s grip; he nearly broke free, but she held on as if her life depended upon it. “This little bitch needs to die!”
Val at the downed boy for the first time; Dylan’s familiar frame lay supine on the floor. “Why were you two fighting?” she asked, hoping the question would direct the struggling boy’s attention away from his attempts to break her and Aaliyah’s grip.
“Fucker said I was ‘tall enough to be on the basketball team and stupid enough they’d let me play center’,” the boy replied, “Which is not. Fucking. Funny.”
Aaliyah caught on to Val’s plan, “I get it; Dylan’s a jerk to everyone. But do you really think one insult is worth killing him?”
The boy relaxed a little, “I had to teach him a lesson. Only stupid fuckheads insult someone who can beat their ass.”
&n
bsp; Val hid a wince at his excessive cursing, “Okay, you made your point. Now, don’t you want to go home and just forget this whole thing happened?”
“I guess the fucker learned his lesson. Alright, just let me go and I’ll leave.”
Val looked at Aaliyah. She could tell they were both weighing the same question in their minds: If we let him go, will he just attack Dylan again? In the end, Val decided she wouldn’t be able to hold the boy back if he really wanted to hurt Dylan more anyway—he was twice her size and at least eight inches taller. She let him go, and after a second Aaliyah did the same.
True to his word, the boy walked through the crowd toward the exit; the gathered watchers parted to let him through. Val turned her attention to Dylan; she leaned down to assess his battered face.
“How bad is it?” Aaliyah asked, her eyes as wide as saucers. This is her party, at her house, Val realized, she could probably get in a lot of trouble if we have to call an ambulance or something.
Fortunately Dylan’s condition didn’t seem that bad; “I don’t know for sure. I think once we clean it up he should be okay. Most of the blood is coming from a cut here,” she pointed to where Dylan’s aggressor had somehow managed to separate the edge of his nostril from his face. “Do you have a rag or something I could use to clean him up?” Val asked; she breathed deeply to fight the wave of nausea that washed over her as she looked at the blood seeping out from the cuts on Dylan’s face.
“Yeah, I’ll go get one,” Aaliyah left to grab a rag while the rest of the crowd dispersed; with the fight over, they apparently no longer cared. Quite a few exited, leaving the living room half-empty; a speaker in the corner filled the room with pop music.
“Here,” Aaliyah plopped on the floor next to Val and offered her two towels; one white and one maroon. “I got a first aid kit too; it has all different sizes of bandages.”
“I think we’d better use the brown one,” Val reasoned.
“Why?”
“His blood would stain the white one.”
“Oh, right,” Aaliyah looked about as sick as Val felt.
“If you want, I’ll clean him up—you can go see if anything got damaged in the fight.” Val placed a hand on Dylan’s chest to support her while she leaned in with the maroon towel. At first she dabbed his entire face, but as the welling blood cleared she saw that her initial assumption had been correct; most of the blood was coming from only one or two cuts. She popped the first aid kit open and fit a bandage over Dylan’s nose; the white pad reddened quickly. As Val put a large patch of gauze over a thin, long cut on Dylan’s cheek, she felt him stir.
When Val finished with the last bandage, Dylan laughed—although it sounded as much like a groan as a laugh, “Of all the people to be patching me up, I never would have guessed it was you.”
Val snorted, “Yeah, after you made fun of my nose and were so mean to me—but it was the nice thing to do.”
Dylan sat up; he grimaced so widely the bandage on his nose nearly fell off, “I guess you think I got what was coming to me.”
Val nodded, “That thought certainly occurred to me.”
“Well, maybe I did. I picked on the wrong guy and he—he turned out to be completely psycho.” Dylan paused, a look of genuine gratitude on his face, “Thank you, by the way.”
“Don’t mention it. I didn’t really do it for you, anyway.”
“Then who’d you do it for?”
“Aaliyah. If we had to take you to the hospital or something, that would have been really bad for her.” Val left unsaid that it would still be bad for Aaliyah, if Dylan’s parents asked what had happened to his face.
Dylan just nodded, “Either way, I still owe you one. Hey, you think you could help me walk to my car?”
“Do you think you’re in a condition to drive?”
“Sure,” Dylan smiled through his bandage-mask, “It doesn’t take that much strength to drive.”
“Hold on,” Val frowned, “Isn’t illegal for you to drive at night, if you have a learner’s license?”
“It is,” Dylan admitted, “But what’s life without a little risk?”
“Safe,” Val giggled at her joke, “But okay, I’ll help you.” She let him put an arm on top of her shoulders, and together they hobbled to a white sedan. Dylan slid his key in and Val helped him plop down in the seat.
“Hey,” Dylan said, as if something had just occurred to him, “Do you want a ride home?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Val bit her lip as she considered whether riding with her erstwhile enemy would be safe. “Let me just grab my purse—I’ll be back in a bit!”
“Okay, I’ll wait.”
Val retrieved her purse and said her goodbyes to the few remaining partyers, including Aaliyah, who was busy dabbing at a trickle of blood that had found its way onto the hall carpet.
“Let’s go,” she said as she sat down in Dylan’s passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt.
“Yup,” Dylan agreed. He turned the ignition and backed out of the cul-de-sac where Aaliyah’s house was. They hardly spoke as Dylan drove; Val because she wasn’t sure where she stood with Dylan after acting as his caretaker, and Dylan because he was preoccupied with his injuries, or so Val assumed.
Chapter 16
Val suppressed a yawn as Miss Stevens explained something called the “substitution method”; it wasn’t that she was tired, just that the whole subject was boring. Sunday had been blissfully uneventful—after the events of Friday and Saturday, Val had been happy to spend the whole day at home.
“Hey, Val, did you hear what happened to Dylan at Aaliyah’s party?” Alex whispered, quietly enough that Miss Stevens didn’t notice.
“Yeah,” Val tried to keep her voice as low as Alex, “I actually saw it happen. Dylan was pretty beat up.”
Alex nodded, “That’s what I heard. Carrie, you were there too, right?”
Their geeky friend looked up from her notebook, “Just for a few minutes. It wasn’t my kind of party.”
“Oh, it was so fun though,” Alex grinned in lieu of laughing, which would have drawn Miss Stevens’ attention, “You know it’s a good party when there’s a fight at the end. I prefer a catfight, but oh well.”
“Do a lot of parties end like that?” Val asked.
“Well, I haven’t been to that many,” Alex admitted, “There just weren’t that many in middle school. But what I’ve learned about parties is they tend to come in one of two flavors; crazy nights that everyone talks about afterwards, or boring gatherings where everyone sits around until they can leave without offending the host or hostess.”
“And this was the first one?” Val guessed; she gritted her teeth as Miss Stevens turned from the whiteboard, looking at their group.
“Oh yeah. I mean, I’m happy it was Dylan getting beat up, instead of someone I actually care about.”
“Mr. Hitchens!” Miss Stevens glared at Alex and Val, “Is there something you’d like to share?”
“Naw, I’m good,” Alex smiled.
“Then may I please return to my lesson?”
“Hmm, I suppose. Proceed, Miss Stevens.” Val nearly gasped; Alex’s response was about the worst she could imagine. Responding to her question seriously—and pretending he thought she was really asking for his permission—was beyond Alex’s usual level of insubordination.
Miss Stevens exhaled loudly; after a few seconds she turned back to the whiteboard and resumed her lesson. Alex tried to start their conversation up again, but Val refused to let him; she restricted herself to non-vocal responses, and soon enough Alex got tired of carrying on a whispered conversation with himself.
Miss Stevens lectured right up to the bell; “Oh darn,” she said in a tone that struck Val as not-quite-sincere, “I guess I’ll have to assign your in-class work for the day as homework. So here’s your in-class work, and your homework, both due tomorrow.” The class groaned; Val noticed more than a few dirty looks directed Alex’s way, no doubt assuming Miss Stevens was punishing
them for his behavior.
Geography was as boring as always; Mr. Andrews mentioned something about a group project coming up, but Val hardly remembered what he said. She took notes on the day’s subject, even though it probably wouldn’t be on any tests or quizzes. One boy—Val thought she remembered him from Homeroom—had derailed Mr. Andrews from his planned lesson by asking about how the Nepalese used the geography around them to their benefit, a subject the teacher seized on; he spoke about it the entire hour.
Val received a text from Scarlett on the way to Homeroom, “You made it!” She knew it referred to soccer; the news made her smile as she walked into Miss Hughes’ room.
“What are you so happy about?” Carrie asked, noticing Val’s smile.
“I made the soccer team!” Val grinned wider.
Carrie nodded, “Cool. Congrats.”
Aaliyah’s response was closer to Val’s, “That’s wonderful! You really wanted that, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Val laughed, “You have no idea.”
“Oh, I do,” Aaliyah embraced Val, “By the way, thanks for helping Dylan get patched up and get home after my party. I know he’s not your favorite person, but it was nice of you to do.”
“You’re welcome.” Val glanced around the room, “Speaking of the spawn of Satan, where is he?”
“Not here today,” Aaliyah said, “It makes sense; I’d take a few days off, too, if that had happened to me.”
“What exactly happened?” Carrie asked, “I left before the fight.”
Val shrugged, “Dylan insulted the wrong person, and from what I gathered the boy he was insulting was—a little violent.”
“Yeah, that’s about it,” Aaliyah agreed, “Serves him right too, the way he insults you. I bet you were happy that he finally got what was coming to him.”
Val frowned, “You know what? I’m really not—I guess I just don’t like seeing anyone hurt, even if it was Dylan.”
“I get that,” Aaliyah sighed, “You should’ve seen what the house was like by the time my parents came home.”
“Oh? Was it really dirty?”