“See? You do know how to dance.”
“Ballroom classes,” He says. “My mom made me take them when I was little.”
He doesn’t have cologne on like Jack, but his natural smell is pleasant compared to all of the sweaty boys who are dripping Axe from every pore. It’s then I notice someone sitting on the couch on the other side of the house, staring at me. The icy-blue of his eyes is very familiar. What is he doing here? Did Kayla invite him? And why does his gaze linger where Wren’s arms are around my waist?
Finally, I get bored of being stared at, and rush back to where our drinks are. Wren follows, downing his grape juice in one thirsty gulp. I do the same, the stale coke burning as it goes down.
“I’m wayyyyy too hot,” I say. “Physically my booty is hot, but I’m also hot temperature-wise, so I’m going outside.”
Wren laughs. “Alright. Thanks for the dance.”
“No, thank you, prez.”
“Wren! There you are!”
I watch Kayla run over to him, beaming. Wren almost drops his cup and his glasses slide off his face. Kayla bends to pick them up for him and he stammers an apology. I take my exit and let them fumble through the awkward.
I swallow cool air and try to catch my breath. I haven’t danced in, well, forever. I hadn’t been invited to parties after what happened with Nameless in Florida. His influence spread far and wide, so I was kind of barred from any and all get-togethers. Not that they invited me, the fat girl, to begin with. But still. I’d danced before but this was the first night in a long time, and it felt good. I sweated off some of my worry over Mom in those few minutes. And to think, I danced with Nameless’ cousin. I laugh and slap the bench I’m sitting on.
“Hitting inanimate objects now? Your violence knows no bounds,” A bored voice says. I don’t even have to turn around to know how it belongs to.
“Jackoff!” I slap the bench harder. “Weren’t you being paid to bed a girl tonight? Where is she? Did you bring her?”
“She canceled. Her father had a stroke.”
“Poor guy. Probably will have another stroke when he finds out the money he sends her for college goes to blow and hookers.”
“I’m not a hooker.”
“Come! Come sit by me. It’s a nice bench. Nice and lovely on the butt.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Yeah, and you’re ugly, but do I complain about it? No! Because I don’t complain about things that I can’t change. That’s called intelligence. How’d you find the party, anyway?”
“I remember Kayla squeaking to me about it earlier today. And I saw you with the red cups, and put two and two together.”
“Wow. So smart. So intelligence. Why aren’t you drinking?”
“I like to keep my wits on me at all times. Drinking makes people sloppy.”
“Wouldn’t want anyone to see the mighty Jack Hunter being sloppy.”
“You reek of rum.” He sits by me and sniffs the air.
“It’s a good thing I am not a sexy-ass pirate, otherwise I’d repeat the same line to you over and over about the rum being gone and make a movie out of it.”
“You like Johnny Depp, then.”
“Like him? The man is my dreamboat on my dream car in my dream house in my actual dreams!”
Jack’s lips crumple into a half-sneer, half-incredulous scoff. “Riiight.”
“Ah, what do you know about sexy?” I sputter and wave him off. “You know nuthin’.”
“I know some things, I like to think.”
“Yeah? Don’t tell me - sappy compliments are your idea of sexy. You just lay ‘em on thick and hope some girl – I’m sorry, your client - is stupid enough to buy them.”
“Most of my clients are fairly stupid. And shallow. It’s sort of inevitable when you work for a Club that hires you for your looks.”
He sounds tired; that exhausted, world-weary edge in his voice. I lean against his back. His spine is rigid, his shoulder blades a comforting sort of hardness on my own.
“D…Did you at least get to use the rope?” I hiccup.
“Not at all.”
“Dang. Must’ve been some nice rope, since she was rich. Like, golden and shit, with gold threads, and like, sapphires in the knots.”
Maybe I’m so drunk I hallucinate, but I swear I feel him laugh, the rumbling vibrating through his back and the sound clear. But it’s quickly swallowed up by the music before I can concentrate through the drunk stupor and determine if it was an actual laugh, or just another angry scoff. The garden is quieter, people making out behind bushes. I point at the slightly-yellow fountain.
“Somebody peed.”
“I’d bet money it was you.”
“I wish! How awesome would it be to pee in that thing! Us girls don’t have the luxury of a portable piss-tube, okay? We can only pee on things we can squat on. A fountain is not one of said things.”
“With your pig-headed stubbornness, I’m sure you’d find a way.”
“Absolutely. I’m gonna try it right now –”
I stand a little too fast, wobbling on my feet. Jack grabs my wrist, pulling me back to the safety of the bench, but when I collapse backwards on it I sit slightly on his knee. I squeal and reposition quickly.
“Phew! That was almost a disaster. Dis-ASSter. Get it? I’m so good.”
“You’re so drunk,” He insists.
“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”
The fountain burbles, and somewhere a cricket starts up his high-pitched engine legs.
“I wanted to thank you.” I squint hard at Jack’s face.
“For putting you in your place, you little hellion?”
“I don’t even know what hellion means. Where do you get all these words? You’re like that one nerdy dude they put on Jeopardy all the time. Minus the neckbeard. And the English degree.”
“It’s like, a crazy girl. An insane sort of…tornado type of person. Someone who just tears through people like paper in his or her madness.”
“Oh. Yup. Cool that they made an entire word just to describe me.”
“It’s Shakespearian.”
“He had a vision. Of me. A million years in the future. And that caused him to make up that word. Little known fact.”
Somewhere someone breaks something made of glass and yells ‘oh shit’. I see Kayla rush upstairs through the windows with a broom and dustpan.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted –” I start again. “I wanted to thank you.”
“For what, exactly? I thought you hate me.”
“Oh, I do! But I still owe you a thanks. You…it’s hard to explain, but I never thought, um. I never thought. It’s, when you’re someone like me, you don’t think it’ll ever happen to you. I just sort of gave up on it, you know? I was happy with never getting one, because people like me don’t get them, or deserve them, really. We’re not the sort of people those things happen to.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” He narrows his eyes.
“I just!” I shout, then whisper. “I just wanted to say. Um. Thank you. For. Um. Kissing me.”
He arches a brow. “That was a joke kiss. You were annoying me with the rumors, I had to put a stop to them somehow. It wasn’t serious.”
“Oh, I know! I think we, uh previously discussed that actually. No, I mean, I know. It was, haha, definitely a joke! Just. Thank you anyway.”
Jack goes very still, and then looks at me like he’s seeing me in a new light all of a sudden.
“Do you mean – you’ve never – that was your first kiss?”
“Haha. I mean, it’ll be my last, too, since, you know, people like me don’t get kissed, except when it’s a joke of course. Haha. But it was, uh, an experience. And. And I’m happy it happened to me, since I never thought someone would ever want to do something like that with me. So. Um. Yeah. Thank you. I mean it.”
“You’ve never - ”
“No! But that’s not really weird for someone like me, I m
ean, look at me!” I gesture to my clothes and face. “I’m not uh, you know, Kayla. I’m not even close. And plus I have too many huge dumb issues. I’m never gonna trust anybody to do those things with. But still. It was nice. And cool. And a joke, duh, but things can still be nice even if they were jokes, I think. Haha.”
Jack’s blue eyes are shocked, or maybe I’m just really drunk.
“But you’re so –” He starts.
“Loud? Annoying? Bitter? Smartmouthed? Yeah, I know. Guys have called me that before.”
“I was going to say,” Jack says sharply. “Confident. Charismatic. And cheerful. You’re like – it just seems like a lot of guys would’ve gravitated to – I don’t know.”
“There you go again with the really gross flattery. I’m not a client, okay? So you don’t have to flatter me when you don’t mean it.”
“I mean it. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“Except when you’re working.”
“But I’m not working now. There is no girl I’m being paid to woo here, so what I’m saying is honest and true.”
“Well, apparently you haven’t quite flipped the correct switches from work back to your normal life, so. It’s okay. The compliments are nice, even if you don’t mean them.”
“I mean them, alright? Stop questioning my sincerity!”
“Stop saying lies,” I sigh. “I’m none of those nice things you just said. But it’s okay. I can pretend.”
He rubs his forehead. “God, you’re infuriating.”
“Ooh, that’s another good adjective to add to my list!”
“If I had known –” He runs his hand through his hair, but it flops back down to shade his eyes. “If I had known I wouldn’t have done it. A first kiss…that’s something a girl should cherish. It’s something you should share with someone you really love. You shouldn’t lose it in a petty high school battle of wills to someone you hate.”
“Yeah, well. Never gonna love someone again, so. It’s okay. I’m glad I lost it, at least! It’s sort of nice to have gotten it over with.”
“You’re so sure of that, aren’t you?”
“Sure of what?” I blink.
“That you’re never going to love anyone again. You said it with such…conviction. Like it’s set in stone.”
“Oh! But it is!” I smile.
“So you won’t, in any one of the endless millions and trillions of possibilities that are your future selves, ever fall in love with someone again?”
“Yup! That’s right. It’s been three years, twelve weeks, and four days since I fell in love. And I’m never going to do it ever again. I learned my lesson.”
I get up and stretch to break the awkward quiet between us.
“I’m gonna get some more booze. You want any?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Oh ho! Is that so? You and Wren, both terrible goody-two shoes! Whodathunk it.”
“We used to be friends, in middle school,” Jack says softly. “Him and I.”
“And then what happened?”
Jack looks up at me, icy eyes glowing with an unholy fire in the faint light from the house. The shadows hug his face, making him look savagely handsome and savagely terrifying all at the same time.
“I did something very bad.”
His tone sends shivers down my spine, but I keep my face light and unaffected.
“Oh. Like, uh, put snow down his pants? Kissed his girlfriend? Or does it have something to do with Sophia?”
Jack laughs. He really laughs, this time, the sound clear like when he was with Madison. But nothing about it is pleasant, or amused. It’s bitter, old, full of guilt. Jack gets up and leaves, my curiosity roars through me and darts my hand out to grab his shirt and pull him back and make him explain, I trip on the lip of the fountain, and all at once there’s a horrible jolting down my spine, a heavy weight falling next to me, and water in my nose, my ears, my mouth. The cold shock whisks my booze-haze away and leaves me sputtering and struggling to get out of the fountain. Jack is likewise wet from his pants-down, and glowering at me. The entire party inside is mashed up against the windows, looking at us and laughing, and the garden crowd is practically rolling with laughter.
“How do you fall in there? It’s like two feet wide.”
“Fucking idiots!”
“Carl peed in there, too!”
Jack and I drip in solidarity.
“You did that on purpose.” Jack mutters, and I swear I see his eyebrow twitch with controlled rage.
“N-No! I tripped and – oh god there’s something green on your crotch. Not that I was looking there. It just happened to be very green! Right there!”
He picks a wad of algae off his crotch and throws it onto the face of a laughing guy nearby. It makes a wet splat, and Jack is gone before I have the chance to apologize properly. Not that I was going to at all since I’m at war with him and what am I thinking, apologizing! And thanking him for kissing me? What the hell am I on other than ethanol-based depressants? I have to work this accident for all it’s worth! I hold up my hands and pump my fist, shouting.
“Take that, Jackass Hunter!”
The party laughs, some people shake their heads. I go back inside, squishing over to a shocked Kayla.
“Sorry about your floor. I love you. Have I mentioned that lately? I really love you and please don’t be mad I shoved your crush into a fountain, please, it was an accident but I’m making it look like it wasn’t because that’s how smooth I am.”
There’s an anxious span of quiet in which I reconsider all my life choices up until this moment. She wrinkles her nose, and smiles.
“You smell like pee.”
I exhale in relief, inhale, and immediately regret it.
“I smell hells like pee.”
-7-
3 Years
14 Weeks
3 Days
Jack Hunter’s level of menace is steadily increasing.
For a while back at the party I thought our pretty-damn-secluded moment of secluded-feelings-sharing was going to diffuse the tension between us, but alas. It appears, by the pictures plastered all over the walls and lockers of East Summit High, that I was wrong.
The pictures are of me. Fat. Coming out of my old high school building in Good Falls, Florida. My butt crack is showing, and I’m practically swimming in the old baggy clothes I used to wear.
People look at the pictures, then point at me and laugh.
I immediately weigh the pros and cons of throwing a tantrum.
Kayla sidles up to me, a nervous look on her face. She walks with me to class. People really are huge meanies. Just really big fat meanies. This has to be Jack’s doing, since we are at war and all, but this is the cruelest thing he’s done yet. I’ve been pretty cruel too, but I didn’t dig around in his past or anything. Okay. Maybe I did. A little. I talked to Wren and he told me about Sophia and I mentioned Sophia at the party. So I guess this is Jack’s way of telling me to butt out. I ticked him off. Super ticked. A very large tick that has drank a lot of blood and been stuck in an armpit for so long it became a Godziltick. That’s how ticked off he is. As if I care! He’s brought out the big guns, the guns of me being fat, and I still look fabulous even fat but how dare he reach his shitty little fingers into my past and air it out for everyone to see, and if I ever see him again I’ll tear his esophagus up out of his mouth and use it as a ceremonial headdress –
“Isis,” Kayla pats me on the back. “You’re thinking out loud again.”
“I am upset,” I sniff. “With certain persons in the immediate vicinity.”
“Not me,” Kayla clarifies.
“Never you.”
“To be fair, it’s a very pretty butt crack,” Kayla offers.
“Thank you. What’s Jack’s first period?”
“Trigonometry with Mr. Bernard –”
I storm over to J-Building and casually kick Mr. Bernard’s door open. Jack’s in the back. I stride over to the whiteboard, p
ick up the eraser, and chuck it at his head. It dings off with considerable force and Jack looks stunned.
“You’re a horrible little boy, Jackoff Hunter McShittington!” I shout. “I bet you have potted cactuses - ”
“Cacti,” Mr. Bernard offers timidly.
“ – CACTI, and you smell horrible and you’re the stupidest asshole I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting and if you could just go jump off a building and die alone I would be very grateful!”
I slam the door behind me and lean against it, breathing deep. With all the angst out, I can smile again, think straight again. I skip to class. Kayla quirks a brow.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m currently devising terribly fiendish torture scenarios in which Jack doesn’t get out alive with his penis intact.”
“Oh.”
“He is getting crossed off the decent human list,” I assure her. “With red ink! And a million exclamation points!”
“Do you think he really did it? He taped all those pictures up by himself? Where did he even get them?”
“There’s only one person who has access to my past like that,” I murmur. As I make my way to Wren’s typical hideout at recess, I realize I haven’t cried. Not a single tear. And why should I? I’m not proud of who I used to be, but it’s not who I am anymore. I’m different. I have four streaks of purple in my hair, and I haven’t fallen in love in three years, twelve weeks, and five days. I’m doing good. I’m doing so much better than that person in the pictures was. I hold my hand out and run down a line of lockers, tearing off the pictures as I go. I slam the wad into the trash triumphantly. My fat butt decorates the floor, ripped and shredded and made dirty by the thousands of footprints that’ve walked on it. Some people have scribbled FAT and HUGE BITCH. The janitor is sweeping pictures up by the dozens, his usual death-glare turning a little soft when he sees me.