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Cat and Eureka passed a tribe of Pilgrim-costumed freshmen gathered around a fire pit in the center of the lawn, their faces lit orange and yellow by the flames. When they passed the Maze and heard laughter inside, Eureka tried not to think of Brooks.
Cat steered her up the stairs to the back patio, past a big black cauldron of crawfish surrounded by kids snapping off the tails and sucking fat from the heads. Shucking crawfish was one of a bayou child’s earliest rites of passage, so its savagery felt natural everywhere, even in costume, even drunk in front of your crush.
When they got in line for punch, Eureka heard a loud male voice in the distance call out, “Make like a tree and leave. ”
“I think we’re the hottest leaves here,” Cat said as the band began to play from the patio above. She pushed Eureka through underclassmen to the front of the drinks line. “Now we can relax and enjoy ourselves. ”
The idea of a relaxed Cat made Eureka smirk. She looked out at the party. The Faith Healers were playing “Four Walls” and they sounded good, giving the party a soul. She’d been waiting for this moment, to experience joy without a wave of guilt immediately following. Eureka knew Diana wouldn’t want her moping in her room. Diana would want her to be at the Maze Daze in a short brown dress, drinking punch with her best friend, having fun. Diana would picture Brooks there, too. Losing his friendship would be like mourning another death, but Eureka didn’t want to think about that now.
Cat slipped a plastic cup of punch into Eureka’s hand. It was not the lethal purple poison of the Trejean colada of years past. It was an appetizing shade of red. It actually smelled fruity. Eureka was about to take a sip when she heard a familiar voice behind her say, “It’s bad luck to drink without a toast. ”
Without turning around, Eureka took a gulp of punch. “Hey, Brooks. ”
He stepped before her. She couldn’t make sense of his costume—a thin gray long-sleeved shirt with a hint of silver shimmer, paired with what looked like matching pajama pants. His hair was wild from the boat ride she’d imagined he took with Maya. His blank eyes held none of their usual mischief. He was alone.
Cat pointed at his outfit and hooted. “Tin Man?”
Brooks turned on her icily. “It’s a precise replica of ancient harvesting attire. Precise and practical. ”
“Where?” Cat said. “On Mars?”
Brooks studied the low cut of Eureka’s dress. “I thought we were better friends than this. I asked you not to come. ”
Eureka leaned in to Cat. “Could you give us a minute?”
“You two have a blast. ” Cat backed away, finding Julien on the edge of the balcony. He was wearing a horned Viking cap, which Cat lifted off his head and placed on hers. An instant later they were cracking up, arms entwined.
Eureka compared Brook’s odd costume with last year’s elaborate Spanish moss suit. She’d helped him staple a hundred shreds of it to a vest he’d cut from a paper bag.
“I asked you not to come for your own safety,” he said.
“I’m doing fine making my own rules. ”
His hands rose like he was going to grab her shoulders, but he grabbed air. “Do you think you’re the only one affected by Diana’s death? Do you think you can swallow a bottle of pills and not gut the people who love you? That’s why I look out for you, because you quit looking out for yourself. ”
Eureka swallowed, speechless a moment too long.
“There you are. ” Maya Cayce’s deep voice made Eureka’s skin crawl. She wore black roller skates, a tiny black dress showing nine of her ten tattoos, and shoulder-grazing raven feather earrings. She skated toward Brooks from across the porch. “I lost you. ”
“For my safety?” Eureka muttered quickly. “Did you think I’d die of shock seeing you here with her?”
Maya rolled into Brooks, scooping his arm to drape it around her neck. She was half a foot taller than him in her roller skates. She looked amazing. Brooks’s hand dangled where Maya had placed it near her chest. It drove Eureka crazier than she would ever admit. He had kissed her less than a week ago.
If Cat were in Eureka’s shoes, she’d compete with Maya Cayce’s oppressive sensuality. She’d contort her body into a pose that made male circuitry go haywire. She’d have her body entwined with Brooks’s before Maya could bat her fake lashes. Eureka didn’t know how to play games like those, especially not with her best friend. All she had was honesty.
“Brooks. ” She looked straight at him. “Would you mind if I talked to you alone?”
The official Olympics timekeepers couldn’t have clocked how quickly Brooks’s arm was off Maya. An instant later, he and Eureka were trotting down the patio stairs, toward the shelter of a chinaberry tree, almost like the friends they were. They left Maya making crazy eights on the porch.
Eureka leaned against the tree. She wasn’t sure where to begin. The air was sweet and the ground was soft with mulching leaves. The party noise was distant, an elegant sound track for a private conversation. Tin lanterns in the branches cast a shimmer on Brooks’s face. He’d relaxed.
“I’m sorry I was so crazy,” he said. Wind blew some of the small yellow drupes from the tree’s branches. The fruits brushed Eureka’s bare shoulders on their way to the earth. “I’ve been worried about you since you met that guy. ”
“Let’s not talk about him,” Eureka said, because an embarrassing gush of emotion might pour out of her if they spoke about Ander. Brooks seemed to take her dismissal of the subject another way. It seemed to make him happy.
He touched her cheek. “I never want bad things to happen to you. ”
Eureka tilted her cheek into his hand. “Maybe the worst is over. ”
He smiled, the old Brooks. He left his hand against her face. After a moment he looked over his shoulder at the party. The mark on his forehead from last week’s wound was now a very light pink scar. “Maybe the best is yet to come. ”
“You didn’t happen to bring any sheets?” Eureka nodded at the Maze.
The mischief returned to his eyes. Mischief made Brooks look like Brooks. “I think we’ll be too busy for that tonight. ”
She thought about his lips on hers, how the heat of his body and the strength of his arms had overwhelmed her when they kissed. A kiss so sweet should not have been tainted by an aftermath so bitter. Did Brooks want to try it again? Did she?
When they’d made up the other day, Eureka hadn’t felt capable of clarifying where on the friends/more-than-friends continuum they stood. Now every exchange had the potential to confuse. Was he flirting? Or was she reading into something innocent?
She blushed. He noticed.
“I mean Never-Ever. We’re seniors, remember?”
Eureka hadn’t considered playing that stupid game, regardless of her status as senior and its status as tradition. Haunting the Maze sounded like more fun. “My secrets are none of the whole school’s business. ”
“You only share what you want to share, and I’ll be right there next to you. Besides”—Brooks’s sly grin told Eureka he had something up his sleeve—“you might learn something interesting. ”
The rules of Never-Ever were simple: You sat in a circle and the game moved clockwise. When it was your turn, you began with “Never have I ever …,” and you confessed something you’d never done before, the more salacious the better.
NEVER HAVE I EVER …
• lied at Confession,
• made out with my friend’s sister,
• blackmailed a teacher,
• smoked a joint,
• lost my virginity.
They way they played it at Evangeline, people who had done what you had not done had to tell their story and pass you their drink to gulp. The purer your past, the faster you got drunk. It was a corruption of the innocent, a confession in reverse. No one knew how the tradition got started. People said Evangeline seniors had played it for the past thirty years, though nobody’s parents would admit it
.
At ten o’clock, Eureka and Brooks joined the line of seniors holding plastic cups filled with punch. They followed the garbage-bag path taped to the carpet, filing into one of the guest bedrooms. It was cold and vast—a king-sized bed with a massive carved headboard at one end, severe black velour curtains lining the wall of windows on the other.
Eureka entered the circle on the floor and sat cross-legged next to Brooks. She watched the room fill up with sexy pumpkins, Goth scarecrows, Black Crows band members, gay kids dressed as farmers, and half the LSU football hall of fame. People sprawled on the bed, on the love seat near the dresser. Cat and Julien came in carrying folding chairs from the garage.
Forty-two seniors out of a class of fifty-four had shown up to play the game. Eureka envied whoever was sick, grounded, teetotaling, or otherwise absent. They’d be left out for the rest of the year. Being left out was a kind of freedom, Eureka had learned.
The room was crammed with dumb costumes and exposed flesh. Her least favorite Faith Healers song meandered endlessly outside. She nodded toward the velour curtains to her right and murmured to Brooks, “Any urge to jump through that window with me? Maybe we’ll land in the pool. ”
He laughed under his breath. “You promised. ”
Julien had finished taking a head count and was about to close the door when Maya Cayce skated in. A boy dressed like a crowbar and his friend, a bad attempt at gladiator Russell Crowe, separated to let her pass. Maya rolled up to Eureka and Brooks and tried to wedge her way between them. But Brooks moved closer to Eureka, creating a tiny space on his other side. Eureka couldn’t help admiring the way Maya took what she could get, snuggling next to Brooks as she removed her roller skates.
When the door was shut and the room buzzed with nervous laughter, Julien walked to the center of the circle. Eureka glanced at Cat, who was trying to mask her pride that her secret date for the night was the secret leader of this most secret class event.
“We all know the rules,” Julien said. “We all have our punch. ” Some kids whooped and raised their glasses. “Let the Never-Ever game of 2013 begin. And may its legend never, ever end—or leave this room. ”
More cheers, more toasting, more whole- and halfhearted laughter. When Julien spun and pointed randomly at a shy Puerto Rican girl named Naomi, you could have heard an alligator blink.
“Me?” Naomi’s voice wavered. Eureka wished Julien had chosen someone more extroverted to start the game. Everyone stared at Naomi, waiting. “Okay,” she said. “Never have I ever … played Never-Ever. ”
Over embarrassed snickers, Julien admitted his mistake. “Okay, let’s try this again. Justin?”
Justin Babineaux, hair spiked skyward as if he were in mid-fall, could be described in three words: rich soccer player. He grinned. “Never have I ever had a job. ”
“You jerk. ” Justin’s best friend, Freddy Abair, laughed, and passed Justin his cup to swig. “That’s the last time you’re getting free burgers during my shift at Hardee’s. ” Most of the rest of the class rolled their eyes as they passed their cups around the circle toward a chugging Justin.