Bad Taste in Boys (5 page)

“Water,” Mike mumbled, shambling toward the house.

The EMTs finally did something useful. One intercepted Mike at the back door, and the other came over to talk to us.

“Good work,” the EMT said.

“Excuse me?” I took off my glove and threw it into the fire. I kept expecting the adrenaline to hit, but I just felt numb.

“Looks like you did the job for us, Ms.…?”

“Grable. Kate Grable.”

“Gotcha. Well, we’ll check him out, but I imagine it’s just another case of alcohol poisoning. Was he drinking?”

“I, um, don’t know. I just got here.”

Normally, I would have been bouncing at the chance to brief an EMT on a medical emergency, but not after what had just happened. I couldn’t believe Mike had walked away. Not after what I’d seen. Dead people don’t get up all of a sudden. How could I have been so wrong?

“We’ll give the guy a once-over just in case,” the EMT said. “Thanks again, Kate. You ought to consider a career in the medical profession.”

I ought to consider a lobotomy if I couldn’t even tell if someone was dead or not.

Rocky escorted me into the living room, where I let myself fall onto a leather couch that probably cost the national budget of some small island nation. Maybe that was where I should go to practice medicine. Places like that were so starved for medical assistance, they wouldn’t mind if I was a complete hack.

She sat down beside me. “Kate?”

“Yeah.” I covered my face with a pillow. I wanted to die.

“What’s—” She stopped, and then in a completely different tone of voice, said, “Do you think he should be doing that?”

I inched the pillow away from my eyes. Rocky pointed through a set of French doors toward the dining room, where one of the EMTs was smacking some kind of fancy medical scope like he thought that might miraculously make it work. Then he tossed it into his kit and kicked that closed. You aren’t exactly supposed to throw those things around. Even I knew that, and I was a complete idiot.

“No. He shouldn’t.” I buried my face.

“Uh, Kate? What’s wrong?” Rocky asked.

“I’m mentally defective.”

“You saved Mike’s life!”

I lowered the pillow. “I thought he was dead, Rocky. And what’s worse? Even though I thought that, I still got a thrill out of rubbing arms with Aaron.”

He walked in with a glass of water just in time to hear that. I really wanted to die now.

“Drink this,” he said, like I hadn’t just made a total fool of myself.

I covered my furiously red face again. “I don’t want it. Thanks.”

Aaron took the pillow away. It was really tempting to hide behind my hands, but that was a little too immature even for me.

“Look,” he said, setting the pillow on the floor. “My best friend
just collapsed, and I could tell by the look on your face that you recognized the mark on his arm. You’re smarter than all of us put together. Help me figure out what just happened. Please?”

I gazed at the little cut above his eyebrow. And then I told him everything I knew about the vials.

“It could be nothing, but it seems like a tremendously big coincidence to me,” I finished, hoping I came off as semirational.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Aaron said.

“Me either,” I replied, trying not to sound as relieved as I felt. He didn’t think I was nuts. “And Coach locked himself in his office after the game. He was probably getting the steroids. Maybe Mike’s allergic to them.”

“Or they’re contaminated,” Aaron said. “They’re not exactly regulated by the FDA.”

“Okay. So we have a possible explanation, but what about opportunity? Were you with Mike all night? Did Coach have the opportunity to give him the drugs?”

“Yeah, he did.” Aaron ran his fingers through his hair. “He met with each of the players after the game. One by one, in his office. It took forever.”

“Really? What for?”

“He said he wanted to give us individual feedback, but all he told me was not to get tackled so much.” Aaron frowned. “As if I needed someone to tell me that. Honestly, the whole thing seemed pretty strange to me.”

We were sitting with our heads close together, practically
whispering. If I had a diary, I’d write all about this later and probably dot all my
i
s with little hearts out of sheer romantic starvation.

It was a good thing I didn’t have a diary.

Rocky spoke up. “Uh, guys?”

I jumped. I’d forgotten she was there.

“Aren’t you overlooking something?” she said. “If Coach was going to give somebody steroids, wouldn’t he dose the quarterback first? I mean, that’s what I’d do if I wanted to win.”

“Maybe he wanted to test it first,” I said. “Like, he gave them to a couple of guys to see how they’d react before doing the whole team? Or maybe he knew Aaron would say no, and he picked the guys he thought would be least likely to ask questions.”

“That’s true.” Aaron looked kind of embarrassed, but he smiled at me anyway. “I may suck, but at least I suck honestly.”

“You’re assuming that Coach is the one who shot him up,” Rocky said. “Maybe Mike’s taking them on his own.”

“Nah.” Aaron shook his head. “Mike can be a moron sometimes, but he’s a good guy once you get to know him. And he’s no user. I’ll ask him what happened, and I’ll see what I can learn from the other guys while I’m at it. If Coach gave them something, they’ll tell me.”

“I’ll check in with Kiki to make sure no one else has been sick tonight,” Rocky said.

They stood up and looked at me like they were waiting for me to add something brilliant. “I’ll stay here, if that’s okay with you guys,” I said.

“You sure you’re okay?” Aaron asked, patting my arm.

I nodded. I just needed a minute to chill. It was too much to handle: Mike’s collapse, the CPR, the steroids … not to mention the fact that Aaron had spoken more words to me today than in the last three years combined. I knew, because I’d counted.

Maybe I should have felt guilty about not helping them, but I’d already done my part. True, my part had consisted of fiddling with the CPR mask, but still. I’d done it. Besides, I was afraid I’d bump into Mike if I ran around investigating, and he was the last person in the world I wanted to see.

Unfortunately for me? He walked into the living room five minutes after Aaron and Rocky left.

Mike stopped a few feet away, staring me down with an expression that said he was trying to figure out if I’d taste better with ketchup or mayo. I had this irrational urge to burrow into the smooth leather of the couch and pretend I didn’t see him.

“Hi, Mike. Are you, um, okay?” I sat up straighter, hugging my pillow like it might offer some protection. From what, I didn’t know.

He nodded slowly.

I hadn’t thought it was possible for me to get more nervous, but I did. Now I couldn’t stop chattering.

“Well, I’m glad to see you. You had us worried for a second, you know. Everybody, I mean. We were all pretty worried there. But the EMTs gave you a clean bill of health, huh?”

“No.”

He just kept staring. I actually found myself wishing for his usual Neanderthal behavior. His fixation on me was almost pathological.

“Well then, maybe I should, uh, check you out instead. I mean, would you mind if I checked your pulse and stuff? Just in case. Not like I think there’s anything wrong with you, of course, because obviously there isn’t,” I babbled.

He nodded again. I stood up, my heart beating erratically. The EMTs weren’t going to give protected medical information to a high school student, and it looked like Mike had refused treatment anyway. If I wanted to know anything, I had to find it out for myself.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.
My instinct to run shrieking out of the room was ridiculous. I placed two fingers on the side of his neck. I didn’t like how his skin felt, chilled and slightly stiff. Given the fact that I had thought he was in rigor about fifteen minutes ago, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I didn’t have to like it.

I couldn’t find his pulse. I couldn’t concentrate.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked nonsensically. Of course he wasn’t okay. If he was, he wouldn’t be staring at me like he was a lion and I was a nice juicy antelope.

I looked up at him and his face was right there, blank eyes devouring me. The corner of his mouth curled up in a smile more predatory than friendly, and he raised a hand to stroke my cheek. It was time to run away, but I froze. And then? He swooped down, pressing his cold, fishy lips to mine.

He tasted like old bile and rotten meat. I caught the faint smell of vomit, undercut with spicy cologne that only made the stench even more disgusting.

I flailed around in an attempt to break the kiss, twisting my head and shoving his chest and shoulders, but he wouldn’t let me go. His hand clamped onto the back of my neck. He bit down hard on my lower lip, drawing blood. The coppery tang that flooded my mouth was actually a relief because I couldn’t taste him anymore.

When he finally released me, I shrieked, “Get off!” Then I scrambled backward, stumbling over the couch and nearly falling over. There was a smear of blood on his bottom lip. He didn’t even bother to wipe it away.

I fled down the hall, looking back over my shoulder. As I watched, he idly began to chew, the blank expression still on his face. Had he taken off a chunk of my lip?

I had to get out of there. But when I threw open the front door, I ran smack into Kiki.

“Listen, Kate,” she said in a rapid, breathless voice that didn’t sound at all like her. “You’d better clear out. I think the EMTs called the cops. I’d hate for you to get in any trouble, especially after what you did tonight.”

“Uh …” I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t get the gross taste out of my mouth. “I need Rocky.”

“She’s on bottle detail all the way out in the back. Did you bite your lip? You’re bleeding. Like
really
bleeding. Gimme a sec. I’ll get you something.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to talk about what had just happened. I wanted to forget it entirely, except my lip was throbbing hard enough to make that pretty much impossible. Kiki dashed into the house and ran out a moment later with a handful of tissues. I pressed them to my mouth despite the pain.

“Thanks for everything, Kate. I’m so glad you were here.” She squeezed my arm. “Get home safe and get some well-deserved rest, okay?”

“But …”

I couldn’t come up with a rational reason to stay. Besides, I couldn’t stop shaking, and I really wanted to go home. I had the intense urge to brush my teeth for the next half hour or so and maybe follow that up with a nice carbonic acid gargle.

I’d just have to text Rocky. Maybe she could come over and take care of me while I had a complete meltdown.

I walked out to the car, looking over my shoulder about every five seconds. The driveway was almost empty already. Jonah sat in the passenger seat, obsessively scrubbing his hands with an antibac wipe.

“So …,” he said while I dug my phone out of my pocket and started tapping away at the keys. “That party sucked.”

vaulted out of the car the second we pulled into our driveway. I had to brush my teeth or I’d vomit. I used about half a tube of toothpaste, and it made my mouth sting like mad, but it made me feel a little better anyway.

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. “Oh my god.” A chunk was missing from my lower lip. And it was oozing.

“You got a tetanus shot last summer,” I told myself. “You’re going to be fine.” A lovely black scab was starting to form, so I wouldn’t need stitches. But I could feel a wave of hysteria threatening to wash over me.

I needed Rocky.

She still hadn’t texted me back, so I called her. Rocky liked to save her minutes, because she’d been racking up overage charges
like crazy ever since her boyfriend had left for basic training. Her parents made her pay them, so she was trying not to use the phone too much. But this was a special situation.

It went straight to voice mail. I waited for the beep. “Call me, damn it!”

Being gnawed on had pushed me over the edge. Mike had always been a tool, but not the kind of tool who bit people when he had the munchies. I couldn’t imagine a steroid that turned people into cannibals, although I vaguely remembered reading about a boxer who bit some guy’s ear off, so maybe it was possible. Or maybe it was totally unrelated.