Beach Trip (28 page)

riggs’s fraternity brothers were the first to arrive, of course. Mel stood at the kitchen window watching them swarm around the keg like so many yellow jackets around a cider bowl. She said, “Lola, go out there and tell them not to drink all the beer before the party even gets started.”

“I’ll tell them,” Lola said. “But it won’t do any good.”

“Tell them to go buy their own damn keg.”

Lola was almost to the door when she turned and said, “Where’s Annie? Where’s my creepy twin?”

“Yeah, where is Annie?” Sara said, coming into the kitchen with an empty tray. Their guests had begun to arrive. They could hear loud shouts and whoops from the dining room.

“She went to the library,” Mel said.

“Why?” Sara said. She was wearing coveralls and a pageboy wig. The original idea was that she would ride a Big Wheels into the party just like Danny in
The Shining.
But the party was already getting crowded and Sara’s Big Wheels was parked on the front porch, so no
one really got
The Shining
connection. Most people just seemed to think she was a farmer.

“Maybe she was meeting someone,” Lola said innocently, smoothing the front of her dress.

Mel turned around from the window. She cocked her head and stared at Lola. Sara came up on the other side of her so they stood shoulder to shoulder. “What do you mean?”

Lola colored slightly and chewed her lower lip. She raised one eyebrow and shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean,” she said.

“Do you know something we don’t?” Sara asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “Has Annie told you something she hasn’t told us?”

“No,” Lola said.

Mel was quiet for a moment, considering her answer. “I think she had to pick up something for a class,” she said finally. “Something at the library.”

Sara nodded as if she found this reasonable. “She wouldn’t do that to Mitchell,” she added. “Cheat, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Mel turned again to the window. “Besides, who else besides Mitchell would put up with her?”

Lola hurried out the back door. Mel watched her cross the yard to the keg where Briggs and his rowdy fraternity brothers had taken up their stations. Briggs put one burly arm around Lola and pulled her close. One of the boys gave her a beer. “I hope they don’t drain the keg before everyone else gets here,” Mel said.

“I better check the table,” Sara said. She picked up a couple of bags of chips and went out.

Mel turned and followed her into the crowded dining room, nervously looking around for J.T. She hoped he wouldn’t come but there was a chance that he might. It would be just like him to show up and ruin the party.

The room was packed to the rafters, and most of the guests were in costume. She stepped around The Incredible Hulk, said hello to a Pet Rock and a couple of disco dancers, and pushed her way through a group of Symbionese Liberation Army soldiers who, along with Patty Hearst, were laying waste to the dining table.

“Yo,” someone said behind her.

It was Bart, the guy Sara had dated, briefly, their junior year. He’d let his hair grow out, and Mel hardly recognized him. She hadn’t seen him since
that night at the drive-in when he’d made a pass at her outside the concession building and J.T., as if sensing this, had threatened to kick his ass.

“Bangin’ party,” he said, smiling down at her. He was better-looking than she remembered, tanned and blond.

“It’s just getting started,” Mel said, glancing around the room.

“So where’s the keg?” Someone had put the Allman Brothers on the stereo and “Statesboro Blues” reverberated off the walls.

“It’s out back,” she shouted. “Hopefully your fraternity brothers haven’t sucked it dry.”

He laughed, leaning in close. “No guarantees there,” he said. “Do you want a beer?” He was dressed like a Sandman from
Logan’s Run.
All of Briggs’s fraternity brothers had dressed like Sandmen.

Mel lifted her glass and smiled. She liked him better with his hair grown out. “No thanks,” she said, wishing now that she’d worn something a little sexier than her Wendy Torrance costume.

“What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Zombie. There’s a pitcher in the kitchen if you want one.”

“Thanks, but I’ll start with beer.” He leaned over and said, “Don’t go anywhere,” and, grinning, pushed his way through the crowd toward the back door.

Mel watched him go and thought,
Why not
? She wasn’t going steady anymore. She wasn’t wearing anyone’s brand. She was free to do whatever she wanted, even if it meant sleeping with the entire ATO house (not that she would, of course). After all, the more experience she got, the better writer she’d be. That’s what she told herself these days, anyway. She held her drink above her head and pushed her way through the crowd toward Sara, who was standing beside Bette Midler, looking nervously down at the table.

“At this rate we’ll run out of food by nine!” Sara shouted.

Mel shrugged. “Oh well,” she said. “Hey, do you remember that guy you dated a few times—Bart?”

“The douche bag? Yeah, I remember. What about him?”

“He’s here.”

“Great.”

“So I take it you never really liked him?”

Sara stared at her for several beats. “Doi,” she said.

“Okay,” Mel said, moving on. “Just making sure.”

•  •  •

By ten o’clock the party was in full swing. The food was dwindling but the keg was still flowing. Sara made her way through the crowded house and into the backyard, where Briggs and his fraternity brothers were busy doing keg stands and whooping it up. A group of giggling Delta Gammas stood around watching them. Their parties always wound up like this, with the Greek crowd clustered around the keg in the back and the dopers and Goths swarming the front porch. The two groups touched, sporadically, but they never actually mixed. It was one of the most annoying things about Lola dating Briggs Furman, the fact that he and his ATO storm troopers were always crashing their parties. Briggs was a great-looking guy, smart and well connected, but he was a complete asshole and he always treated Lola like she was nine years old.
No, Lola, I don’t want you to go out drinking with the girls
or
No, Lola you can’t go to that U2 concert
or
Go in the house and change, Lola, I don’t like what you’re wearing.
Lola was so sweet and kindhearted she’d put up with just about anything, but sometimes Sara wished Lola wasn’t so quick to let herself be treated like a doormat. Then again, who was she to talk?

She pushed herself through the giggling Delta Gammas toward Briggs. “Ex-cuse me!,” one of the girls said. “The line starts back here.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, this is my party so I don’t have to stand in line.”

“Bogus,” the girl said.

The Japanese lanterns shed a festive light, illuminating the bare trees and tall shrubs that ringed the yard. A pale sliver of moon hung from the winter sky. A series of high temperatures the week before had melted most of the snow, which was good because they’d been able to set the keg up in the yard. Usually this time of year, they were forced to set it up on the side porch, a narrow enclosed space running along the side of the house that they used as a laundry room.

Sara tapped Briggs on the shoulder. He and another frat brother were holding one of the Sandmen up by the ankles while he did a handstand on the keg. Another brother stuck the beer nozzle into the Sandman’s mouth. Briggs grinned when he saw her and said, “Yo, Sara, you want to get vertical?”

“I am vertical, Briggs.”

“Suit yourself.” The Sandmen chanted to ten in unison and now the guy on the keg shook his leg and Briggs and the holder dropped him. He spit out the nozzle, stood upright for a moment, then moved sidewise
through the crowd before his knees buckled, and he went down. The crowd roared and Briggs motioned for the next contestant to step up.

“Feel free to go buy another keg,” Sara said.

“I bought this one,” Briggs said.

“No, you didn’t. Lola did.”

“Same thing.” He grinned and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Hey, don’t spaz out. I already sent a couple of the guys on a beer run.”

“Well, I hope you told them to buy plenty. You and your friends aren’t the only guests, you know.”

“We’re the only guests who count.”

“I know it’s hard, Briggs, but try not to be an asshole.”

“Hey, I’m just being myself.”

“Exactly.”

On her way back to the house, she met Lola crossing the yard with a plate of food in her hands. “Please tell me that’s not for your boyfriend,” Sara said sharply. “Please tell me you’re not waiting on him hand and foot like a servant. Or a perfect little wife.”

Lola giggled and glanced at Briggs, who was busy loading another victim onto the keg. “He’s busy right now,” she said. “I really don’t mind. I really don’t mind at all.” She backed across the lawn as she was talking, holding the plate up in front of her like an offering.

Sara sadly watched her cross the yard. It was obvious that in Lola’s little world feminism didn’t exist. Despite her expensive liberal education, Lola would always be what she had been born and bred to be; a good Southern Girl. Sara sighed and went into the house to look for Mel (a not-so-good Southern Girl), stopping in the dining room to replenish a big wooden bowl with potato chips. Most of the special food was gone now and they were down to chips and dips. She pushed through the crowd, stopping to talk to a girl dressed like Linda Blair from
The Exorcist
, who was in her Russian Poets class. It took her a while but she finally reached the front door. She peered through the screen and stepped through, the door slamming loudly on her heels.

She couldn’t see Mel anywhere. The porch was hazy with marijuana smoke. An overhead light glowed feebly, casting shadows around the edges, where people clustered in groups of twos and threes, sitting on the balustrades or cross-legged on the floor. Someone had pushed a speaker up
to the window screen, and the Eagles were singing “Hotel California.” The mood here was mellower, less frantic than the keg stands going on out back.

“This bud’s for you,” a curly-haired boy said, handing her a joint. She took a couple of hits and passed it on. Out in front of the house a guy dressed as Mad Max was pedaling her Big Wheels up and down the sidewalk shouting,
I’ll get you, Toecutter!
She turned to go back in, but as she did, something in the shadows at the other end of the porch caught her eye. She stopped suddenly and stood very still, staring. Mel and Bart were sprawled in the porch swing, making out.

She stood there watching them with a kind of sick fascination. The crowd swirled around her like smoke, parting from time to time to reveal Mel, obviously drunk, sprawled across Bart’s lap. The whole scene was sickening and false, and made Sara feel mildly dirty, like a voyeur at a peep show. She thought of J.T Radford drinking himself into a stupor down at the Bulldog. Despite all that had happened between them (or hadn’t happened between them), she hoped J.T. wouldn’t show up to see this.

Annie appeared suddenly on the porch steps, materializing out of the darkness like a ghost. “Where’ve you been?” Sara asked, as she came up on the porch.

“At the library.” Annie pushed past her. Her cheeks were red with the cold and it looked as if she’d been crying; her eyes were pink and swollen.

“Are you okay?”

Annie swung the door open and stepped inside, letting the screen door slam against her heels. “I don’t feel well,” she said, avoiding Sara’s eyes. “I think I’ll go lie down.”

Sara watched her disappear up the stairs. Everyone’s life seemed to be unraveling. If Sara could have fixed everything, if she could have made everyone happy, she would have. But standing there watching Mel make out with Bart, she realized how destructive it had all become. Unfixable. It was a fight to the death now between Mel and J.T, and there would be no survivors. People would get hurt. People would have to take sides. Sara imagined herself pitching between the two of them like a battered shuttlecock.

She put her hand on the door to go in. And then, as if to remind her just how bad things could get, J.T. showed up.

Lola waited until she was sure Briggs was drunk before taking him the plate of food. She had fixed it earlier in the evening and then hidden it in
the back of the refrigerator until later. Around ten o’clock she took out the plate, ground up one of her sleeping tablets, and sprinkled it all over the Spicy Bat Wings, Brain Pâté, and Corpse Salsa.

It was a beautiful evening, one of those evenings that made Lola happy, as if the moon, dangling like a jewel above the horizon, and the stars, glimmering in the dark velvet sky, had been made just for her. Coming down the steps to the backyard, carrying Briggs’s plate in her hands like an offering to Hypnos, the god of sleep, Lola could feel her heart fluttering in her throat. In another twenty minutes she would be free. In another twenty minutes she would be wrapped in the arms of her beloved.

She passed Sara, who stopped to hassle her about carrying the plate to Briggs. Lola wanted to giggle, to laugh out loud. She wanted to say,
Don’t worry, it’s not what you think.
She wanted to tell Sara everything, because Lola was bad with secrets, but she couldn’t tell her, not yet anyway, not until everything was settled. Not until she was sure her mother and Briggs wouldn’t be able to sabotage her plans.