Blue Hearts of Mars (39 page)

She groaned inwardly. Why had she even bothered to come?
 She could be home watching
Star Trek
or
Dr. Who
reruns or the recent adaptation of that obscure 18th century novel by the BBC. Anything would be better than this on a Friday night.

Swallowing, she tried to ignore their attractive faces, tight T-shirts, and tighter jeans.
 Most of the eyes watching her belonged to guys Noah’s age from nearby Middle Arizona University. But, a few of them were girls from Sarah’s high school. They had hipster hair, outfits, and attitudes, and they laughed prettily as they hung on the arms of the older guys. Something about them screamed Pocahontas. From the Disney cartoon. Which, if you asked her, she’d deny ever seeing. Because…

These girls were the wolf pack of the high school.
 The in-crowd. Only a few appeared to recognize Sarah and gave her encouraging but vacant smiles. The others openly ignored her, staring at Noah or off into the distance, like they were waiting for their close up, Mr. Demille. Sarah laughed inwardly at the reference. They wouldn’t even get it if she tried sharing it. Which was why she was standing there, awkward, wishing that Noah would just ask someone else.

Sarah coughed into her hand. A shaggy-haired guy leaned over to whisper into the ear of another guy wearing a big shell necklace that was meant to be cool because it was so obviously dumb. The one wearing the shell necklace flicked his gaze over Sarah, then laughed and nodded.
 

Sarah shifted and shoved her fists into the pockets of her jeans.
 She became preternaturally aware of how her jeans weren’t the skinny, painted on kind with golf-ball size openings for her ankles. They were comfortable jeans. They fell around her ankles with frays like she belonged at the beach.

Her pants would go really well with that shell-necklace. Like they were made to go together. Sarah cleared her throat—it was suddenly as dry as a bone in the desert sun—and ignored Noah’s audience.

Guitar riffs squealed from the television as Sarah shook her head and spoke loudly over the music, “Thanks, but, uh, no thanks. Someone else should go. I’d rather watch.” 

“Come on, Red. It’s simple, really, once you get the hang of it.” Noah called her Red because of her crazy-long red hair, and she instantly resented the fact that he used it in front of this room of strangers.

“I don’t want to. I’m not good at video games.”

“Please?” He scrunched his nose and squinted like a little boy begging his mother for more ice cream. It always worked on Sarah, and she hated him for using it against her in front of these lions.

“Fine,” she growled, moving toward him, grabbing the miniature guitar from his hand, and bitterly throwing the flimsy strap over her shoulder.

He instructed her on the basics of the game, picked up another guitar and laughed excitedly as the notes began to roll down the screen. Each false note Sarah hit made a jarring, discordant sound. She could feel her ears burning as Noah thrashed easily through the simple song. The Pocahontas girls were laughing behind her, she could hear their quiet chuckles and whispers. “It’s like she’s never played a simple music game,” they said. “Where’s she been living? In a cave?”

She had actually lived in a cave a large portion of her life, but they had no way to know that. It almost made her laugh—they said it as an insult, but it was true!—and she would have laughed if she hadn’t been standing with her back to them, exposed and vulnerable. Tiny hairs on her neck stood up and bristled. It bothered Sarah to be so unprotected. She felt nude. Her palms began to sweat thinking about her awkward display, and her fingers slipped on the guitar-controller buttons.
Clang
. A wrong note.
Brang
.
Brang
.
Clang
. More false notes. It went downhill after that as her fingers slipped across the plastic surface of the buttons.

Noah began to add flourishes to his playing. He held his controller in the air like a rock star, twisting it over his head. A couple of the girls clapped and laughed. “He’s so amazing,” she heard one say. “You should hear him play his real guitar,” another answered.

Sarah felt the blood rush to her cheeks. I hate him, I hate him, she thought, glowering at the screen now, imagining she was clocking him upside the head with the toy guitar. Focusing on something else like that—her revenge fantasy—improved her playing somehow. Like those stupid magic-eye books. The last forty-five seconds of the song weren’t so bad, but still, her heart raced and perspiration soaked her underarms from such a lengthy surge of embarrassment.

“Nice work,” Noah said as the game ended and rated their playing. Sarah intentionally ignored the crowd behind them as she shoved the guitar at her friend.

“Thanks. That was almost as fun as a root canal,” she said, biting her lip and giving him a withering look.

“You got better at the end,” he noted, taking the extra controller from her.

“If by better you mean that I hit one right note out of every one hundred, then, yeah, I did.”

He laughed. “Come on, Sarah, with a little practice you’ll be whipping me every time.”

She rolled her eyes and turned, her gaze sweeping over the pride of lions draped across the ragged furniture; they regarded her with languid eyes. In that moment she caught the complete indifference of their expressions. They really did think she’d been lost in a cave, she realized, and only because she didn’t care for their clubs and rock star games.

“Where you going?” Noah asked as she headed out of the room.

“To find Shannon,” she said over her shoulder. A glance in a gold-framed mirror on the wall revealed that her red hair had begun to curl at the back of her neck where nervous-sweat had soaked it. She sighed thinking of all the time she’d spent straightening it earlier that evening.

“I’ll be out later,” Noah called. She noticed a tone of concern in his voice, which gave her a burst of satisfaction. Served him right. Honestly, she thought to herself, did he enjoy torturing her? He was used to her ways, how she kept to herself, observing others from afar, and staying out of the fray. That was where she was at her best: being silent and figuring things out. So why did he always have to push her into uncomfortable situations?
 

As she strode away, she could just make out his baritone over the echo of her footsteps on the dirty hardwood floor as she walked away. “Someone else?” he was saying. “Come on.
 Someone. Madison, I know you’re into this. Right? I’ll use three fingers instead of four.” 

She went through a cluttered kitchen to the back door. Piles of tree-hugger magazines littered the kitchen table—which was actually a secondhand card table with stains covering the torn vinyl. A bowl of spotted bananas and withered oranges made a laughable attempt at being a centerpiece. Along the wall near the back door stood a row of guitar cases.
 Sarah knocked one over as she opened the door. Righting the case quickly with an embarrassed glance behind her, she stepped out into the cool night and took a deep, relieved breath.

The cold desert air refreshed her after the musky odor of the house.
 She glanced up at the clear night sky, feeling a twinge in her stomach as she left the indoor party. The party. The scene. It was all so pointless to her. She followed the worn dirt path beneath a lightly swaying acacia to the farthest end of the yard, heading toward the orange glow of the fire. 

The night was turning out exactly the way she had feared it would. So far there had been no sudden revelations that she was, in fact, a very sociable creature who loved mingling with crowds and trying to blend in with them in all the right ways while standing out in all the right and enviable ways. Why had she ever considered the possibility that this party would be different? She bit her lip and shook her head. Noah. She made the huge mistake of letting Noah convince that tonight would be different.

Two years ago she’d stopped attending parties and other social functions with Noah. Because it always turned out that Sarah left them feeling worse about herself: she was a freak, obviously, who didn’t love the feeling that she was being sized up by others, ferreted into their mental stereotypes, pigeon-holed into what they saw her as. So she avoided situations where that happened. Especially parties.

She couldn’t blame Noah. No. They’d met in junior high and he always managed to have a million friends, so parties were a natural fit for him.
 Sarah had two friends: him and Shannon.

If Sarah had desired seclusion tonight, she should have stayed home.

Laughter and hints of smoke drifted on a light breeze toward her as she drew closer to the fire. She reached the group and hovered at the outside edge of the circle of lawn chairs until she spotted Shannon. Her friend’s dyed blonde hair—cropped short and spiked into points—seemed to glow against the backdrop of night on the far side of the fire. Sarah wondered how long her friend had been sitting so close to the flames, noticing that her freckled cheeks were flushed from the heat. Shannon’s almond-shaped eyes glittered with reflected firelight and amusement.

Sarah skirted the group silently.
 No one seemed to notice her at the fringe of light. When she crouched down behind Shannon and tapped her on the shoulder, the blonde turned, startled.

“Oh, hey, Red,” Shannon said, smiling. She reached over and patted Sarah on the cheek.

Someone began fervently strumming an acoustic guitar. A male voice joined in, mingling with the chords.

“Having fun?” Shannon asked, quietly.
 Another girl sitting nearby glanced at them, obviously irritated.

“I guess. Well . . . I mean, no, not really. Noah just forced me to play that stupid guitar game in front of everyone. It was torture.” She paused as the playing got louder. “Do you know Bob Dylan over there?”
 

“His name’s Bill.
 He’s good, isn’t he?” Shannon’s gaze swept across the fire to where the musical genius was seated, the light from the flames dancing over the glossy finish of his guitar. His hair was dyed black and cut in asymmetrical lines, hanging over one eye down to his cheekbone.

“Sure,” Sarah agreed politely. “Is he in college?”
 

“You don’t think he’s good?” Shannon’s gaze swung back to Sarah’s face. Her eyes narrowing in affronted concern.

Sarah shrugged. “No, he’s fine, I guess. Brilliant. I’m not a great judge of that stuff, though. You know better than me.” She let out a sigh. “Anyway, I just came to tell you I’m going home. Cool? You can get a ride with Noah unless you want to come now, with me.”

For the weekend, Sarah’s parents—both professors at the university—were at a conference in Europe. The two girls had gotten permission to stay at the St. John home together. Normally Sarah just slept there alone when her parents were away, to keep an eye on the house and the family dog, Ivan. Sarah was nearly eighteen anyway and Noah’s mother lived down the street a few houses and checked on Sarah almost every night when she was there alone. But this time Rosa was out of town. She’d taken Noah’s little brothers down to Tucson to see their grandmother. So Shannon would be there to keep Sarah company and as added insurance against anything going wrong, according to their parents.

And . . . well . . . Noah was staying over too . . . but that was something neither girls’ parents knew.

Really, it was all just supposed to be for fun. Shannon saw it as a chance to try out what it would be like in college, when there were no parents around to boss them and tell them what to do. And though Sarah had spent plenty of time on her own and didn’t think having her parents gone was that impressive, it seemed like the sleepover could be fairly adventurous.

“You should stay,” Shannon said, studying Sarah with her dark blue eyes.

Sarah shook her head and pretended to yawn.
 “I’m tired.”

Shannon nodded, her face softening at whatever she saw in Sarah’s eyes. She knew when to back down. “I’ll hitch a ride with Noah. Be careful.”

Sarah smiled reassuringly. “Of course.”

She gave Shannon’s shoulder a quick squeeze before standing. The strumming had become frenzied. Heads bobbed and eyes closed as the black-haired musician bent close to his guitar, playing and singing his heart out.
 The sound of his voice brought the strange ache inside Sarah into sharp relief. 

They don’t know me at all, she thought as the group watched him play or stared trance-like at the excited flames. But it wasn’t their fault she didn’t fit in.

It was hers, she knew.

She gave the group huddled around the fire one last look and walked away. The shadows reclaimed her as she slipped into the arms of the chilly, indifferent night. She wondered if anyone saw her walking away and if they cared at all.

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by Nicole Grotepas

Kindle Edition

Copyright 2013 by Nicole Grotepas

Cover art designed by Ronnell Porter