End of the Innocence (17 page)

Kyle shot me a glance. “Say what?”

I turned the car on quickly before he could say anything else. “We all ready?”

She nodded in the backseat, but Kyle was still giving me a look. “I was weepy? What happened to love slave?”

“And we’re gone,” I said, shifting into drive.

Jennifer was rummaging in her purse. “I am not even going to ask what that meant…,” she said, moving stuff around, “but I did bring reinforcements.” She pulled a small bottle of schnapps out of her purse and held it up.

Kyle’s eyes almost fell out of his head. “You’re drinking?” He was looking at Jennifer, but from the way he glanced over at me, I knew he was asking me.

And right then it occurred to me I hadn’t honestly thought things through very well.

“Are you drinking tonight?” Kyle asked again, this time looking at me.

See, I hadn’t deduced everything about Kyle’s past, but figuring out his mom was a mean drunk had been pretty easy. I don’t mean to say Linda Stilleno is Foster’s town drunk, but in a postage stamp of a town like Foster, once someone earned a reputation, that person became gossip fodder. And Kyle’s mom had a reputation. I didn’t know squat about children of alcoholics, but that was no excuse. I should have thought things through better.

Jennifer and I always frontloaded before a party.

Frontloading is getting drunk before you go out in case wherever you end up doesn’t have the right kind of drink or even might not have any alcohol at all. Dealing with the Drama Olympics that come with a party like the one we were about to go to had always been easier if I walked in already lit. Frontloading’s like Novocaine before a root canal. It just numbs the parts that are going to cause you excruciating pain later on.

I should have known Kyle would be worried about people drinking, especially me.

“No,” I said after a second. “No, I’m not drinking tonight.” I looked in the rearview mirror at Jennifer. “And I wish you wouldn’t either.”

She paused with the bottle to her lips. “Why?”

Good question.

“Because when things go south tonight, I’d like someone who these guys respect by my side to talk some sense into them.” I saw her eyes looking back at mine in the mirror. “And when that happens, I really need you sober.”

“Why do you automatically think there is going to be drama?” she asked, still not drinking.

“Because I know these people as well as you do, and I know Tony is going to say something and Kelly might decide to be a dick tonight,
and
this is Foster, Texas. Do I have to say more?”

She sighed and put the bottle in her purse. “First, we invite the Island of Misfit Toys to the party, and now I’m going to be sober. Never let it be said, Kyle, that you haven’t made a difference around here.”

He didn’t say anything, but I saw Kyle smile and relax into his seat. Only then did I understand what he’d been going through, silently, while I made my decision and talked Jennifer into hers.

When we got to Kelly’s house, there were a few cars already parked outside, which meant we weren’t the first people to arrive. That was a good thing, because it also meant there would be people inside bored silly just waiting for other people to show up. Jennifer must have thought the same thing because she leaned up from the backseat and said, “I bet the people sitting in there now are so bored they wouldn’t care if we showed up with the Rose Bowl Parade.”

I parked the car some distance away from the house. “I have a feeling they would prefer the Rose Bowl to who we brought.” My words sounded sour in my own ears, and I realized I was reverting to old habits. Sarcasm, apathy, self-deprecating talk….

That wasn’t who I was anymore.

“No—we’re going to make this fun,” I corrected myself before taking a deep breath. “It will most likely be just this side of a three-ring circus, but we are going to have fun no matter what. Right, guys?” I turned to the two of them. They stared back at me, owl-eyed, like I had started speaking in Farsi or another language. “Right, well let’s try to have fun at the very least, okay?” I said in a much lower tone of voice.

Kyle opened his mouth to say something when the sound of someone knocking on his window from outside interrupted him. When I say interrupted him, I really mean scared the living shit out of us.

“What the fuck?” Kyle yelled, trying to jerk away from the window. The seat belt stopped him and threw him back into his seat. He started fighting with his buckle, but I put a hand over his to calm him.

“I think that’s Andy,” I said, nodding toward the window.

Kyle rolled his window down and sure enough Andy, leader of the library nerds, stood there with Jeff and Mike behind him. “We didn’t know what the definition of too early was,” Andy said apologetically. “We were hoping you hadn’t shown up yet and already gone inside.”

“We’re here,” I said, getting out of the car. “Might as well walk up with us.”

“Kyle!” Sammy’s voice called from down the street. “Is that you?” Kyle waved back and Sammy and the rest of the drama crew came walking behind her.

“You said something about Misfit Toys?” I asked Jennifer in a whisper.

Sammy had a dramatic black dress on with slashes across it showing an electric blue lining underneath. Her friends were dressed like they had just walked out of the movie
Underworld,
with pale white makeup and leather coats for all. One half of my brain thought they looked completely badass; the other half thought this was just an inferno waiting for a lit match.

“Someone didn’t think you were actually coming,” Sammy said, not looking at Jeremy. “So we were waiting until we saw you show up.”

“Yeah, because knocking on the door to a party with like fifty people with you never made anyone nervous,” Jennifer said under her breath. I turned and glared at her, and she just shrugged. “Hey, you were the one who wanted me sober.”

Fair point.

“So we’re all here?” Kyle asked, looking at the collected group of people who had surrounded us. I wasn’t sure if he was counting or not, but he looked them over and then nodded to me. “I think we’re good.”

He looked at me with those bright blue eyes with all the trust one person can have for another, and I just melted inside. “Okay, then,” I said, smiling at him. “Then let’s go to a party.”

We walked across the street like we were reenacting a scene from
Braveheart
as done by the cast of
Revenge of the Nerds
. Part of my mind told me I should be worried or at the very least embarrassed by showing up with these people behind me, but as Kyle’s hand looped around mine, those thoughts went away.

I was one of these people now, and there was nothing wrong with that.

One deep breath later, I knocked on the door.

The thumping of the bass could be heard from here; no one behind me said a word. I knocked again louder, and Kelly’s voice screaming “Coming!” came from the other side.

The look of joy and excitement on Kelly’s face lasted all of six seconds from the moment he opened the door and then saw I wasn’t alone. “Brad?” he asked, his voice cracking in surprise. “What the hell?”

I tried to keep the most neutral look on my face. “You invited me, remember?”

He said something as he turned away from the door and stomped back into the house. I turned to Jennifer and asked, “What did he say?”

“He said he only invited you,” she said in a quiet voice as we began to stream inside.

“Oh. Well,
that
can only mean the rest of the night will go well,” I said, making sure everyone else didn’t hear.

“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked when he saw Jennifer and me talking.

“Kelly just opened his door and saw a couple of dozen strangers; what do you think is wrong?” I tried not to sound sarcastic, but I couldn’t pull it off, since all I could imagine was these people blaming me for them being harassed all night. I shook my head and added, “I’m sorry; I just have a bad feeling about this.”

Kyle smiled for a second and then tried to hide it.

“What’s funny?” I asked, desperate for anything to laugh at before this night got sideways.

“It’s a
Star Wars
thing,” he explained, sounding half-embarrassed. “Never mind,” he added when he saw I didn’t get the reference. “Come on, it’ll be fine.”

Though there were several dozen outcomes I could imagine for tonight, none of them even got close to fine.

“Sure you don’t want to drink?” Jennifer asked as we headed toward the living room.

I said no, but I was lying my ass off.

Despite our effort to show up late, we were still some of the first ones here. You could tell because the four guys who had been here before us were now huddled together near the kitchen, as if the unpopular guys were carrying a communicable disease or something. This was exactly what I had been worried about. Kyle had imagined some kind of great communing between the groups, but this was exactly the situation I had been dreading. Both groups had more than enough opportunities to mingle at school; just because they were in the same house wouldn’t change the way they acted toward each other. Sammy and her friends were huddled together by the stereo, almost instinctively circling their wagons against attack. Andy and the library crew sat on the couch, looking around aimlessly. Since Kelly’s friends were standing by the refreshments, no one dared to approach them to grab something to drink.

It honestly looked like a junior high party with all these different cliques just hovering around each other, no one saying a word.

“If looks could kill, you’d be one of the Bee Gees,” Jennifer whispered to me, pointing out Kelly in the kitchen glaring at me. She was right. He was boring a hole through my face that would have blown out the back of my head like a hollow-point bullet if emotions could be made real.

“I should talk to him,” I said, not making the smallest effort to move.

“Better you than me,” she remarked, also not making any attempt to move. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that mad before.”

I sighed mentally. “I have,” I said, making the decision to talk to him. Looking over to Kyle, I said, “You going to be okay out here by yourself? I think I need to talk to Kelly.”

He nodded and gave me a small smile. “He looks really mad.” I nodded, taking another glance at Kelly out of the corner of my eye. “Here’s for luck,” Kyle said, giving me a small kiss on the cheek.

“Fuck!” Kelly screamed, throwing his beer bottle across the kitchen. The sound of breaking glass was like a bomb going off. He stormed off deeper into the house.

“Yeah, that’s my cue,” I said to Jennifer and Kyle. “Wish me luck.”

“Don’t get killed,” Jennifer, said smiling.

“What she said,” Kyle added.

I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of closed beers before following Kelly’s trail across the house. I hadn’t been here in a while, but I remembered the general layout well enough. He wasn’t in the living room or in the bathroom, which only left upstairs. I climbed the stairs two at a time, hoping he wasn’t up there grabbing a gun from his father’s rack or something. The door to his bedroom was open, and I could see someone pacing around.

“Kelly?” I called out, peeking in the room.

The door flew open, and he stood there raging at me. “What the fuck do you want?”

I held up the beers. “I come in peace?”

He thought about it for a few seconds before grabbing one of the beers and falling back onto his bed. “What the fuck, man?”

I turned his desk chair around and straddled it. “I can explain.”

“I asked you if you were coming alone,” he accused me angrily.

“I know, and I couldn’t tell you I was bringing them, or you would have said no.” It was a lame excuse, but it had the rare merit of being the truth.

Kelly paused, his features twisted in confusion for a moment. “What
them
?”

“The drama guys, the nerds, the people I walked in with?” I asked, now confused myself. “What are you talking about?”

“I asked you if you were coming alone!” he fumed. I slowly nodded my head. “And you said you were coming alone.” Another small nod. “So then why would you show up with him?”

We stared at each other in silence for a second before I admitted, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“
Kyle
!” Kelly shouted. “Why would you bring Kyle when I asked you not to?”

“Kyle?” I repeated shocked. “Wait! You wanted me to show up without Kyle?”

“I asked if you were coming alone! What did you think I meant?” His voice was strained, almost soundless. I had never seen Kelly cry before, but I suddenly understood that he was close to doing just that.

“I thought you meant don’t invite a bunch of people you thought were lame,” I answered slowly.

He waved a hand, dismissing the party as a whole. “I don’t give a fuck about them. I wanted to talk to you alone,” he said, sounding really upset.

“Okay, well, I’m here alone,” I said, trying to get him to turn a few more letters over so I could guess at what he was talking about.

“
No,
you aren’t!” he yelled. “You’re here with him, so it doesn’t fucking matter now! None of it matters.” He threw himself back down flat on the bed, taking one of his pillows and putting it over his face as he screamed. His unopened beer bottle rolled off the edge of the bed and under it.

“Dude, what is wrong?” I asked, now kind of worried about how much he was losing it.

“Just go,” he said, pillow still over his head.

“Kelly, I’m serious. What’s wrong?”

He sat up like a jack-in-the-box, his eyes red with tears. “
Get the fuck out of my room
!”

There was literally nothing else I could say. I moved slowly and deliberately, hoping that me being calm might chill him. I got up and made my way to the door before I tried again. “If I did something wrong, man….”

“No, I’m the idiot,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Just go, please!”

I turned around and walked out, pretty sure I had just missed something serious.

K
YLE