James Games (13 page)

I wedge myself into a circle of people that’s just big enough that I don’t have to pay attention to the conversation and just small enough that I look like I’m involved. James is dressed as an extremely attractive person, his hair even more perfectly tousled than usual, a white T-shirt unintentionally just tight enough to tease what’s underneath. A couple girls rush over immediately to chat him up, but he ignores them, glancing around with that haughty expression. Sort of like he’s looking for someone.

Sort of like maybe he’s looking for me.

It suddenly hits me with alarming clarity that I am dressed
as a giant fucking chicken.

Calm down, Fiona. You are still wildly attractive. The feathers only enhance your sublime beauty. You’re Big Bird’s wet dream. I stick out my hip in an attempt to rediscover my sexuality and knock over an empty pitcher of beer, which clatters to the floor and draws James’s gaze.

That asshole takes one look at me and bursts out laughing.

I flee, finding Mags in the corner and distracting her momentarily from her boy. Mags is studying counseling and is really good at pep talks. “Mags. Help. I need a pep talk.”

She strokes my feathers comfortingly. “You are a strong, beautiful, independent woman and the fact that you’re dressed as a big chicken does not detract from your sex appeal even one bit.”

“Okay. Keep going.”

“Confidence is what makes someone beautiful! And the fact that you have the confidence to wear that makes you the prettiest person in the room.”

“That one was kind of backhanded, but I’ll take it.”

“I’ve never seen a hotter chicken.” Her lips twitch. “Or…turkey. Or any kind of bird…oh, I’m…I’m sorry, Fiona, you look so funny!”

She dissolves into laughter. I wail something unintelligible at her and locate Iris, who is drinking her way into oblivion in the corner of the room. “Iris. Pep talk.”

“Elvira? More like el-why-are-ya,” she hiccups, glaring daggers at a distant Amber.

I shake her. “James laughed at me. Mags laughed at me. You’re my last hope.”

She shoves me away. “I don’t talk to birds.”

Should have known better. I whirl, intending to find the bathroom and pluck some strategic feathers now that the votes are most likely all in, but instead I find myself face-to-face with my worst nightmare. God, my worst nightmare has amazing bone structure.

“If you laugh at me again, I will decapitate you,” I inform him.

He tilts his head appraisingly to the side. “That language is a little
fowl
, don’t you think?”

“Oh, my God. Do you know how many people have made fowl/foul puns to me tonight? At least seven. That is level one of bird puns. Please.”

“I’m glad you came out tonight.”

His voice is soft. It startles me and I bluster, “Yeah, well, I thought I should make this party a little more fly.”

Damn it.

“What’s that? Level three of bird puns?” The corner of his mouth turns up.

“At least level five.”

There’s a moment of silence. He lowers his voice. “We shouldn’t be talking like this.”

“Then let’s talk the way they want.” I raise my voice. “What are you supposed to be dressed as, a nerd with no fashion sense?”

“At least I’m not a bird with no fashion sense.”

“Touché. You rhymed bird with something. Level two.”

The few people who were watching us see that we’re fighting and gradually lose interest. My chicken costume is no longer a novelty, and there’s enough nearly naked girls, and boys who’ve managed to incorporate shirtlessness into their costumes, that the fact that James is talking to me is not the showstopper it might have been.

“What kind of bird are you supposed to be, anyway?” he asks.

“I’m a hot chick.”

He nods. “Accurate enough.”

If this keeps up, I won’t last the night. “So you’re one of those annoying people who refuses to dress up for costume parties.”

“Making a fool of myself isn’t really my thing.”

“You should relax. Live a little.” I smirk up at him. “There’s no reason to act like you have a handful of feathers jammed up your butt if you don’t actually. Speaking as someone who actually has something close to a handful up there.”

“I like having my composure.”

“Sounds boring as hell.”

He’s not smiling anymore. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up under a magnifying glass. To have every eye and camera lens on you whenever you walk outside. If you show cracks, they tear you apart.”

“I do, in fact, know what that’s like. Minus the camera lens. They don’t have a whole lot of cameras in the Amish community.”

He chokes on his drink. Take that, composure.

“You—you’re Amish?” he coughs.

“
Was
Amish. Why do you think I act the way I do now? Amish teenagers don’t really get to party. The most exciting thing I ever did before college was skip the morning cow milking one time.”

“Damn.” He squints at me.

I swat him. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop picturing me in one of those frumpy high-necked dresses. I know you are.”

“Oddly enough, it’s not that unappealing.”

“Believe me. It’s that unappealing.”

He looks down at me and then sighs. “I was trying to think of a pun that involved tender chicken breasts and your breasts, but any way I phrase it sounds creepy.”

“Actually, just you saying that on its own sounds fairly creepy.” I lean away from him against the wall and cross my arms, projecting an air of hostility in case anyone’s still watching. “Okay. I told you my deepest, darkest secret. Now you tell me yours.”

“I don’t hand out my secrets like party favors.” He leans forward just enough for me to wish the wall was another two inches further away. Or that the room was totally empty and I wasn’t wearing a chicken suit. Either one.

“So how do I earn one?”

“Why bother talking to me about it when you can look up my life story in the gossip blogs?” His tone grows bitter. “That’s what everyone else does.”

“I’ve spent exactly zero minutes, zero seconds looking you up on the internet,” I say indignantly, making a mental note to look him up on the internet later. “I didn’t even know you existed before I joined Phi Delta Chi and got showered in the juice of the million uteruses you ruptured with your presence.”

“That is disgusting—wait. You didn’t know anything about me before you came here? Anything at all?”

I shrug. “TVs and computers are with the camera lenses in Amish-land. I still don’t know very much about you.”

“Huh,” he says quietly.

“Huh what?”

“It’s refreshing, that’s all.”

“Yeah, a girl in a chicken suit has never Googled you before. That’s practically Aquafresh.”

He laughs. I point at him. “That’s not something you do very often, is it?”

“Do what?”

“Laugh.”

He pauses and raises one hand as if to touch his face and confirm.

“You should do it more,” I say. “It suits you.”

“Fiona!”

It’s Mags, bouncing over and knocking some dude over with her skirt. She doesn’t notice. She’s too busy noticing who I’m talking to.

“Oh—hello! I mean, hi. I mean, it’s nice to finally meet you. I mean—”

“What is it?” I interrupt, mercy-killing her babble.

“We have to go outside,” she stage-whispers. “Sigrid wants to showcase everyone’s costumes before the votes are counted. She’s making us runway-walk the front yard.”

“She just wants everyone to see me try to walk sexy in a chicken suit,” I seethe. “Well, fine. I can still strut my stuff better than anyone here, feathers are no feathers.”

“That was a pretty good one,” James remarks.

“A good what?”

“Bird pun. Chickens strut.”

“Yes, that was definitely, absolutely intentional. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go outside and start a revolution in the fashion world.”

Sigrid’s gone all out. She even found a red carpet somewhere, and now it’s stretched across the grass, collecting dew. Yellow Christmas lights lay along the edges. It looks more like an airplane landing strip than a runway, but nobody seems to care. It’s drunk o’ clock and everyone’s on time.

Ellie is using an upside-down red solo cup as a microphone, unaware that beer is dripping on her heels. “First up is Callie—um, what’s your name?”

“Berkemeyer,” snarls the girl on the red carpet.

“Berkemeyer! As a lovely—um—what are you?”

“I’m a mouse. Duh.” She points at a pair of gray ears on her head before striding down the carpet runway and shaking her butt at the nearest group of boys, who hoot and cheer.

She goes down the list, forgetting nearly everyone’s last name and most people’s first names. I scan for James. He’s not here. He must have stayed inside. “Thank you, karma gods,” I murmur.

And then a lax bro moves out of the way and I see him in the back, watching the whole charade like he’s never been more bored by anything in his life.

“Fuck you, karma gods,” I mutter.

Ellie chirrups, “Iris somethingorother, as Elvira!”

Ha. There’s no way Iris would agree to this—except there she is, red-eyed and stumbling onto the carpet, beer sloshing over the edges of the cup in her hand. Uh-oh.

“You people,” she growls, staggering forward. “None of you actually
appreciate
Elvira’s
aesthetic.
You just want to see my tits.”

“Show us your tits!” some guy howls in confirmation.

“You wanna see my tits?” she leers at him.

This is bad. She is perilously drunk. Although it is impressive that she can still say the word ‘aesthetic’ without screwing it up. I look wildly around for Mags, but she’s off with Batman. Worst time in the world to distract a superhero, Mags. I guess I’ll have to save the day instead.

“Fine, you bastards!” Iris slurs, reaching for the top of her dress. I fly (more bird puns) into action, covering the distance between me and the runway in two great chicken leaps.

She glances to the side and real fear pops onto her face. She screams, apparently forgetting that it’s me and assuming she’s being attacked by a mutant bird of prey, but it’s too late to stop. I crash into her as a feathered blur, knocking both of us backwards into the grass.

“
Help!”
she shrieks. “
Help—
oh. Fiona. Why the hell—heck—are you inside a bird?”

I ignore everyone dying of laughter around us and wave Mags down. She enlists Batman for help, and the two of them hoist Iris off the ground. I rock back and forth until I’ve gained enough momentum to roll to my feet, feathers scattered beneath me

Iris grabs Batman by the neck. “Batman. You’re just the man for the job. The Batman for the job. My friend has been eaten by a giant fucking bird. Cut her out of its stomach.”

He sweats. “It’s just a costume, man.”

She releases him in horror. “
Shit.
You’re in
league
with the birds. Because you’re a
bat.
”

“Take her away,” I tell Mags, and she and Batman haul Iris away as she hollers,

“They both have
wings!”

And just like that, my only allies are gone and I’m alone in a chicken costume in a yard full of people I barely know.

Ellie’s been timing it so that one girl walks up, poses, and as soon as the second girl reaches the front of the carpet, the first girl walks back. So there’s a moment in which two girls are together. And when Ellie calls Sigrid’s name, I know I’m next.

Sigrid saunters up like she spent the last month marathoning ANTM. James has moved closer to the front of the crowd, and she flashes him a heavy-lidded smile. I resist the urge to vomit into my feathers.

“Fiona Arlett, as a turkey!”

“Chicken,” I bark as I take my first step onto the carpet. I pretend I’m in the world’s sexiest lingerie and switch my hips, swaggering and shaking my literal tail feathers. The guys love it. And James’s eyes are on me. He’s pushed almost all the way to the front now.

I do believe I’m managing to turn him on in a chicken costume.

Everyone’s cheering now. I wink, strut up next to Sigrid, and smack my own feathered ass. Sigrid turns, and a sharp foot hooks around my ankle just as I attempt to take a step forward. I fall hard, my arm twisting beneath me as I try and fail to catch myself, pain shooting up my wrist. My head thunks so hard into the ground that stars explode in a little arc across my vision.

Sigrid tuts at me from above. “You really should be more careful.”

I would snap back, except that stupid tears are streaming down my face, the kind of immediate and unstoppable tears that happen when something really hurts. I try to bend my wrist and can’t, although it’s painful enough to split my head in two.

“Come on, Fiona, you know chickens can’t fly!” Sigrid says loudly. Only a few people are close enough to see that I’m crying, and everyone else laughs, some more than a little meanly. Tears clot together on my chin. I want more than anything else in the world to not be crying, but fuck, that hurts.

And then someone is gently helping me up from the ground. Steadying me, James inspects my wrist with careful fingers. “Sprained, at least.”

Sigrid pushes forward. There’s a sway to her step. She’s drunk. “Don’t bother with her, James, she’s probably just molting.”

“What the fuck is your problem?” His voice is Arctic fire. “She’s hurt. Lay off.”

Sigrid recoils. Dizzily, I rip a handful of feathers from my stomach and use them to dry my eyes. James keeps his hold on me. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

No, no, no, I don’t want to be rescued from yet another party by James Reid. “Ow—where’s Iris? I want Iris. Or Mags.”

“Your friends are drunk. I’m taking you.” He’s cool, commanding. I’m about to argue again, but a mega throb of pain silences me.

“I’ll take her,” Sigrid tries again.

“I’m the only one at this party not wasted yet.” James raises his voice. “If anyone else is good to drive, by all means.”

Silence, punctuated by my sniffling.

“Come on,” James says, taking my uninjured hand. “I’ll take care of you.”

And I don’t doubt it.