The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life (12 page)

“Well,” I said, “we are and we aren’t.” I was trying to lighten the mood but it wasn’t working. “I mean, it
is
a competition, right?”

Jill shrugged and said, “That’s fine. Two can play at that game.” She walked off.

“Come on,” I said to my team. “We’re running out of time.”

Patrick, Dez, and Winter followed me to the middle of the field, where the igloo had been built, and then Patrick said, “What was
that
about?” He lifted one of the bales off the igloo.

“I just think it was bad form for them to cut in front of us.” I tried a bale but could barely get it to budge.

“But what’s the big deal?” Patrick said. “They’re our friends.”

I said, “Can we just do this and then talk about it? I mean, I’m sorry, okay?”

Patrick sighed and wiped some sweat off his forehead. The day had gotten hotter, or maybe it was just us. “What about Stonehenge?” he said.

“You don’t think someone’s already done it?” I said. “It’s so obvious.”

He snapped, “Well if it’s so obvious, why didn’t you think of it ten minutes ago?”

Then Winter, who was making a last-ditch attempt to find inspiration on the list said, “A goldfish?” She got her phone out for reasons I couldn’t even imagine, and set about sending a text.

Dez said, “But for the goldfish item it specifies it has to be alive.”

“Well, I tried,” Winter said.

“It doesn’t really matter what we make,” Dez said. “We should just qualify.”

My phone buzzed and I went to look at it. The text was from Winter and said: JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE MAD AT ME DON’T TAKE IT OUT ON EVERYBODY ELSE.

I didn’t even know what to say, so I wrote: I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

“Are you two texting each other?” Patrick asked.

“Of course not,” we both said.

I looked at the igloo and thought about Stonehenge and tried to think of other famous structures, then had an idea. “What if we take the top off the igloo and make the whole thing a little bit taller and crooked, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We can have one of us pose like we’re holding it up.”

“It’ll never look enough like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Patrick said. “It’ll just look like a silo or something. How about the front wall of a castle? Like with a gate and a turreted sort of tower on each side.”

“It doesn’t really matter what we make!” Dez shouted this time, but Patrick and I were locked in this, I’m not even sure why.

“I can’t picture it,” I said.

“I’ll just show you,” Patrick said. “Trust me, it’ll be good. We’ll tell the Yeti we’ve built him a castle.”

“Awesome,” Dez said. “Let’s do it.”

“We don’t have enough manpower,” I said. “Let’s just do Stonehenge. We can make it small.”

“Fine,” Patrick said.

“Let’s just get on with it,” Winter said.

“Yes, for the love of god,” Dez wailed.

The bales were awkward and heavy. We had to work in teams of two, so we decided to do so in one girl–one guy
pairs. Patrick was paired with me and when we were far enough away and when Winter and Dez started talking, Patrick said, “Did you
tell
her?”

I lied and said, “No, I didn’t
tell
her.”

“Well, what was that about then?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Girl stuff.”

“Give me a break, Mary.” Then he was about to say something else but my phone buzzed.

It was from the Yeti and said: APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY. THE YETI IS RATHER BUSY: 21 13 12 1 21 20.

“Who is it now?” Patrick said with annoyance.

“The Yeti,” I said. “Something in code. To build on Godzilla and Winston Churchill.”

“Well, we should finish this first,” he said. “So we’re in for sure.”

Hayhenge, as Patrick started calling it, was starting to take shape. And we were lucky to have Dez on our team because he was sort of petite and easily hoisted on Patrick’s shoulders to help shift bales into position. We were almost done when Barbone’s car rumbled onto the park road.

“Ugh,” Dez groaned.

“Are we almost done here, guys?” Winter asked with some dread in her voice, and Patrick said. “Almost.”

Barbone approached with a “What the hell is that? Some weird shrine to gayness?”

“It’s Stonehenge,” Dez said, then he added, “Douche bag.” It was said in a whisper, near Winter’s ear, but I heard it. And if I heard it, that meant…

“What did you say, choirboy?” Fitz asked.

There was a weary edge to Dez’s voice when he turned and said, “I said,
douche bag
.”

I watched as Fitz started to turn an angry sort of red in the face.

Then, in case it wasn’t clear, Dez said, “I called Jake Barbone a douche bag.”

“Oh, man,” said Fitz, looking at Barbone. “You’re not gonna take that shit lying down, are you?”

“Whatever, man.” Barbone got this dumb grin on his face and he said, “Me and Daphne here, we go way back. Don’t we, Daph?”

“That we do,” Dez said, and I just wanted Barbone to go away. Or to die. It wasn’t a nice way to feel, hating someone as much as I hated him, but there was no way around it.

Barbone gave Dez a funny look, then he turned to his friends again. “See, I don’t even know how you get to be the kind of person that talks like that. ‘That we do!’ But you know what I do know?”

“What?” asked Fitz. Allison and Chrissie were smiling dumbly into space.

We had one last hay bale to position to make Hayhenge complete, and it required that Dez climb up on a sort of makeshift step stool we’d built out of hay once we’d realized Patrick couldn’t hold Dez for that long and still be useful to us.

“I know,” Barbone said slowly, “that you don’t mess with fags because you get in more trouble than when you mess with regular guys.”

“Don’t call me a fag, douche bag.” Dez was high up on the hay bales now. “And while we’re at it, how about you stop calling me Daphne.”

It was Fitz who shoved the bale under Dez. It wobbled and he lost his balance and fell back away from us, to the other side of Hayhenge, where he landed on the ground hard with a thud.

The next sound was Dez’s scream.

Barbone said, “What the hell, Fitz?” and Fitz held up a hand expecting a high five but was denied.

I rushed to Dez’s side.

“Shit,” Dez kept saying, “shit shit shit.”

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s hurt?”

“My wrist,” he said. “It’s bad.” He was cradling it with his other hand.

“Not cool, dude,” Barbone said to Fitz. “I
just said
we weren’t going to mess with the fag,” and they headed off toward more hay bales with the girls trailing behind them like mutes.

“Can you move your fingers?” I asked Dez, because that seemed somehow important, and he could, but he could not move the wrist without screaming.

“What are we going to do?” Winter asked, and I said, “Dez. We need to get you in the car, okay?”

I helped him up and he winced but he could walk, of course, so he got over to the car and into the backseat without too much trouble.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he said once we’d all gotten back in. And he fanned a hand over his face to cover tears. The injured wrist lay on his lap and was already starting to purple.

Patrick said, “I think our next stop is going to have to be the hospital.”

I was about to argue—we could ice it, wrap it up tight, so that we could get back to The Pines to qualify for the second list—but then Dez moaned, “Holy mother of God.”

Almost like a reflex, I turned to the backseat shelf, and saw that Mary was no longer there. “Where’s Mary?” I asked, in a panic.

Winter looked around by her head, then by her feet, and said, “The trunk?”

I shook my head. “No. I put her up here.”

Winter said, “Yeah, you’re right. She was definitely back there before. When we were at Flying Saucers for sure.”

“I honestly don’t believe this,” I said. “Someone took it.”

“But who,” Patrick said.

“I don’t know!” I said. And then I
did
know. “It was Jill,” I said. “She said ‘two can play at that game’ like it was some kind of threat.”

Patrick sort of laughed. “Well, you
were
being pretty obnoxious.”

“They were the ones who wanted to cut in front of us!” I honestly didn’t get why they didn’t get it.

“It’s just wasn’t that big of a deal, Mare,” Winter said.

“What about stealing Mary?” I asked. “Is that a big deal?”

“Well it seems pretty obvious,” Patrick said, “that she is trying to prove a point. And I’m sure she’ll give it back.”

“I think the bigger deal is that my wrist is broken!” Dez shouted.

The Yeti’s text said: FORTY-FIVE MINUTES TIL CHECK-IN, SCAV HUNTERS! MAKE IT COUNT!

The radio was on and Patrick switched it off but Dez managed, “No, leave it. I like this song and it’s a good distraction from all your pathetic bickering.”

The song was that hit-you-in-the-gut anthem “Beds Are Burning,” by Midnight Oil, one of those random songs that the DJs on WOPR felt the need to play at least five times a day. Even though the song was really old, I knew all the words and had downloaded it and I felt certain that when I heard it in ten or twenty years, it would magically transport me back to a feeling, to a moment. I did not want it to be this moment.

The time has come to say fair’s fair.

The car felt eerily quiet even with the music blasting. What was there to say? Why did people like Barbone and Fitz even
exist
?

To pay the rent. To pay our share.

Why did Dez have to go and bait Barbone?

How can we dance when our earth is turning?

What did that even mean?

How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

I felt sick about the way I’d behaved with Jill—an also-ran like me, though she didn’t even know it yet—and about Carson and Winter, whispering sweet nothings in front of Dora and Diego—
¡Ayúdame!
—and about the fact that after all that work we’d forgotten to take a picture of Hayhenge.

Without Mary we were down to 1094, and out of the running.

I was screwed.

Not just today, but in life—where people like Barbone got into better colleges and got better jobs and cars and Yetis, and girls like Winter got guys like Carson. Good girls like me, even reluctant ones, went nowhere fast—I was living proof!—and now Dez wasn’t the only one crying.

AT THE EMERGENCY ROOM ENTRANCE, I STUDIED
the sky again. It seemed to be slowly draining of blue as the sun’s angle had begun its shift toward evening, and I felt drained, too. I wiped away tears with two hands, palms full on cheeks, and turned to Dez. “Ready for your close-up?”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he groaned, his eyes wet.

“You guys go in with Dez,” Patrick said. “I’ll park.”

So we got out and went through the ER doors. At the main desk, a nurse about my mother’s age, and with the same hair color and style—a short brown bob—looked up and studied us for a second. I said, “We think my friend’s wrist is broken.”

She looked over at Dez’s wrist, unimpressed, and said, “Sign here and have a seat.”

“Right handed,” Dez said, lifting the injured wrist with his left, and the nurse shot me a look, so I picked up the pen attached to the sign-in clipboard with a piece of string and wrote Dez’s name. We backed away and shared a look that said,
What’s her problem?

The waiting room was otherwise empty of emergencies, though I was pretty sure I could scare up a few if I tried.

The Virgin Mary’s been kidnapped!

My heart is breaking!

I’m going away and I’m scared to death!

We sat and waited and I texted Jill to say: DID YOU GUYS TAKE THE MARY STATUE FROM OUR CAR?

She wrote back right away: NOPE.

“Jill says it wasn’t her,” I said, and Winter looked at me like I was some kind of monster.

“Really?” Winter said. “That’s your concern right now?”

“It’s worth a hundred points! And it’s the closest thing I have to an important family heirloom or whatever.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before we took it!” Winter said.

“It’s okay,” Dez said to Winter, and Winter folded her arms across her chest and looked off toward the TV screwed into the wall.

To me, Dez said, “Let’s talk it through to keep my mind off this.” He nodded at his wrist.

“I can’t remember the last time I can be sure she was there,” I said quietly so as not to disturb Winter and her current snit, though what reason she had to be in such a bad mood was beyond me. She probably wasn’t thrilled that everything seemed copacetic on Carson’s team, which meant still no breakup, but that was hardly my fault.

“Me neither,” Dez said. “So it could have been taken at the hay bales—by Barbone—or at the bell or at Party Burg or Flying Saucers.”

I said, “Well, that sure narrows it down.” We’d crossed paths with at least five teams, if you counted the ones who’d been spotted by the Shalimar while we were taking a dip.

“My money’s on Barbone,” Dez said.

“But we would’ve seen them near the car,” I said. “Right?”

“I don’t know, Mare.”

A nurse came out and called Dez’s name and he got up and said, “You guys should go. Bring me Barbone’s head on a plate.”

And before either of us could say anything he was through a set of double doors and gone.

“You’re not mad that I like him,” Winter said.

“I’m not?” I think I guffawed.

She shook her head. “You’re mad that he likes me.”

Patrick came into the ER then and I stood up, ready to go, but Winter didn’t move and Patrick sat down next to her and put Dez’s backpack on the chair beside him with a thud. “Did anybody call his dad?”

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I said. “I mean, what if his dad calls Mullin or the cops and the whole hunt gets shut down?”

“
Let it go
, Mary,” Winter moaned.

I spoke slowly and deliberately, as if each word were its own sentence, when I said, “Dez just said we should go back out there!”

“He did?” Patrick asked, sounding pleasantly surprised, I thought, and Winter and I both nodded.