The Next Forever (2 page)

“They’d have to be total ass-bags not to take
us
,” Light Blue said. “Not that I know you,” he said, pointing, “so I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think you’re an ass-bag.” He was definitely drunk, but not the kind of drunk that you didn’t want to hang around.

We all laughed. These guys were cool. Just like any other guys wanting to have fun on a Friday night, like I was. They weren’t total dicks because they wanted to join a frat. It made me wonder if maybe Amy had other reasons for wanting me to join one.

Selfish reasons.

“We’d better finish these up before they come out here and kick our asses for drinking on their porch,” Red Shirt said.

“I can take ’em,” Light Blue said.

I laughed and sucked down my beer. Maybe lying to Amy had been the right decision.

Chapter Two

Amy

I headed back to my dorm, walking along the cement path from the dining hall. After dinner usually meant Frisbee on the lawn out front, studying in the lounge inside, getting ready to go out and pretend you’re having fun if you were rushing a sorority or fraternity, or getting ready to go out and
really
have fun if you had a fake ID or knew somewhere to go where you didn’t need one.

Since Joe was at the library—even lamer than studying in the lounge—I had the night free. Not that I would probably do anything with it. With Joe at my side for the past few weeks, I hadn’t really met anybody to go out and have fun with. Of course, that hadn’t really been a bad thing until tonight. I’d seen the fear in my classmates’ eyes as they made their way down the dorm hallways and around campus in our first weeks here—looking for someone, anyone to notice them.

I knew that fear, that loneliness from the beginning of high school. I was relieved Joe kept me from feeling that again.

It was what he meant when he’d asked,
Where else would you be?
It was true—there was really nowhere else. I had been okay with this because I didn’t need the temptation, but what was I supposed to do if the temptation was standing and blocking my way back into the dorm?

I froze, watching Trevor lean his guitar case like a black construction-paper cutout against the brick wall on the outside of the dorm. He lit a cigarette with a long wooden match, shook it out, licked it so it sizzled, and stuffed it in the pocket of his worn leather jacket.

My stomach felt like it was standing on the edge of a cliff ready to jump. I knew I should walk past him and go back to my room and lock the door and wait for Joe to come over, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t move.

“You can stop staring at me anytime,” Trevor said, the words coming out with smoke all around them.

My stomach had been ready to jump, but when he spoke I realized it was attached to a bungee cord and was stepping back off the ledge. I guess my eyes made the only move I had by asking,
who, me?

“No, the other girl over there who needs a drool bib,” Trevor said, his pale blue eyes on me, sucking the blood from my chest and into my face like leeches.

“I’m not staring at you,” I said, though I couldn’t really deny that I kind of did need a drool bib.

“Whatever you want to call it,” he said, putting the cigarette between his pointer finger and thumb. “Your eyes were slanted in my general direction, which I would have considered creepy if you weren’t kind of cute.”

Kind of cute?
My heart went crazy, like one of those old bell-topped alarm clocks going off.

I looked around, probably to make sure Joe wasn’t nearby, possibly to make sure no one was watching us because if they were, they would see I was bombing this. Standing and staring and drooling were not going to work with a guy like this.

But why did I care?

“I w-was just trying to get back into the dorm,” I said, my voice stuttering, the sound of someone making an excuse.

“There’s the door,” Trevor said, inviting me to walk past him. His hair fell forward, and he pushed it back.

Did I want to walk past him, or did I want to be the old Amy? I had hours to spare and, considering Joe’s question and the fact I couldn’t even answer it, it was obvious I was wondering.

“I used to smoke,” I said, hating that I’d said it as soon as I did. Wishing I could inhale the words back. Joe hated my smoking, was the main reason I’d quit. If he’d thought I was starting to backslide before, wait until he smelled cigarette smoke on my clothes.

“Oh, you’re one of those.” Trevor nodded in that way someone does when really he is looking you up and down. It was like his eyes were tacks, sticking me flat against the cement and sky.

“Those?” I asked, my mouth barely making words, because his eyes were on it.

“The girls in high school who think smoking makes them bad,” he said, exhaling, “until they realize there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that.”

I looked behind me, seriously wondering if there was some kind of thought bubble back there telling him about my past. I was either totally obvious or he was psychic. I decided to go with psychic.

“I know exactly what it takes,” I said. There was an edge to my voice I didn’t expect. This boy might have thought I was some Girl Scout, but he had no idea. I watched him. His eyes seemed to hit mine like a dog’s nose nuzzles up when it wants a pet.

“You’re still standing here,” he said. “That’s a start.” He put out his cigarette and stuck it in his pocket, “What’s your name, bad girl?”

“Amy,” I said. Luckily it was an easy question to answer.

“Amy,” he repeated, and I couldn’t help thinking about the way Joe said it—not like it was just my name, but like it was
me
.

Trevor lit a second cigarette, taking out another wooden match and lighting it, this time just shaking out the match and putting it behind his ear.

“You’re not going to lick that one?” I asked. I had hoped to sound sarcastic.

“You want me to?” he said, and I realized this guy was not about to fall for any of my usual bullshit.

“Where’s your hat?” I asked, wanting to level the ground between us somehow.
So you know I find you attractive and like watching you lick things? Well, I know you wear a paper hat that makes you look like an ass-clown.

“I thought you had a boyfriend,” Trevor said, letting me know he was in complete control of the situation and
still
not falling for any of my bullshit. Maybe if I told him I’d caught him with his friends the seagulls, it would have finally rendered him speechless, but considering I had a parrot of my own that I’d left at home, a parrot that may have known more about me than most humans and that I missed more than most humans, I kind of liked that he cared enough to feed some feral birds.

“I do,” I said. This was good
and
bad. He knew I had a boyfriend because he had been watching me as well, but he also knew I had a boyfriend. I couldn’t stop looking at his hands. They were calloused and dirty, but I needed to avoid his eyes.

“Then why are you talking to me?” he asked.

“You were standing here,” I said, but even as I did I looked around.

He squared his chest. “If you were my girlfriend, I wouldn’t let you talk to anyone.”

I stared at the glass door beyond him, dirty with fingerprints, covered with the name of our dorm in colored construction paper. I should have just opened it and walked inside, but I was light-headed from the way Trevor was talking to me, like his words were his hands.

“So you play guitar,” I said. In my desperation to say something, anything, I’d said the dumbest thing, the most obvious thing. I waited for him to say
, No, I just carry it around
. I waited for him to say,
You would never be my girlfriend
.

Instead he nodded, and I got dumber.

“Cool,” I said, realizing that maybe part of the reason I liked Joe so much was because he didn’t make me feel like a total idiot. He made me feel normal, comfortable. When he would hold me I completely forgot about the uncertainty I battled in most of the rest of my life. His arms so strong, so tight around me, it was like he was certain and confident enough for both of us.

Joe.

I stepped back.

“Something wrong?” Trevor asked.

He was very observant. So aware of what I was doing that he made me feel naked, which made me think about him naked, which made me step back even farther.

“One more and you’re off the porch,” Trevor said, tipping his chin so I would look behind me.

He was right. I was dangerously close to the edge. The metaphor was not lost on me.

I heard his phone beep. He stuck his cigarette in his mouth and looked at it.

“You have to go?” I asked, half of me thankful to be saved, the other half wanting to take his phone and throw it.

“Just a party,” he said, his eyes thin like thread. I could tell he was watching my face.

I looked down, up, trying so hard not to give anything away, but I knew it was useless. He was so
there
, like he was more awake than I was, more alive, even.

“Does your boyfriend care if you go to a party?” he asked.

That was it. I needed to go inside and lock my door and put bars up on my windows and chain myself to the bed. I could
not
go to a party with Trevor. I didn’t want to think about what I might do if I did.

But yet, I still couldn’t move. I was stuck to the pavement, growing out of it like a statue. “Are you inviting me to a party?”

“No.” He smirked. “I’m telling you about a party.”

“You haven’t told me about it yet,” I said, still clinging to the illusion that I was in control.

He held out his hand. “Your phone,” he said, wiggling his fingers.

I reached into my pocket and handed it to him. It was so easy to fall back into letting someone else make my decision for me.

Especially when it was the wrong one.

He typed into it, his cigarette in his mouth the whole time, and then handed it back. “I sent myself a text,” he said. “You want to come to the party, respond to it.”

I watched as he put out his cigarette, picked up his guitar case, and walked inside.

I looked at my phone. The text he’d sent said,
Ur it.

It.

You’re doing it again,
Joe had said.

Maybe Trevor
was
psychic.

…

Joe

I walked into the frat house behind Red and Light Blue. Maybe with them I would blend in. Maybe it would even look like I’d walked over with them. Without a legacy—aka a father—their body shield was about all I had going for me.

I followed them over to the table with name tags lying on it. I found mine and slapped it on, sticking my hand back in my pocket quickly. Neither one of them turned around to talk to me once we were inside.

Why would they?

They didn’t need anything from me anymore. I was their competition. It was okay—I was used to it. I’d felt like I was in competition for most of my life. Having less money than most of the people you are friends with will do that. My mother and I might have lived in a nice house, but it was because my father had bought it and when he left, my mother had to continue to pay for it, which meant we didn’t have much for anything else.

The other guys grabbed a drink, but I didn’t because I was afraid I would spill it all over myself. Even with the beer on the porch hissing through my system, my hands had started shaking so hard I was worried someone might think I had a rabbit in each pocket.

I thought about Amy, how she would take my hands and stroke them like she was putting them to sleep. It was silly, impossible, but I wished she were here now. When she was with me, the things that usually bothered me seemed not to bother me at all.

I hoped that having spent so much time with Amy didn’t mean I had forgotten how to just hang out with guys. But as I stood alone in a corner of the room waiting for someone to talk to me, it was all I could think. It was a weird feeling, considering in high school I had been the one who went up and talked to people. I never waited. Perhaps each life change forced you to start over. You had to prove once again to all these new people that you deserved their attention.

Lucky for me, I decided to start over at one of the most selective frats on campus.

“Hey man, you enjoying yourself?”

I turned to face the biggest set of teeth I’d ever seen, like someone had put a magnifying glass over only his mouth. My guess was I wasn’t the first guy he’d asked, but I was thankful just the same. I looked at his name tag. It read
steve
.

“Sure,” I said, keeping my hands deep in my pockets. I could only hope he would introduce himself without a handshake if he hung around long enough to introduce himself at all.

“What interests you in TKE?” he asked.

And when I heard that, I realized he wasn’t necessarily talking to me, he was just making his way around the room. I pictured him at a meeting an hour earlier, some guys given the job of handing out drinks, some given the job of cleaning up puke, and some given the job of talking to us.

I was curious which of the guys complained the most.

I thought about my practiced introduction. If he wasn’t really talking to me, I shouldn’t really need to talk to him. But I did have to.

“Well, I’m pre-law,” I said, smiling, too, but not nearly as large as he was.

He nodded. I could tell he was unimpressed. I thought about that song from when I was a kid about the spider swallowing the fly and the frog swallowing the spider and so on. His smile definitely would have swallowed mine.

He watched me, waiting for a better answer.

“I heard you guys throw killer parties, like, legendary ones. And,” I continued, “you’d have to be an ass-bag not to want to join.”

“That’s more like it,” Steve said, his green polo shirt so much cleaner and less wrinkled and more polo-ponied than mine.

Mine didn’t have a pony on it. I got mine in a pack of four from Target and each time I wore one of them and stood across from someone wearing one with a pony on it, I pictured having been in a joust with him and losing. If it had a crocodile on it, I had been eaten whole.

Just like the spider that swallowed the fly.

There was also the other reason I was here, the one that I would not admit. I didn’t have anyone leading the way for me when I graduated. My mother was fine. On good days, even nice, but she didn’t have any connections. She had no way to get me a job at a leading law firm. With my father’s exit when I was six, this frat was all I had.