What Happens Next (4 page)

I grab a pop from the fridge and head toward the basement. I open the wrong door, the door to a pantry, and interrupt a couple of lovebirds in the early stages of molesting one another.

“God. Creep much, Ginger Bitch?” the girl says, yanking her top down.

It’s my fellow cheerleader and archnemesis, Starsha Lexington. Ginger Bitch is her favorite name for me these days.

Oh, how Starsha Lexington hates me. And not just because I bumped Cameron Fitzpatrick from the cheerleading squad. Starsha’s hatred of me dates back to the first week of kindergarten, when I was playing Food Channel Hostess in the play kitchen. I must have looked like I was having too good of a time, because she tried to take over my cooking show, and when I wouldn’t let her, she grabbed me by the hair. I grabbed her back and we went careening into the toy refrigerator, all the fake plastic vegetables and dishes spilling everywhere. We both started crying, were sent to opposing time-out corners, and glowered at each other from across the room.

Not much has changed. Starsha glowers at me and I glower back. She and Tate have lipstick smeared all over their mouths and chins.

“Eck, gross,” I mumble, and shut the door.

I get to the basement and survey the landscape. Misery sets in when I realize how my night’s going to play out from here. Some senior boys are shooting pool and playing foosball in the lower rec room while a gaggle of junior girls, Kirsten and Paige included, buzz around them like bees at a honey pot. I slump into a papasan chair and sulk.

I think about the Puberty Pep Talks—what my mom and Kirsten and Paige say about older guys appreciating girls who look different, fair-skinned redheads with curly hair. Big, tall, busty girls with meat on their bones.

I look around the basement again. At all the boys who love all the girls with their perfectly straight, flatironed blond and brunette hair and perfectly proportioned bodies. Whatever maturity switch that is supposed to go off in boys’ brains about dating “the rarer breeds” has definitely not kicked in yet. While most boys are pretty nice to me in general now, none of them look at me in that attracted kind of way. Not the way Dax looked at me yesterday.

As nine o’clock looms nearer, I get more and more anxious and more and more disgusted with the people around me. By ten after nine, an over-the-shoulder demon has popped out and is full-throttle duking it out with her angel counterpart on the other side.

Go to the party!

No, you can’t!

Go to the party!

But you musn’t!

The evil side of me steps it up. The demon says,
It’s nine fifteen and you’re still sittin’ here? Go big or go home, already.

And that’s all I need. When I see that Kirsten and Paige are fully distracted, I slip back upstairs, grab my coat, and sneak out a side door. Off I go, into the night, to find my Prince Charming.

After about ten minutes of walking, my phone starts popping off like the Fourth of July. Kirsten and Paige are texting the hell out of me.

U get back here!

Im going 2 kill u!

Sid 4 real

pleez?:)

Then, finally:
ur a Br@ dont b 2 L8 xxoo K & Pg

I text Kirsten back:
Unlock the back door 4 me <3 u guys xxoo Sid

When I finally find Snowbird Trail, it’s already nine thirty, but I can see from a distance that something is off. No loud music, no cars. No sign with a big arrow and the words college party this way! It is just a dark, quiet condo, nestled among some trees with other dark, quiet condos.

Then it hits me.

I’ve screwed up the address.

Or, even worse, I’ve fallen for the classic fake-out. Only instead of a fake phone number, I got an entire fake invite and fake address. I turn around to go back, my dreams dashed, when I hear someone calling to me. It’s him.

“Hey, stranger! I thought you were blowing me off!”

I smile widely in the darkness. Blow this Adonis dreamboat off? Not a chance.

I make my way down the walkway and up the front steps and sit down next to him—not too close, not too far—on a wooden porch swing.

“Nah, dinner ran late, and I had trouble finding it,” I say.

All the moisture in my mouth funnels directly down into my palms. It’s twenty-nine degrees outside, and my exposed hands are dripping with sweat. I put them in my pockets before the sweat starts hardening into sweat-cicles.

“So what happened to the party? Where is everyone?” I ask.

“Ah, my friend’s uncle’s flight got canceled because of the snow in Denver and he ended up staying here an extra night. We had to shit-can it. They went to The Owl’s Nest for a drink. You want to go meet them?”

He wants to go for a drink. At a bar. Well, he’s not nineteen or twenty. And I’m not even old enough for an R movie yet, sooo…

“No, I probably should just get back then.”

Damn. What a bust.

“Well, come in for a little. We can hang out—watch a movie or something lame like that.”

Ugh. It’s time to end the charade. It’s not fair to lie anymore, pretend to be something I’m not.

“Um, look,” I say, sighing. “I should probably tell you something. I probably should have told you yesterday, but, I don’t know, I just didn’t. Anyhow—”

I pause and look at his stunning face one last time before breaking the news. He has the bluest eyes.

“What?” he says.

I open my mouth and try to speak, but can’t.

“Hey, you’re scaring me,” he says. “Are you an escaped convict? A serial killer or something?”

I laugh weakly.

“No, I’m not a serial killer. Not that I know of, anyway.”

“Then it can’t be that bad.”

I shift in my seat and then finally blurt it out: “I’m only sixteen. I’m in high school.”

I bite my lower lip and looked up timidly through a spiral of hair. He says nothing for what seems like a long time.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. But I’ll be seventeen in July,” I offer.

He looks at me a second longer and then busts out laughing. I sigh. His laughter is a good sign. At least he doesn’t hate me for deceiving him. Even if he tells me to get lost, it’s a relief to get it over with.

“But it’s just a couple of years, that’s nothing,” he says, laughing.

He’s only eighteen, maybe a young nineteen.

I laugh out loud. Really hard. I cover my mouth and try to stifle the Incomparable Sid Murphy Cackling Guffaw.

Then I stop short.

“But the bar? I mean, if you’re only nineteen—”

“Almost nineteen,” he says, raising a finger. “Never heard of a fake ID?”

Duh, Sid.

“Ahhhh. The fake ID,” I say.

Whew. Okay, just two years. This is good. Great, even. God, what a load off. He gets up and opens the front door, stretching an arm out for me to go in.

“Walk into my parlor, mademoiselle. I think
Law & Order
is about to start.”

And then he finally remarks on my hair. He didn’t mention it in all the hours that we spent skiing together. He doesn’t give me the compliment directly but says it in kind of a way that comes across as thinking out loud. While I am walking past him, he gently takes a coil of my hair between his thumb and finger and when it is stretched to the limit, he releases it, and back it springs.

“Man. Spectacular,” he says. “These things, they go on forever.”

And in I go.

The love of my young life following behind me.

4

I sit bolt upright,
startled with that feeling of being displaced. I should be looking at a poster of Paul McCartney in his twenties or a framed picture of me, my mom, and my little brother fishing off Kelleys Island. Instead, I am staring at an unfamiliar painting of a winter scene. A giant buck with thorny antlers looks down on me with caramel-yellow eyes.

I look around, disoriented.

I’m in someone’s bedroom, in someone’s bed, and I don’t know how I got here. Then I remember and it all comes crashing down in a thousand jagged pieces. I jerk back the covers, relieved to see that all of my clothes are still on. The clock on the nightstand says seven a.m. The bus leaves in an hour.

I call out, my throat dry, my voice cracking.

“Dax?”

No answer.

When I try to get up, a sharp pain blooms behind my left eye and spreads over my head. I can’t feel anything from the neck down because the pain is so severe it leaves the rest of me numb. I stumble out of the bedroom, into an alcove, and make my way down a small winding staircase. At the bottom of the steps, I call out to him again. Still no answer.

My coat hangs over a hook near the front door where my boots are sitting, lined up perfectly, right where I left them last night. I pull them on and open the door. It’s still dark out, but the sky is brightening in the east.

As I walk, my phone buzzes inside my coat pocket, then beeps with a low battery alert. Kirsten has filled my inbox with texts and messages, but my phone dies before I can call her back. I hurry through lanes that all look the same, all gingerbread houses, row after row.

I finally locate the correct condo; I can tell it’s the right one by the police cruiser sitting out front. I sneak around to try the side door. Locked. As I turn to sneak around to the back entry, the door swings open. Cougar Di stands before me, hands on her hips, eyes on fire. A burly police officer steps up behind her. He sees me and his eyes move up a tick, taking in the giant nest of red curls, which I am sure are sticking out in all directions, lending me the appearance of a giant cracked-out Little Orphan Annie.

Diane says through gritted teeth, “Girlfriend, you’re in big trouble.”

When I walk into the condo, Kirsten and Paige are sitting on the couch in the living room. Their faces are sunken and swollen at the same time. When Kirsten sees me she cries out with this strangled sigh of relief, a sort of whimper that’s been knotted up in dread. Paige bursts into tears and they both run over and grab me into a hug. Neither of them can speak because they’re sobbing so hard.

I should comfort them, tell them something to stop their tears, but I don’t know what to say. And what’s worse, I don’t hug them back; my arms just hang limp at my sides. I don’t know what’s happened or what’s happening, and I can’t think straight. My head is throbbing so hard I can actually hear it. Like two bass drums, my brain pounds against the insides of my ears. Kirsten and Paige’s sobbing and clinging won’t settle into me the right way; their distress and relief at seeing me won’t go into my heart and mind the way they’re supposed to. I’m queasy and hot and smothered and I think I might faint or throw up or explode if I don’t get out from under their suffocating embrace. They feel my resistance. I’m not exactly pushing them off me, but my body language is clear. They ease away at the same time.

“Where were you? What happened? Why didn’t you call?” Kirsten says, wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “We called you all night
long
!”

On that last word, her voice changes, the fear and dread replaced by something else. I see it in her face, too. In a split second, her expression goes from weeping and frenzied into an expression completely unflinching in its resolve.

Kirsten wants answers.

And I don’t have any.

I look away, turn my focus to Paige. She’s wiping her face, too. And her eyes, while not quite as determined as Kirsten’s, are also filled with immediacy, a need for answers.

“Are you okay?” Paige asks. “What happened?”

I start to say “I don’t know” but am cut off by PTA Nazi Mom, who comes barreling over.

“Yes. What happened? Where were you, Sid? The girls said you went to meet some boy. You went to a party. Is that true? Are you okay? You look hungover. Were you drinking?”

“I—yeah. I mean, no. I didn’t drink. I went to—I met this—” but I’m cut off again when the officer butts in.

“I’ll need you to make a formal statement about this.”

“Okay, girls, go to the bus,” Mrs. Winthrop says, ushering Kirsten and Paige toward the door.

Mrs. Winthrop yells out, “Everybody! On the bus, we’re running late!” then turns back to me and says, “Sid, come sit down in the kitchen so we can get to the bottom of this.”

I sit at the kitchen table, facing Mrs. Winthrop, Cougar Di, and the officer. Tate Andrews and Hunter Brady walk by with a group of guys, all of them carrying skis and luggage.

“Rock on, Sister Red! Didja get laid?” Tate calls out.

“Boys!” Mrs. Winthrop barks.

They laugh and funnel out the front door with the rest of the kids.

Someone has already packed my stuff. My bag is sitting on the table and I’m being chewed out like I’ve killed someone. I nod, but I can’t absorb what Mrs. Winthrop is saying—the throbbing in my skull is too loud. Am I dreaming this? I think my head is going to blow off my neck.

“We finally got the truth out of Paige and Kirsten about a half hour ago when Diane did a head count for the bus. A party? You know that is completely reckless. Do you have any idea what could have happened? You’re lucky you’re not dead. We were so worried, and your mother is absolutely beside herself. She’s actually on her way here.”

My mom. Oh, Jesus.

They call my mom and let me talk to her for a minute. Her voice is all keyed up, and my dead grandmother’s thick Irish brogue is surfacing. My mom was born here, in America, but her parents were from Dublin, so when she gets upset, her voice takes on this hint of an accent. I do my best to calm her down. She’s literally about to fall apart with terror and relief and anger and whatever else a panic-stricken mother feels when she gets a phone call from her missing child. I do the:
Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s a big misunderstanding, I’ll talk to you when I get home, turn around and go home, I’m fine, I’m fine.
Then we hang up. The relief of getting off the phone is followed by a stab of anxiety, because I know I’ve only postponed what is sure to be a very ugly ordeal later on.

As I’m telling the chaperones and the officer how I met a guy on the ski lift who invited me to his condo, I start to regain feeling in my body. Right around the part of the story where I am entering Dax’s condo, I stop.