I was the angry one. I was the righteous one. I was the one avoiding her in the halls and getting on the bus after school instead of waiting for her car. So why did it feel like she’d abandoned me?
Temporary, I told myself. She would apologize, I would forgive, all would be the same. But when I saw Nikki, I couldn’t say anything. It felt different, not having Lacey at my back. All the things I wanted to say, all the fuck you, how dare you, what gives you the right curdled in my throat, and I knew how they would come out if I tried.
You won.
I DID SPEAK TO MY MOTHER that week, just once, just to ask her not to tell Lacey’s parents what she suspected. Because there was no evidence Lacey had done anything, I reminded her, and being my mother only gave her the right to ruin my life.
I didn’t speak to Lacey.
I didn’t call anyone, for that matter; I didn’t go anywhere. I came straight home after school and watched TV until it was time for bed. Life grounded was a lot like life before Lacey, and it terrified me.
“Like old times, right?” my father said, during a commercial, while we waited to see which inbred family would win their feud. And my face must have revealed what I thought of that, because he added, “I know. I miss her, too.”
This did not help.
What did: Friday afternoon the phone rang, and after he answered it, he handed it to me. My mother was down at the Y, tapping into her inner artist at a pottery class — and the customary liquor-fueled wallow that followed — that would reliably keep her occupied through midnight. We were alone in the house. No one to stop him from breaking her rules; no one to stop me from saying, cautiously, hello, and finally breathing again when I heard her voice.
“I’m sorry.”
I wanted to wait for her to say it first, but I was too puppy dog eager, and so we chimed together, overlapping, desperate, both of us so, so sorry, both of us so quick to dismiss and fast-forward, whatever, it was nothing, ancient history, stupid, inessential, inconsequential to the epic and never-ending story of us.
“I have it, Dex,” she finally said. “The perfect revenge.”
“Nikki?”
“Of course, Nikki. You think we let her do this to you and get away with it?”
“So, what’s this perfect plan?”
“Not now. Tonight. You heard about the foreclosure party, right?”
Everyone had heard about the foreclosure party. An abandoned house at the edge of a half-built development, guaranteed empty, out of the way, and equipped with ample bedrooms. Nikki’s father worked at the villainous bank, and every month or two she managed to snag an address and a key. Lacey and I were supposed to be above such things.
“I’m grounded,” I told her, even as my father mouthed, It’s okay, and nodded.
“Sneak out. I promise, it’ll be worth it.”
It’s not that I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t know what it was. “Lacey—”
“Pick you up at nine.” She hung up before I could answer.
“I don’t want to know where you’re going,” my father said. The dial tone was still droning in my ear. “Plausible deniability. Just be back before your mother.”
So I was going to a party.
By nine P.M., I had laced myself into the black corset, which I hadn’t worn since the night of the Beast. Lacey said it made me into a warrior, ready for battle. It did; I was. She didn’t show. I sat on the porch steps, waiting, lipstick congealing, hair wilting in the humidity, time ticking, heart beating, cars passing and never stopping, none of them her. I’d poured some of my parents’ scotch into a water bottle — our own private pre-party, or that was the plan.
I drank most of it myself.
Nine, nine thirty, ten — no Lacey. No answer at her house when I called. No fucking way I was going back inside, changing into pajamas, explaining to my father why I’d chosen rules over rebellion, staring at the ceiling, wondering why Lacey had flaked. The party was only a couple miles away, and I had a bike.
BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY. BECAUSE I was tired. Because I was sick of being the tagalong, the one things were decided for. Because I had something to prove. Because I was curious. Because I looked hot, and I knew it. Because I’d seen enough movies where the mousy girl goes to a party and changes her life. Because I hated Nikki and thought if I drank enough beer maybe I’d be able to buzz up the courage to spit in her face. Because Lacey would hate it, or maybe she would love it, or maybe I should stop fucking caring one way or another what Lacey would think. Because I was embarrassed, and sad, and that made me angry all over again, and the rage felt good against the pedals, pumping through the dark, toward a strobing shadow, toward what felt that night, with the wind in my ears and my parents’ ancient scotch burning in my throat, like destiny. Because anything, because who knows, because it wasn’t a night or a week or a year for because, no why, only who what when where:
Me.
A mistake.
After I should have known better.
Here. The husk of a McMansion, bodies moving across windows lit by the flicker of candlelight. On the grandiose porch, two guys in low-slung jeans taking a final slug of beer before going inside.
“Yo, let’s get stupid.”
“You damn right, son.”
“You know it, son.”
It was the thing, that year, for the whitest of boys to talk like they weren’t, to sling awkward slang and let their pants sag like the rappers they saw on TV, and they were going where I was going, and that could have been my cue to get back on my bike and ride home, but instead I took the water bottle out of my bag and finished the scotch. I was a delinquent, I reminded myself. The cops were after me. I was grounded and sneaking out — albeit with paternal permission. I was dangerous.
The more I drank, the easier this was to believe.
It would have been the nicest house I had ever been in if it hadn’t been so clearly left behind. Left in a hurry, it looked like, couches and tables and rugs all in place, which, despite the mass of bodies gyrating to bad music on stained carpet, gave the house a whiff of Pompeii. Someone lived here, once, and fled in a hurry, set down breakfast spoon and morning paper, ran out the door and didn’t stop until far enough away to be safe from the thing that was coming. The bad thing.
Nikki Drummond was waiting in the foyer as if she were the grand dame of the estate. “Seriously? Hannah Dexter? Gracing us with her presence.”
“Seriously. Present.”
“I figured you’d be shipped off to a military academy by now. Or at least grounded.”
I wasn’t yet drunk enough to spit on her, so I shifted my attention to the jock drooling beside her, Marco Speck, who’d been Craig’s shadow and was apparently now looking to be his replacement. “I think you should watch out,” I said. “The last guy had to put a bullet in his head to get away from her.”
Marco looked at me like I’d just sucker punched her. “Jesus, Dexter. That was cold.”
I felt cold.
Nikki only smiled and handed me a shot, which I tipped back without hesitation, thinking maybe it was enough and we were even. Then she pushed Marco at me, saying we deserved each other, and if I wanted to embarrass myself she wasn’t going to stop me. When he said he barely recognized me in those boobs, and also dude, whoa, I let one hand play at my cleavage and the other wrap itself in his, because Nikki was watching. Maybe Lacey would have said, Don’t be one of them, but then again she’d also said What’s the big deal and What are you waiting for and Don’t be so fucking precious about fucking, and anyway she wasn’t there. The shot tasted like lemon and sugar and fire. Marco tasted like peanuts. His breath in my ear was like the wind on my bike, like coasting downhill in a whoosh of summer. Like letting it happen. Broken glass crunched beneath our feet, everything gritty and sticky and layered with filth, and it smelled like sex to me, sex as I imagined it, smoke and dried beer and rotting fruit. There was music pounding, hard-core rap; there was a crush of strangers doing the things strangers did in the dark. Marco sucked my neck. Marco’s hands were in my hands, and then in my pants, Marco was grinding against me, chest to chest, groin to groin, what passed for dancing, and I could feel him hard against me and almost believed I could do this on my own, without Lacey, I could be what the night demanded, push myself into its live and beating heart.