I shake my head. I don’t live in the house on the cliffs anymore. Do I live here, with Jas? No. Jas is bad. I don’t like Jas.
“I don’t like you,” I say, but there’s still laughter in my voice. “It’s all your fault,” I add.
My words must surprise him, because he drops my arm, and the next thing I know, I’m running, running away from him. Out of his house and down stairs that are wooden and rickety, dirty and covered in sand. And then I feel the sand beneath my feet. I’m on the beach. The sun is shining yellow and red and pink on my back—wait, it’s sunset, not sunrise, when did that happen? I have the whole beach to myself, and I spin around, spin around, dancing to music that only I can hear.
But then he is beside me again, dancing right along with me.
Why did he follow me here? Why won’t he let me out of his sight?
“Come back to the house please, Wendy.” And he says it so politely, so softly, with such a smile playing on the edges of his lips, that I say okay and let him lead me back up and over the cliffs. A cool breeze rises off the ocean, following us back to Jas’s house, making me shiver.
I wonder just how long we were dancing on the beach, just how much time we’ve spent together. Wait, I’ve been on the beach with Jas before.
“What did you mean when you said I looked different?”
“What are you talking about, sweet girl?”
“On the beach. You said living in Kensington agrees with me.”
Jas’s teeth are so white when he smiles, I bet he scares the sharks.
“I meant that you looked beautiful, Wendy.”
I laugh. What a funny word. “Bee-yoo-tee-full!” I shout, each syllable making me laugh harder.
I’m in a bed. The softest bed in the entire world, softer even than the bed in the house on Brentway. I start laughing again: did I really help rob a house? The sheets in this bed are cotton, but they’re silky as satin, and the pillows are fluffy beneath my head. The room is dark, but my eyes are wide open. Suddenly, I’m thirsty, thirstier than I’ve ever been in my whole life. I open my mouth to ask for water, but my throat is too parched to say a word. But then I roll over and a tall glass of water is here on the floor beside the bed, waiting for me.
And sitting beside the glass, he is still there. Refilling my glass, offering me coffee and tea, crackers and Popsicles.
Oh my god, a Popsicle would be so delicious right now. How did he know that?
Well, of course he knows that. He knows exactly what a person high on dust would want. Which reminds me of why I came to him in the first place. Why I took this drug in the first place. I open my mouth to ask my questions, but instead of speaking, I’m coughing. He hands me another glass of water, so cold, so delicious, that I wonder why I ever wasted time drinking anything other than water in the first place.
I sit up. I stand. I shout question after question, and I swear I can see my words hitting Jas like bullets, sliding down his body like ink.
I drop the empty glass on the floor and collapse into the bed. His hand reaches out for me, brushing my hair away from my face. I coo like a baby. His touch feels so good. He drops his hand and slides across the floor, backing away from the bed, putting some distance between us. But he stays where I can see him, disappearing only to bring me more water, an orange-flavored Popsicle, a plate piled high with crackers and cookies.
Why is he still with me? Why does he care?
21
I wake up on the ground.
I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be spending this summer at home, with my parents, shopping for towels and pillows to bring with me to Stanford in the fall. I’m supposed to be on the beach with Fiona, slathering on sunscreen while she sprays herself with tanning oil, watching from a distance while she and Dax splash hand in hand through the waves.
“This is all wrong,” I say out loud, and my throat feels like it’s on fire. I swallow, cringing at the sour taste in my mouth.
Someone is grabbing me. I turn toward the sensation, expecting to see Jas, but instead I see Fiona’s face, hear Fiona’s voice saying, “My god, Wendy, what happened to you?”
Even though she’s standing right beside me, it sounds like she’s miles away. She repeats her question, louder this time. She’s in her pajamas, her eyes still cloudy with sleep. I must have woken her.
The scent of eucalyptus tells me where I am. I’m sitting on Fiona’s front porch; my fingers are still pressing her doorbell. I drop my hand into my lap. I’m shivering. How did I get here?
I close my eyes, willing myself to remember anything that happened over the past few days. I remember kissing Pete on the cliffs. I thought nothing had ever felt as good as those kisses; I thought nothing ever would.
But in a flash I remember Jas’s party. Pete’s kisses didn’t even feel as good as falling to the ground felt when I was on dust.
I went to the party looking for answers about my brothers. Did I even remember to ask Jas about them? I don’t know. I wonder if that’s what happened to my brothers; if they simply forgot to come home after they took dust, if they simply forgot that my parents and I were back in the glass house waiting for them.
I remember running down the beach, the waves crashing in their perfect rhythm, one right after another, a surfer’s paradise. I remember the shadow of someone else beside me. I remember reaching for Pete and finding Jas instead.
I let Fiona lift me off the ground and pull me into her house.
My car is parked in the driveway beside us, but there’s no way I could have driven it here, not in the state I’m in.
I may never stop crying. Sometimes it comes in choking, wracking sobs and sometimes it’s silent tears streaming down my face and filling my throat with the taste of salt water.
I cry until I think there can’t possibly be any water left in me for more tears, and then I cry some more.
Fiona’s mother is standing just inside the doorway. She’s wearing her bathrobe.
“Wendy?” she asks, like she’s not sure it’s really me. “What are you doing here?” She looks from me to Fiona, a dozen questions just waiting to be asked.
But before she can ask a single one, I ask one of my own.
“What time is it?”
“It’s six in the morning,” she answers.
“Exactly?”
She glances at a clock behind her. “Six-oh-seven,” she says.
I actually stop crying for a second. That’s how good it feels to know exactly what time it is.
Fiona whispers that I should go to her room. Even in my addled state, I know exactly how to get from the front door to Fiona’s room; remember, from years of countless sleepovers, how much Fiona hates being woken up in the morning.
I climb into her bed, her pink sheets as familiar to me as my own. I wrinkle my nose because there is a smell here I don’t recognize. Something new mixed in with Fiona’s shampoo and the fancy detergent her housekeeper uses.
It’s Dax, I realize with a start. Dax’s smell is all over.
I nestle deep under her covers, letting myself be drenched in her scent and Dax’s, too. Willing away the smells of Kensington, of the beach, of the ocean, of Pete, of Jas.
“Wendy,” Fiona says slowly, “I’m calling your parents.”
“No,” I manage to get out between sobs. “Wait.”
I really don’t know why I’m crying like this. I’ve never been much of a crier. Maybe these tears are just a chemical reaction, some dip in my neurotransmitters from everything the drug used up. Everything it’s still using up as it snakes its way through my system.