“Let’s not talk about him,” Eureka said, because an embarrassing gush of emotion might pour out of her if they spoke about Ander. Brooks seemed to take her dismissal of the subject another way. It seemed to make him happy.
He touched her cheek. “I never want bad things to happen to you.”
Eureka tilted her cheek into his hand. “Maybe the worst is over.”
He smiled, the old Brooks. He left his hand against her face. After a moment he looked over his shoulder at the party. The mark on his forehead from last week’s wound was now a very light pink scar. “Maybe the best is yet to come.”
“You didn’t happen to bring any sheets?” Eureka nodded at the Maze.
The mischief returned to his eyes. Mischief made Brooks look like Brooks. “I think we’ll be too busy for that tonight.”
She thought about his lips on hers, how the heat of his body and the strength of his arms had overwhelmed her when they kissed. A kiss so sweet should not have been tainted by an aftermath so bitter. Did Brooks want to try it again? Did she?
When they’d made up the other day, Eureka hadn’t felt capable of clarifying where on the friends/more-than-friends continuum they stood. Now every exchange had the potential to confuse. Was he flirting? Or was she reading into something innocent?
She blushed. He noticed.
“I mean Never-Ever. We’re seniors, remember?”
Eureka hadn’t considered playing that stupid game, regardless of her status as senior and its status as tradition. Haunting the Maze sounded like more fun. “My secrets are none of the whole school’s business.”
“You only share what you want to share, and I’ll be right there next to you. Besides”—Brooks’s sly grin told Eureka he had something up his sleeve—“you might learn something interesting.”
The rules of Never-Ever were simple: You sat in a circle and the game moved clockwise. When it was your turn, you began with “Never have I ever …,” and you confessed something you’d never done before, the more salacious the better.
N
EVER HAVE
I
EVER
…
•
lied at Confession
,
•
made out with my friend’s sister
,
•
blackmailed a teacher
,
•
smoked a joint
,
•
lost my virginity
.
They way they played it at Evangeline, people who had done what you had not done had to tell their story and pass you their drink to gulp. The purer your past, the faster you got drunk. It was a corruption of the innocent, a confession in reverse. No one knew how the tradition got started. People said Evangeline seniors had played it for the past thirty years, though nobody’s parents would admit it.
At ten o’clock, Eureka and Brooks joined the line of seniors holding plastic cups filled with punch. They followed the garbage-bag path taped to the carpet, filing into one of the guest bedrooms. It was cold and vast—a king-sized bed with a massive carved headboard at one end, severe black velour curtains lining the wall of windows on the other.
Eureka entered the circle on the floor and sat cross-legged next to Brooks. She watched the room fill up with sexy pumpkins, Goth scarecrows, Black Crows band members, gay kids dressed as farmers, and half the LSU football hall of fame. People sprawled on the bed, on the love seat near the dresser. Cat and Julien came in carrying folding chairs from the garage.
Forty-two seniors out of a class of fifty-four had shown up to play the game. Eureka envied whoever was sick, grounded, teetotaling, or otherwise absent. They’d be left out for the rest of the year. Being left out was a kind of freedom, Eureka had learned.
The room was crammed with dumb costumes and exposed flesh. Her least favorite Faith Healers song meandered endlessly outside. She nodded toward the velour curtains to her right and murmured to Brooks, “Any urge to jump through that window with me? Maybe we’ll land in the pool.”
He laughed under his breath. “You promised.”
Julien had finished taking a head count and was about to close the door when Maya Cayce skated in. A boy dressed like a crowbar and his friend, a bad attempt at gladiator Russell Crowe, separated to let her pass. Maya rolled up to Eureka and Brooks and tried to wedge her way between them. But Brooks moved closer to Eureka, creating a tiny space on his other side. Eureka couldn’t help admiring the way Maya took what she could get, snuggling next to Brooks as she removed her roller skates.
When the door was shut and the room buzzed with nervous laughter, Julien walked to the center of the circle. Eureka glanced at Cat, who was trying to mask her pride that her secret date for the night was the secret leader of this most secret class event.
“We all know the rules,” Julien said. “We all have our punch.” Some kids whooped and raised their glasses. “Let the Never-Ever game of 2013 begin. And may its legend never, ever end—or leave this room.”
More cheers, more toasting, more whole- and halfhearted laughter. When Julien spun and pointed randomly at a shy Puerto Rican girl named Naomi, you could have heard an alligator blink.
“Me?” Naomi’s voice wavered. Eureka wished Julien had chosen someone more extroverted to start the game. Everyone stared at Naomi, waiting. “Okay,” she said. “Never have I ever … played Never-Ever.”
Over embarrassed snickers, Julien admitted his mistake. “Okay, let’s try this again. Justin?”
Justin Babineaux, hair spiked skyward as if he were in mid-fall, could be described in three words: rich soccer player. He grinned. “Never have I ever had a job.”
“You jerk.” Justin’s best friend, Freddy Abair, laughed, and passed Justin his cup to swig. “That’s the last time you’re getting free burgers during my shift at Hardee’s.” Most of the rest of the class rolled their eyes as they passed their cups around the circle toward a chugging Justin.
Next it was a cheerleader’s turn. Then the boy who was first-chair saxophone in the band. There were popular plays—“Never have I ever kissed three boys in the same night”—and unpopular plays—“Never have I ever popped a zit.” There were plays intended to single out another senior—“Never have I ever made out with Mr. Richman after eighth-period science in the supply closet”—and plays intended purely for showing off—“Never have I ever been turned down for a date.” Eureka sipped her punch independent of her classmates’ divulgences, which she found painfully mundane. This was not the game she’d imagined it being all these years.
Never, she thought, had reality ever compared with what might have been if any of her classmates dared to dream beyond their ordinary worlds.
The only bearable aspect of the game was Brooks’s muttered commentary about each classmate taking a turn: “Never has she ever considered wearing pants that didn’t show her thong.… Never has he ever not judged others for doing things he does daily.… Never has she ever left the house without a pound of makeup.”
By the time the game got around to Julien and Cat, most peoples’ punch cups had been taken, drained, returned, and refilled a few times. Eureka didn’t expect much out of Julien—he was so jocky, so cocky. But when it was his turn, he said to Cat, “Never have I ever kissed a girl I actually like—but I’m hoping to change that tonight.”
The boys booed and the girls whooped and Cat fanned herself dramatically, loving it. Eureka was impressed. Someone had finally figured out that ultimately this game wasn’t about divulging shameful secrets. They were supposed to use Never-Ever to get to know each other better.