“So he lives there by himself,” Jules said. “I did not know that.”
“His two older brothers are both at UCONN,” Tom pointed out. The campus wasn’t that far away.
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure they’re usually the ones who buy the keg and bottles of wine,” Belle countered. “Their mother comes back to town every month or so,” she told Jules, “so the party might be cancelled last minute, but as long as Carter keeps everyone following his set of rules?—”
“No puking anywhere inside the house,” Rodney recited. “No glass inside the house—plastic cups only. You spill it, you clean it up now not later, and now meansnow. If his mom calls, we all go submarine-silent, and if she calls to say she’s coming home unexpectedly during the week, we all drop everything, go over and get rid of the trash, move the keg, clean the house. Which we also do before her scheduled visits home. So she doesn’t, you know, walk into any party debris.”
“You guys know if we do this right,” Jules said, looking around at the faces of his friends. And Rodney. “If Suspect X takes Sadie’s bait and puts his flunitrazepam into her beer?—”
“Wine,” she interrupted him. “I cannot with the beer.”
“We’ll get the evidence we need—the drug in Sadie’s wine—ooh, we need to make sure her cup doesn’t get knocked over, we should be prepared with some kind of clean jar to seal it in?—”
“I’ll make sure we have that,” Shelly volunteered.
“But that evidence, plus the video of Suspect X putting it there,” Jules continued, “after which we’ll tackle him to the ground and sit on him until help arrives, which will probably be my mother, who will absolutely call the police...” He could tell from looking at their faces that his friends didn’t really understand the consequences, so he clarified. “That will probably be the last party ever, at Carter’s house.”
None of them looked particularly disappointed, but Tom said it best: “Carter probably should’ve addeddon’t invite rapiststo his list of party rules.”
Shelly raised her hand. “Can I be part of Team Tackle Suspect X to the Ground? Because Ireallywant to help with that.”
Rodney’s little sister Meg spoke up for the first time. “Me, too,” she said.
“Well, all right,” Jules said, looking around at thedetermined faces of his friends—and Rodney. “It’ll be this Friday, then.” He took a deep breath. “Here’s what we’re gonna do....”
It was a long, strange, lonely week as Jules waited for Friday.
He and his new friends worked hard to completely avoid each other while at school—other than the intentionally dramatic clashes that they’d rehearsed and in some cases choreographed.
The loneliness—and strangeness—stretched throughout the long school days, with their too-brief evening meetings at the summer house jammed with laughter, apologies, and intense group hugs. And somewhat frantic preparation for the next day’sbig show, as both Belle and Hobbit called it.
Tuesday’s show was a blow-out fight in the school’s center lobby, right outside the auditorium, between Belle, Sadie, and Shelly—while Tom made himself scarce even though he was dying to watch.
Hobbit managed to leave the auditorium doors open while the three boys lurked in the shadowy darkness, so that Tom could at least listen in because, yeah, the girls were fighting over him.
Faux-fighting. But they were seasoned thespians, so it sounded pretty darn real.
“Just stay thefuckaway from him!” Belle shouted, pushing Sadie back so that she knocked into Shelly. It had been artfully choreographed by Hobbit back in the summer house. He’d made them work through it slowly, over and over, until the violence looked real while, in fact, no one actually got hurt.
But Shelly loudly feigned injury. “Ow! Ow!Ow! Belle,you’re completely insane! Sadie didn’t go anywhere near Tom! She’d never do that!”
“Actually,” Sadie said, a mountain of attitude in her raised voice, “I did. He told me you guys had a fight, and I figured,finally. He’ll finally find out what it’s like to get with a girl who’snotawaiting the return of the mothership!”
Tom was chuckling and Hobbit was snickering.
“You are such a skank,” Belle said in a killer stage-whisper, her voice loaded with indignant anger.
And that was the part that made Jules laugh—quietly because he, too, did not want anyone to know they were in here, listening.
But back in the summer house, when they’d rehearsed this particular scene, Hobbit had ridden Belle hard on the delivery of that line in particular. “Again,” he’d ordered, because she’d originally shouted it at Sadie.
“You aresuchaskank!”
“I don’t believe you!” Hobbit shouted back at her. “Again!”
Again, again,again, until it had come out of Belle in that much lower volume but with greater intensity, and “Thereit is!” Hobbit had said.
And he was right. What was happening out there in the hallway was one hundred percent believable. That is, assuming the crowd of kids who’d stopped to watch didn’t know just how close Belle, Sadie, and Shelly truly were, or thatskankwasn’t in their working vocabulary.
