“Oh yeah?” asks Wes. “When?”
Wes’s eyes are on my face, reading me like a worn paperback, and I know he’s seconds away from realizing that something’s wrong. That something’sreallywrong. So I do my best impression of a well-adjusted person and give his friend a genuine smile even though it kills me on the inside, a fucking knife to the heart. Because I can’t have a meltdown here, in front of him. I can’tdo thisright now—I can’t do thisever—and by some miracle, I manage to answer him in a stable, steady voice. By some miracle, I get the words out without stuttering or stammering or stumbling, though I nearly swallow my entire tongue in the process.
“He dated my friend in high school,” I say.
Wes shakes his head in disbelief. “Wow, seriously? What a small world.”
Hiseyes never leave my face as he takes a sip of his beer. “Tell me about it,” he says, and I want to die.
But then Kaden says something about beer pong and Ben makes a joke and the subject changes and the party moves on.
I don’t. My body is paralyzed in place. I told myself that if I ever saw him again, I’d do what I couldn’t before. I would run. I wouldn’t stand there like a sitting duck, oblivious to the kill shot, free for the taking, a punching bag for someone else’s rage and release.
I wouldrun.
But I can’t. My feet are glued to this floor, and the party rotates around me in a blur of faces and laughter and drunken antics. Why can’t I move?
Shock.
Through the madness, I focus on Wes, and my heart splits in half. He’s the safe place. He’s supposed to be the safe place. But now he’s talking to Kaden and Ben andhim,and I slip away, into the kitchen. My fingertips tingle. My chest constricts. I feel an anxiety attack coming on.
I latch onto the nearest bottle of tequila and pour myself a shot. I down it like a life elixir and then stare out the window in a trance. If my body’s supposed to be in fight or flight, it didn’t get the memo. It’s just…immobile. I just stand at the sink and stare into space while tequila churns my gut and my heart tries to remember how to beat.
I’ve lost track of the amount of time I’ve been standing here when I sense his presence behind me, too close. Way too close. I didn’t notice anyone enter the kitchen. I didn’t hear anyone approach. But my body knows, and my hair stands on end.
“You look good,” he says. I shake my head in the tiniest movement. “What, don’t want to talk? Do you talk to Tucker, at least?” I say nothing. He steps closer. Too close. Intimidatingly close, as if he’s letting me know he could overtake me if he wanted to. I stare down at my shoes. “You guys fucking?”
I flinch away, tripping backward as the flight finally kicks in, and he snickers.
I stumble out of the kitchen, snatching the tequila along the way. Nausea twists my stomach.
First priority: Distance.
Second priority: Air.
Third priority: Vomit.
I don’t know where to go. The moon is too close at this point, not that it’s an option.
Somehow, I make it out of the house, onto the main beach road. Walk a step. Dry heave. Walk another step. Dry heave some more. When I’m a decent distance from the house, I sinkdown to the sand. I raise the bottle of tequila to my mouth and drink.
But I can’t keep the memory at bay.
THEN
Junior year.
We have an after-school routine, the four of us. We get into Lizzie’s car in the student lot, book it to Starbucks with our music blaring, and order the same drinks every day. Caramel macchiato for Alexis. White mocha for Lizzie. Brown sugar latte for Farah. A basic iced coffee for me because my parents are cheap.
We hang out for a while, bitching about lame teachers and pointless assignments and who fingered who at Greg’s party last weekend, and then Lizzie drops us off at home so we can do our homework. Coffee. Gossip. Homework. Coffee. Gossip. Homework. The same thing day after day.
And on weekends, we spend our nights texting guys from Alexis’s basement or sneaking out to one of Greg’s “get-togethers.” We steal booze from our parents’ liquor cabinets—never enough that they’ll notice—and obsess over clothes and shoes and boys. My parents hardly register I’m gone, too concerned with Noah’s insane baseball schedule. It works in my favor.
And then spring break comes around, and Alexis gets a new obsession after visiting her older sister at Harrington University and attending her first college frat party.
Mason Bryce. Sophomore at Harrington. Student athlete: hockey. Went to our rival school, Northland, but she can overlook that since he’s hot. They start texting incessantly. We don’t wonder why a sophomore in college has interest in a high school girl becauseeveryone’sinterested in Alexis Cane. She’sthatgirl. Luscious brown hair. Perfect body. Comes from money. And has a butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck, usually hidden except for hot summer days. Still, it’s cool to know it’s there.
Everything shifts after Mason. We don’t see Alexis for most of the weekends in April. She devotes every second she can to her boyfriend, and it disrupts our entire routine. We spend our Friday and Saturday nights in Farah’s basement instead, and being a weekend threesome instead of a foursome takes some getting used to.
