Bitter Falls

by Caine, Rachel

  “Mind reader.”

  “One of my many talents.” Sam winks at Lanny as they both reach for the corn bread, and he beats her. “Gotta be fast, kid.”

  We all have to be fast to outrun what’s circling around our calm little haven of a house.

  Fast, and smart.

  Lanny goes to bed early. She says she’s got a headache. I wonder, privately, if she’s really got a new girlfriend she’s sending messages to. I almost hope so; the breakup with her first love, Dahlia, nearly broke her. Rebound crushes are rarely healthy, but at least it’ll help repair her self-worth, and develop more armor for next time.

  I worry, just a little, that she’s hiding something from me. But part of being a mom is knowing when to push and when not to. I decide not to this time. I’ve introduced enough chaos today.

  And I pray it’s not a mistake.

  8

  LANNY

  Vee’s back at midnight, of course. I’m nervous and scared and wishing I’d told Mom, but I still make sure my window’s off the alarm sensor when I go outside to take out the trash. Mom doesn’t notice. Nobody does. And that makes me feel pretty guilty.

  When Vee shows up with her big duffel bag again, I slide that window up and get her inside, quickly. I’ve also greased it, so it doesn’t make a sound as it glides up and down. And Vee’s quiet coming in too. She’s even taken her boots off, so she’s in bare feet when she steps inside.

  She gives me a vivid, wild smile, and I can’t help but smile back. Then she hugs me. Since she showered last night she smells pretty good, still, but there’s a hint of sweat and forest to her.

  It kind of turns me on, to be honest.

  Vee shuts the window, puts her duffel bag aside, and whispers, “So, how about that laundry?”

  “Can’t tonight. Mom’s on high alert after what happened today.”

  I expect her to ask what happened, but she doesn’t. She shrugs. “Okay, then. Can I borrow a cool shirt or something?”

  “For what?”

  “You didn’t hear? There’s a big-ass party tonight at Killing Rock! You’re goin’, right?”

  “What? No!” I haven’t even heard about a party. Nobody has called me. Nobody texted me. And since Mom keeps us off social media, I didn’t even have that public heads-up. “Uh, I mean, I wasn’t invited.”

  “Not an invitation kind of party,” Vee says. “You just . . . go. Like a rave. You know?”

  I’ve never been to a rave either. I’ve only been to a few parties, honestly, and mostly those were closely supervised things. And I took presents to them. God, I’m sixteen and a total loser. Yeah, okay, I’ve been out to Killing Rock before. That’s a place where kids hang out and get up to all kinds of stuff, and I went there with Dahlia a few times. But never in the dark.

  “You’re not goin’?” Vee seems disappointed. Disappointed in me. “I thought you’d be happy to get out from under and have some fun.”

  Vee’s definition of fun and mine are probably not the same things, I think. But still, I’m intrigued. “Who’s supposed to be there?”

  “Everybody from town who’s our age. Norton’s the town close to here, right?”

  I nod. I wonder if she’s been there yet. Then I wonder why she’s here at all. I hope it’s to see me, but honestly: I’m not sure. But what if it’s just that simple? That Vee has a thing for me?

  I don’t know how I feel about it. Flattered, I guess? Definitely interested. But there’s something weird and out of control about this. Am I in trouble here? I don’t know. But now I’m kind of trapped. I let Vee in. It’s my fault she’s here. I could have told Mom at any time, and I didn’t.

  I could go tell Mom now, but then I’d have to explain how Vee got in, and Vee would probably say she was here before tonight, and . . . I don’t want that discussion. And . . . and I don’t want Vee to be disappointed in me.

  It’s easier just to say, “Uh, okay. We can go, I guess. For a little while. It’s not very far, just around the lake. But I’m not going to get drunk or whatever.”

  She’s already nodding, and her shaggy, dark hair flops down over her bright eyes. There’s color in her cheeks, and I get a flash of teeth as she smiles. “Too scared of your momma?” She keeps it to a careful, low whisper.

  “Damn right I am,” I whisper back. “What time is the party?”

  “Right about now,” Vee says, and points out the window. I ease up and take a look. I can just see the end of the lake where Killing Rock juts out over the water, and sure enough, there’s a flicker of a bonfire down by the shore. And I can hear music drifting over the water.

  I know it’s a bad idea, but even if some of the bullies are there, I can deal with that. Unlike school, I can leave whenever I want, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a little fun for a change.

  Yeah, I’m making all the excuses to myself. I know I shouldn’t go. But . . . I never do what I want to do. I’ve been so good. And maybe being a little bad, especially if we’re going to leave this stupid town anyway . . . maybe that’s okay. Just once.

  We use stuffed animals and pillows under the covers to make it look like I’m there. It’s pretty convincing. Vee finds some dramatic glittery purple eye shadow and demands I let her do my makeup. I sit down, and she kneels in front of me. It feels weird and intimate, and I close my eyes and try not to jump at the featherlight touch of the brush across my lids. Then her fingers, blending it with expert little sweeps. “Hold still,” she tells me, and I hear her cracking open another shadow container. “I’m good at smoky eyes. You just hang on there. Trust me.”

  It isn’t that I do trust her, exactly, but there’s something about feeling taken care of that’s so . . . easy. I sit and let her do my makeup, and I’m secretly enjoying the way she’s touching me, the warmth of her pressing in between my thighs. It’s not sexual, but it’s sexy, and I have to swallow nervously. “Almost there?” I ask.

  “One sec . . .” Another long, deliberate pull of her thumbs across my eyelids. “Perfect.”

  I open my eyes and she’s right there, bending over and staring into my eyes. For a heart-stopping few seconds I think she’s going to kiss me, but then she winks and puts a hand mirror between us.

  I look good. I mean, wow. She’s amazing.

  We get dressed; I keep my back to her while I change, but I wonder if she sneaks looks. My skin tingles, and I feel awkward and off balance and nearly fall over trying to pull on my distressed black jeans. When I finally turn around, Vee’s leaning against the wall openly staring. Her arms are crossed. It’s a little disorienting to see my clothes on her, like looking at a funhouse mirror. But great too. Like we’re sharing something secret. I feel breathless at that. I’ve wanted to feel part of something outside my family for so long, and for a while I had Dahlia, but . . . that’s over, and I’ve been so alone.

  Vee makes me feel seen. Present. Wanted. Even cool for a change. And I need that so much.

  She grabs my hand as she ducks through the open window and outside, and pulls me along with her. Not that I’m resisting, really.

  Vee Crockett is maybe the most interesting girl I’ve met, ever. She’s dangerous and wild and sleek and unpredictable, and she makes me feel like I don’t know what’s going to happen from one second to the next. Growing up like I did, where there were no good surprises . . . it feels like being on the best amusement park ride in the world.

  But I also know our speeding roller coaster car could fly off the rails anytime, and part of my brain is nagging me as we head down to the road. We can see the bonfire clearly, and hear the shouts and laughter and pulsing music.

  “Come on, let’s get there before the cops bust the party!” Vee calls, and breaks into a run. I catch and pass her easily. This, I’m good at. I don’t even break a sweat, and in fact I have to slow down to let her catch up. She’s laughing and wheezing a little by the time we get there.

  The area under the cliff—Killing Rock—is mostly imported sand, a pretend beach in the middle
of Tennessee. The night air’s crisp and cold, but that isn’t stopping anybody from swimming in the lake or cannonballing off the top of the cliff. It’s not that bad; it hasn’t even been below freezing. Fall in Tennessee can sometimes be summer with more leaf colors, and winter can be fall with more Christmas decorations. No sign of any change tonight. The skies are a little cloudy, but the wispy kind of clouds that look decorative instead of threatening.

  There are maybe a hundred teens around Norton, Tennessee, and about eighty of them are here right now on this end of the lake. The rest are probably on their way.

  “Well, this looks just perfect,” Vee says, and turns a wide smile on a boy who stumbles by. He’s already blind drunk, but she doesn’t seem to mind; she looks him over twice. I feel a little twinge of . . . something. I don’t want to think it’s jealousy. I tell myself that Vee’s not into me anyway, that I was just imagining things back in Wolfhunter when it seemed like she really liked me. Oh yeah, then why is she here, if she isn’t here for you?

  Okay. Maybe I’m jealous, after all.

  I pause just in time to see one of my kinda-girlcrushes Lottie come cannonballing off the top of the rock, knees hugged tight to her chest, and she hits the lake with a tremendous splash that’s greeted with cheers from camp chairs near the dock. Dozens of teens are gathered around the bonfire, which spills red and gold light onto rippling water. I see Vee walk away out of the corner of my eye, but I wait for Lottie to surface. She does, waving, and gets another round of cheers as she strokes for the shore. Lottie’s gorgeous. She’s a redhead with big green eyes and an upturned nose and a Tennessee accent so slow it drips like honey. Yeah, I might have kind of a thing for her. Lottie barely knows I’m alive, though. At least she hasn’t actively hated me. So I can still crush on her a little.

  Killing Rock probably isn’t the real name of the big cliff that juts out over the lake; it has some boring-ass official title like Lookout Point or Sunset View or something. But it’s been called Killing Rock among the students in Norton for as far back as anyone can remember; even the teachers call it that. Nobody can ever say who exactly got killed here, though. There’s some vague legend of a Native American princess committing suicide by jumping off it onto rocks, the stupid bullshit that white people say to make themselves all romantic about the original residents they killed off in the first place. I don’t buy the myth. But the name has to come from somewhere.

  When I look around for Vee, I don’t see her. She’s vanished into the crowd. I frown and search a little, but I finally figure she’ll come back when she’s ready. Yeah, maybe she found that drunk guy and is making out with him right now. I don’t like to think about that. I’m not sure if Vee is gay, or bi, or poly, or what; she hasn’t exactly said anything to lead me one way or another. But I do know one thing, deep down: she’s bad for me. I first met her when she was in jail, and yeah, maybe she didn’t kill her mom, but she’d done plenty of bad stuff by that point. She had a drug problem. Drinking too. And she was willing to do a lot of sketchy things to get what she wanted.

  Doesn’t mean I don’t still want her.

  “Hey, Lanny.” I turn. Someone—a shadow in the trees—holds out a beer to me, but I shake my head. Last thing I need is Mom smelling it on me when I get home. He passes me a water instead. I check to make sure the seal is intact before I open it and take a sip. Growing up paranoid has its good points; nobody is going to get me with the normal predator tactics. Oh yeah, dummy, coming out here in the dark was super cautious. I hate the mocking voice in my head, but I can’t turn it off either. At least it’s making sense right now. Usually it’s just a constant litany of how dumb my hair looks, how my eyes aren’t the same exact size, that I’m too thin or too fat or too short or not sexy enough or whatever. The only thing that makes it better is that I know everybody else has that same voice too.

  Well. Not the assholes, I guess.

  There is just enough firelight bleeding out to the fringes to see that the guy handing me water is Bon Casey, kicked back in a folding lounge chair. Like me, he goes by a nickname, but at least Atlanta is a decent first name. Bonaventure? Ugh, not so much. He’s older than me by a couple of years, a senior, and I’m struck by a little shiver of shyness.

  “Bon,” I say, and toast him with the water. He kicks a bedraggled old camp chair my way, and I sink into it. “How’s it going?”

  He shrugs. “You know.” Bon’s technically a senior, but he got held back a couple of grades. He’s really an adult, which makes it borderline weird for him to be out here. “Heard about your brother. He okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s fine.”

  “Yeah, well, Hank Charterhouse is not okay,” Bon says. “Got his jaw all wired up. You know the Charterhouses are hooked up, right?”

  “Cousins to the Belldenes.”

  “Fair warning, Hank will be looking for some payback once he’s healed. So y’all better keep an eye out. Belldene clan don’t play.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I don’t tell him the old couple already came to our house and low-key tried to scare us. “My mom’s not somebody they really want to mess with, I can tell you that.”

  Bon laughs. It sounds a little high and loony. “Yeah, she’s a scary bitch.”

  “Runs in the fam,” I tell him. He offers his beer, and I tap it with my water bottle. I ought to get up and walk, but truth is, I’m not really sure how accepting the main group will be if I go over toward the bonfire; looks like the Cool Kids Coalition to me. Some are already passed out, wrapped in flannel jackets and blankets. If the cops aren’t already on their way, surely this will all be busted up within the next hour. It’s kind of a scene.

  I look around for Vee again but I still don’t see her. I’m disappointed that she ditched me, but on some level, I guess I’m also not surprised.

  I end up watching as Lottie chats with a cluster of boys and drinks too much, too fast. I feel very alone, despite Bon, Lottie, the eighty or so teens within a dozen feet of me whooping it up. Someone else—a boy this time—cannonballs off the rock, and the splash reaches all the way to the shore. I hear the fake-outraged screams of Instagram bunnies who are taking selfies around the fire. Lottie among them. Yeah, I keep noticing, even while I’m starting to get mad at Vee for putting me in this lonely, weird position.

  “Boo!”

  I yelp as someone grabs me from behind, and drop my water bottle. It’s Vee, I realize as I spin around; she has a wide, maniacal grin that has a chemical sheen to it. She’s so damn high I’m surprised she isn’t floating off the ground. “Fuck! Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry,” she says, but not like she means it. “Come on. Let’s dance.”

  “Hey, new girl, you want to party?” Bon says. She ignores him completely, drags me over closer to the fire in an empty stretch of sand. She starts dancing. She puts her arms around me and pulls me close, and I hear boys whooping and clapping behind us. I don’t like it. I’m not here to put more deposits in their spank banks.

  So I push away from Vee a little and say, “Hey, this party is bound to get busted soon. We should go back.”

  “Back where?” She shouts it over the music. Someone’s turned it up so loud I can feel it in my bones, vibrating uncomfortably through my body.

  “Home!” I’m tired, and I feel weird. My instincts are telling me to get the hell out of here; there’s something brewing under all the cheer and campfires and energy. Just a feeling, but Mom’s always taught me to trust my instincts.

  “Oh hell no, Lanta, we ain’t goin’ home. We’re going to stay out here all night and party!” She draws the last word out and does a wild spinning dance, flinging her arms wide. I have to move back to avoid getting hit. She’s way too high, and she’s not making good decisions. I grab her hand and drag her away, dump her into the chair next to Bon, and get another water bottle from his cooler. He chokes on his beer. “Hey, girl, those cost, you know!”

  I dig five bucks out of my pants pocket and fling it at him. He grumbles, bu
t he takes it. I get Vee to drink, and she guzzles the entire thing, then bends over, gasping like she’s going to throw up. She doesn’t. She’s a little more sober when she sits back. The feverish glitter is mostly gone. She’s sweating. I can smell the harsh body odor coming off her. She needs another shower, bad.

  “Oh man, too much. I fucked up,” she says, and puts her head in her hands. “Sorry. I just—Lanta, I just want to have some fun. Is that wrong?”

  She’s shaking. The drugs are turning on her, fast, and I’m worried. “What did you take, Vee?”

  She doesn’t know, that’s clear from the look she gives me. She downed some pills, probably. Maybe smoked something. Hard to tell.

  She’s not okay. And I can’t leave her out here. Anything could happen to her.

  “Hey,” I say to Bon. “Want to give us a ride home? For cash?”

  “I ain’t Uber, girl. Hike it.”

  Another cannonball hits the lake to applause and cheers. The party noise keeps getting louder. I look over. It’s just a sea of distorted faces and writhing bodies. Firelight makes people I know look like dangerous strangers.

  “So. You buying something more than water? ’Cause if you’re not, move on. Chairs are for closers.” Bon’s here selling weed and pills. Of course. I should have known. Nobody’s nice to me for nothing.

  “Fine.” I grab Vee and haul her to her feet.

  “I don’t feel so good,” she says.

  “That’s okay. We’re going home. You can sleep it off there.”

  She breaks free of me and runs. I mean, runs, and I immediately start after her because this isn’t good. She’s not heading home. She’s heading up the cliff. “Vee! Stop!”

  She doesn’t. She takes the steep path up, scrambling, laughing wildly, and I follow her. Somehow she stays ahead of me, even though I’m a runner; I guess whatever she’s on has given her a real burst of energy. Switchback turns in the dark, slippery rocks, but she makes it, and I burst out onto the cliff just a step behind her.