Lead Me Not

by A. Meredith Walters

  So I had ended it as gently as I was able to. Brooks had taken it well; kudos to the healthy male ego. And we had, surprisingly, become close friends in the aftermath. I still caught him looking at my boobs more often than I would have liked, but I chose to ignore it.

  Brooks handed me a slim paper bag. I peered inside and grinned. “Why, Brooks, are you planning to get me drunk?” I teased, heading out into the hallway, closing my bedroom door behind me.

  Brooks chuckled. “Nah, just figured you’d want to break up your wild and crazy evening of alphabetizing the soup cans in the pantry.”

  I pulled two glasses out of the cabinet and unscrewed the bottle of vodka. Brooks found a carton of orange juice in the refrigerator and set it on the counter. I mixed our drinks while he found a bag of potato chips and dumped them into a bowl.

  “I hadn’t gotten that far yet,” I admitted, following my friend out into the tiny living room. The space was cramped, yet homey. It held a worn-to-the-point-of-ugliness love seat and armchair and a circular coffee table. There was just enough room to walk between the furniture on your way into the kitchen without smacking your knees.

  Sure, the couch smelled like feet and the table had mismatched legs, but I held each and every piece in an affectionate regard. Renee had called our interior design “Goodwill chic.” I liked it because it was mine. Just mine.

  “Is Renee out?” Brooks asked, making himself comfortable in the armchair before reaching for his drink. I curled my legs beneath me on the couch and sipped at my cocktail.

  “Well, she’s not hiding in the closet,” I joked, making a face as the alcohol hit my tongue. Way too much vodka, not enough orange juice. Shit, if I wasn’t careful I’d be falling on the floor after three sips.

  “Is she with Captain Douche?” Brooks asked, making me snort.

  “Where else would she be?” I responded, knowing I sounded annoyed.

  “What’s with that guy? He seems like the sort to tear the wings off butterflies for fun. What does she see in him?” Brooks asked around a mouthful of sour-cream-and-onion chips.

  That, really, was the question of the hour, though if I thought back far enough, I could sort of understand how it had happened. When Renee had first started dating Devon, even I had been taken in by his boy-next-door good looks and good ol’ southern appeal, though I thought he had laid it on a little thick. His Texas drawl was like melted butter in his mouth. He had the “aww shucks” charm down to a science. It had seemed kind of sexy at the time, and his unruly red hair and brown eyes could be construed as attractive.

  As the saying goes, looks can be deceiving. And I had most certainly been deceived.

  “Maybe it’s love,” I said, with a hefty dose of sarcasm. I took another drink of my screwdriver and made a face. “Gah, this is gross,” I said and put it down on the coffee table.

  Brooks shook his head and dumped the contents of my glass into his. “Love, my ass, more like he’s got her cock-whipped,” he remarked, making me cringe.

  “Dude, I don’t need to think about Devon or his cock. Yuck.” I shuddered.

  Brooks picked up the remote and started flipping through the channels until he found a NASCAR race. “You come to my apartment with shitty alcohol, and now you’re expecting me to sit through hours of cars driving in circles? I don’t think so,” I announced, lunging for the remote.

  Brooks tossed it in my direction. “Fine, but I’m vetoing the rerun of Deuce Bigalow that I know is playing right now,” he warned, and I pouted good-naturedly.

  “You have no appreciation for Rob Schneider,” I protested.

  “I just find it extremely disturbing that you can recite all of the dialogue,” Brooks countered.

  Grumbling under my breath, I finally settled on a cooking show featuring an overly angry Brit. Brooks decided that we weren’t allowed to speak unless it was with horrible English accents, which led me to show him my really bad imitation of Judi Dench.

  I was just starting to enjoy my evening when my phone rang. I grabbed it and looked at the number, not recognizing it.

  “Hello?” I said after answering. The noise on the other end was deafening.

  “Hello?” I said again.

  “Aubrey!” someone yelled into the phone. I looked over at Brooks, who was watching me questioningly.

  “Yeah, who is this? I can’t hear you.”

  “It’s Renee. I need you to come and get me.” Renee’s voice wobbled, and I could barely hear her over the commotion.

  “Where are you? What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “I need you to come and get me now! Please!” she begged, and I could tell she was wigging out.

  “Where’s Devon?” I asked, trying to make sense of what was going on.

  “Just please, Aubrey. Devon fucking left me here, and I don’t know anyone.” Renee’s voice rose into near hysterics.

  “Okay, okay. Tell me where you are,” I commanded her with my patented Aubrey Duncan composed calm.

  “I’m at Compulsion. You know, the club?” she yelled, and I wanted to groan in exasperation.

  “Yeah, I know what Compulsion is,” I replied, not adding that my knowledge was only a few hours old.

  “It’s in a warehouse down near the river. I don’t know the exact address, and it was dark when we got here. Just please come and get me,” Renee pleaded, and I knew she was crying.

  “Okay, I’m on my way. Can I call you on this number if I need to? Where’s your phone?” I asked, already on my feet and grabbing my keys.

  “No, some guy gave me this phone to use. I don’t know him or anything. I’ll wait for you inside. Just hurry.” And then the line went dead.

  “Fucking Renee,” I growled in frustration. Brooks followed me to the door.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, grabbing hold of my arm.

  I shook him off. “No, you stay here,” I started, but Brooks cut me off.

  “No way, Aubrey. Compulsion is hard-core. You wouldn’t survive ten minutes! I might as well stick a sign on your ass with the words fresh meat. Hell if I’m letting you go by yourself. Why is Renee there?” he asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders angrily. “I doubt it was her idea. This has Devon I’m-a-cocksucker Keeton written all over it. God, he left her there, Brooks! What a jackass!” I seethed. It was a lot easier to feel angry than to admit how freaked out I was, how one phone call could trigger a memory I had buried under a mountain of repression.

  My mind threatened to relive that night. The frantic late-night call. The gut-wrenching fear. The moment when my entire life changed.

  Only I had learned my lesson, and this time I wouldn’t ignore the person who needed me.

  It wasn’t until Brooks and I were headed down the road that he made an obvious observation. “Do we even know where this place is?” he asked, and I could have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.

  And finally I did laugh, almost maniacally. Just because it was all so damned absurd. Here I was, rushing off to play save Renee from her shitty choices, and I didn’t even know where the heck I was going.

  “Not really,” I admitted once I had settled down.

  “Okay,” Brooks let out slowly, giving me his you-are-a-crazy-person look. I sure hoped his future patients were never on the receiving end of that particular expression. It could make anyone question their mental health.

  “She said she was by the river at a warehouse. Considering I didn’t know a thing about Compulsion until a few hours ago, I’m completely useless right now,” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation.

  “Huh, sounds like it’s down on Third Street,” Brooks offered, earning him a surprised look from me.

  “Didn’t know you were so familiar with the stab-’em-and-leave-’em side of town. Makes me wonder what you get up to in your spare time,” I remarked dryly.

  Brooks rolled his eyes. “I’m not allergic to social situations like you are, Aubrey,” was his only explanation. Huh. It made me wonder how much th
ere was to my good buddy Brooks that I wasn’t aware of.

  The farther we drove into the city, the more obvious it became that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. This was a rough side of town. The stay-inside-or-you’re-going-to-get-shanked part of the city. Longwood University was only ten blocks away, but it might as well be on another planet.

  The streets were lined with run-down houses. Cars were up on cinder blocks, and there were more than a few burned-out streetlights. Teenagers hung out on the street corners, and the shadows seemed to hold all sorts of unsavory things that I didn’t want to examine too closely. I was experiencing a full-on case of the “icks.”

  I pulled into a parking lot and turned off the car. Brooks opened the door and got out, but I sat there, staring out the window, not sure I wanted to leave the nice, warm safety of my car. Shit, we were going to get shot. I just knew it! Why hadn’t I thought to bring the bottle of pepper spray that sat, unused, on my dresser? Idiot!

  When I got my hands on Renee I was pretty sure I’d wrap them around her scrawny neck and squeeze. Really, really hard.

  Brooks leaned down and braced himself in the open doorway. “You coming or not?” he asked, looking amused. I gave him the middle finger, but finally, ever so slowly, I joined him. I pulled my knitted, woolen cap down over my hair and shoved my hands into my pockets to ward off the cold.

  “Someone is going to steal my car, I just know it. I’m seriously gonna kill Renee and her ass of a boyfriend,” I said in a harsh whisper, stealing a look at the abandoned warehouses and dilapidated buildings around us. A group of thugged-out guys walked down the sidewalk, and I seriously contemplated jumping back in my car and heading home, leaving Renee and her bad decision making on her own.

  But damned if my loyalty and annoying sense of friendship didn’t get in the way of my survival instincts.

  “So, any clue as to where this place is?” I asked Brooks, hunching my shoulders as I shivered.

  Brooks shrugged and pointed down the street toward the river. “I’d say we head that way. Renee said it was by the river, right?” he asked, and I could only nod. No need to point out the obvious fact that wandering aimlessly around Murderville didn’t seem like the smartest plan of action.

  We walked quickly, heading toward the water. I wrinkled my nose at the stench of fish and sewage. Trash and unimaginably gross stuff littered the ground, and I tried to suppress the vomit rising in the back of my throat.

  “Hear that?” Brooks asked, breaking the eerie silence.

  “Hear what?” I muttered around the clattering of my teeth. Jeesh, I was freezing.

  Brooks cupped his hand around his ear and then grabbed my hand, pulling me down the street. “I can hear music. It’s this way,” he said, clearly more excited by this twisted game of hide-and-seek than I was.

  “There it is,” Brooks called out, yanking on my arm. Bass so loud it shook my insides served as our guide. Following the music, we crossed the street to join a line that curled around the side of an old warehouse. Compulsion was obviously the place to be on a weekend.

  “You know, this club is a total legend. It’s been around since the nineties and changes locations every week. I’ve talked to a few people who have been here, but never had the balls to come myself. But I’ve always wanted to,” Brooks said low enough not to be overheard by the people around us.

  Everything I knew about the underground club scene came from watching the news and the occasional crappy reality TV show. And it had all seemed so sensationalized, from drug deals, to users ODing in the bathrooms, to people getting beaten up outside. As out-there as the stories sounded, I knew this stuff really happened. I wasn’t stupid or ignorant, by any means. I was more than aware of life’s dark and scary underbelly. But I was not the type of person to search for it. I didn’t get some sick sort of adrenaline jolt from living life on the edge.

  Give me a cup of chai tea and some new episodes of The Vampire Diaries and I was a happy gal.

  But as we waited, I strangely found myself understanding the appeal of it. It was hard to deny the intoxicating feel of anticipation in the air as Brooks and I waited in line to be admitted inside. Everyone was hopped up on some bizarre energy as though we were waiting to be led into paradise. Or purgatory.

  I scoped out the people ahead of us in the line: a group of girls who couldn’t be any older than sixteen. Even I knew you had to be eighteen to get in, but this group looked way too young to be here. They were giggling and bouncing on their feet. One girl helped her friend apply a thick coat of black lipstick while the other girls adjusted their gothed-out clothes.

  Something about them reminded me of Jayme. My little sister had always been the first to jump headfirst into a situation she shouldn’t be in. These girls weren’t much older than Jayme had been.

  Shaking my head, I snapped myself out of that particular train of thought and looked over at Brooks standing beside me. He seemed to be feeding on the high of the crowd. I squeezed his arm. “You know we’re just here to grab Renee and get out, right? I’m not trying to hang out or anything,” I told him, making sure we were on the same page.

  Brooks nodded. “Yeah, no, that’s cool. It’s just I’ve always wanted to check this place out. It’s kind of awesome, right?” he enthused, grinning.

  Uh, awesome wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe it . . . at all.

  I didn’t bother to respond and instead waited impatiently as we slowly made our way to the front door. When we were finally standing at the entrance, I knew instantly that our chances of being let inside were slim to none. I had noticed people getting turned away and others being allowed admittance. I had been trying to figure out how the scary biker-looking guys at the door were determining who would be granted access and who would be denied. But once we were in front of the doormen and given a disdainful once-over I figured it out pretty quickly.

  Brooks and I stood out like virgins at an orgy. It didn’t take a genius to see that the two of us were so far out of our comfort zone that we’d have to hitchhike back.

  “Get out of here,” the bouncer said, with barely a look in our direction. He had a close-shaved head covered in some sort of elaborate tattoo as well as inch-round gauges in his ears. He also sported a rather fierce-looking spike pierced through the bridge of his nose. His goatee was styled into a point and dyed a bright red. Another spike poked out from below his lip. This dude was seriously edgy, and my jeans, cotton long-sleeved grungy jacket ensemble, and Brooks’s blazer and plaid button-down made it more than obvious that we most definitely didn’t belong.

  “Wait a second, please. We’re just here to pick up our friend. She’s inside,” I said, stupidly trying to push past him in my agitation. Damn it! What was I going to do?

  Scary biker dude pushed me back and scowled. “I said”—he leaned down until he was an inch from my face—“get the fuck out of here.” He literally growled when he said it, and it took everything I had not to be cowed under the weight of his glare.

  “Come on, man, we’ll pay the cover. Double, if you want. We’re only gonna be a minute. We just need to find our friend. She called us and she needs a ride,” Brooks tried to reason with the guy.

  But the bouncer clearly couldn’t give a shit whether we were there to get the Queen of England. We weren’t getting inside.

  The people behind us were becoming antsy and more than a little tired of the holdup. “You heard him, get the hell out of here,” a scrawny man said. He was decked out in black leather, looking like an escapee from an S&M club gone bad.

  My lips thinned, and my temper started to rise. I was gearing myself up to do battle, if necessary, because there was no way I was leaving without Renee.

  Brooks must have recognized the ferocity in my eyes, because he put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard, trying to get my attention. I shook him off and leveled scary bouncer dude with my hardest stare.

  “Look, buddy, I’m walking inside this door, and you’re not going to stop me,”
I bristled, sounding way more confident than I was actually feeling. In actuality, I was shaking in my Converse sneakers. Bouncer guy didn’t seem to mind if I was a girl or not; he was going to physically remove me.

  “Let her in, Randy,” a voice said from the shadows just inside the door. Randy’s face turned a flustered shade of red as he looked over his shoulder at the speaker.

  I squinted into the darkness, trying to see who my savior was. All I could make out was the dim outline of a man.

  I gripped Brooks’s hand and waited to see whether this anonymous man had enough sway to get us in. After a few seconds, the doorman, Randy, turned back to me and took my money. He stamped my hand and waved me inside without another word.

  I turned around to wait for Brooks. The bouncer put his beefy arm across Brooks’s chest. “Uh-uh. She can come in. You wait out here,” he said firmly.

  “She’s not going in there by herself,” Brooks argued, pushing against the bouncer’s arm, but it might as well have been made of stone. Randy, bouncer made of steel, didn’t move an inch.

  “If you don’t get the fuck out of the line, I’m gonna make you move. You hear me?” Randy asked, his voice dipping low, his words dripping with a barely restrained violence.

  “I’ll be okay, Brooks. Just wait out here for me, all right?” I urged, hoping he wouldn’t push the issue. I sort of liked the look of Brooks’s teeth in his mouth.

  Brooks frowned. He wasn’t happy. In fact, he was as upset as I had ever seen him. I looked over my shoulder at the dark entrance to the club. The pulsating bass of the music hummed in my head.

  I didn’t particularly like the thought of going in there by myself, but it wasn’t worth Brooks losing a limb to come with me.

  “I’ll be fine. Renee said she’d be waiting inside,” I reasoned.

  Brooks started to shake his head when Randy the bouncer, who had clearly had enough, shoved him roughly to the side. Obviously, the decision had been made for me.