by Ann Tatlock
“And maybe you need to mind your own business,” Lena shot back.
For a moment Rebekah was tempted to put the bottles down, get back in her own car, and leave. She told herself it would be easy. She could just go home and tell her parents she wasn’t feeling well and had decided not to spend the night at Lena’s after all. But before she could make a move, Lena said, “Listen, Beka, I’m sorry. Let’s just drop it, okay? Come on.” She nodded toward the Castle. “Let’s get inside.”
The front door had been padlocked once, but that was years ago. After the original lock was jimmied and tossed, no one had ever replaced it. No one knew exactly who owned the Castle now, though the story around Conesus Lake was that a check for the property taxes arrived every year from someplace in New Mexico. Several times during the summer a crew of workers showed up with riding lawnmowers and tree-trimming equipment to take care of the grounds. The hum of the mowers and the buzz of the chainsaw carried easily across the water to the Sheldons’ cottage on the other side. Whenever these caretakers came, Rebekah’s mother stood on their porch watching and listening. She shook her head at the commotion and wondered aloud why anyone would keep up the lawn while the house itself was simply allowed to fall apart. She said the place ought to be torn down and the property divided up and sold to people who actually wanted to live on the lake. Which was just like a grown-up, Rebekah thought. Leave it to her mother to want to get rid of one of the few places in Conesus that held any interest at all for the teenagers.
At least that’s how she’d felt about it last year. This year, when Lena pushed open the front door, Rebekah felt something pull at her nerves, the way a violinist plucks at a string. She didn’t want to go inside. Just the creaking of the door alone filled her with dread. But she could hardly back out now.
Just inside the door, on a small table in the generous entryway, a Coleman lantern hissed out a circle of light and gave off the stench of kerosene. Beyond that, about twenty feet away, another lantern glowed, and then another. The girls knew the drill. That path of light led the way to the kitchen, where they’d find the doorway to the party. Rebekah and Lena followed the lanterns through the still-furnished parlor and beyond that, a library with shelves that didn’t stop until they reached the ceiling. Arthur P. King, the original owner of the house, had either been well-read or had wanted to look as though he was. The air inside the rooms was damp and heavy and smelled of mold and stagnant water.
The kitchen reeked of something else, something putrid, like an animal had got stuck in the drainpipe and died. Rebekah stepped lightly and shuddered to think of what must live in this so-called Castle. When King Arthur exited the place by drowning, all sorts of animals probably moved in. What was there to stop them? Squirrels, spiders, rats, snakes—they were probably all neighbors somewhere within the walls of this huge place. Why hadn’t she thought about that last year? Or maybe she had, briefly—though as the night wore on she had no doubt cared less and less about the wildlife. She had probably cared less and less about anything at all.
Laughter broke through the front door as another group of kids spilled into the entryway. “The party can start now,” someone hollered. “We’re here!”
“Idiots,” Lena whispered.
Another voice called out, “Yeah, we brought the coke.”
More laughter. Rebekah sneered. “They brought Coke, and they think they’re the life of the party?”
Lena turned to look at her. In the glow of lantern light her face showed disbelief. “They’re talking about cocaine, stupid.”
“Cocaine?” Rebekah stopped short in the middle of the kitchen. “You think they brought cocaine?”
Lena shrugged. “Who knows. More likely it’s crushed aspirin. They probably can’t wait to watch the first person snort a line of Excedrin up their nose.”
Rebekah grimaced at the thought. “So what if it really is cocaine, and what if this is the year the police finally decide to bust the party?”
“They won’t, Beka. They never do. Come on.”
“But maybe they will. How do you know they won’t?”
“You’ve never had to deal with the Conesus police, have you?”
“No. Have you?”
“Let’s just say they’re a bunch of morons who don’t know their head from a hole in the ground, and on top of that, they’re not above making a little extra money.”
“What do you mean? Someone bribed them?”
Before Lena could answer, the coke-carrying crowd of half a dozen guys stumbled into the kitchen. One of them shot the beam of a flashlight directly into Rebekah’s eyes. “Hey, girls!” the figure behind the flashlight yelled. “Ready to party?”
“Let’s roll,” Lena responded, and before she knew it, Rebekah found herself following the crowd down the stairs leading to the spacious underground room known as the Dungeon. With its packed-dirt floor and its walls of sweating fieldstone, the name seemed appropriate. Instead of chains and torture racks, though, the room was originally filled with rows of wine racks, several of which remained. Some even contained dusty bottles, though the corks were missing and the contents long gone. The parties at the Castle were now strictly BYOB—Bring Your Own Bottle—which was why the partiers never came empty-handed.
The place was already a busy port of young bodies swimming in and out of the shadows cast by a ring of lanterns. Cigarette smoke hovered over the crowd like fog. Strange computerized music rolled out of an open laptop and seemed to wrap itself around everything in sight, so that even arms and legs appeared bound by its slow staccato beat. It was unlike anything Rebekah had ever heard, and she felt the rhythm of it worming itself into her brain like some sort of parasite.
“Hey, guys,” Lena called out, “here, take these bottles, will you?”
Two guys jumped at the request, taking the bottles from them. “And listen,” Lena went on, “I need someone to carry in a box from my car. Can one of you do that?”
One of them volunteered, and Lena disappeared back up the stairs to lead the guy to her car.
Rebekah was left alone, but not for long. To her relief David stepped out of the crowd and greeted her with a kiss. “Hey, babe, you got here.”
“Yeah.”
“I missed you this week.”
“Me too. You have a good trip?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, it was all right.”
She didn’t even know where he’d gone. He hadn’t told her. She assumed he was off visiting relatives somewhere before school started.
“So what’d I miss?” he said. “Anything cool happen while I was gone?”
Rebekah shrugged casually. “No, same old stuff.”
“Yeah, figures. So do your parents think you’re at Lena’s for the night?”
Rebekah nodded. She liked the way she felt with David’s arm around her, and she relaxed for the first time since parking her car among the grove of trees outside. David would make sure everything was all right.
“Good, good. Cool,” he said. “So we’ve got all night.”
“Yeah.” Rebekah smiled. “All night. Is Jim here?”
“Yeah, he’s here somewhere. What about Lena?”
“She’s gone out with some guy to bring in some stuff from her car.”
“Good stuff, I hope.”
“Straight from her mother’s own stash.”
David laughed. “Everyone needs a mother like that, huh?”
“Yeah.” Rebekah shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So listen, Bek. We’re going to try something new tonight.”
“We are?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded, looked around the room.
Rebekah thought of the coke. “I’m not sure I want to do anything like that.”
David snickered. “You don’t even know what it is.”
“Yeah I do.”
“No, I bet you don’t. I just learned about it from my cousin a few days ago. Believe me, you’ll love it. It’s over the top. But first things first, huh? How
about a drink?”
Rebekah drew in a deep breath. Maybe a drink would help.
David took her hand and led her across the room to an impossibly long table where bottles of booze were laid out like a glassy-eyed field of dreams.
Phoebe breathed softly and evenly. John stopped singing, waited, listened to the child draw in air, let it out. He stood slowly, so as not to wake her.
He looked down at the face illumined by the dim light from the kitchen. How could it be that she was his?
His heart ached with love and with a fierce determination. He wasn’t going to make a mess of things with this child, no matter what. Now that he had her, he was keeping her, and he intended to give her a childhood worth cherishing. As far as the family as a whole was concerned, he knew there was plenty of work ahead of him. He still had messes to untangle with Andrea and Beka, but he was determined to smooth them out, to make amends for his mistakes, to ask forgiveness as many times as forgiveness was needed. Love covered a multitude of sins, even his.
He bent down and gently kissed the child’s warm cheek. She stirred, sighed, rolled over. As he moved quietly across the room, he heard a tiny voice call out from the bed, “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, Phoebe.”
He stepped into the kitchen and turned out the light.
The air in the Dungeon was beginning to be stifling. By now, Rebekah thought, the entire teen population of Conesus had succeeded in squeezing themselves into this one subterranean room. The only kids missing were the losers, the geeks, and the loners. Nearly everyone else she knew from school was at the Castle, along with plenty of people she didn’t know. Not only were kids milling around, they were also crowded onto lawn chairs, bean bags, throw pillows, even several couches that had been dragged down from upstairs by partiers from years past. Rebekah was beginning to feel claustrophobic from the press of bodies around her. Maybe the police were willing to play dumb, but she wondered whether any parents might wise up and bust the party.
She surprised herself with the thought that she hoped somebody would. She hoped someone would come and blow the whistle, cutting short this whole end-of-summer blowout before something bad happened. She couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that grew heavier as the night wore on. Outwardly she talked with friends, she laughed, she danced with David to the strange beat of the music. Inwardly she was on edge, as though she were inching up the steepest incline of a roller coaster and she was just about to reach the crest before the fall.
She nursed her fifth gin and tonic. The second, third, and fourth she had discreetly dumped out onto the floor. David kept bringing her more in large red plastic cups. But she didn’t want to get wasted. She wanted to keep her head on straight. She was watching everyone, watching the crowd’s slow descent from sobriety to tipsiness to flat-out drunk. The deeper they sank, the louder they got and the more they laughed. But after all, that was the point, wasn’t it? To laugh all the way to that place of feeling no pain.
Rebekah had been there many times before, but she wasn’t going back tonight. Not this time. Something was about to happen, and she was waiting for it. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it was coming. She could feel it.
She jumped when someone laid a hand on her shoulder. It was only Lena, who leaned in close and shouted over the music and the din of the crowd, “Hey, Beka, Jim and I are going up to the library for a while. We heard there’s something going on up there.”
Jim laughed. “Yeah, it’s a meeting of the book club. Want to come?”
Rebekah ignored Jim. “What’s going on?” she asked Lena.
“Someone brought something I want to try.”
“It’s not coke, is it?”
“No, no, no.” Lena shook her head. Her eyes were beginning to glaze, and her breath was heavy with alcohol. “There are better ways to get high than to burn out the lining of your nose. I’d rather pop a pill. It’s so much easier.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lena leaned even closer. “It’s Ecstasy. Want to try it?”
Rebekah drew back. “I don’t think so. I—”
“Oh, come on, Bek. You won’t believe the rush.”
“How do you know? You’ve tried it before?”
Lena glanced at Jim, then back at Rebekah. “Sure. Once or twice.”
“What’s up?” David, who’d just returned from refilling his cup, shot the question at Jim and Lena.
“They’ve got some hug drug upstairs,” Jim said. “Want a hit?”
“Ecstasy?” David asked.
Jim nodded.
“Who brought it?”
“Dan Bradley,” Jim said.
“No lie.” David’s eyes widened. “Chief Bradley’s son?”
Jim nodded again.
“What’d he do?” David asked. “Raid the evidence room?”
“I don’t know,” Jim said. “Who cares, as long as he’s got it.”
Rebekah kneaded her forehead with the fingertips of one hand. The son of the chief of police brought street drugs? Everything’s crazy, she thought. Lena, Jim, this party, the whole world—nothing made sense. And she didn’t know whether it was because the world really was senseless, or because her own mind was breaking up into fearful little pieces. What’s wrong with me? she wondered.
She felt as though she were finally living out one of the recurring nightmares of this past year, the dream that something evil was moving toward her and she couldn’t run away or even move. Half asleep and half awake, she lay helpless on the bed, pinned down by something she couldn’t see, though she heard it breathing just above her in the dark.
“Listen, I don’t think so,” David said. Rebekah looked up and saw him wave a hand, as though to brush away Jim’s offer. “Not tonight. Maybe next time, though, huh?”
Jim, looking cocky, said, “Your loss. Lena and I are out of here.”
Rebekah grabbed Lena’s hand. “You’re coming back down, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Lena said. “Maybe. It depends.”
“On what?” Rebekah asked, but Lena pulled her hand away, and in another moment she was lost to the crowd.
David drew her close, and Rebekah leaned hard against him.
She sighed deeply. At least she was safe here, her forehead pressed against David’s shoulder. The drink in her hand—that she could get rid of. She wanted to stay straight and to stay close to David. He would make sure everything was all right.
She felt herself cradled in his arms for a moment, until he lifted her chin and said loudly over the music, “Well, babe, now that everyone’s got a buzz on, time for a little Space Monkey.”
“Space Monkey?”
“Come on.”
He took her hand, and they wormed through the crush of bodies until David found who he was looking for. “Hey, Chase,” he shouted, “ready for a little Airplane Ride?”
Chase smiled, nodded. Rebekah recognized him from the basketball team at Conesus High. Girls fawned all over him for his golden-boy looks and his athletic ability, but he was also a bookish guy who worked as the sports editor for the school newspaper. He was known for his ranting editorials on the use of steroids in professional sports, and the faculty had set him up as a youthful frontrunner in the zero-tolerance-for-drugs campaign.
At the moment he was drinking vodka straight from the bottle. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Rebekah watched as David and Chase rolled some kids off a couple of large pillows, claiming the cushions for themselves. The evicted kids protested until David said something, and they nodded. They cleared some space so that Chase could stand between the pillows, one in front of him, one behind. The bottle of vodka had disappeared.
Chase leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. Then he started breathing deeply and quickly while the kids around him cheered him on. Rebekah sensed the presence of the dream being just beyond her shoulder. The cup she was holding dropped from her hand and landed on the floor, splattering her drink ever
ywhere. No one seemed to notice. Everyone close by was focused on Chase, who had straightened up and was holding his breath. David came from behind, wrapped both arms around Chase’s chest and squeezed. Rebekah stood motionless, her heart beating out the seconds until Chase went limp and David let him fall to the floor. He rolled, stopped, lifted one hand to his head, then rolled some more. When he opened his eyes, he laughed loudly and pounded the floor with a fist.
One of the girls jumped up and yelled, “There’s another way to do it. Watch!”
Rebekah took a step backward. She didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t turn away. She knew the girl. Her name was Nadine. They’d briefly been lab partners in chemistry last year. Nadine pulled another girl up from the floor and told her to stand against the wall. She lifted her hands to either side of the girl’s neck.
Now Rebekah understood. This was the Choking Game. She’d heard about it but had never seen it done. She’d looked it up once on the Internet, a search that landed her on a site that listed the names of the kids who had died playing. Cut off the oxygen to the brain long enough, you get a high. Cut it off too long, and that’s it.
Rebekah took another step backward. “Dad,” she whispered, surprised at herself for speaking the word aloud. But she said it again. “Dad.” He had stood in the doorway, looking heavy and tired. “It’s over,” he’d said. It must have taken all of his strength to end it. But that was the thing. He had done it.
She patted the pocket of her shorts, felt the bulge of her car keys. In her mind she calculated the distance between herself and the stairs leading out of the Dungeon. The staircase wasn’t far away. It was just a matter of pushing through the crowd to get there.
She turned, but even as she was turning, someone grabbed her hand and held it tight. She looked up into David’s smiling face.
“Time to fly,” he said.
John had just begun to sink gently into sleep when he was jolted awake by the telephone. He rolled toward the night table between the beds, noted drowsily the time on the clock—just past midnight—and picked up the cordless receiver in time to cut short the second ring.
