Theo’s face broke into a giant, doofy smile, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since he’d first started dating Brandy. “Hey, Natalie.”
“I told you, call me Natty,” she said. “And this must be Brandy and Ashton.”
“Aspen.” She looked over at me when I spoke—and instantly I could see why Theo was into her. She had these bright blue eyes that reminded me of … well, of Brandy, actually. “Aspen Quick.”
“That’s a weird name,” she said, nodding, like she approved.
“I know, right?” I said. This was why I’d ditched my real first name, Jeremy, back in third grade. I liked being the guy with the weird name.
She smiled. “Quick, though. Any relation to Heather?”
“You knew her?” I asked.
Natalie tilted her head a little. “The population of Three Peaks is, like, eight people. Everyone knows everyone. Of course I know Heather.” Present tense. Which was weird, but before I could comment on it, she continued: “Anyway, I’m so glad you guys could make it! We always need fresh blood at these things. But I was gonna go meet someone out front, so I’ll see you by the pool?”
“Pool pool pool,” Brandy murmured under her breath, bouncing a little on her toes. It was so cute.
“See you then!” said Theo, waving with this sort of glassy-eyed expression on his face.
Natalie pushed past us—but as soon as her feet hit the lawn, she turned back. “Oh, and here’s a tip, since you’re all newbies. Don’t drink the Red.”
“The what?” I said.
“You heard me.”
“But what does that even mean?” asked Brandy.
“You’ll see,” said Natalie, and started across the lawn, toward a car that was pulling in behind Theo’s.
The house was empty. Lights on but nobody home—which probably meant everyone was in the backyard. So the three of us added our shoes to the giant pile by the front door, and followed the faint noise of the party through a hallway and a kitchen and out through another door—and that was when the volume cranked up to eleven. I let out a low whistle as I took it all in.
The pool, packed with kids splashing around and dunking each other and trying their best to hold their cups aloft. The massive deck that surrounded it. The hot tub. I mean, there was a hot tub.
“Still think your roof is better?” said Brandy, smirking at Theo. She was already stripping her dress off, revealing … ah-ha. She was wearing a bikini underneath. A neon-blue one.
Brandy
in
a
bikini.
Seriously.
Apparently oblivious to the fact that my eyeballs were trying to pop right out of their sockets and attach themselves to her skin, she rolled the dress into a ball, tossed it off to the side, where it landed on a pile of purses, and ran for the pool.
And … cannonball.
A few people shrieked with glee as a wave of water cascaded outward from the epicenter of Brandy’s cannonball, and then she resurfaced, blond hair dark with water, mascara already staining the tops of her cheeks, lips curled up in a grin. She waved at us. Theo waved back. A couple seconds passed before it occurred to me that I had muscles in my arms, and I could use those muscles to make my hand wave, too.
I made my hand wave, and I made my face smile, and oh god, Brandy in a bikini. Up at the lake she always wore this old black one-piece thing. But this. This was …
“You okay, man?” said Theo. “You look like you’re about to keel over.”
I tried to make my smile look a little more natural. “Um. She, um.”
Theo glanced back at Brandy, whose top half—oh, what a top half—was still visible above the water. Then he looked back at me. “Ah.”
“Your roof,” I said firmly, “is definitely not better than this.”
He side-eyed me. “You’re into her, huh?”
Like he hadn’t noticed me ogling her for the past two goddamn years.
“Would you be cool if I were?” I asked, trying to sound more chill than I felt.
Theo took a moment to think about this. Then he shrugged. “Not like we’re ever gonna get together again. But listen, man. If you hurt her? I will break your face. You get that?”
If I hurt Brandy, I’d gladly break my own face.
“Got it.”
“Cool,” said Theo, and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go find Natalie.”
When he was gone, I took a moment to scan the party around me. The air buzzed with energy, the whole place smelled like alcohol, and almost everyone, whether in the pool or not, wore nothing but a bathing suit.
It was one thing to strip down to my shorts at the lake, where it was just my friends and some old people and little kids and we were all in our separate boats, minding our own business—but something about the closeness of this crowd made me want to keep my shirt exactly where it was. So instead of diving in after Brandy, I looked around for the booze—and immediately spotted a group of people clustered together in one corner of the deck.
I moved closer, until I saw a long bench containing not bottles or cans, but four ugly orange coolers with handwritten labels: Blue. Green. Yellow. Red.
A girl in a long skirt and a fringed suede vest was bent low over the Yellow cooler, filling a cup. She handed it up to a waiting guy, who tipped it back and downed half its contents in one gulp. “Top me off?” he said.
“Back of the line, Kendrick,” said the girl. Her voice was familiar, even though I was pretty sure I hadn’t met her before. But then it clicked—just as she turned toward me and said, “What’s your poison?”
Leah.
Her hair wasn’t down, like it had been when I’d met her a few days ago. It was up in a series of messy knots—at least eight of them. Between that, the dark lipstick, and the vest that she wore over her T-shirt, she looked like she belonged at Woodstock. Or an eighties Goth club. Or both at the same time.
Either way, the whole look was kind of unnervingly hot. But then, of course, we had the thing where she probably still hated me.
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh,” she said back, narrowing her eyes as she recognized me. “Who invited you?”
Yup. Definitely still hated me.
“Um. Natalie. I mean, she invited my friend Theo. You met him the other day and—”
“Does Natty know you’re a thief?” said Leah.
“Look, I swear I’m not,” I said. “I was just …”
She pushed herself to her feet, letting her multi-layered peasant skirt swirl around her as she stared me down with black-rimmed eyes. “You were just what?”
I had to think of something, fast. Something that, however stupid, would at least get me off the hook for attempted thievery.
“I wanted to put my number in your phone,” I lied, trying my best to look contrite. “I thought you were cute and, um …”
She blinked at me—and then, to my surprise, she actually laughed. “So you’re not a thief? You’re just kind of a moron?”
Well, I was definitely more thief than moron, though not in the way that she thought. But since I obviously couldn’t say so, I just rubbed absently at my neck, which had tensed up yet again, and shrugged.
Without waiting for a real reply, she rolled her eyes. “Well, make no mistake about this: If I catch you stealing my stuff again, or anyone else’s stuff for that matter, I will cut off one of your extremities and I will make you eat it. And you don’t get to pick which one. Got that?”
“Which one would you pick?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh my god, please don’t tell me you came over here to flirt. It’s not doing you any favors.”
Ouch. But also, fair point. That had been weak. “Well, I actually came over for a drink. Are you the lady I should be speaking to?”
“That I am,” she said, and took a cup from the stack between the Green and Yellow coolers. “Color of preference?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “What’s in them?”
> Leah laughed. “That’s the one question I can’t answer. You’re looking at tonight’s Sadie Ellis Specials. They come in a variety of colors, and each one contains whatever ingredients Sadie found necessary to achieve exactly the right hue. Behold,” she said, lifting the lid off the Blue container. Sure enough, the liquid inside was the kind of blue usually found in crayon boxes and artificially flavored ice pops.
I considered my options. “Well, Natty said not to drink the Red. So, anything but that.”
Leah’s lips curled into a wry grin. “That’s because Natty Frain has the tolerance of a chipmunk. According to Sadie, Red’s the cream of the crop.”
Ah. So it was a question of tolerance, not taste. Well, I had the tolerance of a two-hundred-pound linebacker. Mostly because I’d reached into a two-hundred-pound linebacker one time and stolen his tolerance. So, yeah, Red would not be a problem.
“Are you drinking the Red, too?” I asked.
“I’m drinking Sprite,” she replied. “I’m Sadie and Jesse’s designated driver.”
That was when a wet, towel-clad girl ran up to us, feet slapping on the deck. “Fill me up, Wolfe!” she said.
Leah took her cup and held it under the Red spigot until it was full.
“Hey,” said the boy beside me—Kendrick—who’d drained his Yellow entirely by now. Behind him, a few more people frowned, too.
“Hey nothing,” said Towel Girl. “I made these, so I get to cut the line. Artist’s privilege.”
“You’re Sadie Ellis?” I asked, as Leah handed her cup back.
“The one and only,” she replied, and took a long sip of Red. “And you are … ?”
“Aspen Quick,” I said. “I was just about to get some … Red, I guess.”
“Wait, Quick?” said Leah.
“Good choice,” said Sadie. “Red’s the shit. Hey, Leah, have you seen Jesse yet?”
“Quick, as in related to Heather?” Leah continued.
“As in yeah,” I said … and took in her expression, which had gone instantly sour. “Why?”
“Nothing,” she said curtly, then turned back to Sadie. “Nope. No Jesse yet.”
“Dude, are you getting a drink or not?” said Kendrick, poking my shoulder.
Below me, Leah was already kneeling and pouring a drink for me. “Here you go,” she said, and turned away from me as soon as I’d taken my cup from her. “Give it here, Kendrick.”
I knew she was just making sure the kid got his drink before he went ballistic, but I got the distinct impression that I’d just been dismissed. That I was back on her shit list, this time for a reason I couldn’t figure out.
“Try it,” said Sadie, who’d skirted around Kendrick to stand beside me. She nodded at the drink in my hand.
I sipped. It tasted bitter and sour and sweet all at once—and very, very alcoholic. “Damn,” I murmured, eyeing the cup. It was almost full. I wasn’t actually sure I could make it through the whole thing.
“I know, right?” said Sadie gleefully. “Best one I’ve ever made. I’m on my third. Isn’t it so good? I just wish Jesse were here to try it. He’d be on the roof by now!”
“Why’s Leah … I mean, wait, who’s Jesse? And, like, literally on the roof?”
“Wait, I’ll show you,” said Sadie, and reached below the drinks bench, where a couple purses were stashed. She withdrew a phone, punched in a password, and scrolled through her photos until she found the set she was looking for.
“That’s Jesse,” she said, holding up a shot of a guy crossing his eyes for the camera. It was a weird face he was making, but even weirder was the fact that I could’ve sworn I’d seen him somewhere before. I squinted a little, but before I could process the details of his face, Sadie scrolled to another photo. Jesse and a girl, leaning shyly together on the same bench that currently held the drink coolers.
Not just any girl, though. It was Leah. Had I seriously thought shy in reference to Leah? But I looked closer, and sure enough, that was how she looked. Shy. Young. Oddly hopeful.
Sadie scrolled again, and this time I saw what she’d been talking about before. The guy from the photos, no longer cross-eyed, was standing on the roof of this same house, arms aloft, weird streaks of light all around him.
“Glow-stick hula hoops,” explained Sadie, using her fingers to zoom in. “He strung a bunch of them together to make hoops, and it didn’t really work, but who cares? Still awesome.”
That was when it hit me. The face in the picture was the same face I’d seen during the triad ritual the other night. This was the guy who’d once owned the one-armed Batman. I’d taken away his inclination toward being competitive.
I wondered if my magic had worked better on him than it had on Leah.
Realizing she was waiting for an answer, I said, “Yeah, awesome. So … he’s not here?”
“Apparently not,” she said, and paused to put her phone away again. “He’s been MIA for a couple days now. He does that sometimes. We figured he’d be back for the party, but …” She trailed off with a shrug.
Jesse’d been missing for a couple days? That was weird … but it had to be a coincidence. My magic couldn’t make people disappear. Parts of people, sure, but not whole people.
“Hey!” Sadie shouted. “Why’re you still dressed in clothes? You should come swimming!”
I eyed the pool, all splashes and shrieks and bikinis and guys with pecs and muscled arms. Seriously, every single guy in that pool looked totally built. How was that possible?
“I’d better not,” I said. “I, ah, forgot my bathing suit.”
“Just swim in your boxers,” said Sadie, tugging at one of my belt loops in a way that probably would’ve been hot if she weren’t slurring so badly. “Unless you’re a tighty-whities guy. Oh my god, you’re totally a tighty-whities guy, aren’t you!”
“Yeah,” I lied. “And you, lovely lady, are drunk.”
“Yes I am!” she said. “Now get your butt into that pool.”
Sadie tugged at my belt loop again, this time with way more force. So I put my hand on her shoulder, where her towel had fallen away to reveal the black strap of her bathing suit. I reached into the suit, found her desire to swim with me—more a whim than an actual desire, and not very big at all—and took it away.
Then I said, “Nah, I’m good.”
“Okay!” she replied, and let her towel fall to the deck. She tipped her drink back, finishing it off with one gulp—then, with a running start, she cannonballed back into the pool, just like Brandy had done.
On the other side of the pool, I spotted Theo, talking to red-haired Natalie. It looked like a good conversation, all smiles and wide gestures on her part, lots of fervent nodding on his. I’d have pegged it for a hookup about to happen, except that they weren’t alone. There was another girl—a tall pasty-white brunette—smiling and gesturing right alongside Natalie.
Whatever. Maybe eventually the other girl would get the hint and leave them alone.
I rolled my shoulders and sipped more of my Red.
“Hey, Aspen,” came a voice from right below me. A few feet away, Brandy propped her elbows on the pool’s edge, water glistening in her eyelashes as she smiled up at me. “Is that for me?”
“What do you—oh!” I said, remembering the Red. “It’s mine, but you can have some.” I knelt down on the deck to hand her my cup. As she took it, I considered how much closer I was to her, now that I wasn’t standing. The deck was wet, but I suddenly didn’t care. I sat cross-legged right at the edge of the pool, watching as Brandy took a long drink of my Red. “How’s the water?”
“So nice.” She tilted her head a little. “You should come in.”
“Nah, I didn’t bring anything to swim in.”
Brandy grinned. “And that, my friend, is how skinny-dipping was invented.”
“Umphthlgg,” I said. Or something like that.
“Come on,” she said, touching my knee with two wet fingers. “You be the trend-setter. I’ll be the secon
d-in-command. Everyone else will totally follow. Let’s be those weird out-of-towners who turned a good party into a great party.”
Or, at least, that’s what I thought she said. Honestly, I didn’t hear much of anything after I’ll be the second-in-command. Meaning if I stripped off all my clothes, so would Brandy.
I took a long, deep drink of my Red, and willed the rest of my body not to notice what my brain was thinking.
“Come onnnnnn,” she said, her hand still on my knee.
If I’d been absolutely sure she was kidding, I’d’ve played along, no question. But there was this shadowed look in her blue eyes, this mischievous party-after-dark look, that made me hesitate. Made me kind of afraid that if I agreed to anything, she’d actually hold me to it.
Which was why I said, “Rain check? For when there aren’t a zillion people around?”
“Is that a promise?” she asked.
This time, I was absolutely sure she wasn’t kidding. Her smile was hungry, her wet shoulders rigid and waiting. This was it. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. The next move was up to me.
I leaned down, and Brandy pushed herself a little farther out of the pool, arching her neck to bring her lips up to mine, like she was a mermaid and I was a sailor. We kissed, and we kissed, and holy epic everything, I was finally kissing Brandy, finally. Her lips tasted like chlorine and warmth, nothing like I’d imagined, everything like I’d imagined.
She parted her lips, tilting her head to the side for a better fit, and someone went “Oo-oo-ooh!” behind us, and I was just wondering how much tongue she liked, when my goddamn neck did a stupid spasm thing and I had to pull back.
“Aspen?” said Brandy, her expression caught between worried and offended.
Wincing, I rubbed at my neck. Rolled my shoulders. Waited for the pain to subside to its usual dull background noise. “Sorry,” I said.
“Oh, your neck again?” she said, all sympathetic.
“Yeah. Weird angle, I guess.”
She paused. “Just the angle, though, right? Everything else was …”
“Not weird at all,” I replied. No, that wasn’t anywhere close to the whole truth. “The exact opposite of weird. It was great.”
Rocks Fall Everyone Dies Page 6
