Rocks Fall Everyone Dies

by Lindsay Ribar

  “Great is not the opposite of weird,” said Brandy, but she was smiling.

  Smiling in a way that was weirdly shy, considering that not even five minutes ago she’d basically ordered me to take off all my clothes.

  I sipped my Red. Then gulped. Then chugged, because Brandy was still giving me that shy smile, and chugging my drink seemed like the appropriate response to that. Then I set my cup aside, which meant that there was no longer anything between my eyes and Brandy’s chest. Gah. Her hand was touching my knee again. Gahhh.

  “You broke your drink,” she said, nodding at my empty cup. “How about you fix it, and get one for me while you’re at it?”

  “I am thy knight in armor,” I replied. “I shall do as thou commandeth.”

  The mission was more Red. And more Red was so close! Leah Ramsey-Wolfe was right there, still holding cups under spigots and giving colors to people who were not me. I had to get over there.

  Step one was standing up.

  I did that.

  I stumbled, and heard Brandy giggle behind me.

  Then I righted myself and aimed for Leah and started walking and held out my cup when I reached her. “More Red, iffen you please.”

  She glanced at the cup, and then at me. “Looks like Natty’s not the only one with a chipmunk tolerance. Go chug some water, then we’ll talk.”

  I looked at her lipstick, which was smudged, and her multi-knotted hair, which should not have looked good but did, and her vest, which was just a seriously cool thing to wear.

  “Where’s water?” I asked, because I really did want to talk. Not to her, though. I wanted to talk to Brandy. Actually, no, I didn’t, because in order to talk, you had to not be kissing. Kissing was definitely the main thing I wanted to do with Brandy.

  “Kitchen,” she said, pointing. I followed her finger with my eyes. The house was so far away, and suddenly, more than anything ever, I needed to sit down. So I sat down. “Jesus,” said Leah, squatting beside me. “You okay, newbie?”

  “Aspen,” I said.

  “Aspen Quick,” she said. “Yeah, don’t remind me. Stay where you are, okay? Hey, Sadie! Get out of there and get this boy some water!”

  There was a shout of protest from the pool, which set Leah grumbling. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I knew that the result wasn’t going to be water.

  “Get Brandy instead,” I said. “Or that other one. Theo!”

  “Who?” said Leah.

  “Sprite!” I said. “You said you had Sprite. Can I have some?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then got up and got her cup and handed it to me. “Drink slowly. If you need to barf, trash can’s over there.”

  I drank slowly. I did not need to barf.

  “Not much of a drinker, huh?” she said.

  “I’ve had a few drinks in my time,” I replied loftily.

  “Uh-huh,” she replied. “What about food? Did you eat today?”

  I thought about that. I’d had a sandwich for lunch, and then …

  My stomach growled. Yeah, I’d forgotten to eat dinner.

  I sipped some more of her Sprite. Leah’s Sprite … in Leah’s cup. She’d been holding it, drinking out of it, for at least as long as I’d been here. Maybe for hours.

  “You,” I said, focusing on Leah. “You have not been drinking. At all. Correcto?”

  Someone snickered, but Leah just raised her eyebrows. “Not even a drop since I got here.”

  I felt around the cup for a place where I could reach in and find her sobriety. I just wanted a piece of it. A little, tiny piece. She wouldn’t miss it, because there’d just be more sobriety left in its place. She wouldn’t miss it, and it would help me so very much.

  I reached. I found. I pulled a piece away, maybe not a little piece, maybe something more like a medium-sized piece—and I directed it inward, letting it settle inside me.

  There was a moment of peace.

  Then my stomach heaved, and my vision blurred, and the whole world

  went

  black.

  BEFORE

  I remember the exact moment the idea hit me. It was the Monday of spring break, or maybe the Tuesday, and it was just about midnight. Brandy and her friend Lauren had already gone home, thanks to their parents’ rigid ideas about curfews, but Theo was still out, because his parents were out of town on yet another business trip. Me? I was out because I didn’t give a shit what my dad thought.

  It was Theo who’d suggested going to Wowza, this East Village club that was supposed to be super awesome despite its incredibly stupid name. It was also Theo who remembered that we’d tried to get into Wowza a few weeks ago, but the bouncer had been able to tell that our IDs were fake.

  But it was me who had the most genius idea ever, and insisted on trying again.

  When we got to the front of the line, the bouncer gave me this look, like he could already tell he’d have to turn us away. But when he beckoned us forward and asked for ID, I pretended to trip, and used his thick arm to keep myself upright. His arm, which was covered in a suit jacket. I reached in and stripped away his memory of how to tell a fake ID from a real one. Thirty seconds later, Theo and I were inside.

  My phone vibrated over and over again in my pocket, just like it did every time I stayed out late. I wondered if Dad had called Mom this obsessively, when she’d left. I wondered what would happen if I didn’t go home tonight. I wondered if he’d find something of mine and reach into it and bring me back, and then I could point out that if he was willing to break the No Stealing From Family rule once, he might as well break it again to bring Mom back—

  “Hottie alert,” said Theo, pointing at a group of girls on the dance floor, all wearing stilettos and slinky dresses.

  I switched my phone from vibrate to silent, and I danced and danced until I couldn’t stand up anymore.

  The next morning, Dad woke me up early, looming in my doorway dressed in a suit and tie.

  “Spring break, ’member?” I mumbled. “No school. Leavemealone.”

  “What time did you get home last night?” asked Dad.

  “Dunno. Like one? Two?”

  “Son, you can’t do that.”

  Yes, I could. I pulled my pillow over my face and stayed quiet.

  “And if you do,” Dad went on, “you have to pick up when I call. Or text me and tell me you’re alive. If I hadn’t known you were out with that Valdez kid, I’d’ve …”

  I listened closely. He’d’ve what? Brought me back?

  He sighed. “I almost went to the police.”

  Sure, but only almost. He hadn’t gone to the police, and he hadn’t reached into me and brought me back. I left the pillow on top of my face, and willed him to go away.

  “Aspen, this past month, you’ve been … acting out. I’ve gotten calls from your teachers about missed classes. Complaints about your behavior when you do bother showing up. Is this still to do with your mother leaving?”

  That was such a dumb question, I couldn’t help laughing. The pillow muffled the sound, but Dad definitely heard it.

  “Son, you know you can talk to me, right?”

  Ugh, that was it.

  I removed the pillow. I sat up. I talked: “Bring Mom back, and I’ll stop staying out late.”

  “Aspen, this isn’t about—”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Silence fell. In the darkness of my bedroom, Dad stared at me. I stared back.

  Finally, he reached up to his neck and adjusted his tie. “I have to go to work.”

  “So go,” I said.

  From then on, I stayed out as late as I wanted.

  Something was slapping my face. Someone was saying my name. Someone had replaced my tongue with a dead mouse.

  “Did I throw up?” asked someone with my voice. I could feel the dead mouse moving.

  “Nope,” said a guy. “You just blacked out. What the hell’d you give him, Leah?”

  “Red. One cup. And some Sprite. The Sprite’s what made h
im pass out, which, what?”

  I pried my eyes open. Some guy was kneeling in front of me, palm open, ready to smack my face again. I recognized him: Kendrick, the one who’d been drinking the Yellow. Behind him was Leah Ramsey-Wolfe, arms folded crossly over her chest.

  “You spiked the Spike,” I said. Then corrected myself: “You sprite the Spike. Ugh. YouknowwhatImean.”

  “I did no such thing, you idiot,” said Leah, although she was starting to smile. “Come on. Get on your feet. Did you drive here?”

  “No, Theo drove. He was with Natty Natalie. Where’s she?”

  Leah scanned the crowd, then pointed across the pool. There indeed was Natalie, and she was kissing … not Theo. That definitely, definitely wasn’t Theo. That was the tall brunette girl who’d been talking with them before.

  “Ooh,” I said, because come on, that was super sexy.

  That was when I spotted Theo, a little ways away from Natalie and her ladyfriend. He was chugging something out of a cup, chugging, chugging, then tossing the cup away, then running for the pool, then jumping in. More of a belly-flop than a jump, really. And he was still wearing all his clothes.

  “So much for that guy,” said Leah. “Kendrick, who else here is even close to sober?”

  “Not I,” he replied. “I’m on Yellow number, like, four billion.”

  “How about Corey?” asked Leah, sounding increasingly desperate.

  “How about you?” said Kendrick.

  Leah made a face. “I said I’d drive Sadie and Jesse home, not everyone. Well, just Sadie now, I guess, but …”

  “You,” I said, “have an excellent vest on. You should drive me.”

  “What’s going on?” came the nicest voice in the universe, from right out of nowhere. Brandy, pretty beautiful lovely Brandy, was coming toward us with a towel draped over her shoulders. She was dripping pool water everywhere. She looked like a mermaid with legs.

  “You look like a mermaid with legs,” I told her.

  “He’s drunk,” explained Leah.

  Brandy’s lips twitched. “So I see.” She knelt in front of me and put her palm on my forehead. I leaned into her. Her hand was wet and warm, just like her lips. “Theo’s, um, slightly indisposed. But, want me to drive you home?”

  “Please, please do,” said Leah. “You been drinking?”

  “Like one sip,” said Brandy. “What are you, the sobriety police?”

  “Basically yes,” said Leah. “But if you’re good to go, then please, be my guest.”

  Brandy held out a hand to help me up, and I thought fast. She was about to drive me home, which meant we’d be alone in a car together, and that was the kind of thing you want to be sober for. But I was drunk. Really drunk. And that needed fixing. So when I grabbed her hand and heaved myself to my feet, I made sure my other hand brushed her hip, right where her bikini was. I left it there just long enough to reach into the fabric, pull out some of her sobriety, and pull it into myself.

  My head cleared instantly.

  Holy hell had that been bad.

  “Let me just find out where Theo put his keys,” said Brandy. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  She headed for the pool, in which Theo had joined a bunch of the shirtless guys. There seemed to be a wave war going on, guys versus girls, and Theo looked like he was having a good time. I wondered if he’d already forgotten about Natty.

  I turned back to Leah, who’d started taking drink orders again.

  “Sorry I passed out,” I said.

  She handed a cup of Blue to some girl, then turned a sour expression on me. “Well, look at who’s suddenly capable of saying words again.”

  “Heh,” I said, more than a little mortified. Instinct was telling me to brush against her, reach into her, and steal her memory of the past few minutes—but I wasn’t actually sure I could steal the memory from her.

  Plus, that look she was giving me? That definitely wasn’t just because I’d passed out. She’d been giving me the same look since before I’d even started drinking.

  “Hey,” I said. “Why’d you act like that when I told you my name?”

  “Like what?” she said. “I didn’t act like anything.”

  “Like a snot, kind of,” I said. “Were you and Heather enemies or something? Or frenemies? Or frenemeses?”

  She let out a huff of laughter. “Nobody says ‘frenemies’ anymore, newbie.”

  I smiled. “Nobody says ‘newbie’ anymore, frenemy.”

  “I do,” she said, and did not smile back.

  Well then.

  A few minutes of awkward silence later, Brandy came back, dress once again covering her bikini, key ring around her index finger. Her hair was still dripping pool water onto her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I glanced over at Leah, who’d apparently lost interest in me. “Yeah. Ready.”

  Brandy drove in silence down the quiet street, then another, then onto Main Street, which was also quiet except for a small crowd of smokers outside the town’s only pub. Main Street grew smaller and smaller as it sloped upward, into the mountains, toward the Cliff. Just over the bridge that spanned the tiny creek, then past the second S-curve, marked by a sign that had long since been hidden by creeping vines and drooping tree branches, was the left turn that would take us to Grandma’s house.

  Brandy took the bumpy driveway slowly until Aunt Holly’s car came into view. Then she parked and killed the engine. Then she … didn’t say anything. For the space of three full breaths, she didn’t say anything. Then:

  “Aspen, do you wanna date me?”

  I turned sharply toward her—so sharply that my neck tensed up again. Brandy had this way of saying things where you sometimes weren’t sure if it was just a plain question, or if there was an accusation in there, too. Her eyes usually tilted the balance in favor of one or the other, but it was dark in Theo’s car. I couldn’t see her eyes at all.

  Either way, though, the answer was the same.

  “Um, yes? As in hell yes?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I thought so.”

  My stomach curdled a little. It was a warm thought so, but it wouldn’t be the first time Brandy had let me down easy.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  She nodded. “It’s funny, because I just broke up with Theo, what, twenty seconds ago? We were together for months. I should still be getting over it. I shouldn’t be sitting here, wanting to …”

  “Wanting to what?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.

  “You know.” She laughed, light and airy. A cotton-candy laugh. “Make out with my ex’s best friend. In his car, no less.”

  Yup. That was my cue. I leaned over, craning my head carefully to the left, and our lips met again. She tasted the same as before. She kissed the same, too. But the rest was different. Instead of shouting, splashing partygoers around us, there was the closed-in quiet of the car, and the soft, uneven sounds of breathing—which started to grow deeper, heavier—

  “But isn’t it weird?” she said, pulling away abruptly.

  “Huh?” I said dizzily.

  “This,” she said, gesturing from me to her to me to her. “This should feel like … too soon, or something. It doesn’t. That’s messed up.”

  So, wait, I’d fast-forwarded both of them through the post-breakup process, and Brandy was still finding a reason to second-guess hooking up with me? This was so not fair.

  “No it’s not,” I said. “Every breakup’s different, right?”

  “Like you would know,” she said, in this voice that was half teasing, but also half not.

  She had a point. I’d been so hung up on Brandy for so long that I’d never bothered finding anyone else to date. The closest I’d come was this girl Keisha Sullivan, but that was a one-night stand after junior prom, followed by a solid two weeks of being unable to look each other in the eye. That wasn’t dating.

  “Still,” I said, and put my hand on her shoulder. And reached in.
If I could just find the doubt that was keeping her away from me, I could pull it away, and—

  She shrugged my hand off. “Just go inside, okay? I should get back to the party. Theo said he scored crash space, but I should still check on him… .” She took a deep, audible breath, and let it out again. “And I’ll think about this.”

  “This,” I repeated. “As in you and me?”

  “As in yeah,” she said. “I like you, Aspen. But Theo’s still my friend. I kind of want to, you know … see if he’s cool with this.”

  Well, in that case, everything was fine. Theo wasn’t looking to get back together with Brandy. I’d made sure of that.

  “That’s a good idea,” I said, and unbuckled my seat belt. “Don’t stay out too late.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  I laughed and got out of the car. “Drive safe. And stay away from the Red.”

  “Bet your ass I will,” she said, and started the engine again so the headlights could light my way to the front door.

  “You were out late,” said Grandma, from the living room.

  I shed my shoes and meandered in to see her. The overhead light was off, and there was a fire burning low in the hearth. The regular kind of fire, not the turquoise triad-ritual kind. Grandma was curled up in her armchair, a knitted blanket draped over her knees, a thick book propped up on the pillow in her lap.

  “Not as late as everyone else,” I said. “I was the first person to leave. I … wasn’t feeling too great. Brandy drove me home.”

  Grandma squinted past me, as if trying to see into the hall. “Where is she, then?”

  “Oh, she went back to the party. Theo’s still there, and it’s his car.”

  She eyed me. After a moment, she put the book carefully on the table beside her, next to a mug and a pair of glasses. “Have you been drinking, Aspen? I know everyone drinks at those get-togethers.”

  “I am one hundred percent sober,” I said. “Want me to walk in a straight line? Or, here: Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T—”

  “More to the point,” she interrupted, a sly smile curving her lips, “whose sobriety did you steal?”

  “Oh,” I said, and found that I was too surprised by the question to give her anything but the truth. “Brandy’s. How did you know?”