Gwen was already suffering from sensory overload; now it seemed she was faced with information overload, too.
“Yeah, the man of the hour is around here somewhere,” Michael added, happy for his friend, “and, shit, Jenny got elected homecoming queen, right?”
Claire made a horrid face, as if to suggest that Jenny had been struck by a bus or some other tragedy had occurred since then. Before Michael saw her, she resumed a cheerful expression.
Claire’s black-and-red eye gave Gwen a wink. She leaned in a little closer, speaking quietly so that Michael would not hear the private remark. “Rumor has it that Jenny had the audacity to ask Jay to homecoming and he turned her down. She’s not even here tonight.”
Claire smiled at her once more before disappearing off into the kitchen, conjoined at the hip with Michael.
As they entered, neither Claire nor Michael noticed Dillweed. Even if they had seen the little pixie, the sight would not have registered in their reality-conditioned minds. His investigations had revealed that all the beer cans on the tiled kitchen counters were either empty or unopened. After toying with them for a few minutes, Dillweed came to terms with the fact that he didn’t know how to open the cans and would not be able to figure out the mechanics of it any time soon. This frustrated him deeply as everyone else progressively got more inebriated with the stuff, and he found himself unable to even taste it.
Disgruntled, he took a seat on top of a blender and surveyed the landscape of Jay’s suburban kitchen. That was when the bottle of cherry-flavored vodka caught his attention. The cap had been left off, and all Dillweed knew was that it smelled infinitely better than the rest of what was being drunk. Shot glasses were still out, and Dillweed began the laborious process of tipping the bottle over just enough to pour himself one. Wrapping himself around the neck of the bottle, he flew with all his strength, carefully tipping it and filling the glass to the very brim so that he would be able to drink out of it like a small pond. In that moment, he was a very happy fairy.
Gwen meandered into the living room, putting all her energy into attempting to look less awkward than she felt. Should she be drinking? Everyone else was, even Claire. She didn’t know her limits, but surely, a single red cup of beer wouldn’t hurt. Gwen knew a drink would make her look more in place, but something told her she would feel even more out of her element if she was drinking.
Someone was already passed out on the couch, which was unfortunate since all she really wanted to do now was sit down. So many of the attendees were seniors; she didn’t see anyone that she could start a conversation with. What was there to talk about anyway? What could be said over the throbbing, electronic music? Dancing seemed like her best option, but hopping and bouncing around with the others required getting closer to the massive speakers, and they were deafening enough from this distance.
“Hey, Gwen!”
She felt like a spinning top, turning at the mercy of whoever was calling her name. At the moment, it was Jay calling to her. Leaning against the archway between the living room and TV room, he too had a red cup, but he carried it as if he had forgotten it was in his hand.
The rest of the party melted away. The atmosphere of smoke and anxiety became irrelevant to Gwen. When she saw him, she broke into a smile, unafraid to let her face articulate how happy she was to see him. His playful blue eyes seemed just as glad to see her.
He ambled through the crowd, surrounded by people but never sucked into any given circle. Even at his own party, Jay was orbitally popular, a tangential part of every social circle and welcome in any clique, despite belonging to none.
“Hi, Jay. Nice party.” Gwen felt like she was sheepishly whispering, even as she yelled to be heard over the music.
“Thanks. When did you get here?”
“Just a minute ago. Your brother let me in. Nice guy.”
“He sure is. Came all the way home from the U just so he could help us get our hands on the beer.”
Gwen giggled, awkwardly realizing there was nothing funny about that.
“Hey, so, it’s good see you.”
She could hardly hear him. “What? I’m sorry, the music—it’s loud.”
“Yeah. You want to head upstairs or something?”
He gestured over his shoulder at the staircase, so even though Gwen didn’t hear the question, she pieced together its meaning. “Yeah, that’d be great.” She followed him up the stairs, her heart fluttering as she traipsed up the carpeted steps, one hand on the wooden banister, the other fighting the urge to carry her skirt like a princess’ ball gown. Her face no longer felt flushed, but glowing.
The other party guests were absorbed in their own conversations and protective bubbles of sociality, and Hollyhock was still curiously absorbed in their strange social customs. It was only Dillweed who noticed, and wondered why, Gwen was heading away from the festivities. He pulled himself out of his puddle of alcohol, but was slow on his wings as he followed after Gwen.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you were going to come,” Jay said, once they were in the upstairs hallway, far enough away from the onslaught of synthesized music that filled the downstairs. “I haven’t seen you at school since last week… you okay?”
Gwen knew she didn’t look well. Her head was spinning. It was culture shock, not at discovering a foreign culture, but at discovering her own. This was a Saturday night party; this was what kids her age lived for. “I’ve had a really weird week and—oh my goodness, is this you?”
Captivated by the hanging family portrait, Gwen found it infinitely amusing to see an eleven-year-old Jay posing with his parents and teenage brother. Roger looked so much like Jay did now. Age was a funny thing, and it was strange to see how it turned one person into another.
“Uh, yeah.” Jay clumsily laughed. He set his half-empty drink down on the hall table, the red cup an odd counterpart to the potted orchid already there.
“Little Roger and Jimmy,” Gwen teased.
Jay rolled his eyes. “Older brothers kind of suck.”
Gwen surveyed the hallway. The pale blue walls and family portraits seemed familiar, even if she had never seen them before. This was what houses were like—this was how families lived. This was reality.
Had she turned her attention back to the stairway, she would have seen the sporadic flight of a tipsy fairy who was following her up the stairs.
Still feeling off-kilter, Gwen asked, “Is there somewhere I can sit down? I don’t know; I’m just feeling a little out of it.” The lightness that had buoyed her all over Neverland was fading. Gwen no longer felt as if she could fly, and that made even standing hard.
“Yeah, sure.” Jay went to the nearest door, pulling a key out of his pocket to unlock it. “Everything up here is locked just to, you know, limit the possible places people will throw up in.” He laughed, but Gwen didn’t see the humor in it.
He held the door open for her and she wandered in, immediately enchanted when she realized where she was.
A small stack of books were piled beside his particle board desk, but a sleek computer and a half-eaten bag of Doritos were on top. His bed by the window was covered in a velvety blue bedspread, and above his TV, he had a bookshelf lined with an impressive selection of video games.
None of this interested Gwen. Her gaze was magnetically drawn to the charcoal drawings pinned up on the walls. She wandered across the room, sitting down on the bed as she stared up at a grey scale drawing of Polk High School, a stunning portrait of a rain forest tree frog, and a landscape with a few knotted, twisted trees. Jay’s walls were papered with his art, everything from elaborate doodles torn out of notebooks to masterful scenes on massive art paper.
“Wow,” Gwen breathed. “These are really—just beautiful.”
Jay smiled. “Thanks.”
Gwen surveyed the myriad of drawings, shaking her head in happy amazement. She’d caught sight of a few drawings in his sketchbook, but those were mostly works-in-progress. “When did you develop this passion f
or art?”
“Umm, in utero?” he answered, laughing. “Really, I got my first charcoal sticks for my twelfth birthday, and that’s when I really started getting into it.”
Gwen imagined Jay as a twelve-year-old. It wasn’t hard after seeing the family portrait in the hallway. She suddenly and deeply regretted that she had not met him sooner, that she had not known him before this awkward, awful age of adolescence. “What did you draw back then, when you were a kid?”
Jay laughed, as if the question was unexpected and had never been asked before. “Honestly, it was mostly monsters and characters for video games I wanted to make.”
Gwen looked up at Jay. He leaned against the bookcase as if he couldn’t be bothered to stand upright. He was wearing a blue shirt with the name of some band that Gwen had never heard of, but it paled in contrast to the color of his eyes. Gwen had blue eyes, but they were pale, grayish things, not like Jay’s bright irises. The sound of the music downstairs seemed a hundred miles away.
Too much time had elapsed for them to continue their previous conversation, but for the life of her, Gwen could not think of anything else to say.
“I’m glad you could come tonight,” Jay said.
“I’m glad too.”
For a few seconds, they were both quiet.
“Hey, so, I should say congratulations,” Gwen announced. “I heard you got elected homecoming king.”
“Yeah,” Jay admitted.
“How does it feel to beat out the quarterback and the head of drama club?”
Jay paused, thinking and smiling. “Stupid. It’s stupid and flattering.”
“And Jenny got queen, right?”
Jay nodded, looking bewildered. “She was really excited. That sort of stuff means a lot to her. A lot more than it means to me. I’m… really happy for her.” Gwen regretted asking. Jay’s expression made everything seem so much more complicated than what Claire’s gossip reduced it to. She nervously brushed her hair back behind her ear again before pressing her hands against the bed, as if to help her keep her balance.
“What’s that on your wrist?” he asked.
She followed Jay’s eyes down to her wrist. She hadn’t been actively hiding it, and the sweater sleeve didn’t quite cover the entire burn on her arm. Before she could answer, he laughed. “Did you get a tattoo?”
Gwen was trying to come up with an excuse or an explanation, but her mind went blank, her thoughts falling away as soon as Jay sat down beside her on the bed and picked up her hand. He slid her sweater sleeve up, and Gwen didn’t even try to stop him. She had no desire to shy away from his touch. She had to say something though; she had an article about childhood obesity sloppily printed on her forearm.
“There was an accident,” she announced as Jay stared at her arm, holding it in his hands. “We were playing around with newsprint, except it was freshly printed and the ink was still wet. And then I burned myself.”
“Ouch, man,” Jay replied, still holding the arm, trying to read the blurred text. Antoine had felt her arm too, but there was something different in the way Jay held it. Something that tickled with longing, as if examining the burn was only an excuse to touch her hand. “It looks like you tried to wash it off, too…”
“Yeah, but with the burn, you know, I couldn’t really scrub the ink off without hurting it.” She shrugged as if she were too cool to be bothered about what her forearm said. She was all jittery, and she doubted she was fooling anyone by trying to act laid-back.
“Are you doing okay?” Jay seemed moderately amused by how flustered Gwen was. “What’s been up with you this week?” He watched her face for some clue as to what was going on. He was no longer holding her arm, but his hand rested on top of hers on the bed.
Gwen laughed at her feet. Looking at Jay, she declared, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Jay considered this. “You’re probably right,” he admitted. “You go AWOL for a week, just to show up at a party in a long, blue dress… you’re pretty unbelievable.”
The way he said it, Gwen knew no guy had ever said anything nicer about her. She felt like it shouldn’t be a compliment. She was the odd one out, she didn’t mesh with the surroundings, and yet the way that Jay spoke, it made her feel like it was the most desirable quality she could hope to possess. She was unbelievable, in all the best ways.
They were both drifting closer to each other, imperceptibly moving as they leaned in. Drawn toward him, Gwen felt pulled by a force she wasn’t even fully aware of until it brought her lips to his.
Sitting beside her as they kissed, he put his hand on hers, giving it a squeeze that felt electric to Gwen. When she felt his other hand on her arm, she melted into a girl-shaped blob of joy.
She didn’t know if she was doing it right; she didn’t know if there was a wrong way to do it. Gwen’s first kiss felt exactly as she had known it would, but her imaginings had not done it justice. Excitement and contentment rolled into one and drowned out everything else. She felt Jay’s tongue pull out of her mouth, and as the kiss ended, she quickly pecked his lips one more time before opening her eyes.
He was smiling at her, and that sent Gwen into a tiny flurry of bashful giggles. There he was, the boy she had worried so hard about impressing, just sitting there after having kissed her.
“I’m glad you came.”
“I’m glad I could.”
She ran her hands through her hair again, brushing back what was already securely behind both of her ears. “Could I open the window?” she abruptly asked. “It’s been a really weird week for me, Jay, and I just feel like I could use a little fresh air, or something…”
“Sure, go ahead. Do you want me to grab you something to drink?”
She knew he was offering her alcohol, but her mind was elsewhere as she cracked open the window by the bed and brought a small chill of cool air into the room. She didn’t look out into the night. The car idling outside of Jay’s house had its headlights off.
“No—I don’t need anything to drink. I just kind of need to chill.”
Jay’s eyes smiled with calm affection. “We can chill.” He took the single strand of hair that had fallen back into Gwen’s face and tucked it sweetly behind her ear. Gwen’s heart pounded, and when he wrapped his arm around her, she doubted her heart rate would ever normalize again. “You’re cool though, right?” he asked, a little concerned.
“Cool? Yeah, totally.” The smile did not come readily to her face, but it was genuine when it did. Gwen was just overwhelmed. On top of all the joy she had experienced in Neverland, this new excitement just left her feeling over-capacity. Her little heart could only take so much.
Jay nodded and revived his smile as well. “Cool.”
Gwen leaned into him and happily flooded her senses with his smell. Even all cleaned up for the party, he still smelled a little bit like charcoal. “Can I see more of your art?” she asked.
He kissed her hair. “Alright, but you’ve got to tell me more about this crazy week of yours.”
Gwen giggled, and in order to avoid the conversation, she kissed him again.
Neither of them heard the car doors slam as two uniformed officers parked and left their patrol car outside.
The officers did not knock. They entered quietly, relative to the party. Conversations stopped mid-sentence as dozens of teenagers became bug-eyed in the presence of the police. The techno music continued across the speakers at an irreverent volume.
The high schoolers and poor Roger were not the only ones in peril though. Hollyhock felt her bubbly, warm blood come to a freezing halt in her veins when she recognized the star-atom insignia on the officers’ otherwise unmarked uniforms.
Sitting atop the speakers for the delight of feeling them vibrate under her, Hollyhock knew she needed out of this house as fast as was physically possible. All the windows she’d seen so far were securely closed, and she didn’t want to take a chance on the others. It was very easy to trap a fairy, and Hollyhock cursed her c
uriosity for leading her into this house.
The door was her only feasible hope, and in a second, the officers would close it and lock her in. Leaping into the air, she beelined for the door. Dropping as much of her orange fairy-dust on the teenagers as she could, she tried to hold in the rest of it as she sailed over the heads of the two dangerous grown-ups. They slammed the door shut, almost crushing her in the doorframe before she managed to make it out.
Her tiny chest heaved in and out with exhausted panic as she floated in the night air. Dillweed was still inside! Guilt flooded her, but Hollyhock knew she would have been no help to him trapped inside the house. With a deep, courageous breath, she took off, sprinting through the sky in search of help.
Inside, the louder of the two officers barked, “Turn off the music!”
Troy, nearest the stereo, leaned over and killed the power. The house was instantly dead silent, allowing the other officer to announce, “We need everybody lined up against that wall.”
“Do you want to search the house, or stay down here with them?” his partner asked.
“I’ll do the search,” he volunteered, already heading into the kitchen to do a quick check for anyone else.
The partiers were already lining up against the wall. They’d left their drinks on every available surface, as if setting down the incriminating substance could do anything to help them now. Everyone was caught in their own permutation of hell, imagining the consequences that would soon unfold. Wesley Green felt his weed burning a hole in his pocket, Claire Riley imagined what Sergeant Riley would do to her when he found out, and Roger Hoek began considering how much harder college would be if this lost him his scholarship.
“Alright!” the loud policeman yelled. “None of you should be here tonight, but you’ve probably realized that by now. You all have a chance to make this a lot easier on yourselves though, and help my partner and me.” His eyes narrowed as he scanned the line of frightened faces. “We’re looking for a child.”
The Neverland Wars Page 23
