Really, way down in the selfish pit of my stomach, a spot I believe everyone has, I knew the attention he used to give was not equal. I got more.
Graham patted his stomach. “I need a churro. Har?”
“I could eat four,” Harry said. “You?” I smiled and shook my head. “Viv?”
“I’m gonna get a sno-cone later,” she said.
The boys went in search of the sweets. I pulled free a handful of candy from the bag and was picking through them when Viv spoke. “You want to hear something that’s bananas?” I popped a mini-size chocolate bar into my mouth and struggled to keep it shut while chewing and nodding. “My best friend hasn’t told me she has a homecoming date.”
The half-macerated chocolate lodged in my throat. I swallowed hard; my eyes watered. “Did Graham tell you?” My voice was pitted.
A static burst came from the speakers set up around the knoll. We both startled. Patriotic-sounding music, all brass and drums, boomed. “Yeah.” She yanked the bag of candy from me. “But I almost figured it out myself.”
“I wanted to tell you first thing, but I psyched myself out.” She rooted through the candy. “The four of us promised—love each other always as friends forever.”
Her eyes stayed downcast. “You’re breaking the promise?”
“No.”
“You’re going as friends?”
“I mean, no, it’s a date. I don’t know.”
She made a small grunt.
Nothing else could be said because Graham was there again, hands clapped on Viv’s shoulders, shaking her gently. “The line for churros reaches Mesopotamia,” he complained. “Churros are the only reason I come to this.”
“He wanted to give up because there were five people before us,” Harry said, offering me his cup. “Frozen lemonade?”
There was a small shift in Viv’s pretty face; it made her look ill. “I can’t breathe,” she said. “I need a sno-cone.” She latched on to Graham’s wrist and dragged him toward the booth.
Harry rocked on his heels. “What’s up with her?”
The percussion instruments reached crescendo and for a few moments their battering was all I heard. “I think the floats started!” I shouted, rising up on tiptoes, trying to see.
“Graham told her we’re going to the dance together, huh?” Harry said right into my ear. “Viv wasn’t talking about it. I guessed she didn’t know.”
I searched for something in the crowd to make my creeping nausea stop. “I was crappy keeping it from her.”
“Maybe.” He was fiddling with the lemonade’s straw. “But she was intense making us swear to love each other as friends forever. And the dance, it sort of changes stuff.” He glanced up tentatively. “If you want it to.” I couldn’t look away from the warmth of his brown eyes. There was no more guilt tying my stomach in knots, no fear about breaking our promise. I let my smile answer him. Yes. I wanted. There was only the rush of Harry smiling back at me.
We watched the commotion of a police officer chasing boys on skateboards zigzagging along the cordoned-off street. I squinted at one of the boys. Did I see a white IV on his black backpack or was it another symbol, transmuted by distance? I went to ask Harry if he could make it out, but a glistening blue dome of ice appeared in my face. “Sno-cone for the snow queen,” Viv said with forced generosity. “Here.” The blue ice touched the tip of my nose.
I took it from her as it lurched at me again. “Thanks.”
Viv slurped her cherry-red cone through the straw. I hated blue sno-cones. What naturally occurring fruit was blue? And Viv knew this, knew all my loves and hates. I stabbed the straw through the cone’s outer shell of ice as the floats advanced like glaciers. I could think of worse punishments.
Our school mascot, a blue-eyed tiger, loped by and showered us with a toss of plastic-wrapped hard candy. Loud pops thundered sporadically—Principal Harper at the helm of his float armed with a T-shirt cannon, firing cheaply made apparel at dangerously close proximities. The boys and girls of the soccer and lacrosse teams waved from advancing floats.
Harry and I cheered for one in the shape of a pirate ship carrying the Brass Bandits and the school orchestra. Graham watched the parade with the bewildered look of an anthropologist observing an alien civilization.
I shouted across Harry and Viv to Graham, “Don’t pretend you don’t love this!”
“His veins run blue and white,” Harry teased.
“What?” Graham pointed to his ear, smirking. “I can’t hear you.”
“He’s going to try out to be Waldo the Tiger,” I told Harry.
“He’s planning to off the current Waldo the Tiger so there’s an opening,” Harry said.
Graham shook his head, but his eyes laughed.
Harry’s hand brushed mine. The mascot made another pass on foot. Harry’s arm went up to shield the two of us from the candy shrapnel. I turned into him. For a second our faces came close. The flicker of his lips was all I saw. Then his arm dropped as a curtain while the final float, homecoming royalty with their glitter cannon, came into my periphery. A storm of bright bits of paper winnowed around us. Flecks of color spiraled, changing from summer petals to fall leaves.
Our hands brushed again. He had confetti in his hair and I brushed off a speck of glitter from my nose.
“I’m starving,” Graham complained. “Let’s get a pizza before swimming.”
“It’s too cold for the pool,” Viv said, holding the opening of her cape closed, chattering her teeth. I was warm in my T-shirt and shorts. “Besides, we’ve been invited to a house party.”
Viv handed me her cell, a group text chain with Jess and Rachel on the screen. Jess’s parents were away for the night and friends were headed over to pregame homecoming. Viv squeezed in between me and Harry, slung her arm over my shoulders. “I know you’d rather eat pizza and swim, but please? It’s majorly important we go.” My tongue was still puckering from the awful blue sno-cone. Viv was chewing her bottom lip.
I wanted her to forgive me. “I don’t mind if everyone else wants to go.”
“Why is it important?” Harry asked.
“To hear what they’re saying about you know what,” she answered robotically. I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth.
“You’re not actually considering going, Iz?” Graham asked. He was disbelieving, finger fused to the bridge of his glasses. “Do I really have to lobby for pizza eating—extra cheese, fennel sausage, arugula—versus standing in someone’s kitchen, inhaling Conner’s beer burps and watching girls suck face for his attention?”
Viv rolled her eyes at me and said, without swiveling to face him, “You’re not into girl-on-girl action?”
Graham crossed his arms at his chest. “No. That’s not every guy’s fantasy.”
“Isn’t Jess your fantasy? She wants to know if you’re coming,” Viv said, swinging around. “I swear. Seeeee.” She scrolled up in the text chain and presented the cell to Graham with a flourish of fingers.
He blanched reading it, ran a hand through his hair, and said, “Maybe it would be a travesty to graduate without having the authentic experience of a house party?”
His eyes settled on me. I knew he must be remembering the house party freshman year. It was right before Thanksgiving; Viv and Harry had both been out of town with their parents. Graham and I already had our authentic experience. Once was enough. We never even relived it by talking about it.
“And if it would help your whole revenge scheme, who am I to say no?” Graham added.
I shoved my hands into my shorts pockets and tried to muster enthusiasm. “All right. We’re all in.”
None of us asked Harry what he thought. I realize now that I often mistook Harry being easygoing and mature for not having opinions. He had plenty. He wasn’t like Graham, Viv, and me, projectile vomiting words like Earth’s revolutions would grind to a halt if it didn’t hear what we thought.
We turned up at Jess’s front porch with a glut of other kids. Viv
was snatched by Jess. “Conner’s gonna burp the names of models,” she told Viv, like Hurry, you’re about to witness history. Everyone crammed in the kitchen that quickly began to stink of beer and stomach bile. Harry and I wedged deeper and deeper into the corner by the microwave as kids kept squishing by and stepping on my toes. I abandoned my beer and hopped up to sit on the counter.
From that height I had a view of Viv by the fridge, waving a lollipop like a royal scepter, laughing throatily. She was a quick study.
“What’s with Jess and freaking lollipops?” I muttered. Graham was between Viv and Jess. Despite how into Jess he claimed to be, he was watching the ceiling fan spin rather than talk to her.
“What do you think she’s planning?” Harry asked, elbow on the counter alongside me.
I knew he meant Viv’s grand plot against Amanda. I grunted indistinctly.
“Why don’t you ask?” he said.
I bit my lip watching Viv’s expression alternate between aloof and manically entertained. “Have you noticed Viv trades stuff in for brighter, shinier stuff really fast? Like she never uses the same nail polish color twice because there’s always a better color waiting. In theater, there’s always a new role headed her way. It’s easy to stay in love with it, I think.” I slid down from the counter. I didn’t want to watch her anymore. “I’m afraid to ask her what she’s planning because I’m afraid something more exciting than revenge on Amanda has finally come along. I would understand if she wanted to make peace.” I grimaced. “Accept it, at least.”
“Not me. Where’s the fun in fitting in?”
Viv’s laugh sliced through the room’s chatter.
“You think she’ll be ready to quit tonight’s experiment after that beer?” Harry asked.
“I love experiments,” Conner declared, shouldering through the kids behind Harry, a cigarette dangling from his mouth; his already short polo sleeves rolled up to accentuate his biceps. “Who is our experiment fucking with?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said, sending him an annoyed backward glance.
Conner gave a contemptuous crinkle of his brow. “I never worry, bro. But I am a nosy dick and I keep hearing stuff about you guys.” He jabbed the cigarette in my direction. “You gotta let me in on your secret.”
I batted away the smoke, twisted to retrieve my beer, and pretended to take a sip of the warm brew. Harry was newly absorbed in cracking his knuckles.
“I hear you like running around naked where they found that dead bitch when we were kids.” He paused. “Yeah,” he continued smugly, as if Harry or I had made some noise of admission, “I know all about your secret orgies.”
I watched the beer swirl in my cup. My hand shook with the desire to throw it in Conner’s face.
“Whoa, classy,” Harry said. “You always talk about victims like that?”
Conner’s grin grew mean. “When they’re trash, yeah.” He tapped the cigarette, ash falling to the hardwood floor. His attention latched onto me. “What about you, Izzie? I think you’re probably the kinkiest. You like scissoring under the full moon?”
“I don’t think you understand the fundamentals of that term,” I said.
He turned to give me side-eye. “You know. One in every school. Carries her diary in her backpack. Doesn’t do makeup ’cause it’s sexist and shit. But get a few beers in her and she’s stripping.”
I gave him the glare equivalent of a middle finger.
“You’re right, man, you are a dick,” Harry said. “And we don’t care if you wonder about us, just do it someplace else.” He cut Conner out of our little corner with his back.
“Fuck,” Conner said. “I’m trying to be a nice guy. We want to know what you’re into. Everyone does after last night. People have eyes is all I’m saying, bro.”
Harry’s neck became red, the tendons pronounced.
“What happened to you, Conner?” I asked.
“Huh?” he grunted, running a hand through his yellow hair.
“You didn’t used to be mean. Do you remember third grade when I came back to school after my grandpa died and I played you at tetherball? Big game. Our whole class watched. You usually crushed everyone at tetherball. But you let me win. So what happened to you?”
He recoiled—or maybe I imaged he did. “Shut up already, freak,” he said, shoving past kids to get away from us.
Harry let out a loud, shaky exhale.
“Who cares what he thinks or says?” I told him. He nodded but the voltage in his eyes worried me, like he might go after Conner any second.
“Hey, listen.” I tapped my ear.
The hip-hop song playing transitioned into something jazzy and old-timey remixed with hip-hop. Harry’s frown eased. And then Conner was forgotten and we were talking about music—Harry’s record collection, how he was saving up for a portable record player, how I missed the record player I’d had when I was younger, and the last concert I’d gone to with Viv in Los Angeles the summer before.
After music, Harry and I played a game where we picked someone out of the crowd and pretended to read their thoughts. I closed my eyes during a laughing fit and opened them to realize that most of the kids had left.
“C’mere,” Viv slurred from her post at the fridge. She was between Jess and Rachel. Amanda sat on the kitchen island, drilling the cabinets with her stacked heels. Graham was taking a hit off a joint, standing by the open patio door with the boy band. Reluctantly Harry and I migrated over to Viv.
“Amanda wants to know what we do in the barn,” Viv said clear enough that I doubted the initial slur in her voice. Her eyes twinkled. Sharp. Focused.
“Hang out and study,” I said. I took a backward step. They were all staring at me.
“C’mon,” Amanda whined, her heels hitting the cabinet with a vicious drive. “Study?”
Viv’s eyelash extensions brushed her cheeks as she shrugged coyly. “Sometimes we do homework in there, when we’re not bonfiring and—” She bit her bottom lip. “Oops, I forgot I can’t say. I’m such a lightweight.” And there it was: a juicy morsel she’d let slip to entice the others.
“C’mon, tell us,” Rachel said, swaying a bit on her feet.
“Please,” Jess said.
“It’ll go in the vault,” Amanda promised, raising her right hand to make a pledge.
Graham took a sip from a flask I’d never seen him with. “What do you think we do? Theories?”
I widened my eyes at him.
“You’ll say if we guess right?” Jess asked.
Graham shrugged, handing the flask to Campbell.
Jess leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think you’re pagans who worship anything with an evil eye, sacrifice four animals every full moon, read tarot cards, and don’t believe in monogamy.”
Was the emphasis she placed on four animals every full moon a coincidence? She was still leaning over, breasts bubbling up, tongue flicking her front teeth. Graham’s eyes dimmed. “Creative,” he said flatly. Why wasn’t he picking up on her flirting with him?
“Oh, me now,” Amanda exclaimed, childishly clapping her hands. “I think you’re playing a high-stakes game of truth and dare. With dares like you shoot apples off of one another’s heads with arrows and punk people who piss you off.”
“And sex,” Trent said, laughing, his bloodshot eyes running from me to Viv. “Campbell saw you butt naked.”
“I never said naked,” Campbell said, returning the flask to Graham’s waiting hand.
Amanda twirled her cardigan’s top button as she studied us. “Are you having sex parties?”
Conner coughed midinhale of his cigarette.
I feigned a yawn. “I’m tired. Can we please go?”
“Oh my god, I was kidding about sex parties,” Amanda’s hands flapped. “But listen.” She smoothed her hair in a self-satisfied way. “I’m not dumb and you four aren’t as smart as you think. It’s obvious you’re into something crazy and this year is basic as fuck, so we want in.”
; “You want in,” Graham repeated a little bug-eyed.
“Yeah.” She yawned with disinterest, but her wheedling tone betrayed her. “Whatever bonfire, streaking, truth or dare, prank pulling, punking shenanigans you guys are about, we want in.”
“You can’t have in because there’s nothing for you to be in,” I said. I turned to Graham, who’d driven us. “Home, please.”
“What were you and Harry doing in Berrington yesterday?” There was a sweet snare to Amanda’s voice.
I spun around. “Are you following us?”
“Please.” She swatted the air. “Rachel’s cousin does nails in downtown Berrington and she does Rachel’s for free before every dance.”
“I saw you,” Rachel said. It rang of childish accusation.
I smirked. “You see us all the time.”
“Why’d you buy so much meat at the butcher shop?”
“It’s not your business, but my parents are having a barbecue,” Harry lied smoothly.
“But you were carrying these huge containers and running,” Rachel insisted.
“Big conspiracy. My parents like to grill,” Harry said, and then to Viv and Graham, “If you guys aren’t ready, Izzie and I will walk.”
“Maybe,” Amanda spoke over him, “if you let us in, we’d be better at not asking questions about what you guys bought at a butcher shop the same day there was a prank pulled with animal blood. Maybe then we’d be better about not spreading our theories around. Think on it.”
A bolt of anger shot through me. I left before it came out as a yell or threat or curse. Even when we had the upper hand, Amanda somehow laid claim to it anyway. Amanda and I didn’t have a history like she had with Viv. I didn’t seek out ways to spar with her in the way Viv did. Save once.
Seven Hills High School’s production of The Breakfast Club sophomore year. Amanda had the role of Viv’s understudy. Opening night, Amanda, Jess, and Rachel sat in the front row, and as Viv recited her lines, Amanda hissed like a snake. Sssssssss. I watched the slow spread of red hives up Viv’s neck. It took me until intermission until I understood that Amanda was reminding Viv of the years she stuttered on words that began with the letter S.
First We Were IV Page 16
