Dumb Luck

by Lesley Choyce

  She took a deep breath. “Better,” she said. “I can’t believe people treat me differently because I look different.”

  “Sometimes it works that way.”

  “And I got asked out,” she said sheepishly with a half-smile.

  I had mixed feelings ... which surprised me, but I said, “Excellent. Who asked you?”

  “John Gardner.”

  “The guy from the school newspaper who ran an editorial against my promoting gambling and greed?”

  “He’s very political. I wouldn’t take it too personally.”

  “He said I was encouraging people to become gambling addicts and ruin their lives,” I said a bit too loudly.

  “He does get carried away. But he has very high ideals.”

  “He’s an asshole,” I said. I remember how I’d felt after the article.

  “He’s been nice to me. We’ll see how the date goes.”

  “Do you mind my asking where he’s taking you?”

  “To see a documentary about child soldiers in Africa.”

  “How romantic,” I said with a bit too much edge in my voice. I really didn’t like the idea of her hanging out with John Gardner.

  Kayla wrinkled her brow and took off her stylish glasses. She really had changed in some subtle way that made her so very different from the girl I used to climb trees with. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

  “No way,” I said. And for some reason I repeated it. “No way.”

  In two weeks my parents would move into their new house—their new lives, as my mom was now prone to say. I had offered my parents a more than generous price for our old home. In two weeks, odd as it seemed, I could move out of my fancy-ass apartment and back into my home, a home which would be truly mine to do with whatever I wanted. Only now, that was starting to feel a little too weird. And even sad. Living there all alone.

  Taylor kept saying that before I moved out of the condo, I needed to have a party. This was seconded by Chelsea.

  Kayla was the first person I invited. Well, she was the only person I personally invited.

  “I’m not coming,” she said.

  “You can bring John,” I countered.

  “I only went out on one date with him. And it wasn’t like a date. It was more like a lesson in morality. But he was nice.”

  “Bring him. I don’t care if he insulted me back then.”

  “No. The party thing is a bad idea.”

  “It will be cool.”

  “It will be trouble.”

  And that was the end of that conversation.

  But things were already in motion at that point, Chelsea and Taylor drawing up the guest list, making the appropriate invites on Facebook, etc. Taylor ordered some food and booze. I paid for it all, of course. Hell, I’d never thrown a party before.

  “Get on good terms with the neighbors above you, below you, and on each side ahead of time. You want them to like you. Tell them things will be controlled and not too loud.”

  I did this, offering a bottle of white wine to each of my neighbors, as planned. They all looked a little strangely at me, but I quickly learned that as soon as I told them who I was, they seemed to soften. “One night only,” I promised them. “This won’t be a regular thing.” At least one couple, Steven and Wanda Richards, who owned an interior design business, invited me to stop over some time for dinner. Everything was cool. Taylor knew exactly how to handle these things.

  “It’s all about diplomacy,” she said, the afternoon before the big event.

  Taylor and I split a bottle of wine around five o’clock the night of the party and ate some pizza as we made the final preparations. Music, food, booze. I was thinking that maybe this was another step on the path to my adjusting to being wealthy. Sure, I was only eighteen, but I sure didn’t feel like a teenager anymore. This was the life.

  The party was supposed to start at seven but no one showed up until 8:30, which gave Taylor and me a chance to share some more wine. Chelsea was the first to arrive with Brittany and Emma. Chelsea wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. I saw the look on Taylor’s face—the smirk. I knew what Chelsea was doing, staking out her territory. I liked the hug though and I could smell that she’d been smoking weed. So what else was new?

  Within a half-hour, it was clear that a real party was in full progress. Some of Chelsea’s pot-smoking friends arrived and she lost interest in me as she followed them out onto the balcony for a few puffs. I thought maybe I should be worried about other residents calling the cops, but the wine had gone to my head and I wasn’t much worried about anything. Everyone else had gotten into the action fairly quickly. But then, that was what a party was all about, right?

  At first, everyone was shaking my hand, patting me on the back, and thanking me for inviting them. (Although I didn’t invite them.) Even Grant Freeman, apparently, had been on the invite list.

  “That whole ruckus back then was my fault entirely,” Grant said. “I wanted so badly to be you. Forgiveness?”

  “Forgiveness,” I said. What the hell.

  That’s when Grant dropped his pants and tore off his shirt and jumped into my living-room hot tub. He flicked it on and a minute later Brittany had taken off her blouse and skirt and joined him.

  I was a little shocked, but then I’d never partied with these people before. I wasn’t about to join them. But it was the first true sign, my fuzzy brain concluded, that this was not my party at all.

  chapterthirty

  Chelsea came back in when she saw a couple of others jump into the hot tub. “Shall we?” she said.

  “Not me,” I said. I’d been drinking but I wasn’t that drunk. I wasn’t about to go parading in my underwear in front of all my old classmates.

  She looked a little disappointed but did not go in the tub on her own. Instead, she held onto my arm and whispered loudly into my ear. “This is the best party I’ve ever been to. I am so glad that you’re my boyfriend.” She pressed up so tightly against me and that felt really good.

  But was I really her boyfriend? The way she said it sounded not quite right. Like it was rehearsed. It didn’t seem real. Taylor had set Chelsea up with me. It was great but was Taylor maybe running a bit too much of my life? Looking around at my apartment, with kids drinking and some dancing and some standing on my furniture, (why were they standing on my furniture?), it all suddenly didn’t seem exactly right for me and my life.

  Grant had gotten out of the hot tub and was dripping all over the floor as he walked first to grab a beer from the fridge and then to my bathroom where he put on my bathrobe. As he waltzed back into the living room, still dripping under the robe, he looked like he owned the place. I’d let it go. If I said one word to Grant, he’d flip. Then disaster would follow. Be cool, I told myself. Be cool and try to enjoy yourself. I was suddenly glad Kayla was not here to see this.

  I switched from wine to beer so that I wouldn’t get too drunk. It could be a long night. The first beer went down pretty smooth and it was followed by a second one. Someone had turned the music up way too loud and I turned it down a tad, hoping that no one would notice. Chelsea and Emma seemed to be having a very serious conversation—most likely it wasn’t about child soldiers but nail polish—and I didn’t want to intrude.

  When I found Taylor, she was talking to my personal hero, Grant Freeman.

  “Love the indoor pool, Brandon,” Grant said. He meant the hot tub. “Always wanted one. My stingy parents were always too damn cheap.” Grant’s parents, I think, owned a bank or something like a bank. “Now, this is the life.”

  Taylor was laughing as he spoke. She was clearly enjoying herself and sipping some more wine. There were expensive snacks set out on the counters and my former classmates were feasting, although there were a number of people here whose names I didn’t know and who I didn’t recognize. The room was st
uffed with bodies. Taylor now seemed more interested in Grant than me, and Chelsea was still deep in discussion about whatever, so I figured it was my time to tour the room and introduce myself to some of the fine-looking young women I did not know.

  I was awkward with the first one but, as soon as she understood who I was, everything changed. That made me more confident with the second and third. And then a girl named Stephanie, who I had never met before, said she’d been dying to meet me. She said she’d crashed the party after hearing about it through the grapevine. And she told me she wasn’t a student really. She’d graduated high school and was now a model for a “very important agency.”

  I then recognized her as one of my “fans” who had appeared via e-mail after I’d won the lottery. “I’m glad you came,” I said. I really was glad. At least at that moment.

  She opened her purse. “Here’s one of the pictures from my portfolio.”

  I took the picture of her in a bathing suit, a very skimpy bathing suit. “My phone number is on the back.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. No kidding. I used the word “Gee.” Just like a little kid.

  “You have a great place.”

  “It’s nice but temporary. I’m moving into a house I bought in a couple of weeks. This is sort of a goodbye party to the condo.” I didn’t tell her it was the house I grew up in.

  “You don’t mind that I crashed?”

  “Not at all. It’s great to meet you.”

  “You’re sweet,” she said. “I don’t really know anybody else here. Would you hang out with me?”

  “I’m not sure I really know most of these people either.” A quick look at Taylor and Chelsea again convinced me that neither had much interest in whether I was having a good time. And the truth was, aside from meeting the gorgeous young woman who was now talking to me, I wasn’t really having that great of a time at my own party. I looked at Stephanie and she looked back at me like she’d just met the most important person in her life. That’s when I blurted it out. “Do you want to take a break and go for a ride in my car?”

  “Sure,” she said immediately.

  Without an ounce of fanfare—or interest from the other partygoers who were really going at the party—we slipped out the door. Soon we were seated in the BMW and on the road.

  “Where would you like to go?” I asked.

  “Anywhere, as long as it’s with you,” she said, slipping her hand into mine.

  I found myself driving past my father’s used car lot. Although it was closed, the sign was brightly lit and I saw my last name in those huge letters. Then I drove by my old house and on past where Kayla lived. I could see that there was a light on in her room.

  Stephanie asked me some things about myself. She seemed intelligent and sensitive and a little deeper than Chelsea and less pushy than Taylor. I was thinking that there were possibilities here. Maybe it was time for me to choose my own girlfriend. “How old are you, Stephanie?” I asked.

  “Twenty-three,” she said. “You’re eighteen, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Does it bother you? The age thing?”

  “Nope.”

  “I like younger guys,” she said, making me wonder how many there had been. But I felt like she really liked me. I felt different with her than I felt with Chelsea.

  “I like being with you,” was all I could follow that with. I turned to look at her and I guess I must not have been careful enough with my driving because I let the car slip ever so slightly across the road and a driver coming the other way lay heavily on his horn.

  “Oops,” I said. “I better stay focused. It’s a new car. I’m still getting used to it.”

  Unfortunately, not much more than three minutes later, I saw the lights of a police cruiser flashing behind me and heard the siren. I pulled over immediately and started to panic.

  I looked at Stephanie and saw fear in her face.

  “Shit,” I said out loud.

  A flashlight was in my face and a knuckle was knocking on my window. I rolled it down.

  “License and registration?”

  I dutifully handed them over. I was staying very cool. I was sure this would all be over very quickly and it would all be okay.

  “This is a learner’s permit,” the cop said. I still hadn’t had a look at his face. “She a licensed driver?”

  I had not said a word about being a new driver to Stephanie. I looked at her. “Sorry. Could you show him your license?”

  Stephanie gave me a baffled look. “I don’t have a driver’s license,” she said.

  I froze. I don’t know if she was lying or if she really didn’t have a license.

  The cop said to me, “Can you step out of the car?”

  I took a deep breath and got out.

  I could see now that he was a clean-cut, muscular man of about thirty. “Have you had anything to drink tonight?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “You’re just learning to drive, right?”

  “Yes. I have the learner’s permit.”

  “But you passed the written test?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the part about drinking and driving?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you always slur your words or only when you’re drinking?” he asked with an ominous tone in his voice. I truly didn’t think I was slurring my words. But it was sinking in that he could obviously tell that I’d been drinking.

  I’d never ever been in trouble with the law. And I had this feeling that if I ever got in the slightest trouble, I’d be polite and apologize and the policeman would be kind. He’d give me a little lecture and I’d promise never to do whatever again. And that would be the end of that. “I had one beer,” I said, thinking this would make everything okay.

  “Turn around, please.”

  I turned around and suddenly felt hard metal clamping down tightly on my wrists. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  With that, he pushed me toward his police car and sat me down in the caged back seat. There was police chatter on the radio. And static. I remember lots of static. He closed the doors and then I saw him talking to Stephanie who had stepped out of my car. She had a cell phone up to her ear. I was hoping she would look at me or come over or offer some kind of explanation or assistance that would get me out of this predicament. But she didn’t. She looked completely in the other direction and talked on her cell phone and then to the police officer, who was asking her questions.

  And then I watched as he took my keys from the car, walked back toward me, and sat back down in the front. “Isn’t this all a bit unnecessary?” I asked.

  “It’s the way we do things these days. I pulled you over because there was a complaint from another driver. They phoned in the description of the car. You were the only BMW on the road going this way. Car’s in your name, too. Thought it would belong to Daddy.”

  “I bought it myself.”

  “Nice,” he said.

  That’s when a cab stopped and I watched Stephanie get in. She never looked back at me once. The arresting officer must have felt obliged to explain why she was let go or maybe he wanted to rub salt into my wounds. “She said she’d just met you. I asked if she wanted to accompany you to the station until this was settled. She said no. She was free to go. You comfortable back there?”

  I felt like crying but held it together. I said nothing.

  Pretty soon a tow truck arrived and the cop handed him the keys to my car. After that, he drove me to the police station. It was going to be one hell of a long and difficult night.

  chapterthirtyone

  The handcuffs were tight and they dug into my wrists. All I kept thinking was: This can’t be happening to me! But it was happening to me. It’s possible that it wasn’t until that moment, handcuffed, sitting in the caged back seat of a police c
ar, that I realized just how much the alcohol had affected me. I’d been drinking wine and beer ever since Taylor had first arrived. Going for a drive was a supremely bad idea.

  But right then, at that minute, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I had gotten myself into this mess. And Stephanie had simply bailed on me. Who could blame her?

  At the police station, I was led into a very brightly lit room. “We’d like to give you a blood alcohol test using a breath analysis machine. You care to call a lawyer?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”

  “Go ahead,” said, handing me a desk phone.

  “I don’t know who to call,” I said.

  “Want me to dial Legal Aid for you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He dialed a number from memory and held out the phone.

  When a woman answered on the other end and introduced herself, I told her my name and explained my predicament. Then I asked the question, “Can I refuse to take the test?”

  “You can,” she said matter-of-factly, “but the punishment will be the equivalent of your being found guilty of driving while under the influence.”

  I was not ready at that point to even ask what the punishment would be. “So the best option is just to take the test and hope for the best?”

  “Probably,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. And hung up the phone. “I have to pee real bad,” I told the cop who arrested me.

  “Sure,” he said. “Follow me.”

  I followed him to a small bathroom and went to close the door behind me but he put out his foot to stop me. “Sorry. But I can’t let you be in there alone. I need to stand here with the door open.”

  I think it was then that I truly believed I had wandered out of reality and into some really cheesy bad cop reality show. But I had to pee, so there I was standing in front of a toilet with a cop watching me pee. How weird was that?

  Afterwards, I was led into another brightly lit room and introduced to another police officer and his Breathalyzer machine.