by Megan Hart
Jenni laughed at her sister’s anxious expression and tossed her hair over her shoulders. She’d been thinking of dying it. Black, maybe. Or streaks of color, kind of punk rock. Oooh, she could cut it short, maybe even shave it to the scalp, why not? She’d been the blond princess her whole life. It would shock the shit out of everyone if she went that dark and edgy…baby sister was staring, so Jenni pressed her lips together before saying, “Of course. I told you I would. A whole case.”
"How did you get a whole case of beer?" Allie was still pacing. Her fingers clenched and curled, then released. She was clearly freaking out.
"Allie!" Jenni snapped her fingers in front of Alicia's face to get her sister to focus. "Chill. You're making me nervous."
Mom and Dad were still here, getting ready in their room down the hall. They were leaving Jenni in charge for the first time. At almost eighteen, she was supposed to be old enough to handle things. She should be proud they thought so, right? Allie clearly didn’t think Jenni could handle shit, because she was still looking like someone had stuck her with a fistful of pins. For a second, Jenni wanted to put an arm around her younger sister and reassure her it would all be okay, and that if anything, she ought to be on her knees thanking Jenni for setting this up. Allie’s cool factor was going to skyrocket after tonight, and Allie sure could use a little cool.
It hadn’t been that long ago that she and Allie had been “thick as thieves,” as their mother said. Now Jenni couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had really shared their secrets. And Jenni had plenty, didn’t she? Allie probably didn’t have a single one, the good girl, the quiet one, the nerd. Jenni had never envied her sister until just now.
"How did you get a case of beer?" Alicia lowered her voice to a hissing whisper.
"I know a guy." Jenni shrugged again.
She knew a lot of guys. Always had. That these new “guys” were all older, much older, was something new. She wasn’t going to tell her sister about any of them, though. Not about the perv who bought drugs from her and thought that meant they had something between them. Not about her dealer, who’d promised her more money than she could spend if only she sold for him. And not about him…the one who Jenni thought she might love. Or could love. Or shouldn’t love. One or all of those.
Jenni looked in the mirror to admire the heart-shaped pendant she knew Allie wanted, but which had been gifted to her. For a single moment she considered taking it from her neck and giving it to her sister, who certainly wanted it more than Jenni ever had. Her fingers curled around it, but she didn’t take it off. Keeping something her sister wanted had been a long habit.
Black flecks speckled the glass where the silvering had come off it in the back. This mirror was an antique, attached to an old dresser that had been their grandma's when she got married. When she died, Mom got it. It had been in their room forever, so both of them were used to standing in weird poses in order to see all of themselves.
Jenni cocked her hip and tilted her head as she ran her hands up her sides to close her fingers around her own throat. Steve liked to do that when they were fooling around. It made her feel woozy and dangerous, and even though he’d never really scared her, part of her was always waiting to be frightened. Part of her wanted to be. She pressed her thumbs against her throat and her eyelids fluttered closed as warmth spread upward from low in her belly.
"Where did you meet a guy that old? The diner?"
Jenni’s eyes snapped open at the question, and any desire she’d fleetingly had to give away the necklace vanished with her annoyance at Allie’s nosiness. Jenni had been working at the diner since she got her driver's license, which was about the same time she started growing distant and irritable about everything that happened in this little house. With her little friends. Their little lives. The people — the men — who stopped at the diner were almost always on their way to someplace else. Someplace, any place better than Quarrytown.
She’d met him at the diner.
Jenni turned with another toss of her hair. The heat in her belly had rushed to her face at the way Allie was staring, but Jenni shook it off. "What do you care? Ilya said bring beer, I'm bringing beer. What difference does it make to you what I had to do to get it?"
"Jennilynn! What did you have to do?" Allie squealed.
"Jesus, Alicia. Enough with the Spanish Inquisition. I met a guy, he's old enough to get beer, and he likes me enough to bring it to the party. Quit acting like this is some kind of big deal, because it's not." Jenni turned to face the mirror again, pursing her lips and turning her face from side to side. More blush? More eyeliner. What would Ilya say if she showed up in full-on Goth?
What did she care what fucking Ilya Stern thought about anything? Jenni scowled at her reflection. Not a damned thing, not now or in the future.
"What's going on with you lately?" Allie demanded.
Jenni looked at her sister in the reflection, then once again turned to face her. Slowly, this time. Without the flounce. Again, Jenni remembered how close they’d been. If only she could trust Allie not to run to their folks if Jenni told her the truth…but no. She couldn’t trust her little sister with anything like that. Not if she wanted to keep doing what she’d been doing. Not if she wanted to get away with it. That was the trouble with secrets, wasn’t it? You had to keep them all by yourself.
"Nothing." Jenni put on a vacant smile. Allie didn’t believe her, Jenni could see that. She also knew her sister wasn’t going to press her for answers. “It's going to be a slammin' party. Don't be such a loser."
The "L" Jenni made with her thumb and first finger pressed to her forehead was meant to be a joke, but Allie clearly didn’t take it that way. She frowned. "We're going to get in trouble."
"Not unless someone narcs on us. Mom and Dad won't be back until late Sunday. Galina's working a double or something. Ilya said she won't be home until morning. Barry went fishing for the weekend. And Babulya's staying with some friends in Camp Hill, some kind of quilting thing."
Allie wasn't satisfied. "What if someone calls the cops?"
"Who's going to call the cops?" Jenni rolled her eyes so hard she swore she could see her own asshole. "We're the only houses on this dead-end street.”
Allie left the room. Jenni checked her pager. He hadn’t sent a message, but she hadn’t expected him to. He was out of town. There was a message from Dillon, the guy who was supposed to be getting her the beer. Downstairs in the kitchen, she called him back.
“I’ll bring it to the party,” he said.
He wasn’t invited to the party, but Jenni didn’t say so. If that was the only way to get him to bring the beer, fine. She rolled her eyes, though. Dillon was a loser, one she didn’t feel bad about using to get what she wanted.
Allie had been lingering, listening. “Who was that?”
“Beer delivery,” Jenni said with a grin and a toss of her hair. “C’mon. Let’s go over.”
Chapter 3
Rebecca
Then
It was going to be the party of the year.
Rebecca Segal didn’t hang out much with the kids who lived on Quarry Street, even though they’d all gone to school together since kindergarten. The Stern and Harrison families were tight with each other, their own little club, and although Rebecca had imagined Ilya Stern’s mouth on hers a hundred times, well, so had almost every other girl in school. Fantasizing about Ilya was pointless, since he had eyes only for Jennilynn Harrison, anyway.
Besides, Rebecca had been going out with Richard Goldman practically since her bat mitzvah, when her parents had insisted they share the celebratory kiddush at the synagogue. Their birthdays were only a week apart. Their dads did business together. Her parents liked and approved of him, and if the Stern brothers had the bad boy swagger and good looks that turned girls’ heads, Richie had…well, Richie had money. Or at least his parents did. He also had a car. And a good future, according to Rebecca’s mom and dad, who liked to talk about “a good future” a
lot.
It was inevitable that they’d end up together. In Quarrytown, there were only a handful of Jewish families. Rebecca’s parents had never forbidden her from dating someone who wasn’t Jewish, but they sure had made it much easier to date Richie than anyone else — curfews and other rules seemed to fly out the window if they thought she was with him. So, she told her parents she was with him, and most of the time, she was.
Richie didn’t hang around the Sterns or Harrisons too much either, but tonight it didn’t matter, because the word was out that both sets of adults in the only two houses on the end of Quarry Street were out of town. The news had been shared in whispers and giggles and in notes folded into triangles and passed along the rows of desks in all the classrooms at good old QHS.
It was going to be hella good. A dark thing like a flower unfurled inside her, sending its tendrils into every nook and cranny. It was going to be wild. It was going to be…bad, Rebecca thought and stared at her reflection, watching to see if anything showed in her expression. All she saw was blankness. No hint of the excitement bubbling inside her. No sign that she intended to get wasted tonight. That she was going to dance until she couldn’t breathe. Laugh with girls she usually didn’t give the time of day to, maybe flirt with boys who had no chance with her.
Maybe she’d finally let Richie do all the things he kept trying to do, or maybe she would make him do to her everything she’d been imagining she wanted. Whatever might happen tonight was going to be a big deal. It was going to change everything.
“Meeting Richie for dinner and a movie, but then I’m going to sleep over at Libby’s.” Rebecca twirled her car keys in her hand.
They belonged to the baby blue Volkswagen Cabriolet in the garage. It had been a sweet sixteen gift. She was one of the few girls in her class who had her own ride. One of the few kids in the entire school who had a brand-new car, not a hand-me-down. Even Richie drove his mother’s old Volvo. Rebecca kind of hated the Cabriolet. It had made her popular, and that wasn’t so bad, except that most of the girls who’d started asking her to hang out with them were only doing it so she’d give them rides to the mall. It was better than having to beg for rides herself, though.
“Libby’s?” Rebecca’s mom tipped her head down to peer over her reading glasses. Her lips pursed. “If I call Richard’s mother, will he also be having a sleepover with ‘a friend?’”
“I don’t know, Mother, maybe you should,” Rebecca answered coolly.
Considering the way her parents seemed bent on shoving her down the aisle with Richie even though they were both just barely eighteen, the fact that her mother was even pretending to be worried about them sleeping together was irritating. Besides. They weren’t. Richie had, so far, been satisfied with an occasional handjob and had never even asked her to put it in her mouth.
Linda Segal harrumphed but bent back to the needlework in her lap. She’d been working on the same piece for the past six months. Now she sighed and pulled out a pair of tiny scissors to rip free a few threads.
Rebecca waited for more questions, but her mom seemed satisfied with the lie. For a moment, just one, Rebecca wished her mom wouldn’t let it go. She wanted to spill everything. The party. The drinking she planned to do. The trouble she wanted to get into.
“I’ll be home tomorrow,” Rebecca said.
Her mom looked up again, taking in Rebecca’s pegged jeans and oversized men’s shirt, along with the tie hung loosely around her throat. “Would it kill you to dress up once in a while? For a date, at least?”
“I like this outfit.”
“I’m sure you do, but what does Richard think about it?”
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I’ll ask him and let you know.”
“Becky-boo, don’t be like that.”
Rebecca didn’t protest the childhood nickname. It usually made her grit her teeth. Tonight, for some reason, it made her feel like crying and hugging her mom, something she hadn’t done in…well, in a long time.
“Richie likes the way I dress,” she said, although she honestly had no idea what he thought about the way she dressed and really didn’t care.
Her mom rolled her eyes but smiled. “Have a good time. Tell Libby’s mom I said hi.”
Guilt. It didn’t last long. Excitement overtook it.
At the pizza shop where she’d agreed to meet Richie, he paid for a couple of slices for each of them. His had pepperoni, which he ate with a super smug grin on his face. Lips covered with grease. His mother would’ve had a fit if she’d known he was eating treif. Rebecca didn’t care much, one way or the other. Her parents didn’t keep anything close to kosher, but the Goldmans did.
“You gonna finish that?” He jabbed a finger at her pizza.
She pushed it across the table with a shrug. “What time do you want to leave?”
“Whenever.” Richie shrugged and looked up, still chewing. He frowned around the mouthful. “You’re serious, right? You really want to go? It’s just a lame party.”
It was so much more than that, but she wasn’t going to try to convince him of it. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“We could go back to my house. My parents are out for the night.”
She stopped her lip from curling. “I told a bunch of people I’d be there. But like I said, you don’t have to go.”
“Could be fun.” Richie shrugged again.
She didn’t want him to go to the party. She hadn’t thought much about it before, assuming he’d come along because he was her boyfriend, and it was what she wanted to do, and since he was her boyfriend he would go along with it. But she really hadn’t wanted him to come, and now with the possibility that he might ditch the party, it was all she could think about. Going to the party to drink and smoke and dance and…flirt, yeah. All of that, without Richie.
She couldn’t think of a way to say so. Hell, she could barely permit herself to think it. Before Rebecca had a chance to blurt out something stupid, Richie guzzled the rest of his soda and stifled a belch behind his hand.
“Benji wanted to hang out tonight anyway,” he said.
Hang out meant playing video games and who knew, watching soft-core porn. But it was an out, and while there’d been times in the past when Rebecca would’ve been a bitch about it, tonight she simply shrugged the way he had. Richie burped again.
“I’ll just go and hang out with Madison and those guys,” Rebecca said. “Have fun with Benji.”
Chapter 4
Jenni
Then
With her parents barely two hours on the road, Jenni was wasted and dancing so hard in the center of the Sterns' living room that her halter dress could barely stay up. Dillon, who'd bought her the case of beer, showed up to the party with an additional couple bottles of rum. He was way too old to be at a high school party, but nobody seemed to notice, and he sure as hell didn’t care. The Stern brothers pulled out a stash of vodka. Ilya was mixing some with red punch. Someone else spilled the chips all over the living room floor and kids danced on them, crushing them into the carpet.
Someone put on that song by the Violent Femmes, the one about just one kiss. Jenni didn’t know all the words, but she shouted along with everyone else as the room erupted into a seething mass of kids jumping in unison. The pictures rattled on the walls. Someone knocked over a lamp. Niko and Allie were nowhere to be found, the little shits. Jenni searched the room for Ilya, but she couldn’t find him, either.
In the bathroom she threw up, mostly into the toilet, and rinsed her mouth. She spit in the sink. Her reflection showed sweaty hair, rings of dark smudge beneath her eyes. She bared her teeth, outlined in red from the vodka punch, and laughed in her own fucking face.
“Hey, babe.” Dillon rapped on the door and opened it without waiting for her say anything. “You okay?”
“Better out than in,” she said.
When he kissed her, backing her up against the wall, she knew she shouldn’t let him. He was a creep. He was too old for h
er. He was a shady character, the type of guy who’d buy underage kids beer and make out with a high school student when he was closer to thirty than twenty. It wasn’t like she’d lied about her age, either. But that wasn’t why she shouldn’t let him kiss her. She had other reasons for that, and a shiver went through her at the thought of what Steve would do if he knew she was fooling around with another guy.
He’d be angry, wouldn’t he? Jealous? He might even get a little rough with her. Jenni shivered again.
“Want to get out of here?” Dillon asked.
Jenni broke the kiss and turned her head. “This is like, my party. I can’t just leave it.”
“So, we’ll go out back. For a little bit.”
She knew what that meant. “You need something?”
“Couple of things,” Dillon said with a smile. “Things that’ll make me feel real, real good. Maybe you, too.”
“Already feeling good.”
Dillon kissed her again, tongue sliding between her lips. For a second she almost thought she was going to puke again, and what would Dillon do if she blew chunks into his mouth? Jenni giggled at that, and he pulled away to look at her face. His eyes narrowed.
“Something funny?”
Jenni shook her head. The vodka punch and the beer had warmed her. Made her dozy. Happy. It was so hard to be happy, anymore. She was never happy.
Jenni was almost, almost always sad.
“Come out back with me.” Dillon took her by the wrist to tug her out the door. “We’ll have our own little party.”
In the backyard, Jenni caught sight of two shadowy figures near the picnic table. The Sterns’ backyard was overgrown, thick with dead brown weeds. The music from the house covered up anything the people sitting out there were saying, but it didn’t look like they were speaking anyway. It was Allie, Jenni saw as Dillon tugged her around the side of the house, toward the tree line and the path that led toward the quarry. Allie and…Niko?
