High School Hangover

by Stephanie Hale

  “Laney, I didn’t put you in this truck,” he says so genuinely that I can’t convince myself, for even a second, he’s lying.

  I feel myself deflate like a popped balloon. I thought for sure Jack was behind all of this. Now I have to admit to myself that I may have made some stupid decisions last night that somehow led me here.

  “How did you get here?” Maybe if I can retrace Jack’s steps, I can figure out how they intersected with mine.

  He drops the flashlight and it rolls over to a plastic-covered hanging rack. Even through the plastic I can make out fur coats, evening gowns, and several men’s suits. A feather boa escapes out the side reminding me of Zander’s snake. “Do you have a brother named Zander?” I ask him.

  “No, I have an older sister,” Jack answers, retrieving the light.

  Oops. I wonder whose vase I peed in. I decide not to mention the snake we are hitching a ride with, just in case Jack is more of a girl than I am.

  “Listen, we need to talk about getting out of here,” Jack says, glancing nervously at his watch.

  “What time is it?” I ask, not really sure I want to know the answer by the way he’s acting.

  “It’s a little after ten,” he answers, not looking at me.

  Okay, I can work with that. Erika and I got to the party about six and I remember sitting outside at the pool for an hour or so, then I went inside and watched Leo play poker for a few more hours, so I couldn’t have been here that long. I feel better already.

  “In the morning,” he finishes.

  It takes a few seconds for what he said to work its way into my brain. That means it’s the next day. The day after the party. I feel like a kindergartener trying to learn the concept of time. How could I have lost nearly twelve hours? Erika must be going out of her mind with worry. What if she called Mom? Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad. It would serve her right for kicking me out of my own house for the entire weekend.

  “How did you get here, Jack?” I repeat, realizing he never answered me.

  “I drank a lot last night. Everything is fuzzy,” he says hesitantly, not making eye contact. He tugs open a few of the top buttons on his dress shirt and I force myself to look away. I was so ready to accuse him of playing a joke on me, but now he seems like he is confused about our situation, too.

  “This can’t be happening,” I say, starting to panic as I realize that Jack doesn’t know what is happening either. Valedictorians do not lose twelve hours of their lives. They do not wake up dressed in strange clothes. They do not forget crucial pieces of information like how they got into a moving vehicle with their nemesis while wearing no underwear.

  “You’ve got to calm down,” Jack says, resting his hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I wish I could believe that he is capable of handling this situation but his past track record isn’t so stellar.

  “What if someone kidnapped both of us to sell as sex slaves?” I ask, gripping Jack’s hands. “That stuff really happens, you know,” I say, breathing so hard I’m getting dizzy.

  “Stop it,” Jack demands, letting go of my hands and putting his on my face. “It’s not like that. We had a crazy night. We’re going to stop pretty soon and we’ll get out and go home. No biggie.”

  I want to believe him, but I’ve never felt so discombobulated. I always have everything planned out and last night wasn’t even on my radar. I’m sure some people would probably label me a control freak but it makes me feel secure to know exactly what is going to happen from day to day. I even pair up my underwear and socks on Sunday nights and label them with the days of the week so I’m always prepared.

  Wait a minute. I’m not wearing any underwear. A horrifying thought crosses my mind. “Did we…?” I ask, pure fear registering on my face.

  “You don’t remember?” Jack asks, keeping his hands on my face.

  “Oh my God! This can’t be happening,” I shriek, pulling away from him and starting to rock back and forth.

  “Wow, this sure is a self-esteem booster,” Jack kids. “Laney, I’m messing with you.”

  I stop rocking. “You mean, we didn’t?”

  “Who do you think I am? Leo Doolin?” he asks, looking a little peeved.

  I don’t comment on his Leo slam, realizing this isn’t the time or the place. We are always going to disagree on Leo, like we do about many things, but right now we need to focus on getting out of here.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” I say, trying to keep the cringe off my face so my apology appears genuine. “Things like this don’t happen to me. My idea of a crazy night is staying home and highlighting words I don’t know in the dictionary.”

  Jack laughs at my attempt to make fun of myself and the air seems to clear. That’s one thing I’ve always noticed about Jack, he isn’t one to hold grudges. He makes peace with things and goes on about his life. With the exception of his hang-up about Leo, which I’m assuming probably has something to do with a girl, a car, or sports since those are pretty much the only things guys seem to get worked up over.

  “You were pretty crazy last night,” Jack jokes, fake punching me in the arm.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, curious to hear any information to fill in the missing pieces from last night.

  “Well, for one thing, you went swimming.”

  This tidbit isn’t exactly a newsflash. I figured that out the minute I felt my hair. “Yeah, I remember that.” I’m starting to wonder if Jack has as much memory loss as I do about last night.

  “You do?” Jack asks, acting very shady.

  “I have memories of being in the pool and swimming. I guess the logistics of how I actually got there aren’t very clear,” I admit. Come to think of it, how in the world did I go swimming when I was wearing a dress? Did I go skinny-dipping and that’s why I’m naked under here? I’m too horrified to ask Jack.

  Even in the dim illumination of the flashlight beam, Jack’s expression says it all. He almost looks like he feels bad for bringing it up. I have to know what he knows, no matter how bad it is.

  “Tell me everything,” I demand, suddenly needing to know every single detail about last night that Jack knows and I’ve forgotten. “And don’t embellish,” I add, knowing how Jack thinks it is so cute to toy with me.

  “You know what? I think you should chalk last night up to a learning lesson and move forward,” Jack states, sounding weirdly mature.

  I can’t even imagine how bad the things Jack knows are if he isn’t even willing to rub my nose in it. But I have to know every sordid detail.

  “Spill it, McAllister,” I tell him, bracing myself by gripping the edges of the box I’m sitting on.

  “I wasn’t really keeping tabs on you or anything but someone said that you were in the poker room with Leo and you dropped your dress in front of everyone.”

  I suck in a deep breath and hold it until I feel like I might burst. But wait, this is hearsay. I’ve heard rumors that Amelia was pregnant about five times and never once did she actually pop a kid out. “Did you actually see me take my dress off?”

  “No, unfortunately I did not,” Jack answers jokingly.

  “Okay, so some idiot started some crazy rumor. I can deal with that,” I say, feeling so much better.

  “However, I did witness Leo carrying you over his shoulder like a side of beef, wearing only your bra and panties.”

  It takes a full minute for Jack’s words to completely saturate my brain cells. I bury my face in my hands and feel like I might die of humiliation. “This is not happening,” I moan.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Jack adds, patting my sequin-covered knee, “You looked smoking hot.”

  I scream to the top of my lungs. “My life is over.” I wish I could say that I thought Jack was lying but I knew it was true the moment he said it. I don’t really quite remember it, but it feels very familiar. That must be why I’m wearing a different dress, but what in the world happened to Mom’s dress?


  “Laney, that party was insane. Your little stunt was pretty G-rated compared to some of the things I saw.”

  “Thanks for trying to sugarcoat the fact that about a hundred people had a really good view of my butt, but it’s not working,” I tell him. I am consoled by the fact that high school is over and if I can avoid seeing any of the people from the party all summer, I’ll never have to worry about the humiliation following me to college.

  “Leo never should have taken advantage of you like that,” Jack says, punching a box next to him so hard that it tumbles over.

  I know Jack’s aggressive response isn’t about me, but his hate for Leo in general. He would probably react the same way if he heard Leo was littering.

  “I was the one who drank too much punch,” I confess, realizing that Jack must have been right all along about me not being able to handle it. “Thanks for trying to warn me,” I say, wondering why he even cared at all after the way I’ve treated him since the B debacle.

  “Whatever, I would have done the same for anybody,” he says, making me feel stupid that I thought he was specifically looking out for me when apparently he makes it a habit to babysit virgin partygoers. It bothers me that it bothers me. Kind of like when I saw Jack flanked by those two blondes last night. Great, this is the one vivid memory that my brain decides to serve up? Pathetic. I decide to use it anyway to deflect feeling stupid.

  “What happened to your blonde sandwich? Not enough meat?”

  I regret the words the minute they leave my mouth. What is it about Jack that brings out my inner mean girl?

  “Dimples, how about we stick to subjects you know something about?”

  My face burns with humiliation and I ball my fists up. I shouldn’t have teased Jack about the girls but it is plain mean of him to fire back a comment about my lack of experience with boys. I consider lying and telling him I’ve hooked up with lots of random guys on vacations and summer camps, but something in me won’t let me degrade myself like that to prove a point.

  “I do not want to spend one more minute with you,” I tell him, gritting my teeth so hard that it’s entirely possible one of them might crack.

  “Yes, we should get you back to your knight in shining armor as fast as we can.”

  “You aren’t half the man that Leo is. He’s going to actually make something of himself. You’ll be lucky if you can get a job as the dancing pizza man,” I tell him, voicing my own fear of someday being unable to get a good job and being forced to dance outside the local pizzeria dressed like a giant pizza waving a sign around. I can’t imagine that hell would be much worse than that guy’s job.

  “I always thought that looked like fun,” Jack retorts, grinning and tipping his stupid top hat at me.

  “Please do not talk to me again until you’ve figured a way out of here,” I tell him, turning my back on him. I can’t believe I used to fantasize about Jack and I being more than lab partners. He is infuriating.

  Jack turns off the light and I lose track of how long we sit in the dark but its long enough for the lull of the tires to almost put me to sleep.

  “Laney, get up,” Jack says, shoving me. I’m about to backhand him when I realize that the truck has stopped. “Move to the back door and when it opens, get ready to run like crazy and don’t look back.”

  “We need to find out how we got here in the first place. What if we’re in another town?” I say, realizing for the first time that it is highly unlikely we’ve just been driving around in circles all this time and we’re probably a few towns away from Higginsville.

  “For once in your life, will you please listen to me?” he pleads.

  Jack is being awfully bossy right now and there is still a part of me that expects the door of the truck to slide open and Erika to pop out and tell me this was all a big joke. So I play along and do what he says.

  I scoop my purse up and move toward the giant door. I hear a door slam and my pulse picks up. Light filters in through tiny cracks beside the door. Jack stands next to me stiff as a Christmas Nutcracker. His complete change of demeanor makes me realize that if this is a joke, he isn’t in on it. Jack is right. We should get as far away as we can and figure out how to get home some other way.

  I hear the handle being turned on the outside of the truck and hold my breath. What if I can’t get out quick enough? This dress is like being wrapped in cellophane, and Mom’s heels aren’t exactly Nikes. I know Jack would leave me behind to fend for myself. Not that I could really blame him because I’d probably do the same to him. The handle makes a loud snapping noise like a lock being released and the door rises about an inch on the bottom, bright sunlight flooding our feet.

  “Leave it for now, Jed. I’m so hungry I could eat the ass end out of a donkey,” a male voice says from outside the truck.

  “Yeah, I could probably eat something, too,” Jed answers back.

  Jack and I exchange a glance when we hear retreating footsteps but the door is left open. Jack flashes me a thumbs up sign then eases the bottom of the door up a few feet. He ducks under the door and jumps out onto a paved parking lot. I bend down to see him holding his hands out to help me down. I resist his help, attempting to ease my way out of the truck. There is no way I’m going to be able to bend in this dress without busting the seams and revealing all my business. Before I can decide what to do, Jack grips my waist and lifts me out. My arms grip his considerable biceps.

  “Thanks,” I say, our faces dangerous close. He sets me down gently then reaches behind me and pulls the door back down. Despite the seriousness of our situation, I can’t help but giggle about how goofy he looks in that top hat.

  “Oh, crap. Here they come,” Jack says, grabbing my hand. We run as fast as we can for blocks until we’re sure they didn’t come after us. We’re hunched over trying to catch our breath when I realize that as we were running, I didn’t recognize a single business we ran past. I straighten up and gaze around at a nearby strip mall filled with restaurants, and other random businesses, hoping to see something that flickers recognition. But everything looks completely foreign.

  “Jack?” I say nervously, pointing to a store window covered in signs written in Spanish.

  “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Dorothy,” he says, coming to the same realization.

  Chapter Five

  “Excuse me,” I say, slowing a middle-aged couple walking down the sidewalk. I’m relieved that they look very American. “What town is this?” I ask, holding my breath that they don’t answer back in Spanish.

  “Texarkana,” they both chime. I’m more confused than before I asked.

  “And what state would that be in?” Jack pipes up, clearly as lost as I am.

  “Why, Texas, of course,” the woman answers in a seriously thick drawl.

  “Arkansas,” the man says a second later in a matching accent. The woman playfully slaps the man on the arm.

  “We always bicker about that. The dividing line is over yonder, so this here is really Texas.”

  Jack tips his hat at them and takes my arm and turns me around before I can have a complete meltdown right in front of this perfectly nice couple.

  “Y’all alright? I thought prom was last weekend,” the woman shouts from behind us.

  “We’re good. Much obliged,” Jack replies without looking back. He continues to steer me into a small park area.

  He gently pushes me down on a park bench. I barely feel my butt hit the seat of it because I am so numb. We are at least two states away from home. How is that possible?

  “Don’t freak out, Laney,” Jack urges, probably noticing my near catatonic state.

  I stare at him with what I’m sure are vacant eyes. How could I have been so out of it that I passed out long enough to be driven two states away? What kind of an irresponsible person does something like that?

  “Hey,” Jack yells, waving his hand in front of my face. “This isn’t that big of a deal.”

  I feel like a pot that just boi
led over. “No BIG deal? We are probably over a thousand miles from home and you think that’s no big deal,” I shriek, giving a tree full of birds a good scare as they take to the sky.

  “Calm down. Nothing is going to get solved if you get us arrested for disrupting the public,” he says, holding the outside of my arms. I refuse to acknowledge that his touch is having a tiny calming effect on me.

  “How could you have not known we were getting so far away from home?” I yell, wanting so badly to blame someone besides myself for this mess even though it’s pretty apparent Jack was as out of it as I was.

  “Hello. You were there too, princess,” Jack retorts, dropping the blame back into my lap.

  “God, you make me crazy,” I say, jerking out of his grip. I throw my purse down on the bench and grab fistfuls of my hair in frustration.

  “Way to be mature,” Jack smarts off, making me want to wrap my hands around his neck.

  “You,” I shout, stabbing my index finger toward him. “Every single time I’m near you something goes terribly wrong.”

  “I told you not to drink that punch or hang out with that douche,” he reminds me, which stokes the embers of my temper.

  “You’re such a hypocrite. You got so drunk you can’t remember anything either. And leave Leo out of this.”

  Jack balls his fists up and paces around the park bench a few times. I brace myself for a volcanic tirade when he sits down on the bench calmly.

  “You’re right, Laney. Listen, let’s sit down and talk this through calmly.” He pats the seat next to him. I raise an eyebrow, not sure if I should trust him, but after a few seconds, I sit down.

  “I’m sorry,” I practically whisper. “I’ve never lost control before.” With the exception of my parent’s divorce blindsiding me, my life has been made up of a series of well-organized lists that were completed and checked off. There is nothing random in my life.