Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel)

by Angie McCullagh

  Her stomach had knotted into an anxious, tumor-like mass.

  When it all became too much, she realized she needed air, to get away from the music and smell of alcohol. She burst outside, where clusters of kids stood smoking. The rain had stopped, but a healthy wind still whipped everyone’s hair around their heads, and jackets around their hips. Emily held her skull, frantic. “Crap,” she muttered to herself. “Crap, crap, crap.”

  She folded her long body so she was sitting on the curb and wondered how soon before a neighbor called the cops. She sat like that for a long time, vaguely aware of the music thumping from inside, intermittent laughter, and the smell of cigarettes.

  Then she heard, “Doesn’t look to me like you’re studying so hard.”

  She saw a pair of sneakers. She raised her eyes. Jeans. Gray hoodie. Face. Ryan’s. “It’s all Trix,” Emily said. “And I’m so completely screwed.”

  He lowered himself next to her. She noticed he didn’t carry a six-pack or a fifth and was grateful. “I’m such a cliché,” she said. “Such a pathetic cliché. It’s like a bad high school movie. Teenage girl gets bullied into throwing a giant party. People have sex in the bedrooms,” she felt her face flush as she said this, “and trash the house and girl has to work for decades to earn back her parents’ trust. Not to mention send them her first gazillion paychecks after she graduates to pay for the damage.”

  “Just call the police,” Ryan said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. The party will get busted up, everyone’ll leave and you still come off as having hosted a kick-ass shindig.”

  Someone, somewhere, started smoking weed–its pungent, sweaty smell riding the night air.

  “But then it’s on, like, our permanent record or something. I mean, will I get a ticket? Will my dad find out about it?”

  Ryan’s bent head was close to Emily. She inhaled the scent of him: washed cotton and something faintly evergreen. “It’s better,” he said, “than your dad finding out because the house is a smoldering pile of ashes in the middle of the lot.”

  She felt overwhelmed. Totally out of her league.

  “I’m not trying to scare you,” he said, looking back at the house. “But this party is getting huge. And Bleak’s house was so completely thrashed by his throwdown that his parents took his car keys for the rest of the year.”

  Emily didn’t have her license yet, but she knew her dad would think up an equally stunting punishment.

  At that moment, she saw April, Kennedy, and Vanessa standing in her driveway, holding beer cans, other kids weaving around them.

  “The Farkettes,” she said and stood. She stepped on and off the curb, trying to decide her next course of action. It was then that the side door whooshed open.

  Trix strode across the driveway, her curly hair bouncing over her shoulders. Even from there, Emily could see her mouth set in an angry line. She busted in on the Farkettes’s circle. “Excuse me! Hello? Excuse me! Were you invited to this party? Because I’m pretty sure I didn’t notify any of you.”

  April, a hand stuck casually in her jeans pocket, her head tossed back irreverently, said, “Ben told us about it.”

  Emily could almost hear Trix’s jaw crack as she ground her teeth. “Ben Mason,” she said, nodding and taking a backward step. She knotted her arms over her chest.

  “The one and only,” April said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  Someone in the crowd yelled, “Ben and April are banging.”

  Everyone laughed. Everyone except Emily, Ryan, and Trix.

  A rushing sound like an enormous wave filled Trix’s ears.

  She growled to April, “I have two words for you: consolation prize.”

  April came back with, “I have three words for you, Movin’ on Up.”

  More laughter.

  “All right!” Emily called, hands cupped around her mouth. “This party’s over! Everyone get out. Go do your drinking and trash talking in an alley or something!”

  Trix flashed her a look that could’ve liquefied a brick wall.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” someone said.

  “Over! Time to go!” Emily yelled.

  Furious, Trix went up to Emily and said, “What are you doing?”

  “Shutting this thing down, Trix.”

  “It’s not yours to shut down.”

  Emily actually cackled. A cold breeze rippled through her hair. A cold breeze tinged with the scent of beer and far off burning leaves and teen spirit. “It’s my house.”

  Trix’s eyes were wild, her teeth bared. “You can’t,” she said. “Don’t, Em. Don’t do it.” Nothing had gone how it was supposed to. They hadn’t even gotten to the good part of the night.

  Emily couldn’t quite believe Trix’s recklessness. She certainly was no shrinking violet, but this exploit? It was over the top.

  Just then, a red Honda Civic Emily recognized as Kristen’s friend Karissa’s car pulled up along the curb. Kristen jumped out and jogged across the lawn. “Emily? What is this?”

  Emily looked up the street. It was barren. Quiet except for this house and the wind that howled through the trees. She sighed. She turned to Kristen and said, “Help me.”

  Together, Emily, Kristen, and Ryan made their way through the yard and into the house, calling that the police were coming and to get out fast.

  Kids scattered like ants away from a smoking cigarette butt.

  Engines started in unison. Many people just wandered off down the street, still with beers in hand. A few disappeared out the back, hopping fences.

  There were some stragglers lingering inside the house, still talking and laughing in the kitchen. A guy and a girl Emily didn’t recognize canoodled at the top of the stairway. She broke them up with a loud, “Take it to Motel 6.”

  Trix found Marjorie and they convened on the front porch with Adam and Isaac. Unexpectedly, Sam was still there, lingering. Marjorie said, “This is so effing lame. I thought it was supposed to be awesome.”

  “It was,” Trix said, heat creeping up her chest and flooding her cheeks. How dare Emily make Trix look stupid in front of her new friend. The only friend who really understood her. “Emily just doesn’t know how to party.”

  “Clearly.” Marjorie lit a cigarette and sat down on the wooden steps. Following her lead, everyone else perched on the stairs or railing, too.

  “So, what do we do now?” Adam asked.

  Marjorie yelled, “Will you let me smoke this before we decide? Christ!”

  Pushing back her curls with shaking hands, Trix said, “Let’s go get hammered somewhere. I’m done with this place.”

  25. Cleanup in Aisle Emily

  EMILY DIDN’T SEE where Trix had gone, but finally the place was empty except for Kristen, Ryan, and herself. Stunned, she swept bottle caps from the table into her palm. “What a mess,” she said.

  Kristen carried the recycling bin through the rooms, tossing in heavy glass bottles and crumpled cans. “Will you please explain to me how that started?”

  The party had spread like flames across a dry prairie. Emily had never experienced anything like it. “It wasn’t my fault, okay? Word just got around.” Despite her fight with Trix, she was reluctant to tell Kristen that Trix had been the mastermind.

  Some rap song still played on the stereo at low volume. Emily punched it off.

  She closed rifled-through cupboards and scrubbed the sticky kitchen counters with a sponge.

  Ryan had gone onto the back deck where he was righting lawn furniture. She walked out after him, the cold wind grabbing her. She said, softly, “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I want to.”

  All the lights in the house were on and they made a pattern of yellow rectangles across the deck and grass. The cold air bordered on bitter. “But, why? All your friends are somewhere else.”

  He turned a metal chair and replaced Melissa’s red, floral cushion. “You’re not somewhere else.”

  Emily’s heart
fluttered, like someone erratically pounding a bongo drum. “Well,” she said. “Thank you.”

  She maneuvered so she was one step down from him, her feet firmly planted on the ground. Ryan edged closer. When he got so he stood in front of her, they were the same height.

  Her heart and breath and thoughts clanged. She could smell him again, that cottony, evergreen scent. Oh my God, she thought. Ryan McElvoy. Ryan McElvoy. There is his neck, his pointy Adam’s apple, his skin a little stubbly. And there’s his chin, kind of square and solid. There’s his mouth, his lips a peachy purple in this light and they’re coming closer. Closer. Closer.

  Then, standing on different levels so they were perfectly aligned, with wind spinning the bamboo chimes and rattling the window screens, the house lit like a jack-o’-lantern, and the sound of the clinking bottles that Kristen was collecting inside, Ryan McElvoy kissed Emily. And his mouth was warm, and it was good.

  When they pulled apart, she realized she’d been clutching the sleeve of Ryan’s hoodie. She looked up at him and all she could think to say was, “I’m glad you stayed.” He felt so foreign next to her. Such an oddly different species, the attractive male. But also inviting and intoxicating. More than anything, she wanted to stand there and keep kissing him. Or, better yet, move him inside where it was warm.

  She knew they couldn’t exactly start making out while Kristen cleaned the house, though, so she swallowed hard and smiled.

  Ryan smiled back. “You have soft lips,” he said.

  Emily’s smile grew, though she was equal parts embarrassed and flattered.

  A stinging raindrop hit her forehead, then a second and third. She couldn’t help but wonder if this kiss would’ve happened had she been standing on the upper step. Her voice was almost a whisper when she asked, “Why me?”

  He chuckled, pulled his hand down over his mouth, and rested it on his chin. “Because,” he said, his voice dipping, then coming back up, as if that one word should convey the reason he’d chosen her. “You’re you. There’s no other Lean Bean.”

  She wished Ryan wouldn’t call her that, but to him she supposed it meant something endearing. To her, it was just a reminder of her height.

  She said, “Let’s finish this up before we get drenched.”

  He agreed and they jogged around the front of the house to pick up the detritus that’d been left there. What they found were a group of people sitting on the porch steps.

  Leaning back on her elbows, oblivious to the rain that had started, Trix took short, nervous drags from a cigarette. Marjorie King and Sam perched next to her. “There you are,” Sam said.

  Emily stopped short, her goofy smile and the contented, exhilarated hum emanating from her extinguished.

  She shifted her attention from Sam to Trix. She walked up so the toes of her Chuck Taylors almost touched the toes of her friend’s platform boots. “What was that?” she asked.

  Trix’s eyes were red, but it wasn’t clear if they were red because she was trying to hold back tears or from the smoke drifting into them.

  Trix wanted nothing to do with Emily right then. She’d ruined everything. If the night had gone as Trix planned, she’d be deciding between Devlin, Ben, and Ryan. Instead, Ryan stood there, his fingers linked loosely with Emily’s, both so self-satisfied they practically glowed.

  “Trix?”

  “What?” her tone was flat. Dead. She looked up at Emily, daring her to lecture.

  “What’s going on with you?” Emily wished more than anything that Sam, Marjorie, and the others would go. They had nothing to do with this. And besides, Sam kept staring and was making her supremely uncomfortable.

  The leaves that were still left in the trees above them swished and swashed dramatically. Every so often a full moon peeked from behind dark, fast moving clouds.

  “What’s going on with you?” Trix asked angrily.

  Emily took a step back. “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Miss Prim. Miss Oh-no-I-couldn’t-possibly-have-a-party-at-my-house. When did you get so boring?”

  Ryan and Emily exchanged a look. His was unreadable but he offered a slight nod.

  “Look,” Emily said. “I’m not the one who’s changed here. You are. Putting me on the spot like that was totally uncool. Totally thoughtless and selfish.”

  Trix crushed her cigarette under the heel of her boot. “That’s me,” she said. “Thoughtless and selfish.”

  Marjorie hooted into the night.

  Emily tasted something sour, slightly bitter, in the back of her throat and imagined it seeping out her nostrils and the corner of her mouth. She didn’t understand where Trix’s resentment came from and why it was directed at her. Why was Trix so angry just because Emily was trying to do the right thing? “It doesn’t have to be you.”

  Trix stood. “Yeah it does. It’s my legacy. I’m outta here,” she said. “Have fun with your boy-o. Enjoy it while you can. They all only want one thing.”

  Marjorie dropped a burning cigarette on the porch step and crushed it with her heel. Sam loped after them, turning back to raise one big hand. As they moved down the street under the orange sodium lights, Emily remembered how jealous and enraged Trix had looked coming out of Johnson’s class earlier that day.

  “She’s a real treat,” Ryan said, watching them go.

  Emily wondered if Trix was jealous of Ryan, per se, or just that someone was paying attention to Emily at all. She was dumbfounded, too. Trix should’ve been falling all over herself apologizing, explaining, begging forgiveness. Instead she’d treated Emily like she’d done something wrong. “She … ” Emily stopped, then started again. “She didn’t used to be like that.”

  Ryan’s hand slid up under her hood and rested there. Warmth coursed through her veins and she turned, intentionally slouching so their mouths could meet, and kissed him. A long kiss that pulled her tongue out to meet his and brought her hands up to his broad, boney shoulders.

  It was absolutely nothing like Sam’s slimy kiss.

  This was restrained and electrifying. This was Ryan’s mouth on Emily’s. This was fantastically incredible.

  She tried not to let herself wonder if they would kiss tomorrow and the next day, or if this was a one-night thing. She hoped it wasn’t. God, she hoped it would go on.

  26. Fun House

  THEY WERE IN someone’s apartment. Isaac’s? The music was good. Loud and electric. Trix had drunk more than a six-pack on her own. And maybe vodka. She wasn’t sure. She just knew she felt so good so good so good. Her head was on some guy’s lap as he played air guitar and she tried not to fall asleep. She didn’t want to miss any fun.

  Marjorie lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling as if a movie played up there. She’d done something more than alcohol or weed, but Trix didn’t know what.

  Other people were around, too, but to Trix they moved like ghosts. She was focused on Marjorie. “Whatcha see up there?” she said. Her words sounded mushy even to herself.

  Marjorie only laughed.

  The song ended and the guy playing air guitar went limp. He stroked Trix’s hair, saying something about how much of it there was and that it was like snarled weeds.

  When he caught on a tangle, he ripped through it savagely.

  Trix shrieked. The guy chuckled.

  Fun house. That was kind of what this was like. Things loomed large and then small. A tangle in her hair was a big deal, then faded to nothing. Marjorie with all her makeup and black and purple hair seemed clownishly large, and then remote and tiny.

  “Marj?” Trix said.

  “Don’t ever call me that!”

  “Okay, um, Marjorie. I feel really strange. Like, more than beer and vodka strange.”

  Marjorie cackled again.

  As if she were looking through a magnifying glass, Trix had a huge thought: Marjorie spiked one of her drinks with something. With some drug.

  The party at Emily’s, even though it had only been a few hours before, seemed far away now, like a farm on the d
istant horizon. What had been a major catastrophe earlier—the demise of her great plan to get attention—didn’t matter at all anymore.

  Suddenly, with the guy’s skinny fingers traveling her scalp, she inhaled sharply. Her ideas, which had been so big they filled the room, shrunk to the size of a gumdrop. A grain of sugar on a gumdrop. He was looking for something in her hair. Bugs? Coins? Pills?

  Trix knew she didn’t want him to find whatever was in there.

  She scurried over to Marjorie. She shook her shoulder. “We have to get out of here!” she said. She gave the guy a sidelong glance, knowing he was holding a handful of her strands. Oddly, she felt no pain.

  “What?” Marjorie said slowly. “Why? I’m soooo happy right here.”

  “Because!” Trix was frantic. “We just have to.”

  “Relax and enjoy this.”

  “Enjoy what? Being picked at like a baboon?”

  “The little gift I’ve given you,” Marjorie said, her syllables slurred.

  Sitting back on her haunches, Trix held her head in her hands. “Oh, Marjorie, what did you do?”

  27. Fading to Black

  EMILY SAT AT the computer, alternately clicking every link related to Marilyn Wozniak and chatting with Ryan on Facebook. It seemed that overnight they were an item. Ryan was typing the word We a lot. We should grab burgers. We have to get tix for the XY show at the Crocodile. When are we going camping at the Gorge?

  Every time she read that word, We, elation almost lifted her out of her creaky chair and flew her over Ballard, across Seattle, and above the roiling, cold Puget Sound. But the thing was, she was too afraid it wouldn’t last to really enjoy it. She worried Ryan would come to his senses any second, slap his forehead and say, “Emily Lucas? What the bleep was I thinking?” She worried that her growth would deter him. A couple more inches and he’d be as good as gone.

  So she kept her responses low key. Sure, burgers are good. XY is in January, hold off on buying tix. Camping? Don’t I need a sleeping bag for that? Etcetera.