by Stacey Jay
“Really?” I snatched my cup before he could finish the last of my rum. “And here I’ve let you play in that band for all these years.”
“Oh! Low blow there, Minnesota.” When we’d first met, when he was six and I was five, he’d thought my last name was Minnesota instead of Mottola. It was one of our oldest jokes.
“Whatever, Burn Butt.” Isaac had given Mitch his nickname, a play on Birnbaum. Isaac, who hadn’t been there to support me the one time I’d asked him to be.
Mitch sighed, as if he could tell where my thoughts had drifted. “Anyway, you were really good. I don’t know why you didn’t get that part for real.”
“I’m a horrible audition-nen-ner. Audition-nen-nen—” I shook my head with a laugh. It was getting harder to talk and my head was even floatier than it was before. “I stink at auditioning. I freeze up every time.”
“Then you should do it more often. Then you won’t freeze.”
“No, I think I’ll always freeze.” I tried to take another drink, but Mitch smoothly plucked my cup from my hand.
“I got nervous when we first started playing real gigs. I don’t anymore.”
“Give me my drink, please.”
“I think you’ve had enough.”
“Are you my boss?” I reached for the cup, but he tossed back the last of the rum before setting it down in front of me.
“No, I’m your friend.” He grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the island and its vast array of bottles and cups. “And friends don’t let friends get wasted.”
“Some friends do.” I cast a pointed glance to the living room, where most of the cast was sitting in a circle on the floor, playing a game of strip spin the bottle and chugging tequila. In the far corner, another clutch of people passed around a joint, while a handful of girls tried to get some dirty dancing started on the landing halfway up the stairs. Most people wouldn’t think it, but the drama kids could be a wild and uninhibited crowd. I was one of the most conservative theater geeks I knew.
“Yeah, let’s go outside,” Mitch said, moving toward the back door. “I’m afraid they’re going to make me play that game if we stay in here any longer.”
“They don’t pressure anyone to play.”
“Katie, please. With this body, how could they resist trying to get me naked?” He gestured down his long length, making the same joke about his scrawniness that he’d been making for years. He wasn’t nearly as thin as he used to be, but it was still funny. Mitch was just funny to me. Always had been, always would be.
I was smiling as he opened the back door and we stepped out onto the patio.
It was late September, but the Regises’ pool still had water inside. After the cool nights we’d had, I was sure it was way too cold to swim in, but it looked pretty. Pink and blue lights glowed beneath the water, making the air around the pool ripple with pink, blue, and purple.
Everyone else was inside the house, so we had the line of white plastic deck chairs to ourselves. Mitch pulled two together and plunked himself down. I settled next to him, swinging my feet out before me with a sigh, surprised at how tired I felt. My entire body was buzzing with leftover adrenaline and alcohol, but I was still tired.
Or maybe I was just sad. Yes, that was it. I was sad.
“Katie, come on, don’t cry. It’s not worth it.”
“I’m not crying.” I sniffed and swiped at my cheeks. I was crying, and I hadn’t even realized it. Mitch was right, I’d probably had enough to drink.
“You look like you’re crying.”
“Well, I’m not.” Or I wouldn’t be in a second. I wasn’t a big baby who was going to boo hoo about my boyfriend missing some dumb play. My parents had come, Mitch had come. That was enough.
“You’re stubborn, you know that?”
“I do.” I sniffed again, grateful for the arm Mitch slid around my shoulders. I leaned into him, dropping my cheek onto his narrow chest.
“I do too.” We were quiet for a second, watching the wind push a few early fall leaves across the surface of the pool. Mitch and I were good at being quiet together. Silences with him never felt anxious, just . . . silent, calm. “I wonder if Isaac knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Knows how stubborn you are.” His tone was casual, but I sensed that he was being serious for once. “I mean, you two have been together since you were fetuses.”
“Fourteen is not a fetus. And he was fifteen.”
Mitch grunted. “Still, I don’t think he knows how stubborn you are. I don’t think he knows how much he hurt your feelings tonight either.”
I lifted my head from his chest, searching his face. “So you think I should forgive him? Just forget about this? Because he didn’t get it?”
“I didn’t say that. I said he was a clueless idiot.”
I smiled. “No you didn’t.”
“Well, I’m saying it now.” He leaned in, bumping his forehead against mine. “He’s an idiot. He doesn’t have a clue.” He leaned in again, but this time he didn’t move back, but left his forehead pressed to mine. “How special you are.”
Apprehension slithered along my spine, finding its way into my stomach to spin around with the alcohol in my belly. I swallowed and thought about moving away from Mitch, but I didn’t.
“Special?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Do I look like I’m making fun of you?” His breath was warm on my lips and the air between us thick with possibilities. Bad possibilities. Wrong possibilities.
“No.” Move. I should move. Run back inside before this moment got any stranger.
“I think you’re special.” His hand was warm as it smoothed across my back, down to rest on my hip, touching me in a way Mitch had never touched me before. In a way no one but Isaac had ever touched me. “To me, anyway.”
Get up, Katie. Move.
“Mitch, I—”
“I would never have missed something that was so important to you. Not for anything.” His intensity was almost scary and completely captivating. I couldn’t seem to move a muscle, no matter what the voice at the back of my head was saying. “Not for a gig, not for some stupid basketball practice, not for anything.”
Then he kissed me. Soft at first—his lips the barest brush of heat and skin against mine. But then his hands pulled me closer, his tongue teasing between my lips. Before I really understood what I was doing, I was kissing him back.
Really kissing him back, legs tangling with his as we fell back on the deck chair, him half on top of me, my fingers in his hair. His hands were on my hips, at the small of my back, at my waist, pushing up my shirt, warm on my trembling stomach. Then his mouth was where his hands had been, mumbling my name, kissing the bare skin near my belly button, making me shiver.
The world was spinning, but it wasn’t because I was drunk. It was because he felt so good, because he made me feel so . . . alive, so completely inside my body and outside of it at the same time. Being with Mitch was safety and rebellion, celebration and revenge, familiarity and exploration, all mixed up together. It was intoxicating. Wonderful.
And so very, very bad.
Mitch’s hand was halfway up my shirt when I grabbed his wrist. “I can’t do this. Stop.”
Instantly he pulled away, hands flying to his hair, raking the wild strands out of his face. He sucked in a deep breath, wide eyes meeting mine, looking as shocked as I felt. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s okay.” I sat up, shoving my shirt down, swallowing hard. “It’s—”
“It’s not okay.” He laughed, a sharp, miserable sound. “It’s really not okay.”
“No, it’s not.” I crossed my arms at my stomach, wondering if I was going to be sick.
“I’m sorry, Minnesota. I know you and Isaac . . . and I . . . I’m just . . . sorry.”
We sat in silence. For the first time, I felt the absence of words between me and Mitch—a giant hand squeezi
ng us until we couldn’t breathe.
“We can pretend it never happened,” I finally whispered, my voice small and frightened. If Mitch told Isaac, everything would be ruined, my entire life, every little piece of future I’d stitched together. I was too out of it to think it through completely, but I knew the results of discovery would be awful. Horrible. Unimaginable.
“We can’t. I can’t, anyway.” His hands dropped to his knees. He shook his head, and his hair fell forward again, hiding his face. “But we don’t have to tell anyone else. I won’t tell anyone.”
My relief was so profound I thought I would choke on it. “I won’t tell anyone either.”
We both knew who “anyone” was. Anyone was Isaac. We weren’t going to tell Isaac. We were going to keep this between the two of us, our secret mistake that would never, ever happen again.
And it wouldn’t have happened again, I’d proved that to myself the past two weeks, when I’d stubbornly refused Mitch’s every attempt to get me alone and “talk.”
Everything would have been fine if Sarah hadn’t seen whatever she’d seen or said whatever she’d said to her little brother. I should have been angry with her, but I wasn’t. Sarah wasn’t cruel or a gossip. She’d probably said something in private to Hunter, something she’d never expected him to tell anyone, let alone Isaac.
Even when the rain fell harder—soaking my clothes, making me shiver and my jaw ache from clenching my teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter—I couldn’t get up the energy to hate her. I was on this road, miles from home, darkness and rain falling all around me, drenched and miserable and alone, abandoned on my birthday, dumped on my anniversary, because of me.
I’d done this all on my own. Committed an unforgivable sin.
Stupid locket. Stupid hope. Stupid, stupid Katie.
I reached up to my neck, grabbing the locket in my fist again, half intending to rip it off and throw it into the mud beneath my freezing feet. Instead, I found myself squeezing it, grateful for its strange warmth.
I was so cold. It was almost dark and the temperature was falling fast. I was still miles from home and didn’t dare hitch a ride with one of the few people driving past. Brantley Hills was a safe town, but not that safe. Bad things still happened. Kids disappeared, girls were raped, people were killed. Not often, almost never, but terrible things happened here, just like in any other town. People made horrible mistakes and other people paid the price for them.
Just like Isaac was paying the price now. He was out there somewhere, hating me, loathing me even more than his jerk of a dad. Our dreams for our future together were ruined, everything we’d counted on since we were barely more than kids destroyed, all because of me.
I wasn’t special. I’d been told I was since I was a little girl—by my parents, teachers, Saturday morning cartoons, Disney songs, even milk commercials—but that was a lie. Not everyone is a unique individual capable of living an extraordinary dream. Some of us are just ordinary. Some of us are medium people with lukewarm futures who are lucky to stand next to someone destined for great things.
Someone like Isaac, the boy who’d loved me, the boy I’d betrayed with my stupid mistake. My mistake that was clearly “meant to last.”
Lightning flashed through the sky and the locket grew hotter in my hand, so hot it almost burned, but I didn’t let it go. I deserved pain. If pain could take away what had just happened, I’d take any amount of it. I’d suffer anything, I would—
Fire. Suddenly my hand was on fire. Burning, scalding, like I was holding a live coal instead of a piece of jewelry. I yelped and dropped the locket, but only exchanged one hurt for another. It fell against my shirt, burning away the thin cotton and starting in on my skin.
I cried out as I fell to the ground, hands fumbling in the puddles, splashing rain and mud onto my chest, frantic for anything to put out the fire. But the pain didn’t stop. It only burned brighter, paralyzing me with its intensity. Within seconds, I was frozen on my hands and knees on the side of the road. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could only squeeze my eyes shut and scream.
I was still screaming when the rain shut off like a faucet and the ground beneath my hands shifted and squirmed—wet mud drying, soft earth firming up—becoming a cool, smooth surface that soothed away the stinging on my palm.
The burning at my chest ceased as abruptly as it began.
With a cry of relief, I reached for the clasp at the back of my neck. I had to get the locket off before it hurt me again. My hands were shaking, my breath coming in swift gasps that made me dizzy. When I opened my eyes, I thought maybe the dizziness was the reason the scenery had changed. I was hyperventilating and my eyes were playing tricks on me. That had to be it, because there was no way I could be seeing what I was seeing.
My hands slipped from my neck, down to brace against the concrete once more.
A few feet away, the Regises’ pool shimmered and waved, the pinks and purples and blues mixing in the air, turning the white deck chairs a dozen subtle shades of color. Beyond the pool, picture windows glowed with warm yellow light. Inside, people poured drinks and danced to a throbbing beat I could just catch if I strained my ears.
It looked like . . . but it couldn’t be . . . there was no way—
Lips parting in a silent “oh,” I watched Kayla Spruel run giggling through the Regises’ living room with a tequila bottle, peeling off her jacket as she went, kicking off a game of strip spin the bottle.
I remembered watching her do the exact same thing from the kitchen two weeks ago and wondering how many people she was going to convince to play.
Two weeks ago. The cast party.
It was impossible, but somehow, some way, I’d gone back in time, back to the moment when I’d made my mistake. The mistake that maybe . . . wasn’t meant to last.
Chapter Three
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 11:44 P.M.
My brain imploded, each little wrinkle folding in on itself like a cartoon hole on the ground wrapped up and slipped inside a briefcase.
There was no way this was happening. This was impossible.
I was hallucinating. That was the only explanation. Or maybe I was unconscious. Maybe I’d been hit by a car on my rainy walk back to Brantley Hills and was lying in a ditch somewhere, concussed, dreaming about the night I’d just been dwelling on before headlights came out of nowhere and some careless driver knocked me into the air.
That made sense. At least some small kind of sense.
But still . . . everything was so crisp and clear. I’d never experienced anything like this in a dream, even my most vivid nightmares. The ground beneath my hands was cold and rough and the jeans covering my legs were damp at the knee, right where I’d dropped makeup remover on them in my hurry to take off my stage makeup after the performance. I’d forgotten I’d done that until I reached down and felt the wet spot with my fingers.
The faded softness of the jeans felt so real. As real as the concrete. As real as the slick satin of my favorite emerald shirt, as real as the locket lying cool against my skin.
The locket.
It had burned me, it really had. I explored my new wound with trembling fingers. The skin beneath the locket was ever so slightly ridged and bumpy, slick like a scar that had mended a dozen years ago. There was no way it could have healed so fast—a burn so fresh would be raw and painful—but there was no other explanation.
Just like there was no other explanation for how I’d come to be back at this party. It was the locket. It had to be.
That is insane! I’ve lost my mind.
“Or I’m in a coma. I’ve lost my mind or I’m in a coma.” I reached behind my neck, this time managing to catch hold of the locket’s tiny clasp. Crazy or not, it seemed like a really good idea to take the locket off. Immediately.
Metal caught beneath my fingernail and I pulled, waiting for the clasp to give beneath the pressure, to open so I could slip the loop free. I pulled and pulled, until the metal nub tore through th
e tip of my nail, but the clasp didn’t budge.
“Ow!” The finger with the torn nail went into my mouth, and I tasted blood and . . . hair spray. I never wore hair spray, but I’d sprayed it on thick the night of the play. Bright red wispies are distracting in real life, let alone onstage. I’d washed my hands several times after smoothing my hair, but the stickiness had lingered.
But not for two weeks. This was impossible, it was—
“Hey, Katie. Are you okay?”
I turned to see Sarah easing out the back door. Her long, kinky black hair was pulled into a braid and her baggy black T-shirt and cargo pants hung loose on her tiny frame. She looked like she worked backstage—which she did, most of the time. For almost two years, Sarah had ruled the theater from her stage manager’s headset and kept many a production running smoothly. No one messed with her when she was in charge.
Strangely, however, not many people noticed her when she wasn’t.
Despite her perfect golden brown skin, striking hazel eyes, general adorable petiteness, and diva-sized attitude, Sarah had a way of fading into the background. Being one of the only African American kids—or half African American, anyway—at our school probably had something to do with it. We were one of the “whitest” districts in the state of Tennessee. When you attracted attention for the color of your skin, I imagined fading was a desirable skill. Not to mention that in most situations, Sarah was as shy as I was. It was how we’d become friends in the first place. We’d both been sent to the counselor in third grade for refusing to answer questions in class. We’d bonded over weird flash cards and cheesy books about “coming out of our shell” and had been friends ever since.
At least until this past year, when things with Isaac and me had gotten more intense.
The first time around, I hadn’t even registered the fact that Sarah was at the party. I hadn’t noticed her, I hadn’t said “hi,” I hadn’t asked her why she wasn’t managing Our Town this semester. I’d been wrapped up in my own little world and let Sarah fade away, even though she was my best—my only—female friend.
