by Dean Murray
Chapter 20
There were a couple of times between Monday and the end of the week where I didn't think I was going to survive having to worry about whether or not I'd be able to sneak out to Brandon's party. My dreams had taken a decidedly odd turn. I'd had the lucid, vivid dreams every single night, but my guilty conscience seemed to be working overtime. At least that was all I could assume. I woke up flustered, with vague memories of Alec. My best guess was that I was trying to defend myself after having argued with his little sister. If I was going to waste my time in the vivid dreams, it would've made more sense to spend them trying to explain my side of what'd happened to Rachel, but apparently I wasn't normal enough for that.
I'd been all set to swallow my pride and thank Alec for shutting up the two kids sitting behind me. Only that'd been before the ride home all by myself on the bus while he sped home in his little luxury car. Maybe I'd still have apologized to him if he'd been in school on Monday. Instead, he'd skipped the entire first half of the week, and by the time I did finally see him, I'd backed myself so far into a corner, I couldn't even meet his eyes during class.
Somehow I'd managed to make it through day after day of isolation. Brandon's friends continued to more or less ignore me, the boys without the trace of spite that I picked up from most of the girls. Britney started another rumor sometime about the middle of the week. Apparently I was now some kind of closet drug addict who was hoping to get Brandon to fund my habit.
Rachel hadn't been back to tutoring since we'd argued, and I was picking up an increasing number of hostile looks from people I didn't even know. Some of them were recognizable as Alec's friends, but most of them were just nameless nerds who apparently had a soft spot for Rachel, or a towering hatred for Brandon's friends.
"Adriana Paige. Have you heard a word I was saying?"
I looked up and blinked a couple of times. "Sorry Mom, I was thinking about school."
"I swear, you've become more absentminded lately than ever before. As much time as you spend studying and thinking about your classes, I'm surprised they haven't decided to graduate you a year early."
I shrugged uncomfortably. Since Mom hadn't been interested in the things I could safely tell her without getting grounded, school had become a standard excuse for why I was so distracted.
"Speaking of which, when do they send out mid-term reports?"
"I think they do them twice here. We missed the first batch, and the second isn't until later." I still didn't particularly like lying, but seemed to be doing it more and more often.
"Anyways, I was just apologizing for leaving you home alone on a weekend again. I ran into another trio of hikers, and they told me about a new vantage point for that crooked-looking mountain I keep telling you about. It's on the far side, so I'm going to hike as far in as I can while it's still light today so I can make it there tomorrow with plenty of time before sunset. I don't want to make the hike again, so I'll probably spend all of Sunday shooting, and then hike back on Monday."
Mom paused in her preparations to put her hand on my forehead. "You're not coming down with anything, are you? You've been so listless lately. Do you need me to stay home with you?"
There it was, the perfect opportunity to get her to stay home with me. It would get me out of having to spend time with Brandon's increasingly annoying friends, which was what I currently wanted more than almost anything else in the world.
Unfortunately I wanted to spend time with Brandon even more than I wanted to avoid his friends, so there wasn't really a choice.
"I'm fine, Mom. Just feeling a little run down. I'll spend the whole weekend lying around reading and studying. That should fix me right up."
I gave Mom a wan smile, exactly the kind I used when I was really sick, and helped her finish packing. I wasn't sure whether I helped because I was feeling guilty, or because I was worried Brandon would show up before she'd left. Maybe I was just hoping to kill two birds with one stone.
It wasn't until she was finally in the Jeep and backing down our lane that I finally stopped worrying that Brandon was going to pop around the corner. He'd been smugly confident he wouldn't show up before she was gone, but had refused to tell me how he planned on pulling up at my house five minutes after the coast was clear.
Half of me was strongly tempted to dawdle for fifteen or twenty minutes, but with my luck he'd really manage to show up within the next few minutes, and I'd have to scramble to get ready while he waited for me.
With a sigh I ran up to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, gave my hair the once-over, and grabbed a light jacket as I left my room. It wasn't even remotely as cold here as I would be at home by this late in the year, but the oppressive heat had finally started to wane a little. Knowing my luck, if I left it home tonight would be the first time it snowed in Sanctuary in the last two centuries.
More and more excited about the prospect of going to my first real party, I bounced down the stairs and into the kitchen for a drink. I happened to look out the window as I pulled a glass out of the cupboard, and nearly dropped it when I saw Brandon leaning against his car, patiently waiting for me. Before I could move out of sight, he looked up at me with a self-satisfied smile. I nearly dropped the glass again.
Twenty seconds later I was headed out the door. "How did you do that? There was no way you could possibly have timed things that close."
Another smirk as he held my door open for me. "I told you. Great instincts resulting from superior breeding."
"Fine, don't tell me. I didn't really want to know anyway."
Brandon chuckled as he threw the Mustang into reverse and sped out of the lane faster than normal. The stereo clicked over to another song as we flipped around and headed back into town. It was more of the thrumming beats I'd come to associate with Brandon.
"I thought this place was in one of the parks or something. Why are we headed back to town?"
"Wow, you really are a city girl. In order to get far enough not to be busted by the cops we have to go really remote. There isn't any way my car would make it where we need to go. We're headed to Vincent's to hitch a ride in his truck."
'Truck' turned out to be an understatement. I'd marveled more than once since getting to Utah, at just how big some of the pickup trucks I saw driving around were. It seemed like nobody was willing to drive anything around the way it came off of the showroom floor. Everything had bigger wheels, and suspension that lifted it up several inches.
Vincent's truck had more in common with the beasts in monster truck rallies than it did with the souped-up vehicles I'd seen driving around town. The tires were the biggest I'd seen on anything outside of a tractor, and the lift kit on it was so outrageously tall that I was pretty sure someone was going to have to lift me into the cab. By myself it was going to take a rope and climbing shoes. Of course it was black. I couldn't imagine Vincent in anything other than a black vehicle.
Predictably, Vincent was rubbing down his vehicle, but the exercise seemed more targeted to giving him a chance to walk around with his shirt off than it did with cleaning up the already immaculate truck. Based on the way the cheerleader types by the garage were watching him, it was working.
I much preferred Brandon's jeans and tee shirt, tight as it was, over the shorts and shirtless look, but apparently I was in the minority.
I almost hyperventilated when Vincent casually walked out of the house with a pair of beer kegs and tied them down in the bed of his pickup. His house was more on the fringes of town, but it was still in town. What if his parents came home and saw them? For that matter, where had he been hiding them? It wasn't even remotely possible that all of the people who were going to be at the party were old enough to drink without getting arrested.
Brandon looked at my white knuckles and laughed. "Don't worry, nobody's going to make you drink, and we've never been busted by the cops. We'll have you safely back home sometime early tomorrow morning, and your mom will never have the slightest idea you went to such a wild gatherin
g."
As far as reassurance went, it was a pretty lame attempt, but somehow it didn't sound so feeble when it was Brandon saying it. I calmed down enough to marvel at the amount of other baggage Vincent dragged out of the house, and then any chance I might have had to back out vanished as Brandon picked me up and deposited me on the tailgate of Vincent's truck.
"Riding in the back, isn't that illegal?"
The high-maintenance blonde Vincent was helping up next to me rolled her eyes. "Please."
Brandon helped a couple of late arrivals into the pickup, and then closed the tailgate. I half thought he was going to ride up front in the crowded cab, but he instead cleared the sides of the truck in a jump that was almost inhumanly graceful. He crowded in, close enough I could feel my skin start to tingle with anticipation, and then Vincent started the engine and we were off.
In what was probably the only display of maturity and common sense I'd ever seen out of Vincent, he didn't tear off down the freeway at eighty miles per hour. He was still going plenty fast, but at least the wind wasn't deafening. After a few minutes of white-knuckled fear, I was finally able to relax a little, and enjoy the feeling of having Brandon so close while the wind tossed my hair back and forth.
The other girls were studiously ignoring me while they gossiped back and forth about everyone from underclassmen to teachers and other adults in the town. I didn't want to join in the gossip, and Brandon was sprawled out on the pickup bed with his eyes closed. I settled for contemplating the glorious sunset's myriad colors.
We passed some kind of border into one of the parks. Vincent slowed down a little more as I was busy taking in the incredible pinks and purples that were dominating the western sky. It was like someone had splashed glowing paint across a window and then gone back and painted in picture-perfect clouds to complete the scene.
I'd seen plenty of amazing sunsets back home, but there was something about the rugged, almost hostile, skyline here that gave this one a spectacular level of depth. Maybe Mom was right about the west after all. Sure, it was hotter than Satan's kitchen, and a dermatologist's worst nightmare, but the skylines were amazing.
Brandon opened his eyes as I let out a sigh of contentment. "Bored already? We're only halfway there."
As I opened my mouth to respond, Vincent turned off the road onto a trail that hardly looked wide enough for a Geo Metro let alone his monster truck.
I let out a yelp as we dropped down a small hill and then started climbing up the other side of the gully with a small bounce. Brandon chuckled at me, but shifted position enough to brace himself against the two beer kegs, and then reached out and wrapped an arm around me. A couple of the girls who'd been looking especially condescending over my surprise as we'd gone off-road were now obviously disappointed. They were probably wishing it was them instead of me cradled against Brandon's yummy chest. I tried not to radiate too much contentment, but rather suspected I failed.
Vincent wasn't really driving any faster than before, but the fact that we were going up and down slopes I wouldn't have thought could be driven made his current speed reckless. Even with Brandon's arm stopping me from flying out of the pickup, I still had a couple of moments where my heart shot up to the top of my throat. He of course remained frustratingly calm, even when we hit a bump with enough force to nearly send everyone flying out of the bed. The other girls were trying hard to appear nonplussed. They were probably even fooling the boys, but they weren't enjoying themselves.
I was nearly sick by the time the track we were following leveled out, but there was just enough light left for me to enjoy the last of the sunset as we finished up the last ten minutes of the drive. As the final glimmers of color faded away into twilight, Vincent pulled his truck over in a spray of dust, and we were there.
I'd been expecting a lot of people. Even I knew you couldn't finish off two kegs of beer with eight or nine people, but this was crazy. There were already at least thirty people here, and based on the clouds of dust I could now see coming from where we'd just been, there were more people still on their way.
Brandon nimbly jumped out of the truck bed, and then helped me down to the ground as Vincent came back and manhandled one of the kegs to the edge of the tailgate and tapped it. My first kegger had just officially started.
Cassie showed up in a white pickup a few minutes after the beer started flowing, and popped the panel covering the bed, revealing an astounding row of speakers that promptly started spewing an aggressive mix of drums, guitars and synthesized notes that made Brandon's usual mixes sound like Christmas carols.
In short order there was a roaring fire going, despite the fact it wasn't really cold yet, and people started congregating in groups to talk or dance depending on their preference. Brandon seemed to be one of the former. Dragging along behind him as he slowly worked his way through a third of the school was extremely boring. I honestly couldn't think of a less entertaining way to spend an evening, but I wasn't ready to join the dancers. Most of them seemed to be rapidly losing key items of clothing, and all of them were dancing so close it was hard to tell where one person ended and the other began.
As Brandon handed me another cup of beer, which I started slowly pouring out on the ground as soon as his back was turned, the loneliness really started to hit me.
It would be bearable if I had a friend other than Brandon. It might even be fun to sit back and laugh at some of the antics making an appearance as people got more and more wasted. Instead I was stone cold sober, and the next best thing to completely friendless.
About the time Vincent tapped the second keg, Brandon looked over at me and flashed a thoughtful smile. I would've said nothing could've made up for the last two hours, but it came remarkably close.
"I'm sorry, this isn't any fun for you, is it?"
My listless shrug earned me a chuckle. "Well then, let's change stuff up a little. Care to dance?"
I almost said no, but as he pulled me in towards him, I suddenly realized just how badly I wanted to touch his incredibly hard chest and shoulders. Being wrapped in his arms was so pleasant that I didn't even protest when he pulled me in closer.
My whole body tingled where it touched him, and his cologne, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, was like nothing I'd ever smelled. Almost against my will I found myself pressing up against him so I could drink in the scent.
The music was still way too loud, everyone around us was still ridiculously drunk, but suddenly I couldn't care less.
Someone tried to come up and talk to Brandon as the next song started, but he waved them off, not even pulling his eyes away from mine. I'd thought my heart couldn't race any faster than it already was, but when he started moving his face down closer to mine, it felt like it was going to tear itself free from my chest.
It was happening. I'd fantasized about kissing even back when I thought boys had cooties. I wasn't sure I was any more ready than I'd been out in the parking lot, but I could tell by the way he was moving that he wasn't going to abort this time.
The tingling was even more intense now as I brought my hand up and cupped the side of his face, and then our lips met. It wasn't like I'd imagined. His lips were warm, and they had the slightest hint of softness, but there was more urgency and fierceness to the kiss than expected.
It wasn't as amazing as I'd fantasized, but I was still having a hard time thinking. I tried to pull back and catch my breath, but his arms had become steel cables that pulled me in tighter.
Fear finally overcoming my desire not to look stupid. I started to push away from Brandon. My efforts seemed futile for several seconds, and then his right arm released me. He wasn't letting me go though, his right hand had just repositioned to my stomach while his left arm kept me pinned against him almost as tightly as both hands had just a second before.
It should have been obvious what he had in mind, but it wasn't until his hand was under my shirt and moving upwards that my overloaded mind caught up with events. I tried to protest, tried h
arder to push myself away from him, but he just held onto me tighter than even before.
His hand was just millimeters away from its target, and I was starting to see stars from lack of air, before I finally remembered some of the tricks my dad had shown me.
I slammed my heel down on his left foot, and then brought my knee upwards towards his crotch, only to hit nothing but air as he spun me around.
"What the crap are you doing?" He wasn't even limping. He seemed more surprised than angry.
"What was I doing? Maybe trying to convince you to keep your hands to yourself, you think?"
As soon as the words came out I started wishing I hadn't said them. This was Brandon. Guys like him didn't just drop out of the sky and decide they were interested in chubby little nerds like me.
Brandon's expression hardened, and I suddenly knew there was no going back. Maybe it would've been worth it to let him grope me a little, but done was done.
People were starting to gather around us, Brandon's closest friends, the ones he ate lunch with every day, were all standing behind him, while everyone else filled out the circle.
I looked around for some kind of support from the other girls present, but couldn't find even one sympathetic face. The next thing I knew I was on the ground with my ears ringing and Cassie standing over me.
"...your stupid lies. If you repeat them you'll be sorry. Every single person here will vouch for Brandon."
A couple of people flinched a little at that, like they weren't completely comfortable lying, but Cassie stared them down. Nobody would meet my gaze.
I opened my mouth to protest, and Cassie grabbed me by the front of my jacket and dragged me the better part of twenty feet. My head was still spinning as she leaned down and hissed into my ear.
"Get out of here. Don't wait around, don't ask anyone for a ride. You had your chance and you blew it. He's mine again, and if you're not out of sight in the next five minutes I'll kill you myself and end this stupid experiment once and for all."
I'd only heard that kind of blatant willingness to kill once before, and just like with Jasmin, I was absolutely convinced Cassie was serious. I wanted to get up, to do something other than just lie shaking on the rocks, but my mind was like an appliance with stripped gears. It was spinning but not grabbing onto anything, so nothing was happening.
Cassie picked me up with one hand and gave me a hard shove back towards the road. I almost fell. Considering just how rugged the terrain was, it was a good thing I didn't, because I probably would've broken my neck. It was still a near thing, but once I was moving reflex kept me headed in the right direction.
Tears were flowing freely down my cheeks, and my heart seemed to be missing every second beat, almost like a hole had been torn in it and now it was a battle to continue beating, when it just wanted to quit.
I did fall down when I hit the first slope. There was just enough moonlight to confirm that the pain in my hands and elbow was the result of having all of the skin abraded away. I thought I was going to pass out, or maybe throw up, but I couldn't cry any harder than I already was.
