The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(5)

Sometimes they all went to Emma Fleed’s house on the mountain, but Emma was often busy with ballet class and rehearsals and couldn’t truly be counted upon, as Abigail liked to say meaningfully to Cally when Emma wasn’t around. At this Cally would feel a proprietary thrill: she was Abigail’s, Abigail hers.

That afternoon, in Abigail’s bedroom, Cally sat beside Abigail on the queen-sized bed as Emma stretched on the floor. It seemed perfectly safe for Cally to pull the note from her pocket and hand it over.

When Abigail read the first line, she laughed out loud. She was the only person Cally knew who actually said “ha” when she laughed, barked it. “Ha! Oh my God, dude,” she said. “This is hilarious.”

“Yeah,” Cally said. The note made her stomach turn, but if Abigail thought it was hilarious then it probably was.

Emma stood up and grabbed the note. “What’s this crossed-out part?” she said. “?‘Sometimes when I’m watching you I…’ Nasty.”

“Don’t read it out loud. God.” Cally felt as responsible for each sentence as if she’d written it herself.

Abigail pushed on. “You know what this means. You’re what he thinks about. When he—you know—”

“Gross.”

“In his room at night,” Emma said, “after that creepy mom of his tucks him in—”

“Okay, I get it.”

“Maybe he does it at school! Maybe you’re running the mile and he’s sitting there watching you, hand down the front of those sweats, going at it.” Abigail squeezed her eyes shut and gaped her mouth, acting out a strange kind of pleasure-pain that Cally had never felt.

Emma shrieked with laughter. Cally blushed, hid her face in her hands.

Abigail asked, “What do you want to do?”

“Forget it ever existed? Is that an option?”

“It kills me how innocent you are,” Abigail said. “Do you think he’s going to forget it?”

Cally shrugged.

“What if he, like, comes after you?” Emma said.

“He wouldn’t.”

“He wants you. What if he won’t take no for an answer?”

“I don’t know.” Cally remembered Tristan’s gaze, his thumbs stroking origami paper to life, what he wrote about her bare skin. What if he wouldn’t?

“Well,” Abigail said. “You know what you have to do.”

—

Ryan Harbinger answered the door in dirt-smeared baseball pants and sweat-sheered T-shirt, and he didn’t ask them in.

“Who is it, honey?” his mother yelled from inside.

Cally and Abigail stood together on the stoop; Emma had abandoned them for a late rehearsal. Mothers had a way of hating Cally and Abigail on the spot, but Cally believed if she were Ryan Harbinger’s official girlfriend, his parents would learn to like her. She’d spend weekends at his house—his mother would cook waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse and his father would ask pointed yet encouraging questions about her future, as though college were next week and not a million years away.

Ryan looked them over. “Nobody!” He palmed the back of his head. “?’Sup?”

“You have to see this.” Abigail nudged Cally, who held out the note.

As he took it from her, his thumb grazed her skin, but he didn’t look at her. He never did, exactly. He looked at her earlobe or the top of her head, and when he was kissing her amid the willows by the mile loop, his eyes stayed closed, his eyebrows worried, like it hurt.

You think about things, like I do, Tristan Bloch had written. “Yeah, he thinks about fucking you,” Abigail had said, and Cally had shoved her and told her to shut the fuck up, yet the picture clicked stubbornly into focus: Tristan’s face contorted in the pleasure-pain Abigail had shown her, hips thrusting against her—sweatpants didn’t have buttons or zippers or anything…

Ryan laughed. “Calista. What the fuck.” His eyes were merry, golden-flecked. “Moron got your name wrong.”

He read on. He was gorgeous to watch. There were little lines around his mouth, and dark gold tendrils of hair against his temples where sweat had curled it.

“No fucking way.” His laugh jumped higher, and Cally burned happily. She had given him this pleasure—it belonged to her.

“Tristan fucking Bloch,” he said. “Is he serious with this shit?”

“It was in my locker,” Cally told him. “I just, like, found it.” She did not say, I wanted it to be from you.

“What a fag.”

“So, what should she do?” Abigail asked. They’d discussed this in Abigail’s bedroom—they’d find out what he thought because Cosmo said guys liked when you asked for direction, it made them feel important.

“No worries. I got this.” Ryan leaned into Cally for a kind-of hug that veered sideways as his mother yelled in her anxious pitch, “Ryan! I need you! Right! Now!”

“Okay, Jesus, calm the fuck down!”

As he pulled away, Cally realized she’d been holding her breath. He had crumpled the note in his fist. She wanted to grab it back, but he had closed the door.

—

Cally and Abigail walked from Ryan’s to the 7-Eleven on Miller to buy Red Vines, Tostitos, Reese’s Pieces, and Big Gulps.