Falling into Place(6)

Doesn’t matter. There was too much marijuana in the air, and it was making Liz dizzy. Nothing mattered, not even the way Boy Number Four kept trying to kiss her. Why should it matter? Tomorrow she would wake up and this party would be a haze of lights. She wouldn’t remember any of it. So she finally turned her face and let Boy Number Four press his pot-flavored lips to hers, and he wasn’t bad.

They hadn’t been on the beach for long—half an hour, maybe, and Liz knew this because she had grinded with seven boys so far, one for each song—when they heard the sirens over the music, and then, of course, it was over. As the crowd scattered and someone desperately tried to bury the last keg in the sand, Liz ran. Secretly, she loved when parties were busted. The night wasn’t complete without a climax. The sirens, the swirl of red and blue lights—now that was a climax.

So, with a rush of adrenaline, Liz ran, slipping in and out of the crowd. Maybe, in a distant part of her mind, she remembered the games we played together when we were little, pretending to be spies and heroes, always escaping, always invincible.

She jumped into her car and shoved the keys into the ignition, and backed out of the sand so quickly that she nearly flattened a police officer. She heard him shouting for her to stop, but she didn’t listen, and he didn’t chase her. Her heart was racing and she was laughing, and she rolled down the windows as she zoomed away so that the night could rush into her car and surround her.

Liz briefly considered going home, but she missed the turn and it was too late to swerve, so she kept going. She pressed down on the gas and soon found herself on the interstate, taking an exit she hadn’t taken in a decade. She drove along the beach until the trees grew taller and the night grew darker, and she turned in to the entrance of the state park. She parked messily by the ranger station, right next to the sign that said PARK CLOSED. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

She laughed to herself, thinking of seventh grade, when she, Kennie, and Julia had taken over a janitor’s closet and claimed it for themselves. They had made signs like that, VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Or at least, she and Julia had. Kennie’s had read PROSECUTORS WILL BE VIOLATED. After thoroughly teasing her for the mistake, they had made that their new motto.

Liz turned off the car and was surprised by the silence. It always surprised her, somehow. She grabbed her iPod and turned it on, breaking the night wide open with shouting and drums, something angry—and then she changed the song, because she was alone, and she didn’t have to listen to what other people liked when she was alone.

She forgot, sometimes, that she could make her own choices.

Liz walked into the trees, knowing that she was probably being an idiot and she should at least turn on her flashlight app, but not caring, not caring about anything at all. She hadn’t been here since they moved, but her feet still seemed to know the way. She wasn’t entirely sure why she’d come at all, now that she thought about it, but that didn’t stop her. Liz was beginning to realize that she was drunker than she wanted to admit—enough to be wobbly and careless, and content with being stupid.

She walked in time to some indie singer, who called her beautiful and stronger, stronger, stronger. Liz liked hearing it. She tried to remember the last time she’d heard something like that in real life, and she couldn’t. People didn’t talk like that anymore, did they?

Liz walked for so long that she was almost entirely certain that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the dark, that a bear would be along momentarily to maul her to pieces, eat her left hand, and leave her to bleed to death on the grass just off the trail where no one would find her until she was nothing but a skeleton, which they would ultimately hang up in the science room so that the human anatomy and physiology classes could study her—when, suddenly the trees ended and she saw the tower.

It wasn’t as tall as she remembered.

When she was younger, her father would bring her here on the first Wednesday of each month. Her father didn’t work on Wednesdays and she didn’t have preschool on Wednesdays. Wednesdays were important to them, Wednesdays were theirs. They came to make wishes on whatever was around—dandelions in the summer, red and falling leaves in autumn, snowflakes in the winter, sunshine in the spring. Sure, she had been a short four-year-old, but now, staring up at the tower that had once seemed to reach heaven, she finally began to understand how much had changed.

Still, she climbed it. The stairs were steep and creaking. She didn’t run up like she used to, because there was no one to race her.