All the Beautiful Lies(17)

Chapter 7





Then



Justin Lashaway lived in a deck house in the woods on the outskirts of Kennewick Village. The long driveway was jammed with cars, kids milling around drinking cans of beer. Justin’s parents were home, but they’d offered up the entire bottom floor, a large rec room, for the party. They’d put out tons of food, and buckets filled with soft drinks, but the majority of the kids at the party—almost the entire graduating class—had spilled out into the surrounding pine forest, where most of the drinking and pot smoking was taking place. After checking out the rec room, Gina eating two cookies and a piece of cake, they headed out to the edge of the woods and found Justin manning a keg. Alice knew that Justin had a crush on her, had had a crush on her for at least two years now. He’d asked her to the senior prom, and she’d let him down easy by telling him that if she had any interest in that sort of thing, he’d be the guy she’d want to go with.

“Alice! No way,” he said. He was filling plastic cups for the swarm of students.

“You got a keg?” Gina asked.

“My brother’s home and got it for me. My parents are pretending they don’t know.”

Justin got them both a cup of beer that seemed to Alice to be mainly foam. She drank it while Gina went to find her boyfriend. When she was finished with the beer she told Justin that she was heading home, that she really just came by to say hello.

“Aw, man. Don’t go,” Justin said. “Besides, how’re you getting home?”

“I’ll call my stepdad from inside. He’ll come pick me up.”

“I can drive you. At least let me drive you.”

Alice agreed, and Justin took off to try and borrow a car: “My car’s buried, but Brad’s around here somewhere.” Alice thought about trying to find Gina and saying good-bye, but knew that Gina would give her a hard time for leaving so soon. Justin returned, breathless, holding up keys. “Brad’s Mustang. I had to fight him for these.”

Justin drove slowly, cutting over to Kennewick Harbor, then driving along the shore. At first Alice thought Justin was driving slow because he’d been drinking and was worried about being pulled over, but then she figured out that he just wanted to spend more time with her. He was asking constant questions, wanting to know how she felt about graduating, what classes she was going to take at MCC, why he never saw her at high school parties. She answered as best she could, and laughed when he drove right past her condo. “I thought you might want to go out to the lighthouse, take a little walk,” he said, shrugging.

“Sure. Why not?” she said. Part of her just wanted to see what it felt like, spending more time with a boy who seemed to like her. And he was harmless, that much she knew.

There were no other cars parked out at Buxton Point. They walked down the short jetty and sat on a flat slab of granite close enough to the water so that the spray from the crashing waves occasionally reached them. She let Justin kiss her, and unhook her bra, but stopped him when his hand plucked at the top button of her jeans.

“I like you so much, Alice. You have no idea.”

“I have a boyfriend,” Alice said. It was a lie, but as she said it, she pictured Jake.

“You do?”

“He’s older. You don’t know him.”

“How much older?”

“Just a little bit. I’m sorry, Justin.”

“So why are you here with me?” He had leaned back, and in the bright moonlight looked genuinely upset. He’s a nice guy, Alice thought, but just a boy. He was halfway cute but his eyes were too close together, making him seem a little inbred, and his dark hair was already beginning to thin at the front. He’d probably be completely bald by the time he was twenty-five.

“I shouldn’t be, Justin. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s a bad time for me, and my mom isn’t doing well, and I should be home now. I should never have let this happen.” It was a trick she sometimes pulled on Gina, suddenly getting emotional to get out of something. She knew that because she was so stoic all the time, when she made herself sound upset, people paid attention. It worked with Gina, and it worked now with Justin. He drove her back to the condo, and dropped her off. She kissed him hard once on the mouth, their tongues touching, then quickly exited the car. The least she could do was let him think it was hard for her to say good-bye.

As soon as she unlocked the front door of the condo and stepped inside, she knew something was wrong. It was quiet—just the sloshing sound of the dishwasher running in the kitchen—but the house had a bad smell. She could see her mother supine on the couch, but the television wasn’t on. She hung the house keys on the hook and walked toward her. The smell got sharper, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that her mother had thrown up. Vomit had pooled on the couch and was streaked down her mother’s cheeks. It had happened before, but always when her mother’s head had been turned to the side. This time her mother’s head was tipped back, crusted lips parted, her eyes partly open.

Alice watched her, frozen for a moment, and then her mother’s chest bucked, and she made a sound like a wet cough. Alice stepped backward, alarmed. Her mother was choking in front of her eyes, probably dying. Alice wondered if all she needed to do was step forward and turn her mother’s head to the side so that she’d be able to breathe again. But Alice just watched instead. She was revolted, not just by the vomit and her mother’s gargling, halted breaths, but disgusted by everything about her mother. She was so incapacitated that all she had to do was turn her head to live, and she couldn’t even do that. It was pathetic. Edith bucked again, but didn’t make the coughing wet sound.