Shuffle, Repeat(23)

Shaun and I sit on a wide stump together, sharing a beer from the keg and watching several dozen of our fellow students flirt and drink and slip off into the shadows to make out.

“Do you always come to these?” I ask Shaun.

“Bonfires are only for the first game of the season,” he tells me. “I came last year, but it was on a different farm.”

We sit in silence for a little while, both of us taking only tiny sips from the cup. Shaun knows he’ll have to drive home after Oliver returns us to school, and I don’t want to pee in a cornfield. Hence the moderation.

Shaun gives me a gentle bump with his arm. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

He heaves a deep sigh. “I miss Kirk.”

Shaun drops his head onto my shoulder and I stroke his thick black hair. “I know,” I tell him, even though I don’t. When Itch was gone over the summer, I missed him being around, but I didn’t miss him, if that makes any sense. It seems devastating to have your heart so completely undone for a single person. If they screw up, if they don’t feel the same, if their life is too busy or too complicated or too far away to fit you into it, something inside you breaks. Even when it heals, there are scars.

There are always scars.

No thank you.

Someone shows up with a portable speaker and pop music fills the smoky night air. There’s a sudden cheerleader stampede toward the patch of open dirt substituting as a dance floor.

I check out Oliver and Theo, who stand off to the side, watching the girls gyrate and twirl. Theo points to first one and then another, making comments I can’t hear. Oliver smiles.

I can only imagine.

I nudge Shaun’s head off my shoulder to ask if he thinks we can find an earlier ride home with someone, but I never ask the question, because he’s beaming at me with this big, sappy grin.

“What?”

“Tell me you won’t miss this.” He waves a hand in the general direction of the party. “This is what we’ll look back on when we’re old and boring and sedentary.”

I am about to say something about perception and hindsight when we hear my name yelled from the dance zone. It’s Ainsley. She’s pointing straight at me.

“I don’t suppose I have a choice in this matter, do I?” I ask Shaun.

“Nope.” He shoves me up from our stump. “Life is easier when you acquiesce.”

Ainsley calls my name again. I shrug off Shaun’s letter jacket and drop it onto his lap before pasting on a big smile and heading toward the dancers with as much buoyancy as I can muster. When I reach Ainsley, she holds out a hand toward me. “Phone.”

“There’s no reception,” I tell her, and she cracks up.

“No, silly. Next song up on your phone is what we dance to.”

No one told me about this delightful tradition. I glance back at Shaun but he’s looking moody and tracing the rim of our plastic cup with one finger, no doubt thinking about Kirk.

Shit.

“Come on,” says Ainsley, her hand still open and out.

“You’re not going to like my music,” I tell her, sliding my phone from a pocket and turning it over.

“Who do you listen to? Justin Bieber?” she teases.

If only.

I watch—hating my life—as Ainsley struts to the speaker. The current song abruptly cuts off. Cheerleaders pause mid-bounce with wails of protest. The night suddenly feels very thick and dark.

Ainsley throws an arm up to the crowd. “June Rafferty for music roulette!” she screams. There’s an expectant hush as she plugs in my phone and touches the screen. I scroll through songs in my brain, trying to figure out the worst-case scenario. Dead Kennedys? The Sisters of Mercy? Maybe I’ll get lucky and Ainsley will hit on a Cure song everyone knows.

I’m frozen somewhere between defiance and panic when I see movement from the edge of the dance floor. It’s Oliver, headed toward Ainsley with determination etched across his face. But before he reaches her, drumbeats hit the air, followed by guitar chords. They’re exuberant and light, like the cheerleaders.

The group hesitates as they all look to their leader. Ainsley’s dark eyebrows wing together in a frown. She stalks toward me. “Who is this?” she demands.

I consider telling her it’s Bieber, just to see if she’ll buy it, but I don’t want to press my luck when stranded in a nest of jocks.

“Pansy Division.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Queercore punk out of San Francisco.”

There’s a pause during which it could go either way, but then good old P.D. gets to the chorus, specifically the “Sex! Sex! Sex! Sex!” line, and Ainsley’s lips turn up in appreciation. “I love it!” she shouts, and grabs my wrist, careening us both into the center of the crowd.

I catch a flash glimpse of Oliver at the edge, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and watching. But before I can figure out what he’s doing or thinking, I’ve been launched into the lunacy. The bouncing escalates, the screaming intensifies, and against all odds…I’m a part of it.

Just like that, I’m in.

? ? ?

Oliver makes Ainsley trade seats with Shaun for the ride home so I can hold her hair back if she pukes out the window. “That’s a girl job,” Shaun says from the front passenger seat.