The Mystery of Hollow Places(30)
Chad grins. “Must be this tall to ride.”
“Ride what, Chadwick?” Jessa squeezes past us, Jeremy on her heels. She looks cool and slick in a long white tank top and electric-blue leggings, and Mike Wazchowitz misses an easy volley at the Ping-Pong table when she bends over to look in the fridge.
Clearing his throat, Chad turns on her, blushing to the bright blond roots of his hair. “Mind your business, Jenessa.” He stalks off and plops back in the beanbag with his drink.
As Jeremy pours two cups, she twists her hair into a red-gold rope, then releases it, the strands winding apart, spreading out, shining. Her smile is a white slice in the dim basement.
Jeremy hands her the drink and asks what I want.
“Captain and Coke, please.”
He lifts both eyebrows.
This is the point in the evening where I’d usually pick a spot and commence leaning against the wall with a beer and a powdery handful of Doritos until Jessa swept Jeremy up and away to the Damon Salvatore side of the bed. Then I’d retreat to the snowy quiet of outside and walk the ten minutes home alone, safely feeling my feelings. But I did come dressed to kill, so instead of doing that, I take my drink and sit on Chad’s bed to watch the Ping-Pong game. I decide to fake it till I make it. (This is one of Lindy’s big Tips for a Happier, Healthier Family. “Positive action can open the door to positive feelings,” she would say. “Put your sneakers on instead of your slippers, your jacket instead of your bathrobe.” On Dad’s first real date with Lindy, he wore his tux.)
Even though I don’t especially care about the Ping-Pong match, and I suspect the guys don’t especially care if I care, I root Jeremy and Mike on in turn. They aren’t terrible, and the more I sip my Captain and Coke, which tastes stronger than Chad’s, the more intense the game seems, the funnier the ambitiously failed swings, the more dazzling Jessa and Jeremy are, with his hand in her back pocket, her breast on his biceps, their mouths darting together and flitting apart like dragonflies (nearly four of which I am younger than Chad). After my second cup, handed to me by Mike on his way back from the mini fridge, I think I’m doing a pretty good job of making it.
When I’m quiet and still for too long at parties, I start looking for ways to slip out—I have that in common with Dad—but tonight, I’m committed. So when that starts, I leave the bed to watch Chad and Omar play Mario Kart. They offer me a controller, and Chad smiles over his shoulder at me during a break in the action. Though my eyes are zooming in and out of focus a bit, I’m hotly aware of his teeth, very white, and my own teeth, marginally dull from childhood braces. I bet the Prices brush their perfect teeth with bottled water when I’m not around to shame them into using the tap. Did I brush my teeth before the party? Do I have lipstick on my teeth? Does my breath smell like Doritos? Does Chad’s? No—when I lean in toward the TV, he smells like boy. Like plaid flannel sheets and spicy deodorant and socks that aren’t unclean, per se, but might’ve been hibernating under the bed for a week before he found them and pulled them on, because socks are socks to a guy like Chad. I respect that. I funnel my third drink into my mouth during a break in the game to stop myself from leaning in farther and whispering something “witty” about socks into his perfect seashell ear. He lists heavily to the left as he tries to make a hairpin turn around a penguin, then winces as the unstoppable Wario and immovable penguin collide nonetheless. I like the way he tries to steer with his whole body. I like the way he flinches when he crashes, as if in actual, 3D pain. I like the way he exists—another thought I close my lips around to keep from whispering.
Jessa unravels from Jeremy and drops down on the rug beside me. “I’m glad you’re having fun, Im,” she coos, her syllables dragging slightly.
When Omar loses for the sixth (sixteenth?) time, he suggests we play kings, which I’ll later remember in flashes:
Jessa pulling nine, make a rhyme, surprising us all with a win by rhyming “telescope” with “artichoke.”
Chad insisting we girls stick to beer, but being a little too far gone himself to check our cups closely.
Mike drawing eight, invent a rule, after which Jeremy has to sip every time anyone shouts, “Douchebags drink!”
Chad, his comet-white teeth and his deep, rumbly voice.
Jessa linking her arm through the hot crook of my elbow, and me feeling so good that I let her.
Me, pulling the fourth and final king. Omar hands me the center cup, where a mixture of Sam Adams and Captain and Coke and at least a little tequila and who knows what else swirls in one dangerous mud-brown brew. “Guys, no way, no way,” Chad says, and tries to relieve me of the cup.
“Let her do it, Chad,” Jeremy says. “She needs a good time right now, you know?”
Chad asks us what he means.
“Because of—” Jeremy looks at Jessa, pale between us, and then at me. “Because of your dad being lost, right?”
I turn to the wavering faces around the circle. Mike and Omar are watching me like I’m a bucket of water about to tip. And Chad. Chad is the worst of all.
I cough the terrible mixture down, throw the cup back, then trip up the basement stairs, through the Prices’ perfect, shiny kitchen. Jessa’s slurred voice shouts my name from below, but through the spinning of the world on its strange new axis, I consider the time it will take her to stand, let alone crawl up the steps, and time is on my side. Pausing just long enough to make my unsteady hands, which no longer seem to belong to me, pick up my purse and coat, I spill out onto their lawn.