They Wish They Were Us(12)
“Uh, let’s take a break,” Derek had yelled over the blasting music. For once, we didn’t make anyone else attempt it.
Robert had appeared at school the next week without a scar. “No pain, no gain!” he said when set his tray down at the Players’ Table. It took us a few weeks to realize he was a little foggy and more cruel than before. The Players brushed that one under the rug. Never spoke about it again.
Now he leaps up from Nikki’s bed and makes a break for the stairs, bumping into the banister and sloshing liquid onto the rug as he descends.
Henry and Quentin follow him, racing back to the party. Marla breaks the silence. “Wanna Juul?” She whips her head around and flashes a sly, toothy smile. “Don’t tell Coach.”
Nikki pretends to zip her mouth. “Colleges don’t want athletes who partake,” Marla said once last year after her habit kicked into high gear. “Star field hockey forwards with 4.0 GPAs on the other hand? Golden.”
Out on Nikki’s balcony, the three of us stand side by side, our shoulders kissing in the night. The party has spilled out into the backyard and I watch as a few underclassmen dance barefoot in the grass. Nikki’s house sits right against the water and beyond the yard, there’s a rickety wooden walkway that leads down to the beach. When I squint, I can make out two bare butts running into the sea. They must be freshmen trying to prove they’d pass their pops. My eyes move back to the deck where two female undies kiss on a lounge chair by the pool while a group of guys cheer them on, holding their phones up to document. The salty wind picks up above our heads and I lift my eyes to the sky. The Bull. She’s right where I expect her to be, just above Orion. I picture her spindly legs galloping through the darkness, doing cartwheels above her friends. It’s the perfect night to see her.
“I don’t wanna pick freshmen,” Nikki says. She sips her drink and fiddles with the sliver of rose quartz that hangs around her neck. She got super into crystals after Shaila died. “I’m not ready to be the oldest.”
“I know what you mean. It doesn’t feel like it’s time,” Marla says, blowing faint vape smoke into the air. It floats above her like a halo.
The liquor buzzes in my ears. “Jared wants to be a Player,” I say.
“And you’re surprised?” Nikki asks, turning toward me. A stray leaf catches in her hair.
“Your brother?” Marla asks. “So what? He’s kind of cute.”
“Gross, dude,” I say softly. I wonder if I should have told Nikki alone.
Marla is one of us, chosen after she made varsity as a freshman and the senior boys dubbed her best ass when she arrived at Gold Coast Prep that year. She grew up with four older brothers and a near-perfect complexion, both of which made her enviable. But she was always a little aloof, off in her own self-contained world. I’ve never even been to her house, don’t even know where it is. She rarely joined our sleepovers, since she preferred, she said, to stay at home with her brothers, who all went to Cartwright and were strictly off-limits. That’s what Marla told us when she caught Nikki drooling over them after a game. They wouldn’t have been interested anyway. They were totally unfazed by Prep, probably because they knew they would never lose her, that Marla just joined the Players to ensure she’d get into Dartmouth. Field hockey would help, she said. So would her stellar math skills. But she’s shockingly bad at standardized tests. The wildly accurate study guides in the Files helped her get a near-perfect SAT score last year.
As did the morally questionable doctor who diagnosed her with ADHD so she could get extra time on the test. His kid was a Player a few years back.
Sometimes Marla’s brothers would all come to pick her up from parties, speeding down the winding, wooded Gold Coast roads in their red Jeep Wrangler. When they came to a stop, they would call out in unison from the car, never setting foot inside.
“Mar-la!” they’d howl until she emerged from whatever hazy doorway she had been inside. “Mar-la!” With a quick wave, Marla would be gone, her white-blonde hair blowing behind her as she sat nestled in the back seat of her protectors’ ride. They were ghosts to us, phantom drivers who rode in on chariots and disappeared into the night. But they couldn’t protect her from everything.
I wondered if the allegiance I felt toward Jared was burrowed inside of her, but multiplied by four.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He’s not like us. This isn’t for him. I mean, imagine him dealing with the pops?” I picture his worried little face, confused and distraught.
Nikki puts her arms around me, hugging me from behind. “It doesn’t have to be like that for him. We’re the seniors. We’re in control now.”
“I know. I just . . . He’s my brother.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Marla says. She draws one final deep drag before pocketing the plastic pen. “Like you said, we’re in control.” She pauses. “We’re changing everything.”
My phone vibrates once, and then again, burrowing itself into my thigh. Jared, I bet. Adam, I hope.
“I gotta pee,” I say, and slip past them back into the bedroom. I close the door behind me in Nikki’s en suite bathroom and plunk down on the toilet. My phone pulses again and then for a third time. I pull it out, expecting to find a familiar name. Adam, Jared, Mom, Dad. Instead, it’s a number I’ve never seen before.