We Are the Ants(14)

“What?” Diego cupped his hand to his ear. Someone was blasting shitty power-pop in the other room, and it was drowning out our voices.

“Come on!” I pulled Diego away from the kitchen, toward the family room. I was hoping it would be empty, but there was a group playing pool. It looked like girls against guys, and the girls were kicking ass. The music wasn’t as loud, though. “That’s better.”

Diego took in the room. Shelves stuffed with books were built into three walls, and a TV dominated the fourth. “How rich is this guy?”

“Marcus?” I shrugged. “The McCoys are super rich. His dad’s an investment banker or something.”

“Who?”

“Marcus McCoy? The guy who lives here?”

Diego smacked my chest. “That’s his name! He’s in my econ class. It’s been driving me crazy.” He had dimples like quicksand, and his hazel eyes reminded me of the sluggers’ skin. “Anyway, I was hoping I’d run into you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously.”

“Why?”

Diego shrugged. “You’re the only person I’ve met who hasn’t asked me what kind of car I drive.”

“Well, then you’re the only person at this party who actually wants me here.”

“I doubt it.”

“That’s because you’re new.” Diego had an honest face, but I found it difficult to believe he’d come to the party to see me when I was practically invisible to everyone else. “How’re you liking Calypso?”

“Honestly? It’s weird. Sometimes there are too many people and I just want to find a quiet closet to read in. Other times I want to surround myself with as many people as possible. But I love the beach. I’m there so often, my sister jokes about buying me a tent so I can sleep there.”

“Keep the zipper locked or you’ll wake up being spooned by a bum.”

“So long as I get to be the little spoon.”

Diego’s laugh made me smile in spite of myself. Maybe I’d been wrong to fear the party. I’d been there an hour, and not only had it not turned into a disaster, I was actually having fun.

“You’ll have to work that out on your own.” I finished off my beer and set the cup down on a bookshelf ledge.

We lingered in that awkward stage of a conversation where there was no logical next topic but the silence hadn’t yet grown uncomfortable.

“If you knew the world was going to end, and you could press a button to prevent it, would you?”

Diego raised his eyebrow. “Is there something I should know?”

“It’s a hypothetical question.”

“Then hypothetically, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not keen on dying.”

The girls at the pool table squealed with delight, razzing the losers. I tried to block them out. “But you’re going to die anyway.”

“Sure, when I’m old.”

“You could die at any time. A freak lightning strike could fry your heart, or you could drown in a molasses tsunami.”

Diego’s face was difficult to read. He seemed to take my question seriously, but I hoped he wasn’t going along with it while he devised a way to escape. “If I don’t press the button, I’m definitely dead. At least if I press it, I’ve got a chance at a long life. I like having choices.”

Having choices is the problem. Everything would be easier if someone told me what to do: push the button, stop seeing Marcus, get over Jesse. The problem with choices is that I usually make the wrong ones.

Diego reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair off my forehead. “Sorry, that was driving me crazy.”

“Great, now everyone’s going to figure out my secret identity.”

“Space Boy?” Diego said, smiling. “They already know.”

My smile disappeared, and my defenses snapped up. I shoved my way past Diego without a word. His apologies bounced off my back because I was f*cking bulletproof. I needed to leave, to escape the house and party and all those artificial people, but the front was crowded, so I stumbled onto the patio, where it was quieter and I could breathe.

“Space Boy!”

Marcus and a mixed group, some of whom looked familiar, were sitting around a patio table by the hot tub. Natalie Carter lounged across his lap. The moment he said my name, I became visible. People who hadn’t noticed me before were suddenly glaring at me like I was covered with festering sores. They parroted “Space Boy” and invented semicreative variations of their own. None stung as badly as when Diego had said it.

“Who the f*ck let you in?” Marcus’s voice was cough syrup, but his words were acid.

“Front door was open.” A burning pang began in the center of my chest and spread to my limbs. Marcus was treating me like I was nobody—less than. I wondered how his friends in the hot tub would react if they found out what we’d done where they were lounging.

Marcus elbowed Adrian Morse. “We need to start charging at the door. Keep out the trash.”

I’m sure when Adrian’s mom looks at him in the mornings or brushes his sweaty hair off his forehead while he sleeps through a fever, she thinks he’s a nice boy, but when I look at him, all I see is a demented thug with an inferiority complex and hardly a thought of his own bouncing around in his empty head. “I can get rid of him.”