Of the Trees(14)

“You shouldn’t have lied to them,” Laney said softly. When Cassie looked over, she could see Laney was frowning.

“What?” she asked, grunting a bit as she pulled Jessica more firmly to her feet. Jessica giggled under the adjustment and kept shuffling toward the parking lot.

“They knew you were lying. About Jess’s dad, I mean. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I just wanted to get out of there without getting attacked!” Cassie argued, scowling at her friend. “And you weren’t helping. You don’t see a problem with grown men offering beer to teenage girls? With getting one of them piss drunk? Seriously, Laney?”

Laney didn’t answer, but she did move to take Jessica’s other arm, shifting the weight a bit so that it wasn’t just Cassie hefting her through the now empty carnival. Her car was close, just outside the light cast from the nearest spotlight. It wasn’t until they moved from the muddy grass of the field to the gravel of the parking lot that Cassie remembered what her father had texted her.

Get Ryan to walk you to your car.

With the memory of those words glowing on her phone screen, came another memory. A man with a black hood up and hanging just over his eyes. Older, and yet young, and that same air of confusion, of incongruence between his lined, sallow skin and the stance of his body. Trepidation dancing along her spine.

Carnies, Cassie thought dismissively. She deposited Jessica onto the back seat of Laney’s car and got in the passenger side, a rush of relief coming over her as the door slammed shut.





On the drive back home, Laney came back to herself. It was almost like she had been drunk and in a stupor. Her bizarre excitement was out of the norm, but now that she was away from the carnival, she had settled back into herself.

Jessica stayed drunk.

She hummed and whistled the entire way to her house, giggling madly between choruses. Cassie turned in the passenger seat to look back at her, worried about her getting sick, but she didn’t seem sick, she seemed euphoric. The few words she could catch between the whistling and the slurs were out of place and didn’t seem to match the night that Cassie had stumbled into.

“Wasn’t he, Laney? Hot, right?” Jessica dissolved into breathy giggles. “Mhmm, was. Delicious.”

Cassie turned from Jessica, her attention shifting to Laney. “Was there someone else she was with? Or just the old, fat carnie?”

Laney smiled, her lips curling in a secretive manner. “I mean, we were hanging with a few guys, but yeah, Jess stuck mostly with Jude.”

Cassie wrinkled her nose. “You said he looked like a drug dealer.”

“He wasn’t.” Laney shrugged, her eyes on the road.

“No. No, he was,” Jessica slurred. She sprang forward in her seat, a move Cassie would have sworn two minutes ago would have been completely impossible for her inebriated friend. “Definitely drugs. Good, powerful drugs.”

“Jess, shut up and sit back,” Laney said, frowning at the girl in the rearview mirror. Cassie watched Jessica fall back, spraying the interior cabin with a fine mist of alcoholic spit as she laughed. “Do I turn here?”

Cassie faced the windshield again, squinting at the road signs in the dark. “No, next one.”

She had only been to Jessica’s house once, a pasta supper before last year’s state game, but she remembered the road. Laney took the next left and then another at Cassie’s indication and then Jessica was leaning into their seats again, pointing ahead at a blue colonial with the front porch light still on.

“Think she’ll be okay?”

“You mean in the next few hours or in the long run?” Laney asked with an infuriating smirk.

“Obviously in the next few hours,” Cassie said. “Why? What did the fat guy give her?”

“Nothing!” Laney answered, looking shocked that Cassie would even suggest such a thing. “She had a couple beers, that’s all.”

“I’ve seen Jess on a couple beers,” Cassie remarked. “She gets snarky and can be kind of a bitch. Nothing like tonight.”

“Sounds like tonight was an improvement then,” Laney said.

“I am not a bitch!”

“See, Cass? She’s not a bitch,” Laney said, grinning. “Here you are, Jess. Can you make it?”

Jessica stumbled out of the car and toward the front door.

“Should we walk her?” Cassie asked, watching Jessica weave through the headlights. Laney shrugged, not seeming too concerned, but not pulling out yet either. “Honk the horn, at least.”

“Why?” Laney asked, pulling a face. “We’d wake the neighbors.”

Cassie rolled her eyes and leaned over her friend, jamming her palm into the center of the steering wheel. The horn blared loudly in the silence of the night. Somewhere inside Jessica’s house, a light flared. Jessica turned and stuck her tongue out at the car, squinting into the head beams.

Jessica had an older sister, Anna. With luck, the horn would have woken her, and she could check on Jessica. Worst case scenario, her parents would find her, but even that was better than her passing out in a pile of her own vomit. Which, Cassie thought, without someone’s help, she just might.

“Wanna crash at my place tonight?” Laney asked through a yawn as she pulled the car out of Jessica’s driveway.