Girl Mans Up (17 page)

I GET TO THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, AND SURE
enough, there's Colby and Garrett. They're surrounded by Ike, Tim, and Ray from grade twelve, and two other guys I don't recognize. They're taking up the whole entrance-foyer thing. Way at the back is Tristan, throwing dirty looks at me. I lied to him.

I'm guessing the door they're blocking to the right is the bathroom.

“What's up, Steve?” Garrett says to me. “Is this your girlfriend?”

“You guys were not invited here,” Blake says.

One of the guys I've never seen before says, “I was. They're with me.”

Colby's hands are in his pockets and he stands in the middle of the pack, a half grin on his face just for me.

“Hey, Blake. Some guy was just asking if you were
available,” Garrett says through a crooked smile. “Don't worry. I told him you already have a boyfriend. Then I told him maybe you're a dyke. I wasn't sure what the deal was.”

I open my mouth to tell him off, but Blake's already going.

“Thanks. That means a lot. Oh,” she says, “I guess your friends forgot to tell you this wasn't a Halloween party. No one else dressed up, so you can take off that creepy mask now.”

“Whoa, relax. Why are you getting all bitchy? Is it your time of the month?” Garrett asks her.

“Dude, say whatever you want about me,” I say, “but back the hell off her.”

Garrett smacks Ike's arm, then he says, “All right, Pen. Relax. Can I just ask one more question?”

“No,” Blake says. “But you should consider donating your organs to science. Like now.”

“You say weird things,” he tells her. Then to me: “Steve, your girlfriend's feisty!” He leans closer to me. “You must be packing a pretty huge one, huh? To be able to nail a girl like that.”

“I'm getting Elliott. You guys are so out of here,” Blake says.

I lean over to her and whisper, “Olivia's stuck in the bathroom. I gotta keep Colby away from her.”

She heads upstairs to find Elliott. This whole scene is messed up, and Colby's just standing there watching it all go down, loving every second of it.

“It's not like I can see a package hanging there, but maybe you picked a small one to wear so people wouldn't be able to notice, right?” Garrett says, tipping his head to the side and staring at my crotch.

I look at Colby, shaking my head. He looks back like,
What—you got a problem?
I pull out my phone while Garrett runs his mouth and the others laugh, texting Olivia.
Stay there. Taking care of it.

“What are you guys doing here?” I ask Colby. “Did you come just to mess with me?”

“Yeah, because you're that important, right?” he says, thumbs hooked in his pocket like I was doing earlier, except on him, it looks legit. “You gotta stop telling your mom you're hanging out with me, because you're not.”

“Whoa, Steve's a big liar, lying to her mom. You got balls. I mean, that's good, right? You
want
balls and all,” Garrett says.

My phone buzzes, but I ignore it. Olivia just has to wait. Nothing I can do until Elliott gets here.

“Dudes, why are we just standing here on the welcome mat?” Ike says, pushing toward the front. There's no way a guy in high school can grow a beard like that. He must've failed a lot. “I'm sweating my balls off here, and I ain't got time for that.”

“All right, guys, you gotta go,” Elliott says, suddenly behind me. He moves right through them, right for the bathroom door.

Colby's eyes fall on Olivia, being led out by Elliott, their hands clutched.

“Hey, Livie. How are you?” Colby says. Livie? She doesn't reply, just looks at her feet. “Hey,
Olivia
. How
are
you? Miss me?”

Olivia looks at me. I should be doing something.

“Can you guys just leave already?” Blake says. My phone vibrates, and it won't stop. It's a phone call.

“Jake, you can stay,” Elliott tells one of the guys I don't know. He comes to stand before us like he's our shield, because he's the guy and we're three girls. I step up too, standing next to him. “The rest of you, out.”

“Who are you? Are you the musician?” Colby asks Elliott, taking two steps until he's right in front of us.

“This is my house. Who the hell are
you
?” Elliott asks him. I reach blindly into my back pocket to shut off my phone. Colby's phone starts going off.

“Yo. man, we're just gonna come chill a bit, then leave, all righty, buddy?” the guy, Jake, says, and Ike sighs all exaggerated.

“Yeah, and for real, my man, you need to check your thermostat. It's hotter than Satan's crotch in here. My beard is frizzing,” Ike says, running his fingers through it.

“Sorry, dudes. I don't know most of you, and for real, though, you're being douche bags, so turn around and head back the way you came, all right?” Elliott says.

Colby's phone goes off again. He pulls it out of his pocket but doesn't do anything with it. He stares at Olivia while Elliott and Jake negotiate. I just wish they'd all leave.

“Hey, Livie,” Colby says, then he blows her a kiss when Elliott's not looking. “Come with me.”

“Man, leave her alone. Just go,” I tell him.

Garrett starts laughing and pointing at me. The two guys from grade twelve look bored and head out the door, followed by Ike, who's fanning his beard off. Tristan's finally visible from this angle. He nods his head to the beat of the music coming from upstairs. He shouldn't be hanging out with these guys.

“Tristan,” I say, and he looks over with his blank face, which means he's pissed at me. “You can stay, if you want.”

“Uh, I don't think so, Pen,” Colby says. “Tristan's with me.”

“You got a problem, man?” Elliott asks Colby.

“Yeah, I do. I got a—” Colby stops talking when his phone goes off again, and this time, he picks it up but doesn't say anything into it. Instead he yells at me: “What the hell! You need to stop telling your damn parents that you're hanging out with me, all right?” He stares at his phone now, like something catches his eye. He scrolls like he's totally forgotten what's going down right now.

I glance at Blake, and we both shrug.

Colby dials his phone and puts it against his ear, retreating toward the door, huddling down like he's trying to hear better. Something's up.

“Who's that?” I ask, but Colby's not listening to me. “Is it my mom?”

“All right, out. For real. Out of my house,” Elliott tells the guys, pointing to the door. Jake shrugs and leaves, followed by Tristan and the rest of them. Garrett gives me the finger first with his right hand, then his left, but I'm staring at Colby with his phone to his ear.

Finally, he turns around and drops his phone into his pocket.

“You need to check your phone,” he says to me.

“It's my mom?”

“Yeah,” he says. “They're at the hospital. Something happened to your brother.”

No it didn't. He's lying.

I pull out my cell phone and there are four missed calls from my house. Three voice mails. I dial my house but it just rings and rings.

“You see, that right there is loyalty,” Colby says to no one.

“Why don't you take your loyalty and get out of my house?” Elliott says. He turns to me and goes, “You need a ride to the hospital?”

There's no answer when I dial Johnny's number. It's all messed up after that. I don't talk to anybody. Someone finds my shoes for me.

This doesn't feel real. It's like my stomach falls into my shoes, in a bad way.

FOR TWENTY MINUTES IN THE BACK OF ELLIOTT'S
car, a silent Blake next to me, I think up reasons why Johnny would be in the hospital—all of them bad or terrible. I don't even know what he's been doing since he left. It's like he's not even my brother anymore. What if some crazy homeless dude wandered here from Toronto and stabbed Johnny? What if a drunk driver drove right into his truck?

What if he's dead?

Elliott pulls up next to a parked ambulance and drops me off at the ER doors. Blake doesn't ask to come with me, and I'm glad for it.

“I'll text you later” is all I say before pushing the car door closed.

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY
room. There are people lined up, some holding a part of their body that hurts, some looking ready to fall over and die, and some rifling through their wallets and pulling out cards. There's a guy my age in handcuffs. The cop next to him yawns and crosses his arms.

I have no idea where to go.

There's a nurse behind a plastic window, but she's got that massive lineup of people to take care of. There are sliding doors that don't open when I stand in front of them. A sign says
Authorization Required Beyond This Point
. On the other side of the doors, there are lots of stretchers with people lying on them. Some look dead.

I can't call my parents because only my dad has a cell phone, and it's usually dead in the glove compartment. So I stand here, right in front of the doors, until finally, some doctor comes through and I sneak in.

It smells like butt. For real.

My eyes fall on a curtain next to a sink bolted to the wall. My mom sits on a chair. My dad's not there, but there's a stretcher and Johnny's sitting on it. He's holding a wad of something against his eyebrow and there's blood leaking down his arm—all over his shirt, too. He's all mangled.

At least he's alive.

“What happened?” I ask when I get to them.

Mom looks up at me with a head shake and a heavy sigh. She's still pissed at me, but I think right now she's more mad at Johnny.

“Just some stupid stuff,” Johnny says, and that's when I notice he's talking all weird, like his tongue's not working. I don't look directly at him.

In Portuguese, I ask my mom what happened.

“Oh, you
irmão
is a big shot,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Big big shot break his
cabeça
.”

“Oh, please, man,” he says, looking at me with one squinty eye. “It's a concussion.”

It sounds like
cuncuthon
. “What's wrong with your tongue?”

“Bit down on it when I got knocked in the chin. Got some stitches. Waiting for them to fix the eyebrow,” he says, lifting the wad of gauze from this huge gash that's spilling blood. Even his eyeball has blood in it. Some of the fingers of his right hand are taped together.

“Who'd you fight with?”

“Couple guys at the bar. Going around acting like douche bags,” he says. “One of them swung at Naveed, man. Must not have seen me right next to him. And his buddy threw a bar stool at my face. Regretted it real quick, though.”

“Ah you!” My mom gets up and makes like she's going to smack him. “You big shot, always in other business!” She mutters about Johnny being everyone's personal bodyguard, then
she turns to me. “You, I no forget. You in big big trouble, too. You stay in the house.” She walks away. I sit on the chair she was on. There's silence while I count the flecks in the tiles at my feet.

“You're in trouble, huh?” Johnny says. “What'd you do?”

“I breathed.”

He lets out a chuckle and rolls his eyes—his one eye. When I turn my head away, he sighs. “It's not that big a deal, okay? These eyebrow cuts bleed so damn much. It looks worse than it is. Relax, man.
Calma.
”

“I'm relaxed.”

“Stop bouncing your leg like a maniac then.”

I stop the leg, but then the other one starts going. Two cops walk over. They ask Johnny if he wants to make a statement. Johnny tells them no. “Nothing happened, you know?”

The one cop nods like he's not surprised. “Yeah, figured as much.” Then he says if it ends up being worse than a concussion or if he changes his mind to call them back. There's just a bunch of silence between us, and some moaning coming from behind other curtains.

Finally, Johnny goes: “I'm gonna need my key back. Dom took the truck home for the night and he's got my keys.”

“I don't have it.” I'm not giving that key back—what if I want to sneak Blake over again or something? “
Pai
must have it.”

“Why the hell does
Pai
have it?”

“Why the hell do you care?” I say. “Are you coming to the house to sleep in your empty bedroom or something?”

“Huh? No.”

“Exactly. You don't live there anymore.”

“Hey, man.” He kind of laugh-winces at his tongue problems. “You're acting like a little idiot.”

“
I
am? This is a question of loyalty.”

“Loyalty? Pen, man, what the—” He gets distracted by a droplet of blood that lands on his knee. He fusses with the wad of paper, then directs his one eye back on me. “Apparently
you're
the one who cut me out.”

I'm standing now, shoving my hands into my pockets and feeling all the things I've wanted to say to him bubble up inside me. But most of it stays inside. I give a pathetic shrug. “Well, look at it this way—now you don't have to pull fake knives on douche bags because of your stupid little sister. You're welcome.”

“Man, you need to relax.”

“I am relaxed!
You
need to relax. I gotta go.”

He says something but I don't know what it is because I'm down the hall, and because he's talking like an idiot with that fat tongue. I wait outside the ER, taking a seat across the pissy dude in cuffs until my dad walks by and looks surprised to be running into me.

“Can you drive me home, please?”

“You
mãe
?”

“Johnny's not done. She's staying. But I want to go home.”

He gestures toward the exit, getting his keys ready, and he doesn't say a word. Not even about my getting caught in the basement with a girl, or about sneaking out earlier. I turn off my phone.

THE NEXT DAY, MY
phone's full of texts from Olivia and Blake when I turn it on. I text back to tell them it wasn't as bad as it might've seemed last night, that everything's cool. It's not cool, though. Because Johnny was acting like nothing was a big deal. Like that wasn't the first time I talked to him since he up and left two weeks ago. Like his face wasn't gushing blood the whole time. Like he had no idea I thought he was dead.

Downstairs, there's only the faint sound of the TV going. No banging and shuffling around the kitchen.

“Where's
Mãe
?” I ask my dad.

“She with João.”

“At his place?”

He tells me the doctor wanted someone to watch my brother because of the concussion, to make sure he didn't end up with anything worse. Mom spent the night at Johnny's new place, and it pisses me right off. I mean, I don't even know which building he lives in. My parents throw him out the door, and now they're all hanging out at his place.

It's too early for this crap, so I go back to bed.