Goth Girl Rising (31 page)

I open my mouth to tell Sim to turn around, but then I shut up. It's too risky to go back. It's one thing to sneak out of the house and then sneak back in. That's two chances to get caught. But sneaking out, then back in, then back
out
again and then back
in
again ... I don't like those odds.

Shit again.

I look in the bag, hoping that maybe I tossed something useful in there without thinking about it or remembering it. But no such luck. It's just the stuff that I didn't bother to dump out at the end of the day, which looks like maybe my math book and a copy of our English anthology and something crumpled up at the bottom of the bag.

Shit times three.

"Forget about my bag. Let's just have some fun tonight."

It's like the first time in my life they've ever heard me say
that,
so they both whoop and holler and we go speeding off into the night.

S
IMONE IS TOTALLY GETTING LAID TONIGHT
. I know this because as we get out of the car at Pete Vesentine's house, she says, "I'm totally getting laid tonight." When it comes to this sort of thing, Simone is rarely, if ever, wrong. She's like her own personal oracle; she's got a crystal ball for sex.

Actually, I'd be sort of surprised if Sim didn't get laid five minutes after walking through the door. She looks like something out of one of Fanboy's superjerk comic books—a total boy fantasy in all white. Probably wearing the white so she'll stand out at the dark party, but also because she just bought it and damn if she won't wear it, even though I've gone back to black (for now). I have to admit—she looks hot. Belly shirt that shows off her little navel ring and her tight abs, along with a plunging neckline. With the help of some Victoria's Secret engineering, her small boobs look enormous, like they're about to spill out of her shirt. Then a very short white skirt and brand-new white fishnets that she's already ripped up. The dragon tattoo threads its way through the net, like it's been caught and caged and is ready to burst free.

If I were a guy, I'd totally do her.

Jecca looks almost normal—hair still dyed black, but she's wearing it loose, not slicked or gelled. Black top, tight jeans, sneaks. She looks cute. If I were a guy, I don't know if I would do her, but I wouldn't
not
do her.

She's also the only one of us smart enough to have a jacket.

"I'm freezing my tits off," Sim says. "Let's get inside."

"Gotta have 'em to lose em," Jecca says.

"Someday..." Simone leads us to the door and we don't even knock because we can already hear the music and the talking inside.

As soon as I step inside, I regret it. What the eff am I doing here? I hate this shit. I hate these kinds of parties. Am I
that
desperate to be out of the house? I mean, please—Roger's asleep by now. What's the big deal about being in the same house when he's asleep?

I work up the guts to tell Sim to take me home, but she's already threading her away through the crowd, a slash of white in the dark. The house is lit only by a gigantic flat-screen TV, playing hip-hop videos, and some scattered lamps with weak bulbs. The whole place is a sea of bodies. I really don't want to plunge in.

Jecca takes my hand. "Come on," she says. "Let's look around."

I let her lead me. I see some other goths—Lauri and Troy and the rest. It's mostly juniors and seniors, but there are a few sophomores and even a couple of freshmen, mostly girls, and I want to warn them to get the hell out.

My ass gets grabbed a couple of times as we push into the crowd. I bring my arms up to protect my boobs. My ass is one thing, but you touch my boobs and I'll kill you.

We make it through the living room and down a hall of dancing bodies into the kitchen. A bag of chips has exploded-there are chips and chip fragments and chip dust everywhere. Jecca experiments with something red from a punch bowl.

"Whoa. Oh. Oh, God. That's
strong.
" She holds her cup out to me and I sip from it. Holy shit.

Jecca downs the rest of it. I look around for something to put out the flames, but there's only beer and some bottles of booze. After a minute of looking, I find mixers and the remains of mixers—bottles of Coke and sour mix, a carton of OJ. I drink some of the OJ and pour a rum and Coke, minus the rum. Date rape victim, I've decided, is not going to be an item on my résumé.

I look around, but Jecca's gone. Great. Sim can take care of herself—sort of—but I wanted to keep an eye on Jecca. Shit.

I look around again. Maybe I missed her. It's a big kitchen and there are a lot of people in here.

A girl pushes past me, sloshing me with her drink. "Sorry," she says.

Yeah, right, whatever.

"I said, 'sorry'!" she shouts, like I didn't hear her or something.

"Yeah, OK," I tell her, planning my escape route out of the kitchen and back into the hell of the house.

"I'm Leah," she says, and holds out her hand, like we're at a friggin cocktail party or something. Her eyes are glazed and she's unsteady, and she slurred her
sorry
s a little.

I really don't want to shake her hand, but I go ahead and do it, just to make her go away.

It doesn't work. "I'm a shophomore," she manages to say.

Oh, God. Like I even care. "Yeah, that's great. Keep killing your brain cells and you might make it back to freshman by Christmas break."

She laughs much harder than I deserve for that one. "You are
shoooo
funny!" She hiccups and her drink sloshes me again and she goes away.

Before I can move, though, someone else comes plowing right through me, not even apologizing. It's some little skinny guy,
fantastically
ugly and covered in zits, and just to prove that all types come to these parties, he's actually got his
backpack
with him, and he's carrying it on his hip, like it's a baby or a basket of laundry. Weird. At least I was smart enough to leave my bag in the car.

I can't help staring at him. He's just
so
ugly that he's almost good-looking. I decide his superhero name is Backpack Boy.

I shake it off.

Time to find Jecca. Shit. I wish I had my cell. I'm such an idiot.

There are three ways out of the kitchen—the way I came in, a hallway that looks like it leads to bedrooms, and a door that goes outside to a deck, where people have gathered already, including Drunk Leah at one end and Backpack Boy lounging right near the door so that I can't see anything. I poke my head outside and try to lean around him so that I can look for Jecca. Someone pushes past me and "accidentally" brushes my boob. I kick him in the shin.

"Hey! What the hell was
that
for?" He spins around and glares.

"You know, asswipe. Keep moving." And then, as if to prove something (I don't know what), I whip off my scarf and show him my bald head. He shrugs and goes out onto the deck.

Jecca's nowhere to be seen...

"Hey, can you
move?
" I shove at Backpack Boy. "I'm looking for something."

He cradles his backpack like it's filled with glass. "Sure. Sure. don't shove."

I step outside and I finally get a lungful of air that doesn't taste like beer or sour mix. It's cold outside, but better than the body heat inside. Jecca's not out here, but I give myself a little break and just drink my Coke and breathe in the cold air. Backpack Boy stands off a few feet, still cradling his backpack. God, this world is just jam-packed with weird assholes, isn't it?

Eventually I'm done with the Coke and the deck, so I go back into the kitchen. The idea of going down toward the bedrooms is frightening. I do
not
want to see what's going on in there.

As I fight my way back to the living room, I can't help wondering:
Is there a chance Fanboy is here?
I mean, probably not. He's not the party hardy type. Still...

He
did
tell me that he came to a party here just before summer break. Just before I went away. Yeah. This is where...

This is where he made out with Dina Jurgens.

It makes me angrier than it should. Why do I even care, other than that it's just stupid? He got to make out with what was, at the time, the hottest girl in the school. Good for him. Hooray. Let's throw a parade for the Geek Done Good. His whole life just took right off after that, didn't it? He made more friends, got his shit published, got people paying attention to him...

And I went away. That was probably the best part for him. Who needed
me
after all that shit, right? Who'd need me after he got the chance to eff around with Dina Jurgens?

I shove—
shove hard
—my way through the crowd in the hallway. People yell and complain and someone even throws a (mostly) empty cup at my head, but I don't care. I need to get mad, so I take it out on the crowd and push through until I emerge in the living room.

Fanboy. It's always Fanboy. God, I have to stop thinking about him, just for a little while. So what if he made out with Dina? So what if he doesn't need me? Who cares? Why do
I
care?

"Kyra! Hey, Kyra!"

I don't recognize the voice at first, but as Cal makes his way over to me, I make the connection.

"Holy shit," he says as he sidles up to me, "you should try out for the football team, girl! You broke through that crowd like"—and then he spits out some football crap that I have no way in the world of understanding—"know what I mean?"

Not a chance.

But if he's here, then maybe...

"Hey, is, uh..." I don't want to seem too eager or too
anything.
"Is what's-his-face here?"

"Nah. This really isn't his scene. I'm kinda surprised to see
you
here."

"I came with some friends."

"Cool. Cool." He drinks from a red cup and looks around the room. We just stand there for a while and then he says, "Hey, can I tell you something?"

I hate when people do that. Because if you said no, would they really just forget all about it and walk away?

I give it a shot: "No."

He laughs. "God, you're funny! Anyway, no, really, look—I think it's so cool that you, you know, look out for him, you know? He's a great guy, but sometimes he needs someone to kick him in the butt a little bit. And he gets distracted so easily ... So thanks for doing that. And for—you know, last year—telling me about
Schemata.
"

Oh my God and then he does it—he totally puts an arm around me and hugs me.

"What the hell are you drinking?" I ask him. Because that's the only explanation I can think of.

He steps back and grins a big, broad grin filled with dazzling white teeth and for a half a second I understand why all the girls go weak in the knees for him. He passes his cup under my nose.

"Nothin but Coke," he says. "I'm in season. Football."

"So are half the people here."

"I do my own thing. But, y'know, I don't judge ... Whoa."

I follow his gaze. Simone—of course it would be Simone—is dancing on a table with another girl, one I don't recognize. All the guys are cheering and hollering. Every single one of them right now is imagining what it would be like to be with Simone, or with the other girl, or with both of them. Another Simone prediction about to come true—she is definitely getting laid tonight.

Cal has disappeared. Good. I didn't feel like dealing with him anyway.

I don't see Jecca anywhere in the living room. Great. I'm gonna have to brave the Dark Hallway of Sex and the Bedrooms of Death to look for her. Hopefully she isn't passed out and being gang-raped. Because that could
totally
happen in a place like this.

If someone is hurting her, I'll kill him. That's all there is to it. Simone's different. Simone wants it. Simone deliberately puts herself in positions where guys get to take advantage of her and she usually doesn't regret it. Jecca's not like that. She's not a virgin, but she's not a slut, either, and I won't let people treat her like one.

Then something hits me right there in the midst of the booze and the hollers and the grinding, even as I watch Drunk Leah stagger past me. It doesn't
literally
hit me like the cup a couple of minutes ago. It's just a thought. That I treat Jecca the same way I treated Fanboy. I never kissed Fanboy, but I
understood
him and I gave him courage and I pushed him. And with Jecca, I understand her and I try to help her make the right decisions.

So, you know, eff everyone. All these people think I'm some terrible person because I smoke and I cuss and I'm sarcastic and there's shit I can't be bothered with, but you know what? I'm a
good
person. I take care of my friends.

And then—as if that revelation makes me glow in the dark—Jecca suddenly appears, stumbling over to me. She's what we call Drunk Enough. Like, it's not totally drunk, just Drunk Enough that you feel good and sometimes say and do stupid things. She flops to my side and wraps her arms around me.

"Kyyyyyyrrrraaaa!" she says. "I
love
you, Kyyyyyyyrrrrra!"

Drunk Enough.