“Dude, take the damn hint,” he hisses. He takes a step backward, and his body nudges against mine, forcing me to back away too. “She doesn’t want it. Look at her.” He glances over his shoulder at my expression of revulsion, and he ends up staring at me for a moment longer than I feel comfortable with. Even when Clayton speaks again, Tyler’s just looking at me.
“Alright, alright,” Clayton says. “Just get her outta here then. Why do we have some random kid in here anyway?”
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Tyler murmurs. Suddenly he turns to face me. Completely disgusted by the smoking, I shake my head at him. I wonder if Ella knows about this. Is she aware that he’s out here spending his night getting high?
Tyler takes a step toward me, but as he shifts, his curled-up fist knocks against something. His eyes fall to his right, and my stare follows until it lands on a small metallic table and the tiny lamp perched on the corner of it. I’m about to look away when I notice what’s on that table and beneath the light. There’s a stack of dollar bills and some credit cards scattered around, and, most importantly, a row of neat lines. White powder lines.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, blinking as fast as I can, because I have no idea if the smoke I’ve just inhaled is having an effect on me or if I’m really seeing what is truly there. “Oh my God?”
“Dude, seriously, I’m not kidding.” It’s Clayton. “Get her out of here before she calls the cops or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s leaving,” Tyler replies. At the same time he reaches for my elbow, gently pushing me away from the shed. I’m surprised he follows, pulling me across the yard until we’re away from everyone else and out of hearing range.
“You’re unbelievable,” I hiss while I shake his hand off me. “Coke? Really, Tyler?”
He appears helpless before me, like this is the first time he’s ever been confronted about it, because he just presses his hands to his face and groans. “This isn’t the place for you,” he says once he drops his hands. He stuffs them into his pockets and kicks at the grass. “You should—you should go back inside.”
I grind my teeth. I’ve never been in a situation like this before, so I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to handle it. Do I try to talk to him about it? Do I call Ella? The cops? Eventually, I just decide to storm off. I push him out of the way, my pulse racing and my blood hot. I’m infuriated by what I’ve just witnessed. I want to kick something, punch a wall, tear someone’s limbs off. I’m so mad.
Tyler heads back over to the shed, and I don’t know what he says to his friends when he gets there, but all of a sudden they burst into howls of laughter. I can hear it echoing behind me, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s me they’re laughing at.
“Dude, come on,” someone calls. The laughter in the shed stops. “That’s low. Chill out.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dean,” I hear Tyler say, but I don’t bother to turn around. I’m too pissed off to even look at him.
I hear footsteps running, and I glance up to the guy when he catches up to me. “You’re Dean?”
“And I’m going to have a wild guess and say you’re Tyler’s stepsister,” he says. There’s a hand resting in his brown hair as he looks at me. “You’re the only person here that I’ve never seen before and Meghan says that this mysterious stepsister just so happens to be at this lame party. So am I right?”
I force a smile. “Yeah. Hey, you don’t happen to know which number Tyler’s house is? The one on Deidre Avenue? I need to get home, but I…I don’t know the address.”
“Would I happen to know where my best friend lives?” Dean grins. “329.”
“Best friend?” I glance back over to the shed. Five seconds ago, they were cursing across the yard to each other.
“Complicated,” he says, and then points to the house. “I can give you a ride home. My car’s parked just down the block.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“If I’d had anything to drink, I wouldn’t be offering to give you a ride.”
I heave a sigh. “Thank you.”
He heads back to the house, and I follow by his side, my mind awhirl. And to think I thought Tyler couldn’t get any worse. I slow down for a second to look back at the shed, and with the door still open, I get a clear view of him reaching back into his pocket and pulling out the remainder of his joint. Just as he presses it to his lips and sets it alight, he notices my stare.
For the briefest of moments, he grimaces and drops his eyes to the floor. Someone forces a beer into his free hand, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he just stands there as though he’s frozen in place and can’t possibly move, his shoulders sunken and his head low. And then he breaks free of his paralysis and shifts his way to the back of the shed, as far away from me as possible, so that the only thing I can see is an orange glow blazing in the darkness.
*