Trish glanced at me. “I see that look on your face. Come on, Mystic; just get into the spirit of things and this’ll be a lot more fun. It’s a long way back to Stony Creek.”
I looked at her. She was right. It was a long way back to Stony Creek. I stared at my punch, and it stared back at me.
“What’s in this?” I yelled at Trish over the din.
“Vodka, Red Bull, some other stuff,” she yelled back. “That’s the beauty of Jungle Juice, you never really know!”
It sounded awful, but I sipped, and couldn’t actually taste any alcohol. It was mostly sweet, but tangy sweet, like pineapple juice. I downed the rest of it in a series of long gulps. I’d come here to let loose, after all. Vodka was certainly going to make that dumb plan happen faster.
The announcer-pirate waved for attention. “Juniors, the time has come. You have three phases of initiation. The test of the Holy Grail!” The guys cheered loudly. “The test of physical prowess!” More cheers. “And—truth or dare.”
This time it took a full minute to quiet the crowd down again.
“Form a line!” he said, then disappeared. On either side of the barn, horse stalls had been converted into drinking stations, and their doors were now flung open. In line, partygoers were handed a plastic, dollar-store “grail” and told to drink whatever was in it. Most went away coughing. Trish downed it in one gulp.
“Not bad,” she told me. “Just red wine.”
I stepped up to the table and a pirate handed me a cup. I tried to look into it, but he shouted that I wasn’t allowed to peek. I took a deep breath, let it out, then drank. I almost spit on reflex and turned to Trish with a mutinous look. “That was not red wine.”
“I know,” she said. “It was tequila. But I didn’t think you’d drink it otherwise.”
Before I could respond, the flow of the crowd pushed us along to the next station. Guys were herded up the stairs to the second floor, girls formed a semicircle below them. A huge pile of hay had been stacked up against the wall, ten feet high and fifteen feet deep. One by one, half-drunk guys jumped off the second floor into the pile, some more gracefully than others, flattening it dramatically as time went by. I saw Ben and Jack from our class leap safely down, but I didn’t recognize anyone else. It was kind of dumb, but strangely entertaining.
“What do the girls have to do?” I asked Trish, tugging on her arm as pirates flailed above us.
She grinned as another guy catapulted himself off the railing. “All we have to do is watch.”
After a while, the line of boys ran out, and I was amazed no one had cracked their skulls or broken an arm, although a few had tottered outside to puke. After the last guy plummeted to the floor, picking himself up with a dazed look, the announcer-pirate hopped onto the railing and said, “Wait! Here for a one-night-only special encore, the one, the only, Adrian de la Mara!”
The place erupted with screams, the crowd cheering. And then the spotlight went on and there he was, standing in a loose linen shirt, pirate pants, and historically accurate leather boots, because of course he would have those just lying around. There was a ladder built into the wall that headed up to a tiny platform that made up the third level of the barn. Adrian bowed with a lazy smile, then began climbing. Nervous, I watched as he reached the ledge forty feet off the ground. He turned toward the wall, facing away from the crowd, and backed up until only the toes of his boots kept him from falling into space.
The cheering stopped. It was dead silent.
He bent his knees, arms out to either side.
And then he jumped.
His body catapulted toward the ceiling and then back again to the crowd, twisting in the air like a diver once, twice, three times; gliding through the multicolored lights, finally somersaulting into a landing that made the hay ripple in a fifteen-foot arc like he was some avenging angel come down for war.
But he was standing. And he looked totally fine. Which was not right.
How could he be alive, let alone standing? His head was bowed, and into the intense silence he looked up right at me, his eyes seeming to flash out their own light from the shadow of his face. All at once, the screaming cheers began, and they were deafening, reverberating off three stories of wooden walls so it seemed like a crowd of thousands. He smiled once, and the lights went out, leaving the barn in utter darkness. When they came back on, he was gone. Even though no one could see where he was, the cheering went on and on.
I turned to Trish. “How did he do that?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea! Isn’t it great?”