Are You Mine

Are You Mine - By N.K. Smith



Chapter 1


Saige


Human connection.

Who needs it? I sure don’t, especially if it means I have to associate with the likes of those around me. Sure, every once in a while I wish I could have a relationship with the depth of feeling that, like the cliché, sweeps me off my feet. Sometimes I imagine myself meeting that right someone who makes me feel as my parents must have felt when they found each other.

But seriously. Connectedness is just some idea made up by greeting card companies and churches. There’s no way any of these people here understand me enough to connect with me. I mean, except my two friends who are somewhere in the crowd.

I sigh, grab a red plastic cup of beer, and find an empty spot by the wall to lean against. It only takes a minute before my happy little hideout grows crowded. Someone bumps into me from behind and my beer sloshes down my tailored black shirt. It’s Ben Lancaster.

Before I can even begin to grouse, Ben—obviously stoned—puts his hand on my arm. “Hey Paige.”

Not sure whether I should be pissed at the fact that he didn’t apologize for drenching my chest or if I should focus my energy on the fact that he got my name wrong, I simply glare at him for a second. I’m a bit drunker than usual and with the alcohol comes even heavier negativity and less tolerance for things that annoy me. Like people who should know my name, but don’t.

It’s not like this is Manhattan where everyone is anonymous. Almost all of us know one another. Back in elementary school, we all went to the same little birthday parties and Halloween outings. I guess after a while I just faded from the club. Not that I’m pissed about it though. I’ve never really been comfortable around these people anyway. Always felt like a charity case because of my mom. It was hard to figure out if the girls invited me to sleepovers and the guys talked to me in the halls because they liked me or because their mothers felt sorry for me.

Ben’s stupid stoned smile continues. He can’t get my name right, even though he brought a flower to school for me in the first grade and kissed my cheek.

“It’s Saige, not Paige,” I finally say.

“Alright,” he says with a nod of his head as if he agrees that my name is, in fact, Saige. “It’s cool.”

I grit my teeth. “Thank you.”

I need to get out of here. This party’s not for me.

Ben is still talking, but I ignore him. I’ve learned the hard way a long time ago that if you pretend to care the first time, people will always come back to talk to you. Usually about the same idiotic thing. They latch on and don’t let go.

I drink the remaining beer in my cup, which means I have to leave my comfortable space to get another one. I stand here for a little bit longer, but this guy just won’t shut up about my name now, so I leave my cozy little wall spot and go back into the kitchen.

Damon Hiller, who seems to be the guardian of the keg, looks up at me when I shove the cup in his direction. He takes one look at my shirt and says, “You’re supposed to drink it, not wear it.”

I debate if I should be snarky or just let it go. Damon doesn’t matter to me, and I don’t matter to Damon. “Clever,” I mumble, but then say louder, “Just fill the cup, okay?”

When it’s back in my hand, heavier because of the beer sloshing around, I turn to leave and wouldn’t you know it? Someone else bumps into me. Beer runs down my right leg. “Great,” I hiss as I blow out a breath.

The beer that’s left in the cup doesn’t stand a chance. I drain it quickly, then go over to the massive cooler and grab a bottle while flinging the cup toward the already overflowing trash can. Should’ve thought about a bottle instead of a cup earlier, but I guess I didn’t realize how moronic these people really are.

I set off into the crowd to find new clothes. The house is huge. There has to be something suitable for me to wear.

“Holy shit! He’s going down!”

I look over at a dude yelling and laughing. His buddy says, “Pay up, son! I told you it would only be a couple of hours before he tanked.”

I stop as everyone laughs at Fat Cody Hayes rolling around on the ground in front of me. He’s laughing, too, so I can’t be indignant or anything. He’s about three hundred pounds and drunk off his ass. How many beers did it take to get him this drunk? However many it was, he’s beyond inebriated now. Dude’s wasted. A couple of the jocks—I don’t know which ones, they all look the same to me—reach down and help him up. He manages to do a little jump and holds out his arms like he’s surfing a big wave.

As if Cody has ever surfed. Chances are, being as close to the Atlantic as we are, he’s been down to the shore, but I doubt he’s ever been to the sunny beaches of California. Not that it matters. Cody means nothing to me, even if I’d planned a huge scene to protest his nickname a few months after he first came to Pechimu in the seventh grade. Nothing came of it because one, I’m not great in the follow through department, two, I suck at actual confrontation, and three, the whole point was to publicly make a stand against people calling him fat.

See, we have another Cody in school, and he’s skinnier than anyone I’ve ever seen, so when people started calling Cody Hayes “Fat Cody,” I thought it was a big deal. Fat Cody, on the other hand, did not. Apparently he not only encouraged it, he started it.

Whatever. Who cares about my failed attempts at protesting random crap? Not me. Not anymore. High school is officially over now. I have a shiny piece of paper to prove it.

I look away from the spectacle, and remind myself I only came to this stupid party because my friend Myka dragged me here. I almost started kicking and screaming just to make the cliché complete, but once she put on her pouty face, I knew I’d do whatever she wanted.

I look around for Myka. Maybe she’ll want to ditch this lame party and go grab some food, but when I see her, she and Valentine have their heads together. Val’s a mixture of goth and hippie. He totally indulges Myka’s steampunk obsession, and in return, she adds a little new-age mysticism to her awareness to appease him. They’ve been doing an awkward mating dance of subgenre teenagers for almost two years now.

I guess Val’s a friend of mine, but it’s only by default. Myka’s my only real friend. She wasn’t born in Pechimu; she moved here the summer before my sophomore year began. One day I was coming back from the city, and this crazy looking chick with pale pink spiky hair wearing some kind of purple corset rode the bus the entire way with me. The girl held a copy of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales on her lap and was reading Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle.

So the next Friday I went to a poetry slam and noticed her there. Again, she rode the bus with me back to New Jersey. When she dropped her book, Boneshaker, I picked it up, and we started talking. I’d never heard of steampunk before, and Myka was all too willing to overshare her obsession with it. Over the final weeks of summer, I learned all I’d never need to know about the hybrid subgenre of literature.

She was an instant hit at our high school. None of the cheerleaders ran out to buy corsets of their own, but they regarded my best friend as a novelty they needed to keep close. To this day, Myka wears corsets and won’t even pretend she’s interested in a book unless it takes place in some kind of retro-future or alternate-history universe.

I abandon the hope that Myka will want to ditch the party and weave my way through the dancing bodies, the bodies entwining in tight embraces, the bodies engaging in alpha male and female rituals of hooting and hollering until I find the stairs. I don’t know whose house this is, but surely there will be some clothes upstairs for me.

Luckily enough, the rooms aren’t locked, but unfortunately almost all of them are occupied. Good thing for me the occupants are too busy messing around to notice me creeping in and looking through the drawers. I finally find suitable clothes in the third bedroom I enter. This room is empty, so I change out of my soaked clothes into a shirt and pair of jeans that are both a little too tight, but not bad.

By the pictures all over the place, I deduce this is the bedroom of Kaitlyn Bryer, daughter of Richard and Susan Bryer. They must have moved since I was young. I don’t recognize this house. Dick and Suz are big time names in little Pechimu. Big contributors to Pechimu high’s football stadium. It’s well known they keep this house so their daughter can go to a quieter school, but they really live in New York doing all the fancy stuff hot shots like them do.

Kaitlyn’s dad worked with my mom, I guess. They used to force us to do stuff together. Then when we were in the fifth grade, Kaitlyn went off on me in the cafeteria. I don’t remember why, but I know I was mortified. Everyone looked at me, and she just sat there with a self-satisfied smirk because she knew I wouldn’t defend myself.

What a horrible lunch that turned out to be. After everyone realized the show was over, I just quietly sat there, listening to Kaitlyn talk with the other girls about something else.

Now, in her room, wearing her clothes, I thought about just outright stealing the jeans and shirt, but I’m not the type to steal, so I write a note in lipstick on her full-length mirror. I choose the lipstick because it looks like the color she wears all the time, and while I’m not the kind of girl who steals, I’m definitely the kind of girl who ruins favorite things out of old pent-up spite.

Then I tuck fifty bucks behind the corner of the mirror and leave the room.

Downstairs, I have another beer by the wall. Then another. When I get back to my spot after the fifth trip to the kitchen, the people around me have changed. In fact, the whole mood of the party has changed. Everyone’s much more intoxicated and the music’s turned from fast paced dance music to slower chill-out music.

Myka is nowhere to be seen. Val either. Maybe they found some secret place to snuggle. Maybe they’re finally doing it, especially since they only have a few months before college starts, and they’ll be on their separate ways. But, if they’re busy getting it on, I’m going to take off because there’s no point in staying.

Just as I start to pull out my phone to text Myka my departure plans, I hear, “You know, Saige, even your friends who never socialize are out there mingling.”

I don’t know how he got there, but suddenly some tall guy is right next to me. All I can see is the yellow t-shirt covering his chest and torso because he has to be six-five or something. He’s standing close, but not too close. As I drag my eyes up, I realize it’s Fox Harrington, and I have no idea why he’s talking to me.

“What?” I ask as I adopt a confused but charitable expression.

Fox extends his arm and uses his water bottle to point to the other side of the room. Myka and Val are over there talking to Missy Cusak and Robbie Winter.

“Shows how much you know. Myka talks to everyone.”

“Yeah, but that guy doesn’t. I’ve been waiting for the four years of high school just to see him talk to someone, and now look. Maybe you should follow his lead.”

I fix my glare at Fox again. I don’t like the implication that I’m somehow defunct enough to follow Valentine’s social game. “Four years? I thought it was more like six for you.”

He looks away for just a second, and for a moment, I think I’ve hurt him, but then a slow smile curves his lips and he returns his eyes to me. “I wasn’t trying to be offensive, you know. It’s a party. I just thought with it being the last great hoorah of high school, you’d be out there in—”

“What are you doing thinking about me? Shouldn’t you be spending all the extra time on schoolwork or at least perfecting your burger flipping ability?”

I know the comment goes too far, and I know I shouldn’t have said it at all, but it’s out there now, and I can’t take it back. Again, Fox chuckles as he turns his eyes back to the crowd. He takes a step back, making it so I don’t have to bend my neck so much to see him. When he looks back at me, my blood runs cold at the intensity of his brown eyes. They’re not angry, but they’re fiery. They twinkle a little, like he’s in on some kind of joke I’m not, but they harden just enough for me to catch it.

My breath hitches when he leans in close to me. “You’re kind of a mean person, aren’t you?” The heat of his breath against my cheek somehow makes my earlier barb harsher. “Everyone told me you’re a harpy, but I didn’t believe them.”

“A harpy? What, you don’t believe I’m a winged mythological creature? Good call.”

“That was me trying not to use the same word everyone else used.”

“Yeah, what word is that?” I push my jaw out to the side and cross my arms over my chest. I already know everyone thinks I’m a bitch.

Fox straightens back up, then gives me the most sincere smile I’ve ever seen. “I still don’t believe them. Enjoy the party.”

I can’t take my eyes off him as he moves back into the mix of people. Everyone smiles at him as he passes. When he smacks a few guys on the back, I swear their whole faces light up like they were touched by the Son of God himself. He says something to Kaitlyn, and she beams back at him, but then he moves over to Myka and Valentine.

My stomach is in a vise as I imagine him telling my only friend and her sort of boyfriend that I was completely rude to him. Fox touches the bottom of Myka’s hot pink corset and says something that makes her laugh. Then, to Val, he sticks out his hand. They shake and Fox ends the encounter with a firm hand on Val’s shoulder.

I watch the crowd as a whole as Fox filters away into it. I know I keep telling myself that I don’t care about these people, but I kind of do.

***

The deep hit from the pipe makes me sputter. This would have made the party much more bearable, but Myka hadn’t allotted time for pot before the party. Now that it’s one in the morning, Val, Myka, and I are back at my apartment smoking out.

“I just don’t understand why you can’t just come out of your shell just a little bit,” Myka says to me as she tries to hold in her hit. After she lets it out, she continues, “I mean, you’re such an awesome person. Everyone would like you if—”

“I just opened my mouth and said what’s on my mind all the time?” That’s bullshit and she knows it. I think back to my interaction with Fox as proof.

Val jumps into the conversation. “Well, not what’s on your mind. More like, what’s on your mind after it goes through a few filters to make it safe for mass consumption.”

I shake my head when he tries to pass me the glass pipe. I’m high enough. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re abrasive,” Myka answers for him.

“Maybe you should work on that when you go to NYU,” Val suggests between hits.

“She doesn’t even know if she’s going.”

I ignore them as they go into a deeper conversation about my unwillingness to fully commit to college. Instead, I purposely let my mind wander to my dream of living on the sunny beaches of California. One of my favorite activities is daydreaming and my favorite daydream is of me on the beach, spending hours just sitting, soaking in the sea air and sun. When I’m bored, I’ll take the short trip up to my beautiful house and sit on the deck to watch the blue water sweep in and cover the golden sand. I’ll have a notebook open on my lap, pen in hand, or my laptop open.

“But one day I know she’s totally going to write an epic steampunk novel featuring this badass chick named Myka.”

I bring my attention back around and nod at my best friend. “Absolutely. She’ll be the heroine of the massive battle against the totalitarian government who have seized control of all media and dominates the skies with their old-timey aeroplanes.”

“Don’t forget about the government’s round up of all cyborgs for use in their experimental armies, including the super awesome cyborg named Valentine who fights from within to destroy the government.”

Both Myka and I laugh at Val’s addition. We could probably craft an awesome story out of our discussions, but I probably have a hundred beginnings to stories. I haven’t finished one project I’ve started.

“Yep. I’m totally writing that. It’ll be called Myka’s Incredible Electric Flying Machine and Valentine’s Robotic Arm of Doom.”

Myka jumps in again. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be called Myka’s Metal Valentine.”

I groan. “That sounds mushy. Now you want me to write a mushy steampunk novel?”

She rolls her eyes. “Sorry, I forgot. You don’t do romance.”

I grab the bag of Kettle chips and start munching as I ponder Myka’s words. I’m not sure if I don’t do romance or if romance doesn’t do me.