10
“Maybe it’s not too late to call him and cancel,” Anita said. Even I could hear the desperation in her voice, and I wasn’t even really listening. I was gripping my head so hard I thought my skull might cave in from the pressure—it made listening a lesser concern.
“Chicks don’t cancel on Lucas,” a male voice said. “That shit just doesn’t happen.”
“Shut up, Matt!” Emily cried. “You are not helping. Why are you even here?”
“You invited me over,” Matt said.
“Maybe she should lie down,” Anita suggested.
“Don’t let her lie down,” Em said. “What if she swallows her tongue?”
“Oh shit, for real?” Matt said.
Anita said, “She’s not having a seizure!”
Was I having a seizure? I didn’t think so, but then what did I know? Maybe intense nausea, a pounding headache, and the desire to weep and scream at the same time were what a seizure felt like. Or maybe it was just what being a big, fat, terrified baby felt like. It was an either/or situation.
I was sitting on my sister’s bed in her room, flanked by Anita—it was her room, too—and Emily, with my head in my hands and my eyes squeezed shut. Earlier I had been screaming into a pillow, which had sparked Anita’s alarm. She’d never seen me like this before. Honestly, nobody had ever really seen me like this before. I’d only come to Emily’s room because I was seriously freaking the hell out and also I needed help with my hair and she had all the good hair products. And because I needed my sister.
“Why did you say you’d go with him if you didn’t really want to?” Anita asked as she rubbed my back.
“I want to go,” I replied miserably without opening my eyes. “This is me wanting to go.”
I heard Matt laugh. “Damn, girl,” he said. “You’ve got problems.”
“Get out!” Em cried, and I felt the bed shift beneath me as she got up and wrestled Matt toward the door.
“Hey,” he protested. “You invited me over.”
“And now this is me kicking you the hell out!” Em cried, slamming the door, presumably in his face.
I heard a girl’s voice outside the door say, “Dude, that’s harsh!” and some laughter. Poor Matt would probably be hearing about this for a while.
“God,” Em muttered. “I hate it when they keep coming back like that.”
“You invited him over, you idiot,” Anita said in an irritated whisper. “If you don’t want them to get clingy, then don’t be such a tease!”
“How dare you ignore my sister’s pain to chastise me,” Em replied haughtily, also in a whisper. “This is about Katie. Let’s take care of Katie.”
“Maybe Katie’s freaking out because her sister’s a dirty little skank,” Anita shot back. I heard a thump, which I was pretty sure was Anita being hit by a pillow.
“I’m a skank?” Em cried. “Who slept with Greg Ranski twice after he got back together with his girlfriend?”
Thump, thump.
I had to open my eyes for that one. “Oh my God, Anita,” I said to her.
“That doesn’t make me a skank!” Anita protested, socking Em another time with the pillow from her bed. “That just makes me guilty of…bad decision making. Besides, that was first semester. We agreed that anything that happened first semester doesn’t count!”
“Oh yeah? Well, count this!” Em said, brandishing a cushion from the armchair.
A few minutes later, after a furious pillow battle that I think we all ultimately lost, we found ourselves lying on the floor in a row with our feet up on Manic Melanie’s bed, staring at the ceiling. I had a pink bunny slipper under my head.
“It’s a party,” I said. “You know I’m no good at parties.”
“That’s not true,” Anita said. “You’re good at everything.” I had no idea what she was basing this on, but it was reassuring, nonetheless.
“What if I can’t think of anything to say?” I said.
“Just think of what the coolest person you know would say in that exact situation and say that,” Em replied. “It works for me all the time. By the way, the coolest person you know is me.”
That one was a little less reassuring. If I were going to be Em at this party, I’d have to do some serious drugs to get through the night.
“What if they try to force me to play beer pong or quarters or do that thing where they make you drink beer out of a tube that kind of seems like waterboarding?”
“Then tell them to f*ck off!” Anita and Em both said at the same time, and we all cracked up.
“What if they try to make me dance on a table?” I said.
“Nobody ever makes someone dance on a table,” Anita explained. “It’s kind of a voluntary thing. And I think we can all agree you won’t be volunteering.”
“Hell, no!” I said.
“I’ve got the perfect solution for all your worries,” Emily said. “Here it is: Drink as much as you can as fast as you can. Tada! No more worries.”
I expected Anita to dismiss Em’s solution as quickly as I did, but instead I heard her agreeing.
“Seems like a wise plan,” she said.
“Guys, the only thing worse than going to this party with Lucas would be going to this party and getting plastered and throwing up all over Lucas,” I said. Considering how quickly I’d gotten drunk at The Limo, that was a real possibility. “I reject your solution!”
“Seems like a wise choice,” Anita agreed in a bout of fickleness.
“Okay, then, let’s talk about Lucas. He’ll be with you the whole time, right?” Em said. “Just stay with him. I’m sure he’ll take care of you.” I ignored her unspoken question: Because this is a date, right?
“Except Lucas is a man-whore who can’t be trusted,” I reminded her. “You’re the one who told me that, remember?”
“I once saw him go into a room with a girl at a party—I’m guessing to sleep with her—and then later go into another room with another girl—I’m guessing to sleep with her, too,” Anita piped up. “Then he went home with my friend Gretchen’s sister, but they didn’t sleep together. They just made out.”
“What?” I cried.
Emily half-sat up and glared at Anita. “Do you want to get the pillow again?” she threatened.
“What?” Anita answered, not the least bit intimidated. “He is a man-whore. Everyone’s heard the stories about Lucas. He’s done half the girls on campus, and probably most of the townies, too. Girls fall at his feet wherever he goes, and they always come back for more. That insane brawl in the cafeteria last year where one girl got a hunk of her hair pulled out and the other lost a tooth? That fight was over Lucas. Katie should know what she’s up against.”
I seriously felt like I was going to be sick.
“What if he tries to take me into a room?” I said. The idea was simultaneously enthralling and horrifying.
“Then you only go in if you want to,” Emily replied.
“What if he doesn’t try to take me into a room?” I said.
“Then you call me from the bathroom, where you’ll be hiding,” Emily said. Though I resented it, this was an accurate statement.
“What if he goes into a room with another girl?” I said.
“He invited you, Katie, didn’t he?” Anita said. “That means something. Even if he used to be a slut, he has good taste now. Maybe he’s changed.”
“Maybe he’ll surprise you,” Emily agreed.
“What if he leaves me alone?” I said, turning my head to the side so I was staring at the side of my sister’s face, a face that looked so much like my own and yet, not at all.
I saw Em stiffen. She knew what I was referring to. When she turned to face me, her expression was more serious than it had been all evening.
She said, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
An hour later I was sitting on a bench outside Ban Righ Hall waiting for Lucas, feeling a little less like I was going to throw up and a little more like I might live through the night, though I wasn’t positive about it. It was a mild night for early March, and I didn’t really need the gloves I was wearing but I kept them on anyway. They stopped me from twisting my fingers, which I desperately wanted to do right then. In the end the girls had said the clothes I was wearing were unacceptable, and after a near-fight with Emily over her insistence that I wear her red halter, I’d settled on a cute teal-coloured dress of Anita’s, a pair of patterned tights, and Em’s calf-length suede boots, proffered to me in a moment of real sisterly selflessness—which was only slightly ruined by her telling me that if I stained them she would stab me to death with one of my paint brushes. They’d piled my hair on top of my head and secured it there with a pair of black lacquered chopsticks. I’d even let them put a little makeup on me.
I looked good and that made me feel strong. What I liked even more about it was that I looked just slightly like someone other than myself, which made me feel like someone other than myself, which was a good thing. Maybe this other me could get through a university party in one piece. She was the one who’d gotten us into this mess in the first place, clearly, since I hadn’t been the one to agree to go to this party with Lucas. That was all her.
Lucas and I had gotten into a nice routine lately almost without my being aware of it. The Monday after our stay-in lunch he’d asked me if I wanted to grab some food after art class and I’d agreed, mostly because I was hungry and I’d come to realize that Lucas knew all the best cheap places to eat. We’d gotten poutine at Earl’s Kitchen and then he’d walked me back to my apartment. And then we’d done the same the next day after working in the studio, and then again on Thursday.
He didn’t mention the sketches or the moment we’d had outside my apartment, though several times it seemed like he wanted to. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of cue from me. But I was happy just to leave things as they were, the two of us buddies—although I had to admit he seemed to take every opportunity to touch me that he possibly could—our banter light even if our gazes were heavy. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t exactly easy to sit across from him watching him eat a taco in the messiest possible way and not lunge over the table and kiss him. Actually, it was pretty much agony. But nothing had changed. He was still a player. I still didn’t need a boyfriend, or a hookup, or a whatever. Having Lucas as my friend was a big enough change for now. It was a bigger change than I’d ever thought I would make—that was for sure. I didn’t need more right now. I needed strong and stable, and that was Lucas. I needed comfortable, and somehow that was him, too. I was getting used to him.
So when he asked me if I wanted to go with him to a party Friday night, I heard myself giving the comfortable answer, the answer I’d been giving him all week. I heard the casual, “Sure, sounds good,” flowing off my tongue, and I wondered who the heck I had become.
Who was this new Katie, friends with Lucas Matthews, going to games with him, and sharing fries with him and letting him take her to parties?
I understood the old Katie. I knew her limits. But what were the new Katie’s limits? What could the new Katie handle? And if the new Katie suddenly disappeared, leaving the old Katie in her place, what the hell was I supposed to do then?
My great look armor had basically started to disintegrate and I was about two seconds from running for my life when Lucas appeared on the path to my left. Slutty man-whore Lothario Lucas. But he didn’t seem slutty to me. Seeing him was a breath of fresh air and as I got to my feet I found myself drinking in the sight of him, every beautiful well-sculpted inch. It was weird the way just looking at him and knowing he was near made me feel strong. Maybe that was how the new Katie handled it all. She didn’t handle it alone. She had Lucas by her side.
“What are you doing out here in the cold?” Lucas said. “You should have waited inside for me.”
Reaching out, he ran his hand up and down the back of my coat, which only pressed me closer to him. I got the impression that was kind of the point.
“It’s not that cold; I’m wearing gloves, and it’s not even below zero. Why are we going to this party?” I said in one big rush, forcing out the question I didn’t even realize I’d been holding in. The validity of the question didn’t stop me from staring at the ground in embarrassment as Lucas barked out a laugh.
“I mean,” I continued—wow, the cement really was fascinating!—“I know you haven’t been going to a lot of parties…”
“You know that?” Lucas said. I could just picture the glint in his eye as he said it. “And how do you know that?”
“Well, you know, Em mentioned…”
This time I could see him bending down to get a better look at my face. “So you’ve been talking to your sister about me?” His warm, minty breath against my face made me shiver.
“Oh, shut up!” I said, looking up at last, narrowing my eyes at him. “Emily knows you and I are friends.”
Lucas stood tall again as we started walking down the path. “There’s that word again,” he said as he put his arm around my shoulder. “Friends.”
I chose to ignore this, even though being snug in the crook of his arm, my side pressed into his, was making my heart skip every second beat.
“But really,” I persisted, “what changed your mind? I thought you wanted to stay away from the party scene. What made you want to go to this one all of a sudden?”
“You mean besides the terrible free beer and awful conversation and, oh God, those friends of mine? They really are a miserable bunch,” he said. His tone was light and sarcastic, but I suddenly felt as though I’d stepped in something. Did he sense that I had no interest in meeting his friends or drinking their beer or talking to them? Was old Katie rearing her ugly head?
“I mean, no,” I said frantically. “What I mean is… I didn’t mean—”
He stopped and took me by the shoulders. “Katie,” he said softly, but firmly. “I was just kidding.”
I felt my whole body sag with relief. Jesus, we hadn’t even made it off campus and I was already exhausted.
“And to answer your question,” he went on, pushing a stray curl behind my ear, “I couldn’t think of a good reason to go to those other parties. That’s why I didn’t go.”
I nodded, eager to be agreeable, though I still didn’t really feel like I understood.
Then he took my chin in his hand and tilted my face up toward his. Unconsciously, I found myself leaning in. It was incredible, like he was the flame and I was the moth. I just couldn’t stop gravitating toward his touch.
He said, “I guess I was just looking for a good excuse.”
“So what’s your excuse?” I breathed.
“The chance to show you off,” he replied
And just like that going to a party with Lucas didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.
We left campus, going north. I lived east of campus, but I knew the area—we were close to the Dairy Queen. (I mapped out all locations in Kingston by their distance to the Dairy Queen.) Though Lucas had told me the party was on Frontenac, I’d had no idea it would be so close by. We’d only been walking for about five minutes when we began to notice parked cars crowding both sides of the street. It was pretty clear which house we were aiming for. As we approached on the sidewalk, the three-story gray house on the other side of the street stood out not only because the porch was crowded with people, but also because the Christmas lights that lined the roof and wound up the porch columns were all lit. The booming music was also a pretty good indicator.
My footsteps started to slow as we came closer and I was surprised to see that Lucas’s did, too. By the time we were standing directly across from the house, we were at a standstill.
A guy on the porch spotted Lucas and called out his name. I examined his face for a reaction, but saw nothing. It had taken on that closed-off quality again.
He swallowed. “I guess it’s too late to change our minds,” he said, and my heart did a little pitter-patter at the idea that getting out of the party was still a possibility. I began to think of all the other things we could do with the evening: go to the movies, or out to eat, or to the studio, or maybe…
Another voice, a girl’s voice this time, joined the first guy in calling Lucas’s name, and then suddenly the whole porch was chanting, “Lucas! Lucas! Lucas!”
Wow. Yeah, there was no turning back now.
“Another thing Em told me about you is that you used to be a slut,” I said. I suppose I should have felt bad for being so blunt about it, but there was a porch full of girls chanting his name. Blunt was sort of unavoidable.
“Did she?” Lucas said. We were both still watching the house instead of each other. “She’s right, I used to be. But I’m not anymore.” He took my hand and squeezed it and when I glanced at him he gave me a friendly smile, dropping the stoic mask he’d been wearing.
He could easily have been bullshitting me. That was what players did, wasn’t it? My distrustful nature should have been telling me to run, but it wasn’t. The old Katie and the new Katie, both our brains and both our hearts were telling me that what he said was true. Who was I to argue?
“Let’s go in already,” I said. “It’s colder out here than I thought.”
We crossed the street and joined the party.
Entering a party—my first party—with Lucas was your basic terrifying experience. If I’d come in alone I would have been pretty much ignored, and could have slunk to the back and hid, clutching my red cup of beer. But I’d come in on the arm of Lucas Matthews, which meant all eyes were on us.
The house was pretty big, the entrance opening up onto a staircase leading upwards with rooms on either side, all of which were filled with partygoers in varying states of drunken splendor. There were people sitting and standing on the stairs, lining the hallway that led back to the kitchen, sprawled over the rug and on the couches and around the dining room table, where they seemed to be playing strip poker. One guy wasn’t wearing any pants, and another appeared to be down to his socks and underwear. It satisfied me to see that the two girls at the table were fully clothed. The scene matched perfectly the American college party sketch I’d drawn in my head with details I’d gleaned from various movies and TV shows and stories Em had told me, though I was glad no girls were wearing bottle caps as pasties. Although the night was still young.
Moving through the crowd was slow going, because everyone seemed to know Lucas and wanted to greet him. I couldn’t really blame them for wanting to be close to him. There was no chance in hell I was leaving his side—that was for sure. But dear lord, we’d barely moved an inch from the entranceway. At this rate we’d never make it to the keg, which I’d caught sight of sitting next to the fiWith, and which was looking pretty tempting right about now. And I didn’t even like the taste of beer. I’d already been introduced to so many people whose names I’d already forgotten and had gotten the evil eye from at least three girls, one of who actually tried to have a conversation with me—she’d asked me why I was wearing my hair “like that,” and made a face.
I was still watching her walk away when a big bear of a guy with a full beard came barreling toward us, his arms open wide.
“That’s Oleg,” Lucas explained moments before he was engulfed in his friend’s arms and lifted off the ground.
It was Oleg’s party.
“Lucas, my good friend,” Oleg boomed. “How wonderful of you to join us on this joyous March evening. Where’s your drink and who’s your friend? I think Taylor is looking for you, and she’s—”
The name “Taylor” triggered a memory that wouldn’t quite surface. I knew I’d heard her name before, but I couldn’t place where.
Lucas leaned forward and spoke quietly in Oleg’s ear, and then Oleg’s big brown eyes landed on me with a wide, merry grin. He looked a lot like a younger version of Santa.
“My lady,” Oleg said, taking my hand and placing a chaste kiss on my knuckles. I gave Lucas a puzzled look. What exactly had he whispered in Oleg’s ear? “You know, you look like one of my kin. Are you a fellow Jew? Maybe Moroccan?”
I sighed quietly while giving Oleg a warm smile. “Nope,” I answered. “I’m half-Danish, half-Indian.”
“Well that’s an interesting combination!” Oleg said.
Then Oleg looped an arm over each of our shoulders and began to guide us down the hall, his considerable girth creating a kind of battering ram effect in which people were either mowed down ahead of us or forced to get out of the way.
“Let’s get the two of you a drink!” he said, depositing us in the kitchen, at which point he was instantly distracted by a game of quarters taking place on the stove—it really was just like the movies!—and abandoned us.
I pressed my stomach into the edge of the kitchen counter as yet another friend came over to greet Lucas. We were in the very centre of the party now, surrounded on all sides, and with no jolly Oleg at my side and Lucas distracted, I really started to feel claustrophobic. I tried to remind myself to breathe. But it wasn’t easy. It was sort of like being at The Limo again, that panicked feeling of being packed in a room with so many people, that feeling of being so incredibly out of place. I’d never felt safe in a crowd, not in six years. I’d always thought it was because it reminded me of school before and during and after the trial, all those kids watching me, wondering when I would break, their eyes judging or pitying—it didn’t really matter which—and watching, always watching, as I disintegrated in front of them. But now, as yet another girl walked by and gave me a puzzled once-over, I realized it wasn’t a flashback to high school misery I was having. It was the trial itself I was remembering, that very particular feeling of being in a fishbowl, those moments when I’d taken the stand and I’d known I wasn’t just imagining all their looks; it was really happening. All eyes had been on me. All ears had been directed at that microphone as I’d opened my mouth and spewed one lie after another after another.
That’s what this crowd was doing to me.
It was making me relive my shame.
Covering my burning cheeks with my hands I cast around desperately for a place to hide. I was going down for real this time. I was going to collapse. I needed to get out of here, not in a minute, not in a second, right now.
I didn’t even notice Lucas talking into my ear or feel his arms go around me until suddenly I was being lifted into the air. My arms shot forward, grabbing hold of his shoulders. He set me down on the kitchen counter and, keeping his arms around me, moved forward, gently ungluing my knees with the pressure of his body so he could stand between them. Even then, with Lucas literally between my legs, I wasn’t really paying him that much attention—although now that I was sitting on the counter, we were exactly the same height, his eyes perfectly level with mine. Only when he leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine—this seemed to be his signature move—did I find myself focusing on his face, and specifically the details of it. The little scar above his right eyebrow that sort of looked like an arrow, his longish nose, and those remarkable dimples that were so deep they were like caves.
Without realizing it, I found myself reaching up and placing my thumbs into each perfect dimple, my fingers splayed over his neck.
“Katie,” Lucas said, “are you poking my dimples?”
“Mmmhmm,” I answered dazedly, until all of a sudden his words rang a bell in my head and I realized that I was doing something that seemed incredibly intimate in a room full of people while Lucas was standing between my legs.
For a second I actually stopped breathing.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Lucas said quickly, his hands holding me firmly around the waist as I tried to wiggle free and escape this horrifying moment. “Just pretend we’re alone. It’s just you and me alone in a room. There’s nobody else here. Just imagine it.”
Guided visualization had never really worked for me before—it was something Dr. Lepore and I had tried—but this time, in Lucas’s arms, it sort of did. With his forehead resting against mine, the rest of the room kind of disappeared and it was as though it was just the two of us in our own little bubble.
“That’s better, isn’t it?” he whispered.
I nodded. “Better,” I said.
“Now, instead of trying to run away, why don’t you tell me what the problem is?” he said kindly. “Are you disappointed to be at this party with me now that you’ve seen all the other dreamy guys in the room? Is that what it is?”
What other guys? I wondered.
“It’s just…” I squirmed under his hands, trying to get the words out. “It’s just that everyone is looking at me, at us. I just…don’t like to be looked at.”
He jerked his head back, breaking our little forehead teepee and filling me with alarm, but he didn’t go far. He seemed to have pulled back just to stare at me.
“You don’t like being looked at,” he repeated, saying it as a statement, not a question. “You don’t want all these people looking at you.”
“I just don’t like feeling like—” Lucas interrupted me before I could finish, which was a good thing, since I had no idea where I’d been going with that.
He brought his hands up to cup my face, so delicately, making sure I couldn’t look away. “Katie,” he began, “I’m going to tell you something now that will probably shock you, but I need you to believe me. Can you promise me that?”
“I guess,” I said. I really had no idea where he was going, and the way his fingers were brushing against the skin of my face so gently was getting a little—no, a lot—distracting.
“You are beautiful, Katie,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and tried to turn my face away, but he held me in place with the slight pressure of his fingers.
“No,” he said. “You promised you’d believe me. You need to know this. You need to know how beautiful you are. Everybody else does.”
“Oh, give me a break!” I said. “I think you’re mistaking me for my sister.”
“Your twin sister,” Lucas said. “Your sister who has the exact same face as you. If you can admit she’s beautiful, then why can’t you admit that you are?”
I gave him an exasperated look, though I wasn’t sure he could see it, given how close his face was to mine. “Emily knows how to do it,” I explained, as if it weren’t obvious. “She has charisma and she knows how to dress and she has so much personality it’s impossible to ignore her. I’m…not like that.”
“I hate to tell you this, Katie, but you’re more beautiful than your sister,” Lucas said, and this time I was the one to pull away just to scowl at him. “I’m not saying Emily isn’t a knockout; she is. But you’re beautiful without even trying, without even realizing it. You’re the most f*cking gorgeous girl in this room, and everybody knows it.”
The way he said it, swearing like that—and Lucas really wasn’t one to swear—somehow got the message through to me. I didn’t believe everyone in the room thought I was gorgeous—that was ridiculous. But I believed that Lucas did.
Lucas thought I was the most f*cking gorgeous girl in the room.
I nearly swooned.
“I said this to you once before, but I’ll say it again,” Lucas said, his words uttered so close to my mouth that it was like he was breathing them into me. “They’re only staring at you because you’re so beautiful. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said weakly.
And then he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.
My hands were trembling as I slipped off the counter, my cheek stinging in the exact spot where he’d placed his lips. I glanced around quickly to see if anyone had noticed the mind-altering moment we’d just shared but nobody was looking at us. The party had gone on around us while we’d been in our little teepee and nobody seemed to care about what Lucas had been saying to me. It seemed incredible.
Lucas’s cell buzzed and he slipped it out of his pocket to check the text. He shook his head as he placed it back in his pocket.
“One more thing,” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulder.
“Anything,” I said. Wow, I’d really drunk the Lucas Kool-Aid.
“Can you ask your sister to stop threatening to cut off my balls if I don’t treat you right?”
“What?” I cried out in alarm, grabbing for the phone in the front pocket of his shirt. He covered it with his fingers. “Did she really write that? I don’t even know how she got your number. Oh my God!”
“It’s okay, I understand,” Lucas said. “It’s natural for her to be overprotective when her sister’s out on her first date ever.”
I literally felt all the blood drain out of my face. “She said what?” I said, though I wasn’t sure it even came out. I might have just been silently mouthing it like a goldfish that had been flung out of its bowl, its little fishy lips opening and closing as it died. Because that was exactly what this felt like. Slow and painful death.
Lucas’s eyes were full of mirth as I worked overtime to salvage my dignity.
“Emily is deranged, okay? She says these things just to mess with me and you, because you’re a guy, and she likes to tell lies and create chaos where guys are involved,” I prattled. “I’ve been on plenty of dates. Lots of dates. I just can’t say no. It’s a real problem. Just because I don’t post pics of my bad dates on Facebook doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. I can’t even tell you the number of times I—”
“Katie!” Lucas said all of a sudden, jarring me out of my monologue. “I’m pretty sure she just meant your first date with me.”
“Oh, right,” I said, biting at my bottom lip, hoping he’d ignore the heap of lies I’d just emptied on his head. “Wait, so…does that mean…I mean…did you want this to be…”
I looked at him hopelessly. Was he really going to make me ask if we were on a date?
“Let’s avoid labels for the time being. I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” he said diplomatically, steering me toward the keg.
I couldn’t help but feel a little let down. Not that I wanted this to be a date. Except that I kind of did.
As we stood waiting for our turn, Lucas standing behind me, he put his chin on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, “But for the record, if it was up to me, this night would have the label of ‘date’ all over it. I have one of those label makers. It’s very high-tech. I’d make a label that says ‘Lucas and Katie’s first date’ and make us both wear them as nametags. I just wanted to make sure we were clear on that.”
I beamed as I drank down my cup of mostly warm beer. I’d never tasted anything better in my whole life.
For the next half hour, Lucas and I crept around the periphery of the party. His hand remained planted on my lower back and he was very attentive, always grabbing me a seat and giving me most of his attention, which didn’t seem to be entirely for my benefit. Though coming to the party had been his idea, he didn’t seem ready to participate in it fully, happy to chat with me about our final assignment for art class instead of playing beer pong. A dance floor erupted in the middle of the living room and I was glad to find he didn’t want to drag me onto it. He didn’t even really seem to want to talk to anyone. I noticed him trying to end every conversation as soon as it began, even one with his roommate Eric, who I wouldn’t have minded chatting with a little longer; he looked a little like Ryan Gosling.
We were talking about maybe cutting out of the party early and getting some ice cream—be still, my beating heart—when a familiar girl came up and nudged Lucas with her hip. I couldn’t help but stare as Lucas smiled widely at the sight of her, set down his beer, and picked her up in an Oleg-style bear hug.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Lucas said, and I could tell he genuinely was. His eyes brightened when he looked at her in a way they hadn’t all night.
As he set the girl back down on her feet, she giggled and tossed her long hair over her shoulder.
It was the girl with the blonde hair, the one I’d seen sitting on the bench with Lucas, the one who’d been so angry with him and whose cheek he’d touched.
My stomach sunk like a rock-filled rowboat.
I didn’t know exactly where to look. Watching Lucas’s absorption in this girl was like pushing razors into my eyes, but at the same time I couldn’t look away. A part of me seemed to feel that I deserved this punishment for thinking I could judge a guy’s character, that I could trust a word Lothario Lucas said to me. I’d always been a terrible judge of character, that’s what had gotten me into all that trouble when I was younger. Guys were always liars, and I was always so eager to believe them—that was my weakness, that was why it was so much better to be alone. At least I didn’t come out looking like I’d been duped. At least alone I still had my pride.
I was just about ready to disappear out the back door without a word—I could just see it out of the corner of my eye, over beside the fridge—when I accidentally bumped into Lucas’s elbow and he turned and blinked at me as though he’d forgotten I was there.
Most gorgeous girl in the room, my ass.
“Oh, Katie,” he said breathlessly. “I want to introduce you to—” but before he could finish, there was a tap on his shoulder and another girl was waiting to talk to him.
“Jennifer,” the blonde girl finished, holding out her hand for me to shake. “I’m so happy to meet you. Lucas talks about you all the time. You’re exactly like he described you, except maybe even prettier.” She smiled sweetly at me as I tried not to look like a deer in the headlights. Had she just called me pretty? And it didn’t even seem like she was being sarcastic. But why would one of Lucas’s girls be so happy to meet me and so eager to give me a compliment?
“Oh, thanks,” I managed to get out before Jennifer barreled on.
“What nationality are you? Italian? I wish I had your skin tone instead of my pasty pink cheeks. My friend Sandra is Italian and she tans so dark in the summer. I burn red as a lobster after, like, five seconds in the sun. Or are you Middle Eastern?”
“I’m half-Danish, half-Indian,” I parroted.
“Wow! That’s so diverse. And you’re an artist, aren’t you? Lucas says you have so much talent. I always wanted to take up the piano, but my mother always said, ‘Jenny, stick to what you’re good at,’ which is child rearing, of course. I’m majoring in education, but I was thinking of taking an art class next year. Do you think…”
Her mouth never stopped moving. It was remarkable. As she continued to chatter I stared at her heart-shaped face, her barely-there blonde eyelashes, and innocent, wide-eyed gaze. She seemed like a genuinely friendly girl, if a little sheltered. I was trying to puzzle out how exactly she and Lucas knew each other and would have loved some help from Lucas himself, but he’d been completely waylaid by the other girl. Her head was blocked from my view by Jennifer’s. As I edged a little to the side, trying to get a better look at her, I heard Jennifer’s monologue dwindle to a stop.
“Oh yeah, that girl’s trouble,” I heard Jennifer whisper in my ear, showing more animosity than I would have thought her capable of. She moved over to my side, giving me an open view of the girl who currently had Lucas’s attention.
If before my stomach had sunk like a broken rowboat, now it fell like the Titanic.
At first I thought it was Monica, the girl we’d met at the game, but a moment later I realized I was wrong. This girl was on another level altogether.
She was a vixen if I’d ever seen one. She had on a red dress so skin-tight I could see the outline of her thong. Her chestnut hair was thick and fell over her shoulders in perfectly sculpted waves. She was stick-thin, with flawless skin and eyebrows arched high like a supermodel’s. She was currently pouting her ruby-red lips at Lucas, who stood facing her with his arms folded, probably trying to hold in the urge to throw his perfect body at hers. It would be like two Barbie dolls making love—they were both that perfect. Seeing them next to each other, I couldn’t help but think they should be together. Who would ever want to be a single piece of perfection when you could be a part of a matching set?
“That’s Taylor,” Jennifer said into my ear. “She’s been after Lucas forever. She scared off his last girlfriend, the little witch with a ‘b.’”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at Jennifer’s inability to swear, and the fact that if there were teams we were suddenly on the same side, when five minutes ago I’d thought she was the enemy. But my good humour was fleeting. Watching Taylor and Lucas together—now she was pawing at his chest, pressing her perfect body against him—was infinitely worse than watching him with Jennifer. This time I found myself turning away for fear of tearing up. Already I could feel the telltale prickle behind my eyes.
“Not that I think she has any kind of a chance with him,” Jennifer said, looking at me worriedly. “She’s totally not his type.”
“Well, it’s none of my business, anyway,” I said as I backed away, not really even looking where I was going. The back door escape plan was a no-go now. It would mean circling around them. I’d have to find another way.
“Oh, but I thought—” Jennifer began.
“I really have to go to the bathroom,” I announced, and, turning abruptly, edged my way through the crowd and out of sight.
Finding an adequate hiding place in a strange house on short notice when you think you might be about to burst into tears is a high order. The first door I tried ended up being locked and the second led me into a small den. The room wasn’t empty, but it was dimly lit and I was able to stand in the corner leaning against a bookcase for a few minutes without being disturbed, which was exactly what I’d been looking for. During those few minutes I decided three things. One, coming to this party had been a stupid idea. Two, leaving the party as soon as possible would be the best way to counteract my original stupid idea. And three, it was about time I got it into my head that Lucas Matthews wasn’t for me, for real this time.
I was moving back toward the door, wrapping my arms around my stomach as I always did when I felt sick, when the flickering TV caught my eye. There were a couple of armchairs pulled up around it and some guys were watching the screen. The sports segment on the local news was playing, but that wasn’t what they were talking about. I froze when I heard Tommy’s name.
“…cut him to pieces,” one guy said. “I read an article about it once that went into all kinds of detail. And the kid was only, what, five? Shit was f*cked up.”
“I don’t get it,” another guy said. I recognized him as Tim, one of the friends Lucas had introduced me to earlier. “Why’s it on the news now?”
The first guy finished swallowing a gulp of beer before replying. “Who the hell knows? The media’s gone ape shit over the case from the beginning. Probably some tiny little piece of evidence came to light, like a hair follicle or something. Who cares? What I want to know is the guy’s name. They never released it because he was a minor when he killed that kid. But I bet you anything the second he gets out somebody will leak it. Can you imagine being the one who has that information? The media would pay a pretty penny for his name.”
I leaned back against the bookcase wanting dearly to leave the room and yet unable to move my feet.
“Wasn’t there a chick, too? Some babysitter?” This voice came from the floor in front of the TV. I froze again, this time with my hand on the doorknob. Suddenly it felt as though my entire arm had turned to ice and I couldn’t move my wrist.
“Oh yeah, I always had a theory about her.” This was the first guy talking again. His voice sounded vaguely familiar to me.
“Oh, do tell, Sherlock,” somebody said.
“Well, you know how women are,” first guy went on. “Always nagging, badgering, bitching. ‘Get me a soda. Hand me the remote. Come pick me up.’”
The whole room laughed. I didn’t see how they could. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room to breathe, let alone laugh.
“Babysitter chick always claimed she was knocked out, didn’t know a thing, didn’t see nothing. Total dead-end investigation-wise, right? Or maybe perfect alibi?”
“Wasn’t she, like, thirteen years old?” said the dude on the floor.
“So what? So was he. The way I figure it, the whole thing was her idea. She was the mastermind behind the whole murder. You know how chicks never want to get their hands dirty, so, yeah, he did the actual cutting. But she was right there next to him, egging him on, whispering in his ear, ‘Do it, you loser. Don’t be a p-ssy! Do it and you can have me right here on his bloody little corp—’”
“Shut your mouth!” I yelled.
Somebody flicked on the overhead light. Though I didn’t remember deciding to do it, I had launched myself off the bookcase and taken the four steps across the room, shoving the guy who’d been talking back in his chair with both my hands planted on his shoulders. When I’d yelled out, I’d done it right into his face. Now I stepped back, panting, as the guy looked up at me with a mildly freaked expression on his face. I recognized him as his face was illuminated by the muted television set. It was one of the guys from the night I’d first met Lucas. It was Two.
“Whoa,” Tim said.
Looking around the room at the other guys, I began to twist my fingers.
“Easy, girl,” Two said, very slowly, as though I was a skittish horse who had just kicked him. “What the f*ck was that about?”
“Well,” I said, my self-righteousness fading quickly under the lights, “I guess I overreacted a little. But I just don’t think you should be making up stories—”
“How do you know it was made up? Maybe it’s the truth. You don’t know,” said the guy still sitting on the floor
I felt my anger rising again, and a steady whistle growing louder in my ears. “That girl is a real person who went through a terrible trauma—”
“She isn’t the one who got cut up. All she did was stand by while that kid got murdered.” The guy on the ground was really starting to piss me off. He was eating a licorice whip, and as he spoke I could see little bits of red stuck between his teeth.
Then Two spoke up. “I think we’re getting away from the matter at hand,” he said, “which is that you owe me an apology.”
There was a hard look in his eye that I remembered from the night with the cat.
“In your dreams,” I said as fiercely as I could while also backing toward the door. As I took another step I bumped into something. Only when I turned to find my route to the door blocked by the guy wearing a football jersey did I realize my real mistake in taking my eyes off of Two. In that second of diverted attention he’d clamped his hands on both of my wrists.
Behind me I heard the door to the room open and close, but it hardly registered.
“Let me go,” I said angrily, struggling against his hands as they pinched at my skin.
“You don’t think I remember you, do you?” Two said, leaning in toward me. He wasn’t a bad looking guy. He had a boyish look about him and light eyes that I might have found attractive if we’d met at some other time when I didn’t want to scratch them out.
He breathed in my face. His breath smelled sour, as though the beer he was drinking was rotting in his stomach. “I remember you,” he said.
A shiver ran down my spine at his words. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the night with the cat and not any events much further in the past.
“Dude, just let her go already,” said the guy at my back, who seemed to be reconsidering his position. Two wasn’t quite so changeable.
He yanked hard on my arms, pulling me even closer. My thighs pressed into the side of the armchair as he brought his ear closer to my lips. “What was that, honey?” he said. “Did you say, ‘I’m sorry, Buck?’”
I swallowed hard as he tugged on my arms again and the whistling in my ears reached a fever pitch. All of a sudden I wasn’t at a party anymore. I was in the woods, with the cold seeping through my clothes and another boy was tugging on my hands and telling me to hurry it up.
“You heard him, Katie Kat. You’d better hurry now. If I get there first who knows what might happen.”
“Let me go!” I screamed directly into Buck’s ear, and to my surprise he did let go of my hands and I fell backwards, landing hard on my ass, my hair falling over my face.
Only when I looked up again did I realize he hadn’t let go of me of his own volition.
Behind the armchair, which must have fallen over during the scuffle, Lucas had Buck trapped on the ground, his forearm jammed under his chin, and his fist raised in the air, ready to smash his face in.
I scrambled over to his side. The room was alive with noise as Buck’s friends yelled at Lucas to let him go—though I noticed nobody made a move to help him. Buck’s bulldog face was an angry shade of red as he strained against Lucas’s arm.
“Let go of him, Lucas,” I said calmly.
Breathing hard, his eyes glued to Buck’s, Lucas didn’t look like he had any intention of letting go. His face was screwed up in a look of intense revulsion I’d never seen on him before.
“Not a chance,” he said gruffly.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Look at me. I’m totally fine. You can let go.”
“See?” Buck choked. “She forgives me. She wants you to let me go.”
“Shut up!” Lucas growled.
Without loosening his grip, Lucas turned his head to look at me. When his eyes met mine they were blazing with fury, but they gradually cooled and I saw the tension in his arm begin to ease.
“That’s right,” I said, nodding. “It’s okay. I’m fine. You can let him go.”
Releasing Buck from his grasp, Lucas sat back on his haunches, massaging his hands. I saw the muscles in Lucas’s jaw flexing as Buck sat up and looked at us both. “Are you guys crazy, or what?” he said.
That was when I punched him in the face.