The car slowed as Harry searched for a parking spot. The smell was suffocating, all hot and heavy, inescapable. I bounced my heels in place and flapped the pages of a paperback I had pulled from my purse to give to Graham, but had forgotten about. I was snapping the cover open and closed when Graham pressed it shut.
Light from outside shone as a bar across his flinty irises. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles that would have appeared boring on a face less complicated than his. “There aren’t actually bovine corpses left in there, Izzie,” he told me softly.
“I know that.”
“Do you?” He tapped my bouncing knee. I dug my heels into the car’s floor.
“You have to read this one next.” I tossed the paperback to him. He turned it over to the front cover.
“If I’m lifting the moratorium on dystopian, you’re going to start reading detective novels again.”
“We’ll see.” I sounded wrong, nervous. He cocked his head. Slumber Fest was not my scene any more than it was Graham’s. Or Harry’s. We didn’t go to our classmates’ house parties or beach ditch days, half because we weren’t invited and half because we had more fun in the barn. We could be ourselves there.
For some reason I wanted to convince Graham I wasn’t as miserable as he suspected. “There’ll be Jell-O shots—I’ve never had one. And it won’t kill us to mingle with the kids we’ve gone to school with forever.”
“Uh-uh,” Harry said. “I’m here on official news blog business. Covering the story. No mingling.”
“Slumber Fest is an adventure,” I said emphatically.
“What I don’t get is why Slumber Fest is at a slaughterhouse,” Harry said.
“Because that’s the tradition. It’s . . . it’s an institution,” Viv told him, her voice high and adamant.
He gave her a look like, But why?
“I don’t think it’s because our classmates like the idea of mass cow homicide,” Graham said. “The slaughterhouse bit of Slumber Fest is irrelevant. The chills are the point. Chills and thrills are like a permission slip to do whatever or whoever you want.” Graham crinkled the corners of his eyes at me.
“There are so many better places,” Harry said. “Like down on the beach.”
“Or the picnic spots on the hills,” I said.
“Or the lighthouse in Berrington,” he answered.
“Or the old pier’s carousel house. Or Ghost Tunnel,” I said.
“Oh, there’ll be ghosts. The spirits of massacred cows will haunt all the meat eaters,” Viv boomed, and cracked up.
I laughed too, though nervously. I wasn’t all hyped up on adrenaline because of chills and thrills. It was our senior year. Soon we’d scatter. We wouldn’t live on the same street. The four of us wouldn’t go to the same college, and even if we were no farther than me at UCLA, Graham in Santa Barbara, Viv in San Francisco, and Harry who knows where because he needed financial aid, it wouldn’t be the same. Siblings move but stay close because of blood and bossy parents. I wanted a force as strong for us. I wanted something gigantic to happen that would make geography irrelevant.
There was a sense of shared anticipation among our classmates at the slaughterhouse’s entrance, like in class right before summer break. It made me jump a little, even though circles of conversation didn’t open up as we squeezed in. The artsy alternative kids, poetry girls, and the Brass Bandits shared space. The lacrosse players, arms bracing coolers, had declared temporary peace with the soccer team, and they were knocking around and feinting punches.
Viv’s arm tightened around mine. The year before, three senior girls had started the night single and ended up coupled. Viv didn’t have a specific boy in mind—Luke McHale was a hundred crushes in the past. She wanted a tall, creative, anything-but-blond guy. The slaughterhouse was where she planned to make it happen.
Right then I followed Viv’s narrowing eyes. Her last and most important criteria for a boy: They couldn’t be tainted by her nemesis, Amanda Schultz. Amanda was flanked by her two best friends, the girls Graham called imminent sorority girls, Rachel Wyndamer and Jess Clarkson. To Graham, the title wasn’t a judgment but a fact.
Viv’s features pinched as she stared at Amanda and her plush pink beanie with rabbit ears. Viv nudged my side for me to look. “I think Amanda’s stuffed animal hats begin as actual stuffed animals she steals from little kids.”
“But she only steals them from kids with cancer,” Graham chimed in, propping an elbow on my shoulder.
“No, not kids, babies,” Harry said.
A trace of a smile warmed Viv’s eyes.
“Or maybe she’s a witch and they begin as real animals she captures and kills to stuff and turn into hats,” I said.
Viv’s heart-shaped face exuded light. “She’s a rabid stuffed animal.”
“With a PhD in psychological torture,” Graham said, the interest thinning in his voice.
“Ironic that she used to give me tons of grief over how I dressed and now she wears decapitated toys on her head to cover up how pure evil she is,” Viv said. I pulled her closer.
“We should pretend she doesn’t exist. Just ignore her,” Harry said.
Viv’s smile soured and she whispered, “Except she’s already erased me.”
“No one can erase you,” I said.
Graham shrugged. “She did literally erase Viv’s name in last year’s yearbook.” She’d substituted “Nobody” for “Vivian Marlo” under Viv’s picture. Viv either wanted to end Amanda or be her. I wasn’t sure then which she’d choose.
Word reached us soon that the fire department was inside, checking that the building wasn’t going to cave in on us. Graham shook his head, feigning disgust. “How pedestrian.”
“This is supposed to be death-defying,” I said, stomping a foot.
“I’m going home if I’m not risking life and limb,” Graham complained, garnering us dirty looks. Our classmates did not usually appreciate our brand of humor.
The bodies coiled tighter. My arm pressed into Harry’s, but I angled away from the contact. I never took Harry’s hand or jumped on his back like I did with Graham. You had to ground Graham like you would a live wire. Grab him before his stories got out of control. Except then you’d catch a little of his electricity and be that much more alive for it.
Harry wore a fixed and intent expression. Next to Amanda was Conner Welsh and his two closest friends, Trent and Campbell. Amanda, Conner, and their friends made up a little flock of despicable sheep. Our togetherness made us outcasts; their togetherness made them nasty tyrants. Most kids paid homage in order to be ignored by them. Viv and Harry weren’t so lucky. Just then, Conner snatched a bottle from a paper bag in one of the Brass Bandits’ hands. The trumpet player, Henry, whirled around and started to protest, saw it was Conner, and instead raised his hands in surrender.
Conner swigged, his boys jeering at Henry until he disappeared into the crowd to get away. Laughing, Conner mimed slapping the butt of cheerleader standing in front of him, Trent thrusted his hips in her direction, and Campbell, usually the least offensive of them, belted out a burp that scaled a full octave.
“Science is wrong about Neanderthals going extinct,” I said to Harry, jerking my chin at the boy band—Graham’s name for them.