“Dude.” Gerritt flicked his chin at Brooks. “Your parents are, like, cool with us being here? Drinking, smoking, and whatnot?”
“They’re cool,” Brooks said. “Already half asleep in the cottage. And you gotta go through a maze to get from here to there. I’m pretty sure my dad’s stoned. So he ain’t making it through any maze. Having ex-hippies for parents isn’t half bad.”
He delivered this info in one shot, played it straight, didn’t even crack a smile, and there was a pause before the crew burst into laughter, the ceiling catching it so it seemed to Maddie as if the laughter went on too long.
So that’s how it was going to be. There was her Brooks—the honeysuckle-tasting, making-up-words, sweet-and-chivalrous Brooks. And there was the cool and aloof Brooks he showed to others. He was hers though, she was suddenly sure of that, and the thought ignited a spiral, like the shooting-star fireworks Dom set off every Fourth of July, from her belly to her throat.
Brooks had hooked up his stereo next to a set of turntables. There were at least six black binders, the plastic sleeves filled with CDs to satisfy everyone’s craving. Rolo, always jonesing for classic rock, had his Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. John Anderson, Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest. The perfect accompaniment, Maddie thought, for his habit of crushing beer cans under his Timberland boots. There were home-burned CDs she guessed were dance music. But sounded like new drug fads. Mojo. Trance. Acid House. Thick 3D block letters in red and black Sharpie. That’s his handwriting, she thought. He must be an artist.
After a ton of negotiation, which involved Ricky threatening to leave (and take his hash with him) if they didn’t play Dark Side of the Moon, Brooks dropped six discs in the CD changer. Music filled the ballroom from rounded ceiling to parquet floor. The vast space seemed to devour the sound and spit it back out twice as loud, reminding Maddie of how, on foggy days, the sound of the barges offshore warped so they seemed next door even though they were really miles away.
They got to work getting their buzz on. She knew now, after a month of partying with the East kids, that they took getting wasted seriously.
Bitsy pulled a blue plastic bong out of her purse and called, “Who wants a taste?” and some of the kids—Maddie, Brooks, and Penny included—sat in a circle on the cool dirt-streaked floor and passed the bong.
Rolo and Austin tapped the keg and Vanessa was the first to do a keg stand—her shirt falling down so her lacy black bra showed. John Anderson started to reach for her breast, ready to give it a squeeze, when Bitsy lifted her face from the bong and said, breath held, “Don’t you even fucking think about it, John,” right before she let out a stream of thick smoke and fell into a fit of coughing.
An hour later, when Tribe’s “Scenario” blasted from the tall speakers, all the girls, even Penny, were in the middle of the ballroom dancing and singing the stuttering lyrics, pointing at the boys with their lips pressed in pouts. Bitsy trotted out of the circle and grabbed Brooks, pulling him into the crowd of girls, and Maddie felt Penny shoot her a look but pretended not to notice, kept singing, Here we go yo here we go yo So what so what so what’s the scenario. But when the song reached Gots to get the loot so I can bring home the bacon, and the usually shy Rolo was dancing, his belly jiggling under his threadbare Grateful Dead tee, Maddie saw Bitsy gyrating her lithe body around Brooks. Spencer was watching Maddie watch Brooks and his eyes narrowed in disgust before he turned away.
Maddie searched for Gerritt, knowing he’d be good for busting up Bitsy making moves on Brooks. Then the music went dead. Her ears rang in the sudden silence.
The kids groaned, What the fuck? and there was Bitsy standing by the stereo, clapping her hands. “Chop-chop!” she sang, “That’s enough whirling-dervish shit for now. It’s game time.”
“Chop-chop?” Brooks whispered, his breath tickling Maddie’s ear.
She knew what “game time” meant and prayed it was Spin the Bottle, not Seven Minutes in Heaven. Not much happened in seven minutes locked in a closet with a boy—cold hands slipping under her shirt, over her bra, as she massaged some guy’s hard-on over his khaki shorts while the rest of the kids whispered on the other side of the door. But there was that awful moment when time was up and the door opened, light blinding the couple as they returned to the world, faces flushed, hair mussed, lips raw. Like Adam and Eve after the snake (or was it God, she couldn’t remember which) told them off. Seven minutes with Brooks she’d do times ten, but odds were high she’d pick another boy’s name out of the smelly Mets cap Bitsy would pass around.
What a relief to hear from Brooks that there were no closets in the ballroom, and the players settled in a circle around a few thick candles that smelled like pine trees. It was dark out now and the arched windows above were an underwater blue.
Not everyone participated. She’d spotted John and Vanessa sneaking off to make out in a dark corner after swallowing two pills of E. Rolo and Spencer were also rolling hard and had left for the woods to climb trees. She’d been able to avoid Spencer all night so far, which, she thought, probably meant he was also avoiding her, and that was just fine by her.
That left six. An even split of boys and girls.
“Lucky six!” Bitsy sang. She coordinated the events with a bossiness that reminded Maddie of PTA moms overseeing school bake sales. At first, Maddie had guessed it was the thrill of sex that excited Bitsy, but she’d come to understand that Bitsy was like the vampires in the Stephen King novel she’d read late at night under her bedsheets with a flashlight. Bitsy fed on humiliation.
Like now, as Penny locked lips with twitchy Ricky, Penny grabbing the collar of his Izod shirt with both hands, Bitsy called out, “Too much tongue, girl! I give that kiss a five, tops.” As if, Maddie thought, she were judging an Olympic ice-skating competition.
“That was some Deep Throat shit,” Ricky said with a shaky sigh before making a big show of using his shirt to wipe his mouth.
While everyone laughed (but Maddie), Penny stared at the shadows flickering across the floor. Poor thing had a major crush on dickhead Ricky.
They spun the bottle as Alice in Chains hummed from the speakers, telling a story about a man in a box buried in his own shit. Maddie got Gerritt and gave Bitsy a quick shrug (asking if it was cool) before leaning over and giving him a quick peck on the lips.
“Thanks, babycakes,” Gerritt said.
The circle laughed and Maddie found Brooks’s eyes. He winked and she was relieved.