“Ow.”
While I was in the sink, Ned arrived with armfuls of laundry, sheets, blankets. He’s already got a towel turbaned around his head, and he’s wrapping Sof in a blanket as I grab a sheet and tie it round myself like a toga. Now it’s one of Grey’s parties.
“No, you—” Thomas comes clattering through the door with a mop and bucket and stops, staring at us all. “Those were for the floor? To soak up the water?”
“Fuck the water,” says Ned cheerfully, and I laugh. “We’re drowning men anyway—Papa’s going to kill us, whatever we do.”
“But we should at least…” Thomas is goggling at the wreck of the kitchen, and I smile at him. He nods, not unhappily. We’re okay, I think.
“Tomorrow!” declares Ned, grabbing a bottle of rum that survived the melee. He tucks it under one arm, and Sof under another. “We’ll worry about it then.”
“A last drink on death row,” says Sof, and he kisses her on the head.
“Yes! You get it.” He starts leading us out to the garden. “Let’s warm up outside. Grots, did any mugs survive?”
I grab what I can and smile shyly at Thomas. He gathers bottles and mugs with me, meeting my eyes and smiling as we follow them.
Outside, the garden is quiet and inky dark. Pretty much everyone’s disappeared. A few entwined couples are melting into the trees, and as we pass a group of Ned’s friends in the driveway, there’s a sweet smell in the air—a tiny orange firefly is flitting from hand to hand.
Meg and Jason are on the bench outside the house, kissing. I float above them, unbothered.
“We’re going to drink rum,” I tell her as we walk by, a peace offering. “Come with us.”
She gawps at our appearance, then she and Jason follow us through the dark to the apple tree.
Ned and Sof are already cross-legged underneath it, buried in the thick grass, a gold-plated Titania and Oberon.
“A toast,” Ned announces, his towel turban wobbling, as we sit down. “Thomas, my man, the glasses.”
Among a fuss of mugs and eggcups, rum is poured. I open the bottle of coke I rescued and top everyone’s mugs up. It fizzes over the top of Meg’s glass, onto her hand. She giggles, trying to lick it off her fingers.
“Ooh,” she says. “Wet.”
“It’s just pop,” says Sof. “Have you seen us?”
She shakes out her hair, which is drying into the crazy frizz she usually semitames. Ned unwraps his towel to reveal a huge perm, his eyeliner dangerously Alice Cooper. I gaze at them in the half-light. It’s not that they look particularly alike underneath all the razzle-dazzle—and Ned and I actually do. But they both have this sense of themselves. They belong. Belong to a band of loons marching to the beat of Gaia-knows-what drum, but still.
But it’s okay, because I belong as well. I’m trouble times two. At least for the next couple of weeks. I sip my rum, leaning into Thomas’s arm. He’s quiet. I squeeze his knee, and he smiles at me, then peers into his glass, fishing out a leaf.
“What happened, anyway?” asks Jason.
“Did you all go skinny dipping?” asks Meg dreamily. “Everyone’s wet.”
“With my little sister? Gross,” says Ned.
“Yes, we’re wet,” says Sof patiently.
“Did you know Gottie and Jason skinny-dipped?” says Meg, not listening. Too late I see she’s stoned, really stoned. In the glow from Jason’s cigarette, her eyes are tennis balls. “Jason told me they swam together in the canal. Like mermaids…”
Ned is staring at Jason. Sof bites her lip, glancing between me and Thomas—guessing he doesn’t know the half of it. He tight-smiles at me, like he’s not thrilled by this revelation, but he’s not quite allowed to be annoyed either. I can’t find my tongue; I think I left it in the kitchen.
“Mermaids,” Meg giggles, staring at her fingers like they’re brand-new. Then she looks up at us all, wide-eyed and full of wonder, and I know what she’s going to say before she says it. I can’t stop her. Here’s where my tiny white lie, a misunderstanding I could have cleared up days ago, comes back and destroys me. “They had sex.”
“Fuck,” says Jason. He stubs his cigarette out on the grass, then looks at me across the circle. We stare at each other for a long moment, in it together. But not, I suppose, anymore.
“Come on,” he says to Meg, starting to help her up. “Time to go home.”
“Jason.” Ned glowers at him, his hair crackling and huge. “Piss off, would you?”
“Ned,” Sof says softly, putting a hand on his arm.
Jason looks around at us all, staring up at him in a circle. In slow motion, he mouths a “sorry” at me, and ambles off into the darkness. Meg wobbles and Sof scrambles to stand up. We all do. I can’t look at Thomas. My head throbs.
Meg shakes Sof off and stumbles across to me. She leans right in, looking at my face. “You’re pretty,” she says, trailing her finger down my cheek. “Isn’t she so pretty, Thomas?”