CHAPTER SEVEN
“This is it,” Tara said, her face a shiny silver in the moonlight.
I looked at the house at the end of the block, the throngs of people outside, their laughter and drunken cries filling the air. Cars littered the street, all to be driven home drunk later.
“You having second thoughts?” she asked. Her voice was small, telling me how much she was depending on me. If I didn’t go into the party with her, she wouldn’t go at all. And all her hopes of winning over Angus, Adrianna Gee’s boyfriend, would be dashed. Tara was my closest friend and yet I was still nothing but an excuse for her to come here.
I nodded quickly, despite the warnings from Jacob. The warnings that Adrianna couldn’t be trusted. That she had some deal with the devil. That all her friends were against me, waiting to eat my soul. Even though I hadn’t seen Jacob for a while, his inane ramblings were still fresh in my mind. I hadn’t told Tara any of this, of course. I knew she wanted to go to the party, even though we weren’t invited.
Luckily, Tara wasn’t a fat ugmo like myself. She was freakishly tall for her age, which did garner her a few choice nicknames, but honestly I’d rather be tall than fat. Besides, she was pretty and slim and if she wore dresses and short skirts instead of her tomboy outfit of cargo pants and vintage camp shirts, she would have turned more than a few heads. The point was, she’d be allowed into the party. I wasn’t too sure about me.
“Yeah, I’m having second thoughts,” I admitted. “But I’m down. I told you’d come and I will. I just…”
“Just what?” Tara said, pulling out a joint and lighting it.
I watched her puff back on the crinkly paper and inhale until she was a shade paler. Then she exhaled, the pot smoke drifting up into starry late winter sky.
She passed the joint to me and I inhaled half-heartedly. It would take the edge off but pot just felt like child’s play these days.
“But…” I said slowly, already losing my train of thought. Should I tell her? Oh, fuck it.
I gave her back the joint and said, “I just heard that these people didn’t like me.”
“Who told you that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A boy.”
“What boy?” she asked suspiciously.
“You wouldn’t know him. His name’s Jacob.”
She gave me a disbelieving look before coughing her lungs out.
“Jacob? Mohawk dude who killed himself?” she asked between coughs.
“He attempted to kill himself,” I explained. “And yeah, so what, it’s him. He’s been walking me home a lot.” Every day for weeks, until the last week when he was acting just a little too crazy for my liking.
“I’m pretty sure he died, Perry,” Tara said.
“Oh yeah, so I’ve been talking to a dead person,” I said, laughing. Child’s play or not, the pot was strong and I was already becoming more removed from the situation.
Tara laughed too. “Well I dunno. His funeral was in the paper the other week but maybe I was too fucked up.”
I let the giggles flow. “Or I’m too fucked up and I’m talking to ghosts.”
“Either way, he sounds like a liar. No one hates you Perry. No one even knows who you are.”
That would have stung more a few minutes ago but now her words left just a soft pang in my heart. “Hey…”
“Sorry, Palomino. I just meant that no one cares about you.”
I raised my brow at her. Still no better.
“I mean, you’re harmless, Perry. No one hates you. Seriously. Let’s just go inside and you’ll see. It’ll be cool.”
I nodded and we resumed walking down the dark, barely lit suburban street. I was high as a kite for some reason, though it could have been the two-liter of Canadian cider that we shared on the bus earlier.
And then Tara was gone. And I was alone on the street.
I looked around me wildly, seeing only shapely shadows created by the moon and an empty, wide cul-de-sac. Tara was nowhere to be seen and the noise from the party had ceased. It was like time stopped, everyone on earth had left, and only I remained.
“Perry,” I heard a whisper.
I turned and looked in the direction of the house. In the blackness, a lone streetlight turned on. It illuminated Jacob’s spikey-haired silhouette as he stood there, frozen on the spot, a gas can in his hand.
“Let’s go in together,” he said. And without rhyme or reason, I found myself moving toward him, a creeping shadow on the lifeless street.