Nineteen
Annalie
My Lyft drops me off in front of Mike’s house. While I’ve never seen it before, I have driven by the neighborhood and I had a good idea of what I was going to be getting into. It’s massive, beigey-tan all around, and looks like three houses meshed into one. There are wings jutting out from all sides. It’s ugly, but it sure does scream wealth.
I hate going to parties alone.
Violet is on vacation with her family.
Daniel told me I shouldn’t go, but I have to.
I need to see Thom. He’s been texting me nonstop since the video came down, and we’ve barely had time to talk. I’m chaotic inside, and I need to see him. If only to know how I feel about us. If there’s anywhere for us to go from here. I hope there is. In the beginning, there was something that was brilliant and golden about being with Thom that made all the other stuff go away.
I want to know if it’s still there.
Besides, nobody’s ever turned down an invite to Mike’s house, and I’m not going to be the first.
It smells like beer when I step inside, like somebody has already spilled something onto the carpet. Is it possible that Mike’s parents don’t know that he throws ragers when they’re gone, or do they just not care? What kind of life would I be living if my mother didn’t care whether I used our house for beer-soaked social events?
There are probably already around forty people here, milling about in the kitchen, hanging over the railing on the second floor, which opens into the foyer.
I don’t see Thom or Mike or the other guys. Nor do I see Alexa, Joy, and Christine, who were ever so pleasant when they ran into me at the mall earlier this week. I always thought they were generally pretty cool people. Nice to me in classes. We weren’t friends, but I also didn’t have anything against them. They ran in Thom’s circle of friends.
It’s incredible what comes out of people when you’re not expecting it. They came up to me to say hi at first, but the video came up right away, and then.
Well. When you peel a layer of the onion back, the real sharpness comes out.
I wondered for a moment there whether they knew, but I could tell they didn’t. The boys hadn’t told anybody else. For once, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
I am the only one who knows. Me and Daniel, anyway.
The kitchen is all chrome fixtures and pristine white Shaker cabinets. There’s a cooler full of beer and a glass fishbowl with a bright red drink. “Has vodka in it. It’s pretty good,” a girl from my AP Lit class says by way of greeting. Her name is Katarina. “I never see you at these.”
I grab a Solo cup from a stack on the counter and ladle myself a cupful, just so I have something to hold. My hands otherwise have a habit of losing track of what to do and just flutter around awkwardly. “Have you seen Thom?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I think he’s upstairs. You guys are together now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen?”
There must be something in my face, because she cuts in quickly, “I didn’t mean anything by that—it’s just I’ve never seen you together at school.”
Now it’s my turn to shrug. “My first summer job. Saw him a lot there.”
Speaking of summer jobs, somebody I haven’t seen in months turns the corner and makes eye contact. Audrey. She’s wearing a black velvet skirt and a floral top, and her golden-red hair is swept in a messy but studied bun perched on the back of her head.
I hate it, but I do wish I could make my hair texture look half as good as hers. My hair is too flat in front and not fine enough to do a beachy look.
She’s already spotted me. Too late to avoid her now. Her eyebrows jump in surprise before she manages to hide it. “Oh, it’s you,” she says. “I wondered where you disappeared to.” She pauses, slightly awkward. “How are you doing?”
“Fine, I guess.”
“I hear you’re dating Thom, so that’s exciting, but not unexpected. I guess that’s why you’re here?”
“Maybe I’m here because I’m cool and not just Thom’s girlfriend,” I say. It comes out sharper than I mean.
Katarina’s eyes widen. She looks down into her cup, then turns away to escape the circle of conversation, like yeeeesh.
Audrey puts her hands up. “Whoa.”
“Sorry,” I reply, abashed. “Kind of aggressive.”
“Kind of? Damn. I just meant that it makes sense you’re here.”
“Well,” I say, trying to save this conversation, which might be a lost cause, “at least I’m out of your way at the Sprinkle Shoppe now.”
She stares at me. “Do you think I hate you or something?”
“Do you not? I mean, at least you didn’t seem to love me when we worked together.”
“Yeah, because you were bad at everything, which made my life harder, but I assume you’re decent at other things.” She sighs. “The other girl who replaced you is worse anyway.”
I laugh, surprised. “Sorry, that was my bad. I jumped to conclusions.” It occurs to me that part of the reason I didn’t like her was because I thought she was competing with me for Thom. And maybe at the time, she was. But seeing her here, leaning against the counter and relaxed, I think maybe I misjudged her.
“Any chance you want to come back?”
“I don’t think the manager would hire me back, but in any case, I work at Bakersfield downtown now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You should come by sometime. Believe it or not, I am actually a much better baker than an ice cream scooper.”
Audrey grins. “I’ll believe that.”
I can’t believe Audrey and I are getting along. Of all people. Another thing I would never have guessed at the beginning of the summer.
“I’ve never been to one of these parties,” I confess to her.
“They’re not that great. I tend to come for the first hour and a half and then bail before it gets too sloppy or before the cops inevitably get called for violation of noise ordinances.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Applying to colleges this fall. Can’t get in trouble.”
Mike finally comes in the back door, hauling a giant aluminum beer keg over his shoulder. Seeing him for the first time since the diner makes me uncomfortable again, like I am somewhere I don’t belong. He sees me and flashes a smile, perfectly innocuous. “Hi, Annalie! Glad you were able to make it! Thom’s bringing some stuff inside.”
He’s never been anything but nice to me. It makes me doubt myself. I shake my head.
Audrey looks at me curiously. “Hey,” she says awkwardly.
I pull myself out of my thoughts. “Mm-hmm?”
“I’m sorry about the thing that happened earlier this summer. When you quit.”
For a second, I actually have no idea what she’s talking about, and I have to swim through my memory to remind myself of my last day at the Sprinkle Shoppe. Oh, right. I take a big gulp of the drink in my hand. It’s deceptively bright red and pretty-looking. It tastes sweet and bitter at the same time.
“Do they have any suspects? From the video, I mean? I saw that your sister posted it.”
I twist my lips. “No.”
She shakes her head. “That’s terrible. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I grunt.
“I just can’t believe it would happen here.”
“Probably just some dumb kids.” The lie feels slimy coming out of my mouth, like it sticks all over my tongue.
“Probably. I just can’t imagine it was anybody we know.”
I nod, feeling ill. I drink more jungle juice. That feeling of wanting to escape this town comes over me again. It must be so freeing to be somewhere where nobody knows you.
Finally, Thom rounds the corner and spots me. He strides right over, puts his arm around my waist, and gives me a kiss. His expression is warm and happy, no sign of the apprehension from when we saw each other last. “Hi, A! Glad you were able to make it.”
He smiles at me lazily—and he still has the most perfect teeth I’ve ever seen. He looks over my head to the others. “This girl is amazing.” His praise warms me. I realize that if I thought seeing him would in some way inspire a snap decision one way or the other, I was wildly wrong.
The crowd that always seems to gather around Thom wherever he is glows in our direction.
“You’ve never been here before, right?”
I shake my head.
“Let’s give you the tour.” He steers me out of the kitchen and back into the foyer. I glance over my shoulder back at Audrey, who gives me a wink and thumbs-up. Mike and the other guys are in the foyer, setting up a beer pong table and filling cups. They wave at us. “Come on,” Thom says. He leads me to the back. There’s a piano room (a room dedicated entirely to a piano), a formal dining room with a crystal chandelier and a white wooden china cabinet (seems entirely too fragile to be twenty feet away from a major keg operation), a living room, and a “den,” which I think is just a fancy word for a living room when you already have another living room.
The backyard is fenced and pristine. We go upstairs, where there are a few people lingering in the hallways. His hand is touching the small of my back. “This house is huge,” I say.
“It’s pretty nice. There’s a home movie theater downstairs too—you’ll have to come back when there are fewer people. Mike has us over to watch movies sometimes.”
We peer into Mike’s room. “Are you sure we’re supposed to be up here?”
Thom grins. “Yeah, sure.” He flips on the light.
To my surprise, Mike’s room is immaculate. I don’t know what I expected, exactly, but Thom’s room has the vibe of a teenage boy: a bit messy, undone bedspread, clothes on the floor. Mike’s room has none of that. Thom has band posters on his wall that I don’t recognize because I’m not cool. Mike has framed paintings of nature. On his bookshelf, Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, and lopsided clay sculptures clearly formed in elementary school and painted with a young kid’s hand. Some old, well-loved stuffed animals line an artfully distressed sideboard. His room is kind of . . . sweet.
“I know. Mike’s room is decorated like an old lady featured in House and Garden.”
I choke back an unexpected laugh. “I promise not to make fun of him later. I’ll try, anyway.”
“You don’t have to try,” Thom says confidently. “We all don’t.”
“We all have our faults. My room looks like if a hoarder really liked both rabbits and the color blue and only those things.”
“Rabbits?” He quirks an eyebrow. He has never been in my room because he has never been inside my house.
“Not real ones.”
“Okay, because I was imagining a bunch of rabbits just hopping around your room.”
“I always wanted a pet ra...
