“Discussions of cultural appropriation aside, it’s all good!” She spins to face Laney and me, and, without warning, throws both arms around us in a suffocating squeeze. Considering her size, her upper-body strength is impressive.
“Hi! I’m Anna! It’s so great to meet you!” Everything she says sounds like an exclamation point.
This time it’s Jake trying not to laugh. I shoot him daggers over Anna’s shoulder.
“Long time, no see.” Danny and Jake exchange some complicated handshake thing, the way guys do. He has on a pair of ultraskinny jeans that look a lot like the ones Laney is always buying, and his bangs are long and swept to one side. “When was the last time? That sit-in in March?”
The voice that answers isn’t Jake’s. “And look how much was accomplished on behalf of immigrant rights.”
Another girl sits on Danny’s other side. Her long legs are crossed, arms folded across her chest, and she has dark hair cut severely at the chin, emphasizing her strong jaw and thin mouth. That’s Gwen—which I realize, not due to my amazing intuition, but because she straightens in her chair and says, “I’m Gwen.” I assume that information is for the benefit of Laney and me, but it’s hard to tell since she isn’t even looking at us. Her gaze is solely focused on Jake.
“Hi,” I say, opening my mouth to make the obligatory introduction when Jake sets down his chair, its metal legs striking the sand sharply.
“You look good,” he says. The words come out through gritted teeth. “I see college is treating you well. Too bad you didn’t get into Pratt, though. I hear their art program is top-notch.”
The antagonism in his tone doesn’t escape me. Neither does the way Gwen looks from him to me and back again. That is definitely the look of a possessive ex. After Laney dumped Dustin and started dating one of his friends, he had that same look all of the time.
“It’s too bad you’ve decided not to pursue secondary education at all, Jay.” Gwen has that affected, high-pitched baby voice that some girls at my high school like to adopt, thinking it’s cutesy and endearing when it of course has the opposite effect. It makes me want to stab my eardrums. “It’s really expanded my horizons. But I guess you’re happy at the Oleo.”
She bares her teeth in a smile that is anything but friendly. Jake makes a noncommittal noise in his throat, unfolding his chair and flopping down on it. I follow suit and search for Laney. She’s across the circle, lounging comfortably on Seth’s lap, laughing at something he’s said.
Typical Laney, already making fast friends. She has a knack for effortlessly fitting into any crowd—the kind of girl who walks into a room and leaves an hour later with fifteen new people added to her cell phone’s contact list. Usually half of them are potential make-out partners. Funny how we can be best friends, when she’s so magnetic and outgoing, and I’m—well. Not.
“Did you go to the Diego Lopez show?” Jake is saying. “I heard he played on campus.”
Gwen snorts. “Like I would listen to that dreck.”
“I haven’t seen him live, but I’ve heard his stuff. It’s pretty good.”
“Yeah, but you like crap music. I mean, you like the Doors,” Gwen says with a hint of disgust, like this name drop explains everything. She loops her arm through his and looks at him pityingly. “You poor, unenlightened soul.”
“Uh—” I clear my throat. “What’s wrong with the Doors?”
She stares at me as if I’ve grown a second head. “Only everything! Jim Morrison was nothing but a junkie with an overblown sense of superiority. The only reason anyone still gives a crap about him at all is because he died young. Bee-eff-dee.” Her arm untangles from Jake’s, and she shakes her head at him. “Really, Jay, for as much as you claim to be so dedicated to worthwhile music, you do hold some seriously blasphemous opinions.”
I make a sound, the start of a laugh, and she jerks her head around to look at me. I quickly shut my mouth. This girl is too ridiculous. How does she even exist? Maybe she’s thinking the same thing about me, because when she rises from her chair, she shoots a parting dirty look my way before sauntering off to the other side of the circle, hips swinging. I wait until she’s out of earshot before turning to Jake.
“Really, Jay, what are you thinking,” I mimic. “You poor soul!”
“‘Unenlightened,’ my ass!” he mutters under his breath. “She’s the one who never stops verbally fellating the Smiths.”
“’Bee-eff-dee.’” I stretch each syllable out so they sound even more ridiculous and cringe. “Who talks like that?”
“Gwen, apparently,” he says. He stares after her as she leans on Danny’s chair. “Forget her. She thinks everything and everyone is overrated.”
“So, how long did you two date?” I ask casually.
Startled, he tears his gaze off of Gwen and turns it to me. “What? Who said—”
“Please, I’m not blind. The unnecessary touching, the excessive nickname usage, the death glare imposed on any female in your two-mile radius. All classic signs.”
Gwen is certainly…interesting. Is that the kind of girl Jake is attracted to? Petulant and pretentious? She’s pretty, I’ll give her that, but none of her outer beauty could really be worth putting up with the constant bitchitude and baby voice. Unless Jake is ruled entirely by his dick—which is totally possible. Most guys are.
If that’s the case, well, good for him. He probably deserves someone of her caliber.
“Six months, junior year,” he admits. “She ends up dumping me for some guy in her art class at the community college. Says I’m not ‘mature’ enough for her, but she hopes we can still be friends. Woe is me, right?”
“She still dating the guy?”
“I think that relationship lasted all of three seconds.” Jake grins like he can’t help himself. “No, she goes to school in Ann Arbor now. She’s just on break.”
“That’s a shame. Here I thought we were on a fast track to bee-eff-eff-dom.”
He snickers, scoops a stick off the ground and pokes idly at a log in the embers. “Yeah, the two of you really hit it off.”
I’m not surprised she doesn’t like me. Most people don’t. I guess because I don’t hide the fact that I can’t stand people like Gwen, who take themselves too seriously, or people who don’t take themselves seriously enough. I’m not like Laney, the chameleon, fitting herself into every social situation seamlessly.
Like right now—Laney’s already deep in conversation, perched on the arm of Seth’s chair as she compares favorite current fashion trends with Anna and Danny. I suspect from Danny’s passion for eyeliner and scarves that as far as make- out partners go, he would be as likely a candidate for me as, say, Gwen. Hell, even Anna would probably be more interested, if her constant giggling and hooded looks sent in Laney’s direction are any indication. Seth keeps mostly to himself. After a while of observing the ongoing discussion, he slides a beat-up black case out from beside his chair, withdrawing an acoustic guitar. He sits back and strums it a few times clumsily.
“Jay, you should play something,” Gwen suggests from across the crackling fire. Somehow from the way she says it, and the dark look Jake gives her in response, I can tell a gauntlet has been thrown. Maybe some You Got Served-style dance-off shenanigans will ensue. That would be—well, that would be pretty awesome, actually.
Jake frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“No, man, you should.” Seth comes over to hand him the guitar. “You’re way better than I am.”
Jake accepts it hesitantly. I watch as he draws it into his lap, shifts the strap over his head and slides his fingers down the neck of the guitar. His expression is oddly subdued when he bends his head down, hair falling across his eyes.
Everyone goes quiet as he begins to play. His singing is strong and clear, fingers finding the right chords with ease, eyes fixed on his hands. Shadows thrown from the fire play across his face while he sings about the day the music died in this plaintive, striking voice. Watching him, I can s
ee how connected to the music he is. The guitar is like an extension of himself.
As he launches into the livelier chorus, Laney springs off of Seth’s lap, grabs his hand and starts skipping in a circle around the campfire, one arm waving over her head. Anna joins in, and Danny, too, all of them twirling and dancing and belting out the lyrics in a hilariously off-key chorus. Only Gwen, Jake and I remain seated. Jake watches the commotion with a big grin while Gwen stares at her nails, bored, a liquor bottle dangling in one hand.
I watch them as they run and dance and sing in the same way that little kids do, carefree and not at all self-conscious. Like you do before you’re old enough to worry about how dumb you’ll look to anyone else. I wish I could be like them. Able to let go that way. But instead I’m the girl who sits on the sidelines, unable to feel anything but anger, my heart all hollowed out, my insides closed off, iced over.
Listening to Jake, though…I’m thawing. A little. Not enough to get me to dance—seriously, that’ll never happen—but enough to enjoy it. The dancing, the fire, the moon. His song.
Even though everyone else is singing, too, Jake’s voice carries the loudest. I catch his eye across the circle, and his grin spreads wider across his face. I smile back, ignoring the stink-eye I know Gwen is giving me without even looking her way. My attention turns to the loop of crazy teenagers romping around the fire pit, wild and untamed in the flickering firelight, like gypsies.
They all burst into spontaneous applause as soon as Jake strums the last chord. I clap my hands, too, as Jake just smiles and slips off the guitar. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him look downright sheepish.
“That was great,” gushes Anna, after they’ve all calmed down enough to take their places around the fire again. “Seriously, Jake, you should—”
“A road trip, huh?” Gwen cuts in, raising her eyebrows at Jake. “Why California?”
So she doesn’t know. Who did Jake tell? Anyone? I don’t think he’d be that stupid, but then, I don’t really know him, do I?
Before Jake can whip up an answer, Danny says, “You should go to L.A. Track down Paris Hilton. Throw a can of paint on her or something.”
“You know, we’re driving down to Chicago tomorrow to meet Devon. There’s this huge antiwar demonstration at Union Park.” Seth tucks his chin over Laney’s shoulder, and she leans back into him. It’s so weird to me how comfortable she can be with someone she’s known for less than three hours. “Why don’t you guys drive down with us?”
“Jay doesn’t do protests,” Gwen cuts in. Her tone is so icy I’m pretty sure the air temperature actually drops a few degrees when she opens her mouth. “Not anymore.”
What is that supposed to mean? Jake’s face reveals nothing. As usual.
Laney clasps her hands together. “We should totally go!” She looks over at me and does her best pout, the one she reserves for conning people into getting whatever she wants. It usually works, too. “Can we, Harper?”
“Um, I guess.” I glance at Jake to see his mouth turned down. “I mean, Jake’s the one driving, so—”
He shrugs. “I’m okay with it. It’s just—you should know this isn’t a let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya kind of deal. It can get…intense.”
I can’t believe it. Here’s another person treating me like a little kid, like I’m too fragile to deal with anything. I’m not a child.
“I can handle myself.” I stand up and snatch the bottle out of Gwen’s hands. “Give me that.”
I unscrew the top, take a long swig and promptly gag. Whatever is in the bottle is vile. I choke as I swallow it down, trying desperately not to spew, despite the fact that my throat is basically on fire.
“What is this?” I cough and squint at the bottle’s label.
“Uh, tequila?” Gwen says, like it should be obvious.
“It tastes like lighter fluid.” I grimace, but that doesn’t stop me from taking another long pull, and then another. Still disgusting, but by the fourth drink, it goes down a little easier. What the hell. You only live once.
As I’m working on my fifth, Laney steals the bottle from my hands, laughing, and says, “Didn’t you ever learn how to share?”
“We should go swimming,” Anna says, out of the blue, and then hiccups. She slaps a hand over her mouth, smothering a giggle.
Danny looks at her like she just suggested knocking over the closest liquor store. Which wouldn’t be such a bad idea, on second thought, considering how fast Laney, Seth and Anna are working through the tequila bottle. “Uh, sure, if catching pneumonia’s your idea of a fun time. I don’t want to freeze my balls off. I’m rather attached to them. Literally and figuratively.”
Laney springs to her feet. “I’m game!” Of course she is.
“You don’t have a suit,” I remind her. Why do my words sound funny? Oh, okay. Maybe I am a little tipsy. I can’t feel my toes.
“So?” She directs a coy grin at Seth. “I don’t need one.”
“A bunch of drunk kids skinny-dipping in the middle of the night. That’ll end well,” Jake comments with an eye roll, but Laney, Anna and Seth don’t hear, or don’t care, as they’re already racing to the beach, peeling off their clothes as they run.
“They can be so juvenile.” Gwen scowls. “I’m going to go inside and work on my project.”
“Is this the one with the high heels?” Danny asks. He looks over at us from underneath his artfully arranged fringe. “She created this papier-mâché Jesus—except it’s Jesus as a woman—and there are high heels instead of nails through the hands. And there’s a tampon stuffed in Jesus’s mouth.” He shakes his head. “That is some fucked-up shit right there.”
“It’s supposed to represent the oppression women face due to traditionally gendered beauty standards driven into us by the patriarchy,” Gwen says defensively. “I don’t know why I bother trying to explain these things to you. Are you coming in or not?”
“Like I’d go swimming?” Danny scoffs. “Lake water is killer on my hair.”
As the two of them trudge back to the house, Jake pats the pockets of his leather jacket. “I’m going for a smoke,” he says.
“Like I care,” I shoot back, but by the time the words come out, he’s already out of earshot. My reaction time? Not so stellar at the moment.
I hear the sound of splashing and shrieking as Anna, Seth and Laney plunge into the water. I’m not that wasted, seeing as I have no desire to follow—it’s either that, or else no amount of alcohol can lure me into unleashing my inner exhibitionist, apparently. I slip off my flip-flops and walk down the beach by myself, padding barefoot over soft and cool sand.
A ways down, I stop, roll up my jeans over my knees and wade into the water. It’s cold—cold enough to make my feet go numb after only a few minutes. I don’t care, though, because the alcohol makes me feel warm and loose and heavy, and I’m too absorbed in looking over the lake to focus on the cold. The light from the pinprick stars glimmers off of the glassy water, the moon a bright sliver in the black sky. I’m far enough down shore that the laughter of the swimmers is just a faded echo.
I push out farther, the waves lapping up and breaking over my waist, soaking my jeans. I skim my fingertips over the water’s surface, trail them lightly back and forth. Everything out here is still and silent. Nothing, it seems, could break the veil of peacefulness.
“Harper? Harper!”
Except that.
Slowly I turn around, the wet sandy mud squishing between my toes as I do. Jake is up on the dry sand, out of breath, his expression a cross between anger and confusion.
“You’ve been out here half an hour! I thought you pulled a Jeff Buckley on me. Which—while I would appreciate the extra room in the van—is not something I want to explain to your mother.” He stops to catch his breath, his brow furrowed with confusion. “What are you even doing?”
I try to think of how to explain. “The lake—it’s…it’s big.”
Jake looks like he’s leaning more
toward annoyed now. “Uh…so?”
“I mean…” It’s difficult to articulate when my tongue feels too thick for my mouth. But I’m desperate to explain, how insignificant I feel in comparison to the lake, to the sky, to the world. “Look at it. I’m nothing. It’s so much bigger, bigger than me, bigger than my thoughts and my…my…
Pain, is the word I’m going for, but the line of connection from my brain to my mouth appears to have short-circuited. That’s probably for the best. Regardless, Jake seems to get it, because he laughs a little and runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up messily.
“Well, aren’t you Mommy’s Little Existentialist,” he says wryly. The tension releases from his shoulders as he blows out a long breath, like he’s been holding it for a long time. “Come on, let’s go before you start quoting Sartre. If that happens, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”
As I come out of the water, I step on a sharp-edged rock that sends me staggering dangerously to my left. Jake rushes forward and catches an arm around my waist before I lose my balance.
“Easy, tiger,” he says, slinging my arm over his shoulder.
I lean into him, and my face momentarily rolls against his neck. He smells woodsy, like smoke and leather. Probably the jacket, I figure. “Do you believe in God?”
His arm around my waist stiffens. “That’s…random.”
“No, it’s just—what do you have against Sartre? You think the world has meaning? That everything happens for a reason? “ I’m yelling without really intending to. “Because, news flash, Tolan, it doesn’t.”
“Okay, now you’re just being a nihilist.”
I’m not a nihilist. I’m not really anything, I don’t think. I don’t know what I believe anymore. If God does exist, then He’s just an asshole, creating this world full of human suffering and letting all these terrible things happen to good people, and sitting there and doing nothing about it. At June’s memorial service, a few people came up to me and said some really stupid things, like how everything happens for a reason, and God never gives us more than we can handle. All I could think was, does that mean if I was a weaker person, this never would’ve happened? Am I seriously supposed to buy that June’s death was part of some stupid divine plan? I don’t believe that. I can’t. It just doesn’t make sense.