Okay, I know how stupid that sounds now. But at the time, I honestly believed I had it all. Looks, friendship, true love. I honestly believed I led a charmed existence.
And then, halfway through the summer, Taylor’s brother, Jarrod, had a party, and in a single night two things happened that would change the course of my life forever:
My best friend betrayed me.
And my face went through a windshield.
It’s Not What You Think
MY LIFE IS OVER.
It’s the kind of pronouncement teenage girls make every day. They say it after such traumatic events as, say, farting out loud in gym class, or discovering they’ve gained three pounds at Christmas and can’t fit in their winter formal dress. Oh my God, you guys! My life is over! Then they bawl to their girlfriends, eat a bunch of Oreos, and move on.
But this was different. I wasn’t saying the words for effect; I meant them. Because when you’re fifteen years old and you’re lying in a hospital bed listening to things like “multiple facial fractures” and “reconstructive surgery,” there is only one coherent thought in your mind: my life is over.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” said the nurse who was checking my blood pressure the morning after the accident.
No, I thought, trying to shake my head but it hurt too much to move, I’m not.
I couldn’t expect some stranger in Mickey Mouse scrubs to understand. But the truth was, what happened to my face wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part—the reason I was in the hospital at all—was Taylor.
It should have been a perfect night. The first Saturday in August, and Mr. and Mrs. LeFevre were both away for the weekend (him, golf tournament; her, spa), leaving Taylor’s brother, Jarrod, in charge. Which, of course, meant throwing a midsummer blowout. Tay and I were thrilled, because what better way to kick off our high school career than to party with a bunch of seniors? I may not have liked Jarrod, but his status as varsity football captain, and my status as his sister’s best friend, had their advantages. Taylor even suggested I invite Ryan, who, although he hadn’t tried out yet, was hoping to make varsity instead of JV and could only benefit from meeting Jarrod.
“You’re the best,” I said to Taylor when we were up in her bedroom getting ready.
“I try,” she said.
I felt a wave of love for my best friend. Not only was she looking out for me, she was looking out for my boyfriend, too. Taylor was the kind of person you could count on. The kind of friend who would loan you her best vintage tee—the new one that she hadn’t even worn yet. Who assured you that the blue mascara you put on wasn’t bogus; it made your eyes pop.
As the two of us walked out into the hall, she grabbed my hand. “How do I look?”
I studied her kelly-green halter and matching miniskirt. “Awesome,” I said. Then I asked if she was sure I should wear the jeans. Wouldn’t I be too hot? It was August, after all. What about the shorts I had on earlier?
Taylor shrugged. “The jeans look good.” She hiked up the waistband of her skirt another inch.
“Okay…” I said. “Thanks.”
Then the two of us headed downstairs to the kitchen, where Jarrod and a dozen of his football buddies were already standing around a keg, red plastic cups in hand.
“Well, well, well,” one of them said. He smirked at us from under his baseball cap. “What have we here?”
Another punched Jarrod’s arm. “Where are your manners, LeFevre? The ladies are thirsty.”
Jarrod filled two cups: one for Taylor, one for me. I shook my head and smiled, a gracious refusal, but Taylor gave me her puppy-dog look. Please? her eyes said. Pleeeeaaaase?
So I took the beer. I knew before long she wouldn’t care if I drank or not. She’d be too busy flirting to notice.
“Bottoms up.” Jarrod’s friend Rob hoisted his cup in the air.
Taylor giggled. “Bottoms up.”
As she raised her beer and threw back her head, I thought about how long she’d been crushing on Rob, and how badly she wanted him to notice her—not just as Jarrod’s little sister, but really notice her. Maybe tonight would be the night.
Taylor drank with the speed and ferocity of one of those hot dog–eating champions, who can down fifty wieners in ten seconds. When she finished, Rob whistled, long and low.
Of course, that was the point.
I waited for Tay’s next move, which was to smile winningly at Rob, flip her hair over one shoulder, and hold out her cup. “Beer me.”
But Rob wasn’t looking at Taylor anymore. He was looking at me. Looking and smiling. Looking, smiling, and leaning in so close his lips grazed my earlobe. “Your turn,” he said.
I pulled away fast, like I’d been burned. Because that is what you do. When your best friend’s crush flirts with you, there is only one acceptable response: Disengage. As in, Do Not—Under Any Circumstances—Flirt Back.
“I’m a sipper, not a chugger,” I mumbled. Which was exactly the right thing to say because I sounded like an idiot, making Taylor seem cooler by comparison.
Rob laughed.
Of course, that ruined everything. Now he thought I was funny.
Taylor shot me a look—the briefest flash of annoyance—before she turned away. “Beer me,” she repeated, this time holding out her cup to Jarrod, who filled it. I didn’t expect her to drink it; the most Tay ever had in her life was one beer. But here she was, chugging again. And it must have made her feel better because as soon as she finished she grabbed my hand. “Let’s dance!”
So I followed Taylor into the living room and helped her roll back the rug like we’d done a thousand times before—to play sock hockey, or to practice for lip-synch contests, or just to crack each other up with our dance moves. We blasted the stereo. We shook our hips like Shakira. I decided that I would mention the Rob thing later, but for now I would keep things light. Tay was in party-girl mode—silly, happy, whipping her hair all around. I didn’t want to jinx it.
At some point Ryan showed up. “Hey, beautiful,” he said, wrapping his arms around me from behind, pulling me close. We danced for a few songs before he left to get a soda. Then Kendall and Rae arrived, and a bunch of older girls I didn’t know. Before long, the dance floor was packed and my jeans were stuck to my legs like a scuba suit. I needed to get outside. So I left Tay on the dance floor and headed back through the kitchen, where Ryan was now propped against a countertop, bonding with his future teammates.
Ryan’s eyelids were droopy—a sign he may have been drinking more than Coke—which surprised me. And not in a good way. Ryan always said getting drunk was stupid. But then I caught his eye through the crowd, and he smiled, sending a spark across the room, straight to me. “Love you,” he mouthed silently. Which made everything okay. I knew that later, when we were alone, his breath would smell like Big Red, and his lips would be soft.
But at that moment I needed air. Even though Jarrod had expressly forbidden anyone at the party from going outside—he didn’t want the neighbors to call the cops—I ducked out the back door. I braced myself for someone to stop me, but no one did. The night air felt like satin. I rolled up my sweaty jeans and sat on the tile edge of the pool, dangling my feet in the water.
I don’t know how long I sat there. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? All I know is when I went back inside Ryan wasn’t in the kitchen. I checked the basement, where a bunch of guys were playing Foosball and Ping-Pong … no Ryan. The TV room … no Ryan. So I headed back to the dance floor to find Taylor.
“Where’s Tay?” I yelled over the music to Kendall.
“Bathroom!” Kendall yelled back.
I had a vision of Taylor face-planting a toilet bowl. At every high school party we’d gone to—there had been three so far—we’d seen people throwing up. I knew what I needed to do: check all six of the LeFevres’ bathrooms. Just in case Taylor needed me to hold back her hair.
“Tay?” I said each time I knocked. “Taylor, are you in there?”
When I struc
k out downstairs, I headed up. I checked the guest bathroom. Taylor’s bathroom. Jarrod’s. Then I did what I would never in a million years have done if Taylor’s parents had been home. I walked down the cream-carpeted hallway to the other end of the house, to the master suite. I felt weird doing it, knowing it was wrong. But I needed to find Taylor.
When I reached the end of the hall I turned the corner and there was Heidi. Chubby, frizzy-haired Heidi, standing directly outside the door to Taylor’s parents’ bedroom. She was wearing the same halter/miniskirt combo as Taylor, but in an unflattering shade of yellow.
“Hey,” I said.
Heidi jumped. “Oh! Hey!”
“What are you doing up here?”
She flashed me a big, weird smile. “Nothing.”
“Have you seen Tay?”
Heidi shook her head. Then she looked down at the charm bracelet on her wrist and started fiddling with it like crazy.
“Are you sure?”
“What?” Heidi’s head popped up. “No … I mean—yes! I’m sure.”
I watched Heidi’s round pink cheeks turn even pinker. I knew she was lying; I just didn’t know why. So I told her this was serious. Taylor chugged two beers. Two. She could be throwing up right now. Or passed out. Or, worse still, passed out and throwing up, inhaling her own barf, just like Mrs. Meechan warned us about in health.
“Yeah … I’m pretty sure she’s okay.” Heidi smirked slightly.
That’s when it hit me. “Oh my God, is she with a guy? She is, isn’t she? She’s hooking up in there…. Wait—is it Rob?” I waited, silently hoping that Heidi would say yes.
But she didn’t. She just shook her head.
“Is it another one of Jarrod’s friends?”
The corner of Heidi’s mouth twitched again. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
I stared at Heidi, waiting for a straight answer, but it didn’t come. All she could do was smirk and yank on her bracelet.
“Well then,” I said calmly, “I’m going in.”
Heidi sidestepped in front of me, blocking my path. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Move,” I said.
“I promised Taylor I’d guard the door,” Heidi said, folding both arms across her chest. Which was downright laughable since I was the best friend in this scenario, and Heidi was only doing what Taylor had told her to do, as usual. Heidi had no clue how annoyed Taylor got with her sometimes. But I knew. And I almost felt sorry for her at that moment.
“Come on, Heids,” I said. “I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“Suit yourself.” Heidi stepped aside, and I turned the doorknob. I walked into Taylor’s parents’ bedroom and there, in an instant, my whole world disintegrated before my eyes. Kneeling on the carpet in the far corner of the room was Taylor. Reclined on a chaise lounge in front of her, boxers around his ankles, was Ryan.
My Ryan.
At first, I couldn’t move; the shock was too great. All I could do was stare in disbelief. They hadn’t even bothered to turn out the lights.
Seconds ticked by—a lifetime—but they still didn’t notice me standing there. Finally, I found my voice. “This cannot be happening,” I mumbled. Then, “Tell me this isn’t fucking happening!”
Ryan’s eyes snapped open. He scrambled for his boxers, tumbling onto the floor in the process. “It’s not what you think,” he said. Incredibly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The words felt thick in my throat, heavy as stones. “And you,” I turned to Taylor, pointing one shaky finger in the air, “you…” I wanted to call her something awful—the worst name I could think of. Yet nothing came to me.
Taylor’s eyes were huge, shocked. She simultaneously shook her head and began walking toward me, stumbling a little. “Lexi—this isn’t—”
“Don’t,” I said, cutting her off. “Don’t ever say my name again.”
She blinked.
“I hate you, Taylor LeFevre. I will hate you forever.”
I knew how stupid those words sounded even as I said them. Stupid and childish. So I did the second best thing I could think of: I spun on my heel and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind me.
Heidi was still standing in the hall, shaking her head. “I tried to warn you, Lexi,” she singsonged, “but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Go to hell,” I told her.
“Lexi!” I heard Taylor calling after me. “Lex, wait!”
But I didn’t wait.
Everything that happened next was a blur—a series of hazy snapshots taken underwater. Me, running down the stairs. Me, tripping over an umbrella stand.
A dozen interchangeable guys in white baseball caps, standing around a keg with their red plastic cups. A beer in my hand, the color of pee. “WHICH ONE OF YOU JOCKSTRAPS WANTS TO GIVE ME A RIDE HOME?!” The window of Jarrod’s Saab, fogged with breath. “You’re so hot, Lexi. Do you have any idea how hot you are?”
And then … darkness.
Pussy Galore
THE IRONY IS, Taylor and Ryan didn’t even like each other. Not at the beginning, anyway. I remember the day exactly. It was December 27, winter break, and me, Taylor, Kendall and Rae, Heidi, and a bunch of other kids were skating on the frog pond behind the junior high. When this guy with a hockey stick whizzed past us, every girl over the age of ten did a double take. He was wearing a red Weston Academy jersey, number 24, and—despite the frigid temperature—shorts. His blond hair was messy in that just-rolled-out-of-bed way, like the guy in the Abercrombie & Fitch ad Taylor had taped inside her locker.
“Who is that?” Heidi asked as he blew by us a second time.
“Good question,” Taylor said.
“He is a major-league hottie.”
Kendall rolled her eyes. “You think everyone’s a major-league hottie.”
“So?” Heidi said. “Am I wrong?”
We watched as the hottie in question spun around in a graceful fashion so that he was skating backward. He raised his hockey stick over his head and rested it on his shoulders. Still skating, he lifted one knee to the opposite elbow, then switched, then switched again. Watching this, I felt a flutter in my stomach that unnerved me. I didn’t like show-offs. And this guy was clearly showing off. Yet, hard as I tried, I couldn’t make myself look away.
But then, no one could.
“Omigod.” Heidi clutched Taylor’s arm. “He. Is so. Hot.”
“Yeah,” Taylor said, pulling away slightly. “We’ve established that.”
“What I want to know,” Rae said, “is if he goes to Weston Academy, why is he slumming it in Millbridge?”
“They’re probably on break,” Kendall said, “same as us.”
“But wouldn’t their rink still be open, like, for players?”
Heidi shook her head. “Weston’s a boarding school. They totally shut down over Christmas.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“Maybe he goes to Weston, but he lives in Millbridge,” Rae suggested. “And we just never noticed him over breaks.”
“Please,” Kendall said. “How could we not have noticed?”
While this debate raged on, number 24 proceeded to do another spin move, lower his stick to the ice, and weave his way toward us again at breakneck speed, dodging every obstacle in his path.
Well, almost every obstacle. Every obstacle except the crater in the ice about three feet away from us, that caught the edge of his skate just right and sent him flying through the air—straight into Taylor.
My best friend was now flat on her butt on the ice, earmuffs askew, looking ticked. This might have been remedied—or at least minimized—if Ryan had said he was sorry. Or asked if she was okay. Or helped her to her feet. Instead, he did something utterly bizarre: he popped up from his own horizontal position, raised one eyebrow, and said, completely deadpan, “Dano…. Rya
n Dano.”
Everyone stared at him, blank. Except for me, who half snorted, half choked, because my father was a James Bond fanatic, who once forced me to sit through an entire weekend of “Bonding” with him. Not the recent incarnation of Bond, either. Oh no. I had to suffer through the classics: Goldfinger, Octopussy, For Your Eyes Only—
“Omigod!” Heidi let out a shriek and clapped her mittens together. “Ryan Dano? I know you!”
“Oh yeah?” Ryan Dano smiled, revealing a slight gap between his two front teeth, which on anyone else would have looked ridiculous, but on him it worked.
“We went to Circle Nursery together!” Heidi said. “Remember? Mrs. Genther’s class? The blue room? With the macaroni table and the stall for the horses we made out of broomsticks and pillowcases…?”
Of course she would remember this. Heidi is practically a savant when it comes to recalling useless information. When she finished babbling about nursery school, she went on to exclaim what an amazing coincidence this was—that he, who’d moved to New York City when he was four, should be back, skating on this pond, on this day, and run into her!
While Ryan patiently explained to Heidi about his grandparents still living in Millbridge, I snuck a few glances his way, absorbing the blueness of his eyes, the fullness of his lips, the tiny, moon-shaped freckle on his right cheekbone—
“Don’t worry about me,” Taylor cut in. “I’m fine, in case anyone was wondering. Which no one was. Obviously.” As she limp-skated past us, she shot Ryan Dano a look of pure venom. “Thanks for the apology, asshole.”
Ryan smiled an adorably crooked smile. “Hey … sorry about that.”
“Weston Academy, huh?” she said to him, full-on sarcastic. “Huge shocker there.” To the rest of us she muttered, “I’ll be in the cocoa hut. If anyone cares.”