I’ll Meet You There

  I thought of his chess pieces lying scattered beside the pool, the way he’d suddenly become distant and cagey.

  “I won’t take no for an answer,” Dylan said.

  I twisted the long piece of brown paper in my hand into a branch, feeling the paper bend and mold under my fingers. It was too thin, and the glue coating my skin was making it tear. Dylan sat there staring at me, waiting for me to capitulate. I balled up the paper and fell back against the bed with an overdramatic groan.

  She handed me a dress she’d folded into her bag and pointed to the bathroom. “Go put this on.”

  Josh probably wouldn’t be there, I reasoned. He certainly hadn’t been in a partying mood a few hours ago. I could just go, stay for a half hour, then come right back.

  “Fine.” I held the dress out to her. “But I can’t wear this.”

  It was cute, but I knew it would be much shorter than I was comfortable with. And tighter. It was the kind of dress that probably made boys check their pockets to see if they had a condom with them. At least, it was that kind of dress when Dylan was wearing it.

  She twirled her foot around. “Just try it on. It won’t be as short on you as it is on me.”

  I sighed and went into the bathroom. I pulled my hair back and started washing my face.

  “What’s this room called again?” she asked.

  “Viva México.”

  Most of the decorations consisted of Frida Kahlo prints. I’d been obsessed with Frida ever since I’d seen Salma Hayek in a movie about her life. I loved how Frida painted her pain. Whatever crap was happening to her, she put it on the canvas and let the colors and lines tell her story.

  In addition to the Fridas, I’d pinned up lotería cards that Chris had gotten me on a trip visiting relatives in Mexico. Next to a sombrero hanging on a hat rack there was a Día de los Muertos piñata in the shape of a dancing skeleton wearing traditional Mexican clothing. There were even maracas on the nightstand.

  “Lots of this shit’s creepy, Sky. No wonder you’re sitting here all by yourself, listening to wrist-slitting music.”

  “Sia’s introspective, not depressing. There’s a difference.” I had to admit the piñata was a little creepy, especially in the middle of the night when the wind from my open window made it dance around.

  “Whatevs,” Dylan said. I heard her sigh and flip through one of the old celebrity magazines I was collaging with. I started brushing my teeth, just in case fresh breath ended up being important tonight.

  “You know, I’m going to take some classes in September,” Dylan said. “Become an X-ray technician. That’s legit.”

  I stuck my head out the door. “Dyl, seriously. I’m sorry. Don’t feel like you have to—”

  “No, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I mean … I don’t want to be here my whole life. Plus, Seanie deserves more.”

  I nodded. “What’s Jesse say?”

  “He’s down. That boy would move to freaking, I don’t know, Russia with me if I wanted to go.”

  “It’s really cold in Russia.”

  “Yeah, fuck that.”

  I left my pajamas in a heap on the linoleum floor and pulled the dress over my head. There was a floor-length mirror behind the door, and I turned around to see how bad the dress was.

  “How’s it look?” Dylan called.

  I want him to see me in this.

  “It’s okay,” I said. I let my hair fall around my shoulders and put on some mascara.

  When I came out, Dylan put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Hot!”

  I blushed and slipped on my All Stars to feel a little bit more normal.

  “Hate those shoes, but I’ll take what I can get,” she said.

  I pointed to a picture of Frida sitting in a man’s suit, her hair short, with a pair of scissors in her hands and hair at her feet.

  “This is how I was feeling today,” I said. “I’m gonna wear whatever shoes I want.”

  Dylan looked at it, then back at me. “Tragic much?”

  Chris would have gotten it, I thought. Or maybe Josh. Then I felt guilty because this was exactly the thing Dylan had meant, about Chris and me being so down on Creek View people.

  She stepped closer to the painting. “Don’t do that to your hair.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” I mumbled.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I took one more look in the mirror. “No.”

  Dylan grabbed my arm. “Our friendship hangs in the balance. Get your ass out.”

  I glanced at my collage, then shut the door behind us.

  * * *

  Dylan nudged me in the ribs and nodded toward the group a few feet away from the bonfire. About fifteen people, they all stood close to one another, sizing up who they wanted to take home that night.

  “There he is,” she whispered.

  Josh was in the center of their circle, sitting in the bed of his truck, legs dangling over the tailgate, a bottle of beer in his hand. Each time he took a sip, he held the bottle’s neck with his thumb and index finger and tipped the beer into his mouth. I didn’t know it was possible to envy a bottle of beer, and I got lost for a moment, watching his lips against the glass. Hypnotized. It was terrifying, how my body had started reacting to him. He was a fix I needed bad.

  Dylan laughed her husky I’m-thinking-about-something-naughty laugh. “Wow.”

  I tore my eyes away from Josh. It was like I’d been deep diving in some fantastic water underworld and now I had to come up for air. “Oh, shut up.”

  Dylan whipped out her troublemaker red lipstick and swiped it over her lips. “Sky, you better get in on that before one of the Swensons suggests a threesome.”

  The Swenson twins, notorious sex fiends, who, if memory served correctly, had both slept with Josh on multiple occasions. Possibly at the same time.

  “I really wish that the boy I’m in love with hadn’t slept with three-quarters of the Creek View population,” I said.

  I hated the longing I felt. I didn’t want this need to be near him. I didn’t want to feel murderous every time a girl touched his arm—like one was doing right now.

  “Oh my God. Sky.” Dylan stared at me, incredulous.

  “What?” I clutched at my dress, certain there was a big-ass rip in back or something. I pushed against her arm. “What?”

  “You just said love.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said quickly.

  The word had tasted sweet, exotic. Love. I shivered.

  “This is almost as good as losing your virginity!”

  “A little louder, Dylan. I’m not sure everyone heard you.”

  “Oh, come on. You have to admit, this is pretty epic. Especially since it’s Josh Mitchell.”

  She kept talking, but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore because my eyes had strayed involuntarily to Josh again, and he was staring at me, eyes wide, mouth open. Taking in the dress Dylan had made me wear. I couldn’t resist the chance to raise my eyebrows a little and smirk. This was how you played the game, right? Some girl came up to him, holding out a bottle of beer, shoving her breasts in his face. I looked away. This wasn’t a game I could play, not even if part of me wanted to.

  “Hey, baby,” said a soft, male voice.

  I turned around, and Jesse was instantly all over Dylan, his hands on her waist, his body pressed against hers. It was kind of amazing that she’d gotten pregnant only once—I’d never seen people more hungry for each other than those two. But instead of being annoyed or mildly disgusted by it like I used to be, I was sort of starting to think it was beautiful.

  He whispered something in Dylan’s ear, and she threw back her head, laughing hard. “I’m not letting you get away with that,” she said.

  “Um. I’ll let you guys—”

  Dylan pulled away from Jesse’s lips. “No! We have to get you and Jo—”

  I held up my hand. “Jesse doesn’t need to know the details.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Sky. I won’t tell
nobody.” Jesse looked at me for the first time, his eyes comically surprised. “Damn, girl. That dress is—” Dylan smacked him on the arm, and he laughed. “Don’t freak out on me,” he said. “It’s just, I’ve never seen Skylar wear … you know. Your kind of clothes.”

  “Shit,” I said, pulling at the hem. “I told you, Dylan. It’s too short.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That was sort of the point. You look all ooh-la-la. It’s exactly what you need to be wearing right now.”

  “Is ooh-la-la like Moulin Rouge ooh-la-la, or Tate’s ooh-la-la?” I asked. Tate’s was this skeezy strip club about thirty miles up the highway.

  “Does it matter?” Dylan said. She squealed as Jesse leaned into her, whispering again.

  For a second I heard Josh’s voice above the collage of conversations and music pumping from somebody’s car stereo, and I pretended to look around so that I could watch him. The guy next to him said something, and Josh laughed. They knocked their beer bottles in a half-assed, manly toast, then drank. It was like nothing had changed—even with one leg, Josh Mitchell would always be a local god.

  I’d thought he’d be excited to see me, want to hang out or something, but it was as if I wasn’t at the party at all. He wasn’t looking at me, seemed much more interested in the girls near his truck. Was this a bad idea, me coming? After what had happened at the Paradise, maybe I was the last person he wanted to see. Here, he could pretend cars backfiring didn’t remind him of a war he was still fighting, even though it was thousands of miles away.

  “Skylar. You look … wow.”

  Blake. Of course it was Blake.

  “Hey.”

  Dylan, finally aware of my presence again, grabbed me and put an arm around my shoulders.

  “She’s not here for you, Blake. Back up off.”

  Blake rolled his eyes. “Down, girl,” he said. “I’m not drunk enough to make an ass of myself just yet.”

  “Since when did you become self-aware?” I asked him.

  “I’m always aware of myself,” he said. Typical Blake. “So.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “I’m helping with drinks—wanna come check out our selection?”

  “I don’t drink, remember?” I said.

  Blake shrugged. “I can work with that.”

  My options weren’t great: be Dylan and Jesse’s third wheel or hang out with my ex-fling. I couldn’t stand here all night, so my impatience made me choose the greater of two evils.

  “Fine, I’ll go over there.” I turned to Dylan and Jesse. “You guys coming?”

  “Um. In a minute.” That was Dylan-speak for I’m going to have a quickie in my boyfriend’s back seat. “If that’s okay?”

  “You’re giving me a ride home, don’t forget,” I said.

  Dylan swatted me on the butt. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  I shooed her away. “Get out of here already.”

  I followed Blake to the table that was set up next to a truck bed full of bottles and ice. I had to keep fighting the urge to pull at the hem of my dress, so I settled for clutching my purse like I was walking through a dark alley.

  “So why are you all dressed up?” Blake asked.

  His eyes were straying over the dips and curves of my dress, like he was trying to figure out the quickest way to take it off. I wanted Josh to look at me like that and—God, I couldn’t believe I was thinking this way. It was like some horny Creek View girl had taken over my brain. I’d worn this dress so that Josh would see me—and only me—for the rest of the night.

  But it wasn’t working.

  “I’m not dressed up,” I said. “I just … It’s a party, isn’t it?”

  I suddenly felt like a seventh grader at her first school dance.

  He squeezed my hand. “Yeah. And I’m glad you came.”

  I pulled my hand away and shook my head. “Alexis: girlfriend. Me: not your girlfriend.”

  He opened his mouth to say whatever Blake-ish thing he was going to say, but we were at the drinks table and this girl named Tina was throwing a bottle around like she was in the cast of Coyote Ugly. I didn’t know her very well—she’d graduated the year before me—but her mother was the only person on the Paradise “housekeeping” staff, so sometimes we hung out around the pool.

  “Hey, Skylar. What’ll it be?”

  “Um…”

  “Make her that fruity thing you gave Jessica,” Blake said. “Virgin, though.” He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

  Tina poured the drink, then Blake handed me the red cup. “To Skylar Evans—because she’s finally joining the party.”

  I raised my cup. “To Blake Mitchell—no, never mind. To me.”

  “Oh, burn,” he said.

  Someone near the bonfire yelled, “Skylar!”

  Not Josh.

  It was one of the guys next to him—his friend Brady. I’d gotten to know him a little bit because he’d started coming around the Paradise now that Josh was home. Brady waved me over, but I barely noticed because one of the Swenson twins had her hand on Josh’s knee and her lips close to his ear. He smiled, slow and easy. He’d heard Brady call my name, of course he had, but either he was intent on ignoring me or he was more interested in what that Swenson girl was offering him.

  What the fuck? There was no way I’d imagined this thing that had been growing between us all summer. Slowly, especially for Josh, but growing.

  Just when I’d decided to make some lame excuse and go home, Josh’s eyes met mine. I raised my eyebrows, like, Well, I’m here. For a minute, it was just the two of us and the smoke from the bonfire and all those little moments at the Paradise, swimming across the distance between us: the way he’d tease me for using so much ketchup with my fries or how he’d call me ma’am, half joking. And how he’d started hugging me when he went home, each hug lasting a little longer than the last until hugging became holding.

  “C’mon,” Blake said, walking toward Josh’s truck.

  I looked back to where Dylan and Jesse had gone. I was stuck for a while, unless I wanted to walk back to the Paradise. Three miles wasn’t that bad, was it?

  “I’ll give you a ride home if they ditch you,” Blake said. I frowned, thinking about how he’d said that over spring break. “No strings attached, honest.” He tipped his bottle against my cup.

  “Fine.”

  To Skylar Evans—because she’s finally joining the party.

  chapter twenty-four

  “I’m a fuckin’ U.S. Marine, that’s why!” Josh shouted, red-faced but smiling. “First to fight, the President’s Own, you punk.”

  He kicked at one of the guys nearby. “Whoa, now,” the dude said, blocking his crotch. “Watch the junk.”

  I wasn’t sure what we’d missed, but apparently Josh had won some sort of argument and suddenly everyone was doing the hitting-bottles, talking-too-loudly-then-chugging thing. What was I doing here?

  “Hey, you,” Brady said. He hopped down off his perch next to Josh and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Hey … Brady.”

  I gave him an awkward pat on the back and tried to disentangle myself from his too-friendly hug. This was why I never borrowed clothes from Dylan. It was like every guy in the circle was seeing me for the first time. Except Josh. He just said, “Hey,” and went back to talking to other people. I couldn’t read him. It was like all those afternoons at the Paradise were nothing.

  A Swenson girl—I couldn’t tell which was which—looked at me with barely disguised hostility.

  Brady leaned against the truck. “So, Skylar, we were thinking of heading into Bakersfield for some late-night Denny’s. You up for it?”

  I shrugged. No. No. And no. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, but all you have to do is walk five steps from your room to the desk,” Blake said.

  For the next half hour, there was talk of a bunch of random crap I couldn’t bother to concentrate on. Video games, som
e football team. For the most part, I stared down at the pink liquid in my cup, swirling it around. Someone started passing a joint. I shook my head when Brady handed it to me.

  “Still straightedge, huh?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  Josh was a few inches away, but instead of talking to me, he let that Swenson girl put her hands all over him, and I knew, I just knew, he was going home with her. This wasn’t the same Josh who joked with me about Dairy Queen Blizzards or talked about Afghani sunsets. Maybe I’d imagined him. I had probably just felt so sorry for him or for myself that I’d built those moments into something they had never been.

  I tried to nod and laugh in all the right places, but pretending had never been my style, so I stood there, waiting for Dylan to show up so I could have her take me home. The bonfire gave the air a cozy smell, and all I wanted to do was find a thick quilt and lie down by the fire and feel good and sorry for myself. My mind collaged one by my feet. My head was starting to pound, and it was hot and cold and loud and silent, and this wasn’t me. Not at all. I handed Blake my cup.

  “I’ll be back in a sec,” I said.

  “You want me to—”

  “No. I just need to grab my sweater out of Dylan’s car.”

  Blake looked like he was going to follow me, but then Brady started talking shit about the Dallas Cowboys and he got distracted.

  I didn’t look back to see if Josh had noticed me leave, just walked away, in the opposite direction from where Dylan’s car was. My feet started taking me to my dad’s favorite part of the creek, where the sand was softest and the beach was shaded by tall, leafy trees. It was the place I went to when I felt lost because he’d said that no matter what happened, it would always be ours.

  Soon, the party was a distant murmur, the music and laughter already memories. I walked more slowly, feeling close to my dad as I looked up at the familiar bend in the creek and the trees that leaned over it. His spot. I wished he were there right then, to tell me why boys were such jerks. I wanted to ask him if it would always be this hard.

  If I were a real Creek View girl, the kind Josh liked, I’d be hammered right now, not thinking about my dead father. Maybe I’d barf in the bushes, then down another beer before going to Denny’s and ordering a Moons Over My Hammy and drinking coffee until the sun came up. Maybe I wouldn’t even show up for work. I’d just go home and give Mom and Asshat a surly look before passing out on my bed. Then I’d wake up and do the same thing all over again for the rest of the summer so that I never had to think, not once, of how Mom was ruining her life and by extension mine or about Josh or school or anything. I’d just drown myself in booze and boys, like a good little Creek View girl.