I didn’t have a crush on her—no more than every other male on the planet, anyway. But you have to have a certain amount of respect for something so spectacular, whether it’s the Grand Canyon or a girl.
“Hi, Didi. How’s it going?”
She drew in a sharp, impatient breath. “You don’t want to know.” That was classic Didi. She wasn’t being rude; she was just answering my question. It was like meeting a hotshot executive who truly can’t spare the mental energy to think about you very much. Of course, Didi had never held so much as a paper route in her entire life.
To hang out with Jennifer and Didi was to learn what it is to be ignored. How two people who lived right next door to each other, went to school together, and spent most of their waking hours in each other’s company still had so much to discuss was beyond me.
They talked about guys like I wasn’t even there—who was cute, and who had a great butt, and who used to have nice pecs until his father sold the weight set, blah, blah, blah. Actually, the male sex was getting pretty seriously trashed in the conversation in my dad’s Buick. Didi was miffed that Todd had to attend his great-aunt’s birthday party tonight (what a prince). And Jennifer was complaining about a recent bad breakup with a boyfriend.
“Men bite,” she decided. “No offense, Ricky. I refuse to waste my youth on some guy whose idea of a good time is an all-day Baywatch marathon. I’ve got a new rule. From now on, it’s all about me.”
“That wouldn’t work for me,” said Didi. “Todd’s pretty used to being the center of attention.”
“That’s a quarterback thing,” I put in. “You guys need to date more kickers. Whoa!” I jammed on the brakes. We were still three blocks from Jake’s house and already the streets were lined with cars. The parallel-parking jobs were a drivers’-ed. teacher’s nightmare. Nelson Jaworski’s pickup was half on the sidewalk, two inches from a fire hydrant. But it still managed to jut out far enough in the road to make it a tight squeeze to get between him and the idiot across the way who was four feet from the curb.
Didi was impressed. “There are a million people here! Who is this Jake?”
“Probably a jerk,” decided Jennifer. “Anybody this happening has got to be full of himself.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, parking behind a rusty Honda that was blocking someone’s driveway. “Wait till you meet him.”
As we headed for the front door, the van from Dante’s Pizza pulled up. Out came an army of delivery boys, each with a stack of flat boxes. I recognized Kevin Fontaine from school.
He saw me too. “Hey, Rick, whose house is this? It’s the fourth Friday in a row where everything we bake comes straight here! What’s going on?”
“It’s Jake, the new long-snapper for the Broncos,” I replied. “He’s got a way with parties.”
“I thought the army was camping here or something,” Kevin called back. “Seventeen pies, cash on the nose, and always a great tip.”
“Does the army travel with a keg?” I asked smugly.
His eyes widened. “Sounds like the money spot.”
“Want me to introduce you?” I asked.
“No time,” he replied, climbing back in the van. “We’ve got nine orders on hold because of this.” And Dante’s Pizza roared off.
When I opened the front door, the blast of music almost blew us back out to the road. The house was even more crowded than it had been the week before with Fitzgerald High’s beautiful people at frantic play. But the feeling was the same—in all the world, there was only one place to be, and this was it.
I could tell the girls were impressed because Jennifer couldn’t think of a single obnoxious thing to say. I pointed them in the direction of the keg, yelled something about going to the bathroom, and ran off to warn Todd.
I almost went crazy finding him, not because he was hiding, but because the place was so jammed. It didn’t help that some junior had brought his pet boa constrictor, Victor, which was scaring the daylights out of people. And I count myself among them. Picture this: you round the corner into the hall and come face-to-fang with a cold-eyed reptile whose head is bigger than yours. It was a good thing the stereo was so loud, because I’m pretty sure I screamed. I doubt I was the only one.
I finally ran into Todd shmoozing around the back porch. He was with Melissa again, which was a real risk. Not only was Nelson not passed out yet, but he actually seemed to be seeing single.
“Hi, Rick,” slurred Melissa, who was barely seeing at all, as far as I could tell.
“Hey, Melissa. Todd, I need to talk to you.”
“Rick,” he mumbled through Melissa’s big hair. “Chill out, man.”
“This is important!”
But Todd was in that stubbornly cheerful party mood that refuses to deal with anybody who isn’t in a similar state of mind.
“Sorry, Rick. I can’t talk to you until you’ve had at least one beer. Those are the rules.”
There was no time for pussyfooting around, so I just blurted it out. “Didi’s here.”
He jumped away from Melissa like she was carrying the plague. “Didi? Here? How?”
“Jake asked me to bring Jennifer,” I admitted. “But then Didi tagged along because you told her you were busy.”
“I can’t believe you did that!” As I’d predicted, this was all my fault. “What am I going to do? I’m screwed!”
“Hey!” Melissa was miffed. “What am I—chopped liver?”
She tried to drape herself over him again. He shoved her away so hard that she flipped over the porch railing and landed flat on her back on the grass.
Before I could react, a couple of guys from the track team played follow the leader, as if Melissa had taken her leap on purpose. Cheering and snickering, they hurled themselves off the deck, landing perilously close to poor Melissa.
I ran down to where she lay, winded and sobbing. I was pretty amazed to see Todd still standing there, unmoved and unmoving.
“Get over here!” I hissed at him.
But the only thing on his mind was this mess with Didi. He barely even noticed that Melissa was there. As he walked back inside the house, I recognized his game face. It was fourth and goal, and Todd Buckley was going to fight for Todd Buckley.
I got Melissa calmed down and cleaned up, and released her into the wilderness. I wasn’t afraid that she’d say anything to Nelson. How could she, after all, without making herself look bad?
I made better time getting back to the living room. The snake guy was on his way upstairs. I could see Victor the constrictor threading himself in and out of the struts of the banister.
Coming down the stairs was our gracious host, his Polo wardrobe slightly denim-ized with some Abercrombie accents. He was his affable self, shaking hands, slapping backs, and exchanging a few words here and there. I couldn’t help noticing that while he talked to everybody, he didn’t really talk to anybody—not more than “How’s it going, baby? Good to see you!” He didn’t even flinch when he saw the boa. He just held out his beer and let the forked tongue take a couple of tastes. Now, how cool was that?
I met him at the bottom of the stairs. “Another great party, Jake.”
“Hey, baby.” He was talking to me, but he seemed to be looking over my shoulder.
“Jennifer’s by the pizza table,” I supplied. “She brought her friend Didi.”
Maybe it was the light, but for a second it looked as if tanned, confident Jake Garrett went white to the ears.
“That’s okay, isn’t it?” I added. “You said you wanted fresh blood, remember?”
“It’s great!” he said a little too quickly. “Are they having a good time? Do they know anybody here?”
“Didi’s Todd’s girlfriend,” I said. “She knows a lot of people. Come on, I’ll take you over.”
By the time we got to Jennifer and Didi, Todd was already with them. He might have been a good quarterback, but he was a lousy liar.
“… so they rushed Aunt Sophie to Mercy Hospital. She
’s okay, but they had to cancel the dinner.”
Didi looked suspicious. “Why didn’t you go to the hospital?”
“Oh, I did,” Todd explained. “But her room was too small. You know—with the whole family there. So I called you, and your mom said you were at a party. I took a gamble and came here looking for you.”
It wasn’t such a bad story. But the way Todd told it, it was obviously one hundred percent bull.
Jennifer looked totally disgusted. “You know what I think—”
Her friend cut her off. “I don’t want to know.” You could almost see the wheels spinning inside Didi’s exquisite head. She was trying to bend and twist Todd’s story until it fell into a shape she could believe.
I’d never had a steady girlfriend. But if swallowing this kind of crap was part of a relationship, then it was pretty pathetic.
I figured it was time to change the subject. “Jennifer, Didi, I want you to meet Jake Garrett.”
Jennifer looked Jake up and down like a horse trainer checking out a new thoroughbred. And, man, he must have passed with flying colors, because she actually smiled. “Hi. Fantastic party.”
He never even looked at her. Our host only had eyes for Didi.
“Hi, Jake.” She was working hard to force Todd’s story out of her mind. “It’s funny. I used to know a guy named Jacob Garrett.”
He gave her the Jake smile with both barrels. “It’s been a long time, Didi.”
chapter four
“IT’S YOU!” Her perfect eyes widened in surprise. “Jacob, you look so—different!” She turned to Todd excitedly. “Jacob used to go to McKinley! He was my math tutor! If it wasn’t for him, I’d still be in tenth grade!”
Todd seized on it like a drowning man who had just found a life preserver. “Jake’s our new long-snapper,” he beamed, putting an arm around Jake’s shoulder. “He’s going to be a great asset to the Broncos.”
Didi was blown away. “You look awesome!” she told Jake. “And this is your party?”
He nodded. “I enjoy having a few friends over.”
“I like big parties,” Jennifer commented. “You don’t have to remember anybody’s name.”
Didi was taking a walk down memory lane. “Remember the time I had that test, and we studied by the pool, and you put sunscreen everywhere, but you forgot your nose?”
Jake nodded. “Quadratic equations.”
She looked blank. “Huh?”
“That’s what the test was on—quadratic equations.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “I remember my folks were out of town, but they left me their credit card. We ordered so much Chinese food that the bill was, like, two hundred dollars. And you got the idea to take the leftovers to a homeless shelter.”
“And the homeless rejected the moo goo gai pan,” laughed Jake. “They loved the ribs, though. And the sweet-and-sour chicken balls.”
A bloodcurdling shriek cut through the loud music of the party.
Jennifer jumped. “What was that?”
“I think somebody just saw Victor,” I remarked.
The girls wanted to take a look at the snake, so Jake walked off with one on each arm.
As soon as they were gone, Todd practically melted with relief. “Oh, man, that was close! She bought it, right? I’m out of the woods?”
“Either way, you’d better keep your nose clean,” I told him. “And you might want to apologize to Melissa for putting her in the dirt.”
He looked ashamed. “Listen, Rick, I’m sorry I got on your case about this. I just really freaked out when I heard Didi was here.” He grimaced. “The lousy part is that Didi’s going to want to come every week now that it turns out she knows Jake. There must be some way around it!” The expression of concentration on his face would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful.
“I know,” I suggested sarcastically. “Why don’t you put out a contract on her? Then you won’t have to worry about any week.”
He looked pained. “Thanks a lot. I’m opening up to you as a friend, and all you can do is make bad jokes.”
“Broncos!” came a bellow. A group of football players headed by Nelson swooped down on us, snatched up their fearless leader, and carried him off on their shoulders. Anyone in the way was either brushed aside or trampled.
I watched as the king accepted the adulation of his royal court. He was off the hook with Didi and riding high again. Yet I was the one feeling relieved. If Todd had gotten himself dumped over this, the guy would have had a new girlfriend in about three minutes. But the stink of having let him down would have followed me around forever. He held all the cards, and I held diddly-squat. It had always been that way. It probably always would be.
Left on my own, I did a little walkabout. On closer inspection, the party wasn’t exactly the same mix of people as the week before. Fresh blood, Jake called it. Interspersed with the regulars were a handful of slightly edgier people—body piercing, dog collars, green hair, black leather. I saw the kid they called Poozer, who was famous for cleaning his fingernails with a razor-sharp army-surplus bayonet. He was currently on suspension for throwing a punch at Mr. DiPasquale, one of the assistant principals. There was a nineteen-year-old who had taken a couple of years off to travel around as a roadie for a ska band. He was back to finish up a few classes for his diploma. There was Phil Braggett talking to a couple of girls. He was laying it on thick about how he just got back from a few months in juvie for some exotic, but nonspecific crime. He had a great tan, though, which most people behind bars don’t get. I personally suspected he’d been at his rich family’s place in Palm Beach.
If Jake had hand-selected the newcomers, he couldn’t have done a better job. Just by adding ten or fifteen people, he’d changed the whole feel of the party the way a great chef can make food come alive with a tiny dash of spice. Yet the selection was a careful one. Jake had invited kids who brought with them an air of toughness without actually inviting any really tough kids. There were guys who hung around drugs, but no dealers. There were guys who could fight, but probably wouldn’t. There were guys who looked like they belonged in the East Village, or Venice Beach, but when push came to shove, they were suburban teenagers at a party.
Hands reached around my head and clamped over my eyes. I already knew it was Jennifer. She did this to me at least once every time we were together. I had to “guess.”
“Is it the illegitimate love child of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mussolini?”
“Right!” she removed her hands and came to stand in front of me. “I swear to God, Ricky, this is the best party I’ve ever been to. They’ve got a game of strip Twister going on in the basement!”
I brightened. “Anybody losing?”
“Just Dipsy, but I don’t think he’s in the game. He’s kind of passed out on the pool table with his head in a bag of Cheez Doodles. And he’s got no pants on.”
I remembered last week. “The football team probably stole them.” I looked around. “Where’s Didi?”
She shrugged. “Jake’s giving her a tour of the house. I sure wasn’t going to waste a good buzz looking at somebody’s wallpaper.”
“Because it’s all about you,” I finished.
She beamed. “Ricky, that’s why I hate men. None of them can ever compare with you. Let’s dance.”
We squeezed into the pack of gyrating bodies and swayed in the same direction as everybody else. You couldn’t move any other way—not unless you wanted to get coldcocked by a flying elbow. We must have looked like a wheat field on a windy day.
We were right in front of the speakers so Jennifer had to shout to be heard. “How do you think Jake pays for all this?”
I just shrugged.
“He’s your friend,” she persisted. “Food, beer—getting this place cleaned up must cost a few bucks. Not to mention his clothes. Does he have a job?”
I shook my head. “No time. He’s got football practice every day. Maybe he’s got a trust fund or something.”
r /> “Ricky,” she chided. “Look around. It’s a pretty big house, but it’s not an estate. What’s Jake got going?”
“Will you give it a rest?” I complained. But deep down, I knew she had a point. I had a sneaking suspicion that the answer had something to do with those little white envelopes our host had collected at Throckmorton Hall.
The action seemed to be escalating. At around eleven, Corinne Gardner’s Sweet Sixteen party showed up, twenty strong, dressed to kill, and determined to make up for a three-hour deficit in drinking. They brought with them a partially melted six-foot ice swan. In no time at all, there was an army of people all over it, trying to re-shape it with their tongues. I noticed Todd and Melissa in there, laughing hysterically, and obviously friends again.
It was around that time that Nelson fell down the stairs. He took three people with him, and it was a miracle that we didn’t have to send for a fleet of ambulances. Though Nelson did knock out a tooth, which was found thirty feet away in the dining room.
At midnight, Kevin Fontaine burst through the door with the entire staff of Dante’s Pizza, just closed up.
“We delivered to nine parties tonight,” Kevin informed me, “and this is the only one worth going to.” He gawked at the writhing mass of swan-lickers. “This is the place to be.”
It was pure insanity. By one a.m., the place was so crowded I thought the walls would split open. A bunch of football players were doing jumping jacks in the backyard in the pouring rain just to prove they were tougher than Liberty, our week-one opponents.
Some wise guy must have taken control of the music, because the CD player was off. Now the speakers blared out Jake’s dad’s old vinyl Beach Boys records at 45 r.p.m. In all the craziness, it sounded kind of good, like Munchkins on a caffeine buzz. There were twice as many dancers as before.
It took the laws of physics to put an end to the festivities. Shortly after three, the keg began hacking up foam. And by that time, the last piece of pizza had either been eaten or mashed into the carpet. The party was over.