Alex’s house glows in the dark and throbs with bass. Cars litter the front yard like lawn ornaments. I glance down at my phone. Savannah hasn’t texted since before midnight. She’s definitely pissed.
Chase gives me a sidelong glance as we climb out of the car. “You alright?”
I slam my door shut and nod.
We head toward the house. The front door flies open, and Savannah’s blowing down the steps toward me, her face a twisted mask of “I’m-so-happy-to-see-you” and “You-are-so-dead-to-me.” Even pissed off, she’s hot, her blonde hair all shampoo commercial. Plus, she’s wearing those jeans that I want to pull off with my teeth.
“Eli . . .” she starts, but I rush her, pull her to me, and kiss her hard on the mouth before any other words can come out.
She softens a little in my arms, then pulls away from the kiss and reaches up a hand to push back my wet hair. I toss my head, shaking my hair down again.
Savannah’s ocean eyes hide green rip currents. “What took you so long?”
Chase ambles up the stairs past us. “Just a little harmless pre-partying.”
“Dude!” I spin around like I’m going to punch him, but he’s already swerving into the house.
Savannah’s eyes narrow. “You’re not in trouble, are you? You know we can’t take any more trouble.” She means the kind of trouble we got in after Winter Formal. It was February before her parents would let us see each other again, and that was only because I showed up at her house on Valentine’s Day. I wore my nicest clothes, took grocery store flowers for her mom, and swore on my life to her dad that I would never put his daughter in that situation again.
“Tell me,” Savannah demands.
I hook my arms around her waist and make like I’m going to haul her off into the woods behind Alex’s house. She giggles and punches my chest in that girly-way that’s supposed to hurt but wouldn’t dent a pillow. I tell her the truth—at least part of it. “I fell asleep.”
Savannah fixes me with one of her are-you-lying stares that makes it hard to hold her gaze. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I guess you do look pretty tired.” Savannah relaxes in my arms. “You have sleep lines on your cheek.”
I stifle a yawn, and she giggles. “I’m still mad at you,” she says, but her eyes tell me otherwise.
I press my mouth to her ear, breathing in her smell, starburst sweet, and whisper that I’ll make it up to her. She sighs, but pushes me off. “C’mon,” she says, grabbing my hand and tugging me toward the steps. “Everybody’s inside. I can’t leave Katie by herself.”
Katie is Savannah’s latest project, a freckle-spattered strawberry blonde she’s been trying to set up with Chase since Winter Formal.
I groan. “Freckles is a big girl. Can’t she take care of herself?”
“It’s Katie,” Savannah snaps, shooting me a look.
I let her pull me inside.
There are at least fifty kids in the house. Bodies press together in corners and sprawl on couches. A beer pong tournament is in full swing. Chase is already up to bat, draining a red plastic cup. Freckles hangs off his arm. In the kitchen, the granite countertops are lined with empty glass bottles, and Alex is going ape-shit because somebody drank his dad’s beers from Hong Kong.
“Gimme that!” he yells at some random girl I vaguely recognize from Pre-Calc. He snatches a half-empty bottle from her hand and shoves her out of the kitchen. “Cans, not bottles, people! Cans, not bottles!”
I start to inch backward out of the kitchen, but Savannah’s fingers snake around my wrist and hold tight. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she teases. “I’m not letting you out of my sight tonight.”
“There he is!” Alex shouts, noticing me for the first time. “The man of the hour!” He scrambles up onto the kitchen island, clapping his hands together until everybody’s looking at him. “Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight we celebrate our first win of the season, against none other than the muthafucking Wolves!”
The crowd in the kitchen roars.
“And who do we have to thank for that?” Alex bellows.
The tips of my ears are on fire. Savannah leans in, tucks her arm around my waist.
“Raise your drink with me,” Alex continues, “as we celebrate the man . . . the legend . . . Eli Ross!” He spins around to face me, almost falling off the island. Somebody hands him a red cup, and he holds it up, beer sloshing over the lip. “To Eli!”
“To Eli!” the crowd in the kitchen echoes.
Alex jumps down. He slides a beer down the counter toward me. “E-li!” He claps his hands against the counter, urging the crowd to follow suit. “E-li, E-li . . .”
Savannah gives me an apologetic smile, and I crack open the can.
The chant quickly changes. “Chug! Chug! Chug!”
I slam three beers, one after the other, until the chorus changes into cheers and applause, and the room tips slightly out of focus. Savannah tugs on my arm. “Alright, alright,” she says, pushing back the fourth beer that Alex places in front of me. “That’s enough.”
The crowd groans, but they let me go, clapping me on the back as Savannah pulls me out of the kitchen. Somebody hands me a red cup. It’s cheap piss-water keg beer, but I toss it back and ask for another.
Savannah leads me into the crowded living room. It’s commercial-perfect, with white couches and glass-topped tables. It wouldn’t last ten minutes with Benny around. And judging from the swaying brunette waving around a red wine cooler, it might not last the night.
Guys from the team shout my name, punch my shoulder as they pass. Across the room, Freckles is sucking on Chase’s neck, and he lifts his vodka bottle to salute me. I’m the man of the hour, the fucking king of LionsHeart. So why do I feel like a fraud?
Alex’s family portrait hangs above the fireplace. His mom and two older sisters. Alex and his dad wearing the same deep tan, the same starched blue button-down. All of them shooting Crest-white smiles at the camera. The picture-perfect family.
My family doesn’t have any pictures like that, all four of us smiling together. Steven’s living room is a Benny Museum. There’s a picture of the day Benny was born, another of his first day of preschool. There’s even a snapshot memorializing the one day he played soccer before he decided he didn’t like it anymore. The only pictures of me are from before Steven, back when it was just Mom and me, and I was all the family she needed. The rest are boxed up in the attic somewhere, along with anything else that might remind her of my father. His old lacrosse stick. A weathered baseball glove. Everything’s hidden away, like he never existed at all.
Somebody bumps into me and I stumble, sloshing beer on the hardwood. Suddenly I’m suffocating. There are too many people, too many bodies to move through, too many faces getting in mine. I’m fucking drowning in bodies.
“I need some air,” I tell Savannah.
Cigarette smoke hovers over the deck like storm clouds.
I lean against the wooden railing, sucking cold air into my lungs.
Savannah presses a cool palm against my clammy cheek. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. I’m not okay. Not even a little bit.
She leans against me, and I love the way her chin fits right in the spot below my collar bone. I kiss her on the forehead, I’m sorry. Because she can’t make me feel better, but I know exactly what will.
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper.
She pulls me closer, because she knows what I’m going to do, and she doesn’t want me to. “Stay with me,” she says, her fingers trailing the waistband of my jeans. “We can go upstairs for a little bit, okay?”
I hesitate, but then the glass door to the patio slides open so hard it rattles the frame. Freckles is a dark shadow in the doorway, twin black lines streaking down her face like train tracks.
“Katie,” Savannah gasps. She starts toward the door, then turns and holds out a hand like a crossing guard. “Stay there,” she commands. “I’ll be right back.”
I nod, because you can’t lie when you don’t say anything. And because a few minutes alone is all I need. Savannah wraps her arms around Freckles, and they disappear together into the haunted fun house of lights and smoke and music. I slip down the deck steps and through the bushes to the front of the house.