Lance couldn’t fight his melancholy at school the next day, and when Tyson approached him in the hallway at lunchtime, he had little patience.
“My friend, Lance,” Tyson said, thrusting out his fist to bump with Lance. But Lance kept his hand in his pocket. “If I didn’t know better, dude, I’d think you don’t like me.” Humor rippled in his tone.
Lance just kept walking.
Tyson was full of energy, trotting in front of Lance, turning and walking backward. But he looked like death warmed over. His eyes were sunken, like a junkie on a dayslong high, but Lance resisted the urge to push him out of his way.
“What do you want?” Lance asked.
“Just to be friends, man,” Tyson said, hitting his own chest and throwing his hands out. “I like you, man. I don’t care what the jocks say about you.”
“I don’t care what they say about me either.”
“I looked you up on the Internet. Saw the articles about your shooting. I know it’s all true, man.”
Lance’s steps slowed. It wasn’t as if he’d spent a lot of time trying to convince people about what had happened to him back in Jeff City. But when someone acknowledged that it was true, it did him good.
“I’ve been telling everybody, dude,” Tyson said. “You’re a cool guy.”
Lance stopped walking and stared at him.
“What do I have to do to be your friend?” Tyson asked him.
Lance didn’t know what the guy was up to, but he didn’t trust him. “Leave April alone.”
“Hey, I’m just her friend. You overreacted last night, man. It’s not like you caught her shooting crack.”
“If you care about her, back off, okay?”
“Hey, you’ve got problems. If you loosened up, people would like you better. I can hook you up. A little stress reliever to help you forget your sister killed somebody.”
Lance’s muscles went rigid. “She did not kill anybody, so shut your stinkin’ mouth.”
Again, Tyson’s hands came up. “Sorry, man. I didn’t say that right. I’m sure she’s cool.”
“Get out of my way,” Lance bit out.
Lance pushed past him. He thought of calling Kent and telling him that a slimy drug dealer was slithering down the halls of the high school. But Tyson was too smart to be caught that way. He wouldn’t have more than one hit on him — just enough for a small misdemeanor charge, and he’d be free again within hours. Lance knew how guys like him operated. They kept their stash nearby, in a place that was easy to reach, but never on them. His dopers had to come to a second meeting at a more discreet location to buy from him. He’d never have enough on him to be busted for long.
Brooding, Lance went into the cafeteria. The smell of beef stew assaulted him, making him feel sick. He headed for the salads and found April there.
Her smile almost made him feel better. “Hey, Lance. You okay?”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
“So . . . you want to go to Aaron Gray’s party tonight?”
He shrugged. Aaron Gray was a basketball player whose parents were millionaires. Lance didn’t have a clue why the guy went to public school. The party was for the whole junior class, but Lance hardly knew him. “Not really.”
“Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“I have a lot going on.”
He took his tray and headed to an empty table. April followed. “How’s Emily?”
“Okay. She broke her foot. Like she needed more bad luck.”
“She must be really depressed.”
“Yeah. I hope she doesn’t have to repeat the semester. But I guess that’s the least of her worries.”
“Have they caught the killer yet?”
“Nope.”
“Then she might really have to go back to jail?” she whispered.
Lance just stared at his food. “Can we change the subject?”
“Yeah. Sure.” April took a bite, her soft eyes on him. “Come on and go to the party with me tonight. I don’t want to go by myself. It’ll get your mind off things.”
“Tyson hasn’t offered you a ride?” he said sarcastically.
She took the blow. “I don’t want to go with him.”
“Good.” There was hope. He should wash his hands of her for smoking dope with Tyson. But she was weak and down, and Tyson clearly had taken advantage. Maybe Lance shouldn’t be so hard on her.
He drew in a long breath. “Maybe I could get my mom’s car.”
April’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
He grinned. “I’ll text her and see.”
The Grays’ house reflected their wealth. Aaron had bragged often about the ten-thousand-square-foot mansion with countless rooms. The party spilled onto the back lawn and around the pool, though it was too cold to swim.
As he and April walked up the drive from where valets had parked his car, Lance’s anxiety kicked into hyperdrive. April, who’d grown up here, found friends just inside the house and dashed toward them. Lance stood alone for a moment, then forced himself to head toward the kitchen.
The counters were filled with bottles of everything from Corona beer to Jim Beam. Clearly, the host’s parents weren’t around . . . or else they had no problem with teenagers getting drunk in their home. Lance found the sodas and poured himself a Coke.
He stepped out of the kitchen and tried to find a place to get out of the way. He missed his friends in Jeff City.
Sitting alone, watching his classmates drink and dance, he decided that he shouldn’t have come. Why had he been so flattered when April asked him? It wasn’t like a date. She wasn’t paying any attention to him. Maybe she just considered him a project, someone who needed a friend, so she’d made the sacrifice.
He saw a table of food on the back patio and ambled toward it. A couple of people he knew from class stood in front of the chips and salsa. They looked sober and sane, so he went toward them. But as he approached, they walked away. He wasn’t sure if they’d seen him and were avoiding him or if they just hadn’t noticed. He set his drink down and filled a plate with some chips and dip, then headed for a free chair in a corner of the patio.
As he sat down, he saw Tyson coming in, newly arrived and wild-eyed. He looked worse than he had earlier. Several of Lance’s classmates greeted the doper like they’d been waiting for him. He was sure to score big tonight.
Lance sat alone for a while, scanning the crowd for April, but after a while, he realized he’d completely lost track of her — and Tyson had disappeared, too. He should just leave, but first he had to make sure she had a ride home. Irritated, he went looking for her. He found one of her friends in the kitchen, mixing rum and Sprite. “Scarlet, do you know where April is?”
“I think they’re in the study,” she said.
They? Who was they?
He crossed the crowded living room toward the foyer, looking for something that looked like a study. A door just off a massive hallway was closed. Maybe that was it.
He opened the door, looked inside at the cluster of people there. A joint was being passed around the circle, its smoke clouding the room.
Lance stepped back, and April shot up. “Lance?”
Lance looked from her to Tyson, who was grinning as he lit another joint and passed it down.
“’Sup, Lance?” he asked. “Come in and have a toke.” His laughter cracked through the room.
Lance ignored him and closed the door. He was outa here. He headed for the front door, but behind him, the study door flew open and April dashed out. “Lance! Don’t go.”
Lance didn’t turn back as he trotted down the steps to the drive.
“Lance! Please wait. I just took one hit.”
“I’m going home,” he said over his shoulder. He found the car and pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Find a ride.”
“No, I’ll come with you,” she said.
He unlocked the door and April jumped into the passenger seat. “I braced myself for alcohol being here,” Lance said, “but I didn’t expect dope. I thought you told me it was just a mistake when you did it before, that you weren’t gonna do it anymore.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He drove in silence for a moment, unable to look at her. “My sister started with things like this, you know. And then one day at a party just like that one, somebody handed her a pill and said, ‘Take it. It’ll make you feel better.’ So she took it and it calmed her, and she thought that was her answer. She could be a big party girl, do whatever she wanted, have so much fun, if she would just get high before she went. But you know what happened? Before she knew it, she wasn’t taking it because it made her feel good. She was taking it because if she didn’t she would puke her guts out. And she spent every minute of the day trying to figure out where she was gonna get her next hit. And then the pills stopped being enough. So she started using heroin and cocaine and anything else she could get her hands on. She threw my mom and me under the bus and lost all her friends.”
April stared at him in the darkness.
“My mother raised her with perfect teeth, and now she has fourteen fillings in her mouth. She’d hang out in rat holes of apartments and dope houses, shooting poison into her veins. It all started as no big deal. Just one hit. One joint. One pill.”
April set her elbow on the window and let out a long breath. “I know you’ve seen some bad stuff. But I’ve been really depressed about my parents, and I just wanted to feel better.”
“You think you got problems? My friend Jordan was a second-generation meth addict. Her mother traded Jordan’s baby for drugs, and Jordan and her baby almost died. People like her and my sister are fighting for their lives every day, and you have the stupidity to flirt with it like it’s no big thing. I can’t hang out with you, April. I was gonna ask you to homecoming, but I don’t want to anymore.”
She turned her rounded eyes to him. “Really? You were? I would’ve said yes.”
That didn’t make him feel better. “I should save my money anyway. Trying to buy a car.”
She wiped her face. He fought the disappointment surging through him. She was his only friend, and he hated being alone.
But he’d had enough stupidity in his life. Best to move on now, while he had a choice.