The seniors-only party was stifling, confined to the basement of Morris Robinson’s house. Morris was one of the wealthier guys at school, so it was a big basement with a living area, a game room, and a laundry room…but it was still a basement. There were no windows, and about eighty people were packed in tightly, smoking, laughing, and being generally irksome.
None of this was good for a girl who hadn’t eaten all day or slept all night. The moment Danielle, Jonah, Zach, and I arrived, I wanted to bail.
“Yo, Zach, Jonah! Wanna shoot some pool?” Zach’s friend Luke shouted from the doorway to the game room. “We’re playing for cash.”
Zach and Jonah glanced at each other, then looked at me and Danielle hopefully.
“Go ahead,” Danielle said, shooing them along. “But if you win you gotta buy us something pretty.”
I smiled as Zach kissed my cheek and jogged off with Jonah. Oddly, I felt relieved the moment he was gone.
“Let’s get something to drink,” Danielle said, pulling me toward the bar.
She mixed herself her favorite drink—a screwdriver “light on the screw”—then started to make me one.
“I’ll just have the juice,” I told her. I sat down on a chair that had just been vacated.
“Coming right up!”
Okay, this was better. The air was less smoky over here, and it seemed a little less loud when people weren’t shouting directly into my ear.
“Here you go,” Danielle said, dropping down next to me. She took a sip of her drink and smacked her lips. “Where’s Aurora tonight?”
“I think Drake dragged her to that environmental rally at the college,” I told her. “You know, Trent’s thing?”
I wondered if I would have been there, too, if I had chosen Trent. It might have been nice to be out in the fresh air tonight instead of here.
“Are those two, like, together now?” Danielle asked, raising her eyebrows. “Because I’m sorry, but Drake is weird.”
“I think they’re just friends who’re going to the prom together,” I replied. “But who knows? Tomorrow she might call us up and tell us she’s all in lo-o-ove.”
“Yeah. She hasn’t been in lo-o-ove in, like, a month. That’s a long time for her.” Danielle laughed. “So how about you? Are you all in lo-o-ove again?”
I forced a smile and sipped my juice. “Sure. Of course. Everything’s great.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it,” she said skeptically.
“What?” I asked, my stomach twisting.
“It’s just, you don’t seem happy,” she told me. “You seem kind of blah, actually.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No! I just mean—”
“Hey, Noelle?”
I looked up to find Tracy Walkow standing over me. She was more sober than she’d been at her own party, but she seemed kind of…concerned.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“You might want to come in here for a sec,” she said. Her voice was flat.
My heart thumped with foreboding, and I pushed myself up from my seat. A major head rush threatened to take me right back down, and I pressed my hand to a wall to steady myself. Tracy was hanging by the door to the game room, waiting for me.
I walked over to her and looked across the room to the pool table. My entire stomach almost dropped right out of my body.
Melanie Faison was there, standing by the wall. What the hell? Was this girl everywhere? Or just everywhere Zach happened to be? As I watched, she took a sip of her drink and handed Zach his pool cue. He thanked her and then bent to take his shot while she blatantly checked out his ass.
“What the hell is she doing here?” I hissed. “I thought this was a Jefferson party.”
“Yeah. So did I,” Tracy said.
“Noelle,” Danielle whispered, touching my shoulder. “They’re not doing anything. It’s just a party.”
“Please! She’s practically stalking him!” I whispered back. From the corner of my eye I noticed a few people watching me and whispering. “What is up with this girl? Is she that freaking hard up, she has to keep coming after my boyfriend? Are there no eligible guys at her own school?”
“Maybe she can’t get a guy at her own school,” Danielle said uneasily. “I don’t know. Maybe we should feel sorry for her.”
“Please. That’s about the last thing I’ll ever feel toward her.” I ducked behind the door and peeked back into the room. “And look at him! He’s totally talking to her. Why doesn’t he just tell her to back off already?”
“I don’t know,” Danielle replied with a nervous laugh. “Cuz he’s polite?”
“Why are you always defending him?” I asked.
“I’m not! I’m just trying to make you feel better,” Danielle said. “Calm down.”
“I am calm,” I told her, looking wildly around the living area. “He thinks it’s okay to flirt while we’re in a relationship? While I’m in the next room? Fine. I’ll show him what real flirting is.”
“What’re you gonna do?” Tracy asked, scuttling up behind me.
My eyes fell on Derek Walton, the guy who had been crushing on me since Valentine’s Day, if not longer. A jolt of exhilaration shot through me. All at once, I felt more awake than I had in days.
“I’m going to give my boyfriend a taste of his own medicine.”
“You have the best legs in the entire senior class,” Derek said to me, staring down at my bare knees as we sat on the couch. Derek turned out to be an even easier target than I’d predicted. He was already pretty drunk, so he had long since passed into uninhibited territory.
“You think?” I said, hooking one leg over his.
I blushed the second I did it, and Derek’s brown eyes widened a bit. Oops. Maybe I had just taken this a tad too far. Of course, Melanie probably would have done that half an hour ago.
“Yo. Aren’t you, like, with Zach still?” Derek asked me.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t talk to you, does it?” I asked him, tilting my head, not believing the sound of my own voice.
Derek smiled a toothy smile. “No. I guess not,” he said. Then he burped right into my face. His breath smelled like jalapeño Doritos.
The things a girl has to do to wake up her boyfriend…
“Uh, Noelle? Can I talk to you for a second?” Danielle said, pushing through the crowd to stand in front of me.
“Actually, I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I told her.
“I can see that,” Danielle replied through her teeth. “It’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“So talk.” I was not getting up from that couch. I was not going to move until Zach came back from his epic billiards game and saw me. Until he felt that punch in the pit of his stomach that I felt every time I saw him with Melanie.
“Okay, are you trying to drive Zach right into Melanie’s arms, or are you trying to get Derek’s ass kicked?” Danielle demanded.
“Whoa, whoa. Who’s kicking my ass?” Derek asked, his head lolling as he tried to focus on Danielle.
“No one,” I assured him. “Danielle, just drop it, all right? I know what I’m doing.”
“You know, I really don’t think you do,” Danielle said.
At that very moment Zach stepped into the room, laughing with Jonah. My instinct was to jump right off Derek, but I didn’t move. Zach had to see this. He had to know how it felt. Finally Zach’s gaze fell on me, and his entire expression changed. He looked as if he’d just had his heart torn out through his back. I can’t say I wasn’t gratified to see that he still cared.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, crossing the room in two strides.
“Oh. Hi, Zach.” I tried to sound casual, but in my nervousness I sounded shrill.
“Get off him, Noelle,” he said, seizing me by the wrist.
I got up too quickly and stumbled a little, off balance. “What? We were just talking,” I said pointedly. “What’s the big deal?”
Zach ignored me. His chest heaved. His face was red with fury.
“Get up,” he said to Derek.
“Why?” Derek asked.
“So I can beat the crap out of you,” Zach replied, grabbing Derek’s shirt.
My stomach clenched. Uh-oh. Honestly, in spite of Danielle’s warning, I hadn’t expected this to happen. I expected Zach to pick a fight with me, not innocent, drunken Derek.
“Zach, no!” I said, tugging his arm. “Leave him alone! It wasn’t him!”
“What’re you talking about?” Zach shouted. “He was all over you.”
“No, he wasn’t! I was all over him!” I shouted. Oh, God. Here it came. I was going to throw up. Again. Dammit. “I was…I was—”
There was no time. I put a hand over my stomach and staggered for the laundry room and the bathroom beyond. I was just able to get in there and slam the door behind me before it came. My whole body was racked with pain as I shuddered through it, and tears squeezed out the corners of my eyes.
“Noelle? Are you okay?” Zach asked, tapping lightly on the door.
“One second!” I shouted.
I pulled myself together. Then I wiped a hand roughly across my mouth and opened the door. Zach took one look at me and went pale.
“Are you all right?” he asked, stepping inside.
“No! No, I’m not all right!” I shouted. I let the tears stream down my face. I had totally lost control. There was no going back now.
“Calm down. What’s the matter?” Zach asked quietly. He looked over his shoulder and closed the bathroom door behind him.
“You know what? Just do it already, okay?” I shouted at him. “If you want to hook up with Melanie again, do it! Get it over with! I can’t take this anymore!”
If Zach wasn’t as white as the linoleum before, he was now. “Who told you?” he asked.
I felt as if the entire room was crumbling around me. So he had hooked up with her. Then he’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book and admitted it. Hugging myself, I stepped back against the wall.
“No one told me,” I said. “You just confirmed my suspicion.”
For a split second Zach’s eyes flashed with anger. He tipped his head back and knocked it against the closed door.
“Oh, my God. This is not happening,” he said to the ceiling. Then he looked at me, his eyes pleading. “Noelle, it was just one time, okay? And it was while we were broken up. You have to believe me.”
I stared at him icily. What better way to announce to the world that you’re lying than to say, “You have to believe me”? This was insane. If he was lying about this, then what else had he lied about? Had he been lying the entire time we were together?
“What about that night you were supposedly sick?” I asked him. “The night when you didn’t answer any of my calls.” He dropped his hands, and his face completely shut down. “Where were you that night? Tell me the truth.”
“Noelle…”
“Zach, I swear…if you don’t tell me the truth right now I’m never going to trust you again,” I said.
Zach hung his head. He pushed his hands through his hair and blew out a sigh. “Fine. I was at a party,” he said.
I gulped. “With her?”
“Yeah. It was a Washington party,” he told me, driving a stake right through my heart. “But nothing happened,” he added, his eyes begging. “We were just hanging out.”
I covered my face with one hand and realized I was trembling. Of course I was trembling. I hadn’t eaten or slept well in days, and the guy I loved was admitting that he’d spent time with another girl while we were together—and lied about it. I felt as if the last three years were flashing before my eyes. Had he been seeing other girls behind my back all along? How stupid was I?
“Noelle, I love you. You know that,” Zach said, stepping toward me. The room was small enough that this one step put him mere inches away. I stared at the faded NASCAR logo on his T-shirt and saw the lines of his muscular chest through the fabric. I felt myself start to cave. I loved him, too, dammit. Why did I have to freakin’ love him?
“No,” I said, standing up straight. It was the only word I had the strength to shove out, but at least it was something. I couldn’t let myself give in. Not this time. But I couldn’t be this close to him either, or I would cave.
I started past him for the door, shoving him aside, but he grabbed me by the wrist.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“I have to,” I told him. “I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take you anymore. Not right now.”
“Noelle—”
“No, Zach. I have to…I have to think,” I choked out, tears welling up all over again. “Please just let me go.”
Zach sighed but finally released me. I fumbled for the doorknob and staggered out, hoping Danielle had never finished that drink of hers. Someone was driving me home from here this minute. And it definitely was not going to be Zach.
I stared at the glass of water and the plate of crackers on my bedside table. Every time my dad walked past the closed door of my room with his heavy gait, the water rippled. I blinked, and my eyes burned from staring blankly too long.
Outside the sun was shining, but barely a trace made it through my closed blinds and drawn curtains. According to the clock it was already after noon. I hadn’t gotten out of bed all day. My mom and Faith had checked on me a few times—thus the crackers and water—but none of their chiding and wheedling could get me out of bed. Every time I lifted my head, every time I thought I’d found a comfortable position, I’d start to feel sick again. And every time I’d found something on TV or in a magazine to distract me, I was soon staring into space again, thinking about Zach.
“Who told you?” he’d said.
With that look of guilt. Of sickened, snagged guilt. What had he done with her? Did he kiss her neck the same way he kissed mine?
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, my pillowcase bunched up in my fists.
I knew I couldn’t blame Zach for anything he’d done while we were apart. After all, I’d shared those intense kisses with Trent. But if he’d been seeing her before we’d broken up, before our anniversary, then that whole special day with him was a sham. How could he say that it didn’t mean anything? Whatever he’d done with her, it meant everything.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang, reverberating through the otherwise silent house. My heart flew up into my throat, and I sank down in the sheets. I could hear my mom talking and recognized the low tones of Zach’s voice.
There was no way I wanted to see him. No way in hell.
My mother climbed the stairs to my room and knocked lightly on my door before entering. Thank God, she’d left Zach behind.
“Honey? Zach is here to see you,” she said.
“Could you please tell him to go home?” I asked.
“Noelle, he looks upset,” she said, taking a couple steps into the room. “And he brought flowers,” she whispered.
“I don’t want them,” I groaned, rolling over. “I can’t deal with this right now, okay? Please just tell him I’m sick and I’ll talk to him later.”
“Okay, hon. I’ll tell him,” my mother said.
She closed the door behind her, and I took in my first real breath since the bell had rung. I heard the front door close, and finally my toes and fingers uncurled.
I was safe for now. I’d bought a little more time to figure out what I wanted to say. I just wished I knew how to begin to figure that out.