But that’s not how it happens. He doesn’t fire back. He leans in for the kill, over my shoulder, his lips so close I feel hot air glancing over my earlobe.
“Because it happened to you, didn’t it?”
My breath catches. I try to suppress it but I flinch, and when Jack sees that he laughs. The sound is brittle and cool, like a frozen thing snapping in two, and he holds up a hand as if in farewell to the room and leaves through the door he came in, the night lawn crowded with poorly parked cars swallowing him up.
The house starts talking again. People laugh and dance and drink again, making out against walls with renewed vigor. Heat and ice are sloshing through my veins all at once, back and forth. My heart’s being squeezed by a heavy iron fist, and I can’t breathe. Kayla puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Are you okay, Isis?”
How did he know? Could he really read me that well? Yeah, the same thing happened to me. A boy broke my heart – no – more than that. He broke my soul, my heart, and who I used to be. After three years, nine weeks, and fifty-one days, I should be able to hide it better. So how could he tell?
Everyone’s watching. I can’t run out the door, since that’s the way he went, or they’ll assume things. I can’t go upstairs to be alone, or they’ll assume he won. Won what? I’m not sure yet, but the antagonism that arced between us felt like a fever – uncomfortably warm and refusing to be ignored. I want nothing more than to crawl into someplace quiet and nurse the scab he ripped off my gaping wound, but I can’t. People might be going back to partying, but they’re also watching me for confirmation of what exactly happened, and what I do next will determine that.
He attacked me on my most personal level.
He opened the one injury I never wanted to think about again, the one I came here to escape.
“He kissed me!” I announce loudly to Kayla. “It was disgusting! All tongue and no skill.”
Kayla’s eyes widen. My words echo back at me over the music in snippets of different people’s voices. Kiss. New girl. Jack Hunter. Ice Prince kissed New Girl. While it spreads, I pull Kayla by the hand and bring her into the kitchen. She’s shaking. I put my hands on her shoulders and look her in the eyes.
“You – You and him –” she starts.
“Didn’t do anything,” I murmur. “I swear to you. I just said that to make him look bad.”
Her eyes brighten momentarily, then dim, and somehow that makes me more sad than it makes me angry. She still likes him, even after he called her pathetic in front of a bunch of people. I feel so bad for her. I used to be her and that’s why I feel so damn bad for her.
“I can’t believe you actually punched him!” Kayla says. “You’re crazy!”
“You’re crazy for liking a guy like that,” I sigh. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to stay away from feral dogs?”
“He’s not a dog!” She protests. “He’s never hit on me!”
“Because he’s g*y.”
“He has mature college girlfriends! A new one, like, every week!”
“Because he’s ordering them from Russia. Or Saturn. Whichever one has more girls who are depressingly desperate for money.”
Kayla wobbles, and I help her sit on the polished wood floor against the kitchen counter. There’s a large cupboard. She feels it against her back and drunkenly opens it and crawls inside, closing the doors behind her. I become extremely patient and understanding for an entire ten seconds, then knock. A mutter reverberates from inside.
“Go away.”
“C’mon. I’m not sorry. He deserved it, okay?”
“I’ve liked him since fourth grade!” Kayla mourns. “That was the first time I’ve ever talked to him! And you…you came in and ruined it! It’s over! My life is over!”
“It was a life well spent.” I nod.
“I’m not actually going to die!” She flings the cupboard doors open to wail at me.
“Oh but you are! In about seventy years. But for now you are very much alive and very much wasted, so I think I’ll drive you home.”
“No! I can drive myself!” She gets out of the cupboard and promptly slips on a cheeto. I catch her and pull her up, and together we make it through the front door.
“You can drive yourself into a cliff, yes.”
“I might as well!” Kayla moans. “Jack hates me now!”
“Oh pish posh. I’m sure he’ll remember you fondly as the four hundred and thirty sixth girl he made cry.”
Kayla bursts into tears, and I half-drag, half-pull her across the lawn and into my tiny VW beetle. It’s light green and rusted, with a broken headlight and soda cans littering the floor, but it does its job of letting everyone know I’m poor and that’s really all I ask from a car.
“Isis!”
A voice calls to me. Kayla tries to bolt, but she’s so drunk she just wobbles in place a bit and burps. I help her onto the seat and shut the door, turning to face the voice. Avery Brighton makes her way over to me, red curls bouncing and green eyes bright. She’s a picturesque Irish doll, with porcelain skin, slender proportions, and a perfect spate of freckles across her button nose. It’s like God airbrushed the crap out of her, ran out of paint for everyone else, looked down at all the babies he was chucking to Earth and went ‘hahah whoops but check this one out it’s a masterpiece’.
“Are you kidnapping Kayla?” Avery asks, smiling a china doll smile.
“Theoretically, I am totally not the sort of person to do that, but also theoretically if I knew how to kidnap people from looking it up on Google when I was really bored over Christmas break last year, then theoretically there’d be a lot more duct tape and chloroform involved. In theory.”
“Yes, well, that’s very interesting but I’m going to ask you to give her back. I need her here.”
“She sort of seems out of it? And also she’s really bummed because of some things I don’t know if you saw or not that happened?”
“I saw. It was interesting. Probably the most interesting thing that’s happened all year besides Erika’s suicide attempt,” Avery muses. She looks me up and down, as if seeing me in a new light, and then points at me. “But that doesn’t excuse Kayla from certain duties she needs to perform tonight.”
“That’s sort of weird? Like, it’s a really vague and threatening thing to say about someone? Also I don’t think you own her and she needs to lie down and chill so I’m taking her home?”
I inch around the car to the driver’s side as Avery’s face grows darker and more perfectly deadly vampire-esque.
“Why are you talking in questions?” She asks.
“Why are you? Talking in questions?” I crane my neck over the hood and maintain eye contact. She’s like a bear. A really big, really rich bear. I can’t look away or she’ll charge and use my insides to line her Louis Vuitton purse.
“If you leave now, I’m not inviting you to another party again.”
“Okay? That’s kind of good because I don’t think I want to associate with people who say suicide attempts are interesting? And who make pooping juice and pretend it’s punch? That is almost as bad as playing the Black Eyed Peas on loop?”