Hannah Harrington - Speechless

Well, I don’t think I’ll have a recognition problem now.

“Feeling better?”

Brendon approaches me with a cautious smile, like he’s afraid I’ll hurl all over his shoes at any given moment. Not a total impossibility. At this rate, I’m pretty sure my hand on the banister is the only thing keeping me upright.

“Uh—” Why is it that I always sound like such an idiot around Brendon? Seriously, I am incapable of forming a complete sentence in his presence, even when I’m stone-cold sober. It’s kind of pathetic. Okay, a lot pathetic. I breathe out and try to focus. “Where’s Kristen?”

“In the kitchen, I think,” he says. His brow furrows. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” I say, “I just—I need to talk to her.”

I find her in the kitchen surrounded by half of the basketball team. The guys are all rummaging through her cabinets looking for snacks. Kristen’s lucky her parents are out of town; this place is going to be a disaster area come tomorrow morning. I’ll probably have to help her clean it up, too. Somehow I’m the one who always ends up cleaning out the vomit-ridden toilet bowls.

“Kristen!” I say, louder than I mean to. Everyone’s head swivels around to look at me as I wobble up to her on unsteady legs. Balance is a tricky concept at the moment.

Kristen looks up at me over her cup of beer, one part amused, one part embarrassed. “God, Chelsea, you’re a hot mess.” Which is pretty lame of her, because her cheeks are apple-red and her eyes are just glassy enough to let me know she’s only a fraction less drunk off her ass than I am.

I ignore the insult and grab her arm urgently. “Kristen,” I say again, “you’re not going to believe what I just saw.”

This catches her attention, and everyone else’s. Warren closes the refrigerator door and looks over at us, and Brendon comes up next to me. Joey hops off of the counter and crosses his arms. Everybody’s gone quiet, wondering what I’m going to say. And really, this is the best gossip I’ve heard all year. Considering the year is less than an hour from being officially over, that’s saying something.

I don’t know what I expected to happen when I told everyone. I guess I thought it’d be a funny story, or at least a memorable one. It’d be the kind of thing where later, every so often someone could bring it up by saying, “Hey, remember when Chelsea walked in on Noah and that random guy macking on each other?” And that’d be the point where I’d jump in and give my firsthand account, and everyone would be both amused and scandalized, and maybe Brendon would be bowled over by my charismatic storytelling skills and declare his undying love for me on the spot. Or something.

I didn’t realize Kristen would have the reaction she does—which is less laughing and more one of extreme disgust, like I just told her that her guest room has a cockroach infestation. Once I spill the details, she gives a full-body shudder, mouth hanging open with a mixture of shock and revulsion.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Ew!” she exclaims, appalled. “He got fag all over my sheets!” She says it like being gay is a highly contagious epidemic or something. My stomach drops, and I open my mouth to say something.

Before I can, Derek Connelly, the team’s small forward, laughs. “That dude?” he says. “Seriously?”

Warren stalks over to us, one fist clamped tight around a bottle of beer and the other clenched at his side. “Whatthefuck?” he slurs. Redness creeps up his neck and flushes his whole face. “That fucking— I swear— I’m gonna—” He doesn’t finish the thought, but somehow I don’t think the rest of that sentence would be “give him a hug.” Warren is about as affectionate as he is articulate.

“Seriously. What. The. Fuck,” Joey echoes, useless as always.

“Who was he even with?” Kristen asks me.

“I… I don’t know,” I say uneasily. “I don’t think the other guy goes to our school.” This conversation is not going the way I imagined it would.

“Who the fuck does he think he is?” Warren growls. He wipes the sweat off his upper lip with the side of his fist. “All right, where’s the fag? I’m gonna go talk to him.”

“Fucking right,” Joey agrees.

The two of them push their way out of the kitchen and head for the staircase. I trail after them and manage to catch up halfway through the living room, nearly bowling over five people in the process.

“You guys, don’t.” I reach out, snagging Warren’s shoulder.

Except because I’m so trashed, I stumble and almost fall down. Joey and a few other people see and laugh. Brendon, though. Brendon isn’t laughing.

“Look,” I say, “they’re leaving anyway. Just leave them alone, okay?”

I point to where I can spot Noah’s shock of white-blond hair. He hurries to the front door, red-faced, with a cute black-haired boy behind him. The black-haired boy seems to be dragging his feet, intent on going at a leisurely pace, his fingers wrapped around Noah’s wrist as they move through the throng of people packed at the bottom of the staircase. Noah stops and says something to him, the words impossible to make out over the music and the conversation. The boy says something back, and Noah frowns, tugging the boy’s hand, and they disappear through the door together.

The irony is that if I hadn’t been drinking, I probably wouldn’t have spoken up at all—not right there in front of anyone; I would’ve waited until it was just Kristen and me alone. And I definitely wouldn’t have touched Warren—he’s not the kind of guy you pal around with.

Of course, if I hadn’t been drinking, I wouldn’t have needed to find a bathroom so badly and I wouldn’t have seen what I did.

Warren shakes me off with a scowl, and I fall sideways into Kristen, who laughs and props me up against the wall.

“You’re sooooo drunk,” she says. “Oh, my God.”

“They’re fucking holding hands? Shit.” Warren spits into his plastic red cup—so many kinds of gross—before he nods at Joey and says, “You coming?”

And Joey says, “Fuck, yeah,” because Joey is an idiot.

“You guys.” I push myself off the wall. “You guys, seriously. Don’t. Just leave it, okay? Okay?”

“Don’t worry,” says Warren, “all we’re gonna do is teach them a little lesson.” But his smile is all wrong, twisted, and there’s something else in his voice, too, warning me not to push it.

And so I don’t. Because it’s easier. It’s easier to let them go.

* * *

My plans to have Brendon sweep me off my feet at the stroke of midnight are thwarted when my nausea catches up to me, and I instead ring in the New Year vomiting my guts out in the bathroom. I must pass out sometime after that, because I wake up the next morning curled around the base of the toilet the same way you’d curl yourself around another person. Kristen didn’t even think to wake me up and help me into the bedroom, and now I have a sore hip and a crick in my neck. Not to mention a severe case of dry mouth.

I use the counter to pull myself to my feet then turn on the tap. As I scoop the cold water with both hands and splash it over my face, I try to piece together exactly what happened last night. I remember Warren and Joey taking off, but everything after that is a little fuzzy. It’s kind of freaking me out; I’ve never gotten that drunk before. Never to the point where I can’t remember what happened the next day.

Things start to come back to me when I rub my face dry with the thick terry-cloth towel hanging on the rack. Kristen cajoling me into one more shot even though I was already falling-down drunk; jumping up on her coffee table to dance until I fell off and landed on some freshman girl; Brendon—oh, God. Brendon. I’m pretty sure I totally threw myself at him in the most embarrassing manner possible.