Лорен Кейт - The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

I rolled my eyes, suddenly glad Kate wasn’t here. “I didn’t think Rex would give the library liquor green light to such a strung-out drunken pig.”

“Feisty, Nat,” Baxter said, leaning over and attempting to run a finger up my thigh from the couch. I swatted him off.

“Let’s see that crotch shot again,” he said. “Usually, things don’t get that hot and heavy till at least midnight.” He fiddled with the camera to play back some of his footage. “So far the juiciest thing I’ve got from down below is Justin Balmer tripping over his boa.”

“What?” My ears perked up. “Let me see that. What’s J.B. doing?”

“Asking to get punked is what he’s doing,” Baxter said, rewinding his footage to show us. “Someone should cut that kid off. He’s one drink away from being worth the price of admission.”

“You said it,” I muttered as Mike and I leaned down to look over Baxter’s shoulder. The camera was so wobbly that it was hard to see much, but J.B. was definitely making an ass of himself. He was poolside, flashing a sock-stuffed lacy bra he must have borrowed from some Bambi. He was sporting red lipstick and a short leather skirt with fishnets — pretty much the opposite of classy.

My eyes narrowed.

“Let’s get down there,” I said.

Mike nodded, happy for a reason to get away from Baxter. He made a last run for the good champagne.

“Royal road pop,” he said, handing me the refill. “Who knows what the plebs are drinking down there?”

“You sure you don’t want to do one more sex scene for the camera?” Baxter called out. “I could make you big on the Internet.”

“Bye, Baxter,” I said, leaving him slumped on the studded leather couch. “Thanks for the preview.”

On the staircase, Mike and I paused again for another pose in front of the gilded mirror. Why was it that every time I caught a glimpse of myself looking so good, my father’s trashy text flashed into my mind?

I started down the stairs again, but Mike pulled on my hand.

“Don’t stray too far when we get down there,” he said. “Can’t have some masked man swooping in on you.”

“Promise,” I whispered back, glancing once more into his dark eyes.

In the kitchen, we passed the crawfish-boil buffet and the sign above it reading, Bite the Tail and Suck the Head. We paused behind a crowd of guys that had formed in front of the refrigerator. They each had a beer in one hand and a string of beads in the other. They were attempting a very drunken drum roll on their thighs.

“What do we have here?” Mike asked.

“Ask and you shall receive,” one of the guys answered, tossing Mike a strand of beads.

Soon, a line of girls filed in to stand in a row before the crowd. Their hands were poised at the hems of their shirts.

“And. . flash wave!” one of the guys cued.

The girls all whooped, and one by one, they lifted up their shirts in a contagion down the line. When all the lacy bras had been shown off, everyone was rewarded with exchanges of beads and saliva.

“Encore!” the guys shouted.

“Moving on,” I said to Mike, and pulled him out to the tent.

At least the party outside was a step up on the classy scale. A band played old New Orleans blues songs on a rotating stage in the middle of the dance floor. Most of the upper-classmen were getting freaky around the band, holding giant feathered masks up to their faces.

From the bar, Kate waved in her hot-pink negligee. Her hair was in a high braided bun, and she seemed to be the only girl at the party who hadn’t bothered to cover up her face with a mask. Her feathered heels clacked on the parquet as she dashed over to us.

“Don’t you two look all regal?” she asked, giving Mike a once-over and me a solemn nod of admiration.

“We ran into Baxter upstairs,” I said, watching her face light up as she tugged the negligee lower on her hips. I leaned in and cupped her ear. “He looks like he could use a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

“Say no more,” she purred, then pounced past us towards the house. I wasn’t sure why she was after Baxter at all, but I was nothing if not charitable to the deserving. I wouldn’t stand in their way. And anyway, I had more important things on my mind. Like finding J.B.

I scanned the rest of the crowd, spotting some senior girls in the far corner. They were serenading each other with massive multicolored boas. It was one big cloud of feathers flying over variations of tight black dresses.

“You want to go dance with the girls?” Mike asked.

I looked around to see what else was going on. I did love to dance, and there was something pretty sexy about everyone being incognito behind his or her mask. But I also wanted to be cognito when Mike ran into J.B.

An unwelcome hand on my ass told me I didn’t have to wait any longer. I spun around and lowered my mask.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” J.B. purred. “I thought you were someone else. A girl I used to know. My mistake.”

I raised my palm to slap him, but Mike was standing right behind me.

“Hands off,” I muttered to J.B.

“C’mon, doll face. Don’t you know flesh is fair game on Mardi Gras?”

“Don’t call me that,” I hissed, my stomach seizing up at the sound of the nickname. “And for the record, my flesh is never fair game for you.”

“Hey,” Mike said, joining the conversation. “Balmer, you are one fugly woman.”

“And you didn’t dress the part,” J.B. said, taking in Mike’s tuxedo. From the self-conscious look on his face, it might finally have occurred to him how ridiculous he looked. “I thought you were going all out with me.”

“Change of plans,” I shrugged, thinking back to what Baxter had said upstairs about J.B. asking to get punked. “You look like you need another drink. Maybe it’ll make you forget how unflattering those fishnets are.” I turned around and spotted a crowd gathered next to the pool. “Look,” I said innocently. “Keg stands. That looks fun.”

“You want to do a keg stand?” Mike asked.

“No,” I said. “J.B. does.”

J.B. looked me up and down. His eyes were glassy and drunk. I couldn’t figure out why I suddenly felt more naked than I had when Mike had my dress hiked up around my waist.

“Well, that sounds like a dare,” he said.

Within minutes, Mike, Rex, and a couple of their JV football runners had J.B. lifted in the air. His legs were splayed out, and his mouth was poised over the keg to take it. I didn’t even have to lift a finger to get the crowd to gather around.

“Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!” the whole party cried out in unison.

J.B. spent a reputable amount of time sucking off the keg, and I sidled to the front to see his swollen face lurch with beer. When he made the mercy cut-off sign, the guys lifted him back up, then set him down. A cheer rang out across the party for the green-faced victor. I stood among my senior girls and waited for him to do something lewd enough to shock the crowd. Everyone knew Justin Balmer was no peach when he got trashed.

“Clear out,” J.B. yelled, stumbling toward the bushes. “I’m gonna puke.”

“Vile,” my friend Amy Jane Johnson said, offering the senior girls swigs from her grandmother’s old flask. “Keg stands are so bourgeois. Why is J.B. doing that?”

“That’s not what you said when you made out with Dave Smith right after he did a keg stand last summer,” Jenny Inman teased her, tugging on her uncharacteristically short black shirt.

“That was different,” Amy Jane said, fanning herself with her mask. “Dave Smith played at Wimbledon. He gets carte blanche.”

“Encore,” someone hollered at J.B. I looked up to see Baxter and Kate’s silhouettes huddled together on the library balcony. “Boot and rally!” Baxter yelled.