Robin Wasserman - Girls on Fire

BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY. BECAUSE I was tired. Because I was sick of being the tagalong, the one things were decided for. Because I had something to prove. Because I was curious. Because I looked hot, and I knew it. Because I’d seen enough movies where the mousy girl goes to a party and changes her life. Because I hated Nikki and thought if I drank enough beer maybe I’d be able to buzz up the courage to spit in her face. Because Lacey would hate it, or maybe she would love it, or maybe I should stop fucking caring one way or another what Lacey would think. Because I was embarrassed, and sad, and that made me angry all over again, and the rage felt good against the pedals, pumping through the dark, toward a strobing shadow, toward what felt that night, with the wind in my ears and my parents’ ancient scotch burning in my throat, like destiny. Because anything, because who knows, because it wasn’t a night or a week or a year for because, no why , only who what when where :

Me.

A mistake.

After I should have known better.

Here. The husk of a McMansion, bodies moving across windows lit by the flicker of candlelight. On the grandiose porch, two guys in low-slung jeans taking a final slug of beer before going inside.

“Yo, let’s get stupid.”

“You damn right, son.”

“You know it, son.”

It was the thing, that year, for the whitest of boys to talk like they weren’t, to sling awkward slang and let their pants sag like the rappers they saw on TV, and they were going where I was going, and that could have been my cue to get back on my bike and ride home, but instead I took the water bottle out of my bag and finished the scotch. I was a delinquent, I reminded myself. The cops were after me. I was grounded and sneaking out — albeit with paternal permission. I was dangerous.

The more I drank, the easier this was to believe.

It would have been the nicest house I had ever been in if it hadn’t been so clearly left behind. Left in a hurry, it looked like, couches and tables and rugs all in place, which, despite the mass of bodies gyrating to bad music on stained carpet, gave the house a whiff of Pompeii. Someone lived here, once, and fled in a hurry, set down breakfast spoon and morning paper, ran out the door and didn’t stop until far enough away to be safe from the thing that was coming. The bad thing.

Nikki Drummond was waiting in the foyer as if she were the grand dame of the estate. “Seriously? Hannah Dexter? Gracing us with her presence.”

“Seriously. Present.”

“I figured you’d be shipped off to a military academy by now. Or at least grounded.”

I wasn’t yet drunk enough to spit on her, so I shifted my attention to the jock drooling beside her, Marco Speck, who’d been Craig’s shadow and was apparently now looking to be his replacement. “I think you should watch out,” I said. “The last guy had to put a bullet in his head to get away from her.”

Marco looked at me like I’d just sucker punched her. “Jesus, Dexter. That was cold.”

I felt cold.

Nikki only smiled and handed me a shot, which I tipped back without hesitation, thinking maybe it was enough and we were even. Then she pushed Marco at me, saying we deserved each other, and if I wanted to embarrass myself she wasn’t going to stop me. When he said he barely recognized me in those boobs, and also dude, whoa , I let one hand play at my cleavage and the other wrap itself in his, because Nikki was watching. Maybe Lacey would have said, Don’t be one of them , but then again she’d also said What’s the big deal and What are you waiting for and Don’t be so fucking precious about fucking , and anyway she wasn’t there. The shot tasted like lemon and sugar and fire. Marco tasted like peanuts. His breath in my ear was like the wind on my bike, like coasting downhill in a whoosh of summer. Like letting it happen . Broken glass crunched beneath our feet, everything gritty and sticky and layered with filth, and it smelled like sex to me, sex as I imagined it, smoke and dried beer and rotting fruit. There was music pounding, hard-core rap; there was a crush of strangers doing the things strangers did in the dark. Marco sucked my neck. Marco’s hands were in my hands, and then in my pants, Marco was grinding against me, chest to chest, groin to groin, what passed for dancing, and I could feel him hard against me and almost believed I could do this on my own, without Lacey, I could be what the night demanded, push myself into its live and beating heart.

What the fuck are you doing?

I thought I heard her voice in my head, and I answered out loud, “ Shut up. ”

“Not a chance.” That wasn’t my head. That was Lacey, really her, standing behind me, hands on my waist, pulling me away from Marco and his hot sweat, pushing me through the bodies, up the stairs, into a child’s bedroom, a sad parade of zoo animals peeling off its wall.

“What the fuck, Dex?”

She wasn’t dressed for a party. White wifebeater and gym shorts, she wasn’t dressed for anything. No makeup. No boots. That was the weirdest part. Lacey in sneakers.

“I didn’t even know you owned sneakers,” I said.

“Are you drunk ?”

“Started without you.” Then I was hugging her, hugging her and saying how much she sucked for flaking out on me, but now she was here, and sneakers or not, everybody dance now —I sang it, took her wrists in my hands and waved her arms in the air.

She shook me. “Sober up, Dex. What the hell were you thinking?”

“You love me drunk.”

“When you drink with me. When I can watch you.”

“You’re late,” I said, and we shook each other off. “And in the wrong place.”

“And you’re sticking your tongue in Marco Speck. We’re both having off nights.”

“Lacey. Laaaaaaaaaaacey. Lighten up. It’s a party.”

“I have to fucking talk to you.”

“Right. Revenge,” I said, open for business. “Vengeance. Monte Cristo —style. Bring it on. What’ve you got?”

“What?”

“Nikki Drummond. You said you had the perfect plan. So, go on. Make this worth it.”

“Because you’ve got better places to be? Like in Marco Speck’s pants? Like I’d let that happen.”

I would have gone back down to the party then, maybe not to fuck Marco Speck but at least to make a good effort, if she hadn’t stepped in front of the door.

“Fine,” she said. “You want revenge? Here’s the plan. We burn the fucking house down. Right now.” She pulled out a lighter. I didn’t know why she would have a lighter, or why she was lighting it, taking one of the kids’ pillows and setting it on fire, both of us staring, mesmerized, at the flames.

“Jesus Christ!” I knocked it out of her hands, stomped on the fire, hard, desperate, stop, drop, and roll spinning through my head, and all those panicked nights I’d spent in fourth grade after Jamie Fulton’s house burned down and the school sent home a checklist of clothes the family needed in the aftermath, including girls’ underpants, size small. If my house burned down and my clothes turned to ash and the other kids in school had it confirmed in black-and-white that I required their spare girls’ underpants, size small . . better to die in a fire, I’d thought.

The flames went out. Docs were good for stomping.

“Are you trying to kill us?”

“The house burns down and what do you think will happen? Nikki’s party, Nikki’s fault, and everyone will know it,” Lacey said, something wild on her face, like she would have actually done it, like she would still do it, if only I said yes. “It’d be all over for her. And think of the fire, Dex. Flames in the night. Magic.”