Betting Blind (18 page)

Blah blah! . . .
Stop nagging me!

I pictured my arm punching through the foam core, grabbing Phil around the neck, and shaking him so hard, his spine snapped. Then I’d get Mom a wonder drug that gave her X-ray vision to see through bullshit. She’d look at Phil and see nothing but a pair of glasses.

I looked at the keyboard. What was I doing? I’d been taking tests all week, and now I was slaving over another piece of writing? Forrest was having a party, and I was sitting at my desk
writing an essay
?

I went to one of the sites that sells term papers, and typed “What do you believe in?” There were hundreds of hits . . . Guess it wasn’t such an original question after all. I read a list of titles and picked “I Believe We’re All the Same Underneath.”

It was a bunch of crap. We’re not all the same underneath, and anybody who says so is high. But it seemed like something Mueller would like. I had to doctor it to fit the assignment, but it didn’t take long.

As soon as I hit “Send,” I bolted out of my seat and dug my stash out of the closet. I bet tonight I could unload a quarter of the stuff at least, and pass along the rest to Kyle. I wanted to get it off my hands.

Forrest had his own entrance, and the bass was shaking the door. I walked into a cloud of smoke and a buffet of California Pizza Kitchen lined up by two pony kegs, thanks to Forrest’s parents. They were the types who wanted to be cool so bad they probably would have catered crack if he had asked them to. The place was packed with people talking and dancing and playing quarters, or just standing in front of the kegs, trying to get trashed before the beer ran out.

Kyle hollered, “Gabe!” and shoved through the crowd to give me a one-armed hug. “We’re done, dude! Least for this quarter. Cheers!” He tried to clink glasses, realized I didn’t have a drink, and handed me his. “Thisses scotch. My grandpa ordered it twenty years ago, with special oak and stuff. Been cooking for twenty years! You like scotch?”

I downed the glass. “Tastes okay to me.”

“That drink you took! Thass like fifty dollars!” Kyle laughed.

“Got any more?”

He held up a finger. “Be right back.”

I wandered through the crowd until I found my people: Forrest, some other rowers, and a bunch of fine women. Matt’s parents didn’t let him go to Forrest’s parties, which was probably good because he would have taken one look and left anyway.

Kyle came back soon with a bottle, and we passed it around and talked about—
finals?

At first I thought I was hearing things. Were these freaks seriously rehashing the test questions at a party? I couldn’t believe I’d spent all week being tortured and now had to relive stuff like “Why did Hamlet . . . ?” Did these people know how to have fun?

Even though I thought they were crazy, I couldn’t help listening, and I realized: they knew what they were talking about. And their answers were different from mine.

Suddenly I was so pissed, I wanted to punch something, wanted them all to shut up, these smart bastards who knew things about Hamlet that I couldn’t figure out if you cut open my head and scanned in the whole play.

I took another swig of scotch, slid the backpack off my shoulder, and dropped it on Forrest’s bed. “Open for business,” I said.

It was a magnet. People crowded around, digging out cash, talking with their friends about what to buy. One dude actually tried to write me a check. The scotch was potent, and I wasn’t thinking straight, or I wouldn’t have been doing business in the open like that. But it turned out fine. I unloaded the designer dope right away because people were curious, and then the Oxies and e
started disappearing, too.

A hand shoved four bills at me, hundreds, and I looked up to see Forrest’s face. Everything was spinning, and I felt hot. He scooped up a bottle of Oxies, didn’t even ask how much they were. He knew four hundred was way overpaying.

“I—” My tongue was thick, crowding my mouth.

Forrest looked up, and our eyes held—his weird gray cat eyes—and then he dipped his head and melted away.

The next person pushed cash toward me, and I noticed my hands were shaking. This was wrong, messed up; I hadn’t meant to sell to Forrest. But I didn’t know what to do. Something. I had to do something.

“Can you take over?” I asked Kyle.

“Sure. Lemme count.” He started to count what was left—Kyle was straight business like that—but I waved him away.

“I trust you, man. Just handle it.” I took a last swig of scotch and left the room. What if I went after Forrest and asked for the dope back? Told him I made a mistake? I looked around, but I couldn’t see him, and the crowd was pulsing as if I were underwater.

I pushed outside for some air. Forrest lived on his own little nature preserve. You couldn’t see another building except for his greenhouse, and there were thick pines all around and a deck with two levels. The cold wind felt good, and the smell of the trees made me realize how nasty it had been inside. A group of girls was hanging out on the deck. Every now and then they gave me looks, and laughter cut through the air.

I dropped into a deck chair and ignored them. Things were swirling and unsteady. Where was Forrest?

Then one of the girls broke off and came over. It was Becky. She was wearing a dress about as big as a Band-Aid, with nothing but a ruffle to hold it up. She had to have been freezing. I pulled her onto my lap. She laughed and squirmed, but she didn’t get up.

“You look good,” I said, nuzzling her neck. “That’s a nice dress.” She kissed me back, and I started to pull up her skirt. I was so hammered, I didn’t care that we had an audience, but she stopped me.

“Let’s go in there,” she whispered, looking at the greenhouse.

I picked her up and carried her past her giggling girlfriends into Forrest’s backyard.
Forrest’s forest.
Ha.
I set her down, or maybe dropped her, and opened the door. We stumbled into the greenhouse, laughing, and I grabbed her and kissed her. It smelled so good in there, like flowers and rain, and there were ferns falling from pots in the ceiling, tickling my shoulders.

Becky whispered, “Gabe, hold on. I need to ask you something.”

I ran my hands down her body. “Huh.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.” I stopped, took my hands off her chest. “Yes.” There was a horrible silence as Irina’s face zoomed out of the fuzzy back corner of my mind.

“Yeah, it kind of seemed like you were avoiding me at school. And I heard you were still seeing that Russian girl.” Becky’s voice was flat. She tugged her dress down.

“I’m sorry.” I stepped back. “I’m trying not to cheat on her. Shit.”

Becky gave me a small smile. “You’re not a very good boyfriend, are you?”

“No.” I pressed my fists against my eyes, rubbed, and tried to clear my head.

Becky brushed a fern out of her face. “Why do you like her so much?”

“She’s . . . Why are we talking about her?”

Becky’s eyes were gleaming in the dark. “Because I want to know.”

I leaned against the cool glass wall and tipped my head back, looking at a plant with white flowers. “She’s different. She’s smart and funny. I just like how weird she is. I know it’s crazy.” My words were coming out thick.

Becky shook her head. “Then be good to her.” A second later, the door creaked closed behind her.

I breathed in the rain smell and blinked. There were halos of light around the potted cactus. My thoughts were muddy but definite:

Becky had saved me from my stupid self.

She was a nice girl, and I shouldn’t have treated her like I did.

I had to be good; Irina was worth it.

I had been leaning there, thinking, for ten minutes, maybe twenty, when I heard yells and laughter outside really close. I took a breath and pushed out of the greenhouse. The moon was a strange orange color, heavy and ill.

Kyle streaked past, hauling Erin by the arm. He was laughing, trying to rip off his shirt with his free hand. A beer bottle arced in the air like a shining rocket.

Then Forrest flew past me, arms pumping, breathing rough. I almost didn’t recognize him, he looked so fierce, like some kind of animal. His body was lit up with that unnatural electricity that turns the skinniest fiend into someone who can lift cars—if the right pill is underneath. He roared something, I couldn’t tell what, and threw another bottle in the sky. There was a tinkle of glass.

“Follow the fucking leader!” screamed Forrest. He disappeared into the trees.

I felt hot and sick. I stared after him.

I knew dealing was bad and I did it anyway and . . . now I had this feeling Forrest would have to pay for it. I should be the one paying for my own screwups, but the world doesn’t work like that.

I wandered across the lawn, the wet grass soaking my shoes. Shadows were thick on the ground. There was a bubbling sound and I stopped. A pond. Orange bodies flashed through the water. I watched, trying to find a pattern. I wanted there to be a pattern, didn’t want them to be just swimming around blind.

I shoved my hand in my pocket and pulled out the cash I’d made earlier. Forrest’s bills were on top, the only hundreds in the stack. I clenched the ends and twisted, but they wouldn’t rip. My hands weren’t working too good. I peeled off the top bill and tore it in half; then I did the rest of them, letting the pieces drop into the pond. They floated on the surface. I kneeled and pushed them to the bottom, and when they floated back up, I put on rocks to weigh them down.

When the money was gone, I wiped my hands on the grass and looked at the sky. I hoped God was real. I hoped he cared about humans and would take care of Forrest. “I’m sorry,” I said.

I staggered across the lawn, around the house, to the cars lining the sidewalk. There was my Altima, finally a car I could be proud of.

I touched the hood. Mine.

Blood money
.

I got in and put the key in the ignition . . . but some dinosaur part of my brain said,
No. You’re too wasted.

Okay. I could wait a little while. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. Let things go black.

The next morning, I woke up still in my car, feeling like somebody was suctioning my brain through my ears. Even the gray Seattle light hurt my eyes. I stared blankly at the windshield, covered with fat drops of rain—and I groaned as the night came flooding back.

Becky. Forrest. The money I’d ripped up.

Had I really done that? I worked my hand into my pocket. Empty.

I rested my head on the seatback and closed my eyes again. What good had that done? What was I thinking? Trying to be noble or something? But there was nobody around to see.

My stomach, my head, everything felt wrong. Clips of last night drifted through my brain: The dope spread out on Forrest’s blanket like a street fair. Becky’s eyes when she said,
Be good to her
. Forrest’s crazy yell as he ran through the yard. The fish swimming over money. It was like dirt to them; they couldn’t eat it or breathe it . . . We couldn’t eat it or breathe it, either, but we worshipped the stuff.

Suddenly I got the strangest feeling. All the ragged thoughts in my head floated away, and I went still inside. I waited. I felt something coming. I was sinking into myself, and my edges were matching up, solid and sure.