Playing Nice (8 page)

I usually feel better when the sun comes out and I know that U of M and marriage are for me. If I can have a life like my parents, I know I'll be happy.

"Be still My Hart. First Vinyl Tap, now Lake Loraine? Has the world started spinning backward?"

My breath catches in my throat at the mere sound of his voice, like a purring cat, and I look up from my cell, cheeks instantly on fire.

"I thought it was about time I saw the better side of Minster," I say. I'm surprised I can get the words out without jumbling them up. In my head, all I see are a mixture of letters that make no sense at all and Matt's lips.

He sits next to me on the bench, placing his guitar behind us, and takes a sip of beer. His hair falls over his forehead at just the right place and every few seconds he has to tuck it back behind his ear. I have to clasp my hands in my lap so I don't reach out and touch him.

"Are you going to play tonight?"

"Maybe," he winks. "Are you going to sing tonight?"

I laugh a breathless giggle that comes through my teeth and makes my eyes go splotchy. I don't think the songs I know are good material for this party, but my heart gets light at the realization that Matt knows more about me than I thought. That he actually paid attention when I was tutoring him.

"Maybe," I flirt back. Inside, I'm shocked at how steady my voice sounds and the fact that his leg is touching mine and it isn't sending my mind into a crazy montage of sex scenes.

We sit for a few moments, not saying a word. Matt leans back on the table and takes another sip of his beer. I stare at the jelly bracelets on his wrists, black stacked on top of black, and then my gaze travels down to his hand resting in his lap. Without thinking, I look at his crotch and the way his jeans wrap tightly around his man parts.

Do you want to see Matt's
? Lil's voice rings in my ears. I look up quickly, my cheeks even hotter than before. Matt's still staring straight ahead. Thank God.

"If you ask me, people don't sing enough anymore, " I say, not really understanding that my mouth is moving and words are coming out that mean something. "All we do is listen to music. We never really experience it."

"What do you mean?" Matt asks, turning to look at me and cocking his head to the side. A strand of hair falls into his eyelashes and I swallow hard.

"Well..." I blink and try to focus my thoughts past the part of my brain that's imagining all the places I want to touch on his body. Double gulp. "Listening locks the words inside of you. But when I sing, I feel every word, like I'm living in it." I stop. I've just said something I've thought a million times, but I've never shared it with anyone else. "I'm sure you feel the same way about playing the guitar, like if your fingers didn't pluck the chords you couldn't truly understand the song."

Matt doesn't say anything at first, just takes long sips of his beer, almost like he's chugging it. I start to play with the bottom of my shirt, worried it was a bad idea to say anything at all. Why did I do that? I want him to think I'm pretty and nice and kissable. Not a jumbled mess of illogical words. I should keep those to myself. Lake Loraine isn't the place for existential thought. It's for making out and getting drunk.

When the silence drags on longer, I wish I could grab what I said out of the air and stuff it back in my mouth.

"Would you like to dance?" he finally asks.

I stare at him, not sure what he means. "Here? In front of all these people?"

"Do you think anyone cares what we do?"

I think back on the couple practically having sex against the tree.

"I would love to dance with you," I say.

Matt grabs my hand and lifts me off the bench. His fingers have calluses on the tips from years of playing guitar.
The mark of a true musician
, he once said when I was tutoring him. And now his hands are going to touch my back, the part that divots in the center, a part very few people have ever touched on me. My toes start to tingle and I hope I don't faint.

"Do you like this song?" he asks.

I'm glad Bob Marley is still playing and I don't have to lie. "I do," I say as he pulls me closer and puts his one arm around my back. Slow dancing. My favorite. I close my eyes for a second and tell myself to keep cool, that I've danced with a lot of boys. But this is the first time I'm pressed against a boy I would take my shirt off for. A boy I would let touch me in all the ways I've dreamt of in the back of my mind.

Matt keeps my other hand held in his and places it on his chest. His sweatshirt is soft cotton and my mind races, imagining what's underneath.

"Your hand is on my heart," he says.

It's beating, slow and steady. The rhythm juxtaposes with mine, which threatens to jump out of my chest at any minute.

Matt sways back and forth to the rhythm of the song, guiding my body with his hips and holding me close. He's a good dancer, and I think he must be good at sex. He leans down and whisper-sings into my ear, "One love, My Hart, let's get together and feel all right."

My knees buckle as I feel his warm breath in my hair. The lyrics bounce around my head and I decide right now, at this moment, Bob Marley might be my favorite singer ever.

I rest my forehead on his shoulder and smell his skin. It's earthy, like he showered in a bath of dried leaves. I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening right now! It's a dream and I'm floating in ecstasy.

"One love, My Hart, let's get together and feel all right," Matt says as the song ends.

I'd give anything for the music not to stop, for the song to be on repeat over and over and over again so I could stay locked in Matt's arms with his hushed, sexy voice in my ear and our hips touching. Why can't life be one long slow dance?

But Matt pulls back once the song shifts to a more upbeat tune. My skin goes cold the moment his body isn't against mine, and I shiver. If I could rewind time, I would.

"You're a pretty good dancer," he says as he lets go of my hands. They feel empty without his and I clasp them together, hoping to warm the cold chilling my veins.

"My mom made me take ballet when I was younger." I can feel the moment coming to a close, like a scene in a musical when everything fades to black and a new set is brought onstage. I search my mind for anything to say that will keep it going. "Do you come to these parties a lot?"

"It was nice dancing with you, My Hart." He winks as he grabs his beer and guitar off the table and walks away.

I watch him leave, and my entire body feels different, tingling, more alive than ever before. I know it's not an official kiss, but dancing with Matt felt like the most intimate thing I've ever done.
One love, My Hart, let's get together and feel all right
. I quietly sing Matt's lyrics to the cold night air, letting the words encase me from head to toe.

I think I might need to go to Vinyl Tap and buy a Bob Marley record.

Once I can get my feet to move, I decide to find Lil. I don't recognize anyone else, Matt having disappeared into the woods. Now it's just a bunch of random people tucked in corners blacker than night. I want to go home and relive dancing with Matt over and over until I fall asleep with Bob Marley in my head.

I walk a little farther into the woods, peering around trees, whispering Lil's name like we're playing hide and seek, the grown-up version with beer and pot and boys who stick their hands down other girls' pants in public. Everything about this party feels awkwardly open. No one seems to care what other people think, and I don't know whether I want to embrace it or run screaming into the dark.

I find Lil standing on the bank of the lake, talking to a guy I don't know. Her gold shirt shimmers in the moonlight and almost reflects on the water. It's the first time I've seen her actually bright. I watch the scene for a second, trying to decide if I should politely interrupt or wait for their conversation to be over. My mom always says I need to be better at picking my moments.

The guy leans into Lil's face, kissing her on the cheek. At first, I'm jealous. Even Lil, Mrs. Grim Reaper, the goddess of night, emo-goth-hate-the-world chick, gets kissed. WHY? Am I lacking a gene or something, maybe a kissing chromosome doctors haven't discovered yet, and I'm destined for a spinster life like Jane Austen and Queen Elizabeth? I'm about to turn around and wait for Lil on the picnic bench, but then I realize that the cigarette in her hand looks weird, like her fingers are having a hard time holding on to it.

Then Lil smacks the guy's face away, and I freeze.

"Get the hell away from me, Grandpa!" Lil yells, her shimmery shirt blowing in the breeze off the lake.

But he doesn't. He grabs her around the waist and pulls her hard to him, this time kissing her mouth and neck and shoving his hand up her shirt. It isn't nice, but forced. He even pulls her hair. When Lil's cigarette drops from her hand, I know she's in trouble. I don't know Lil well, but I do know she loves to smoke.

I walk up to them, a weird fluttery feeling in my stomach, like an internal motor propelling me forward even though my mind has no idea what I'm doing.

"I want to go home now," I say to Lil, practically stomping my foot into the ground.

The guy holding her drops his arms and looks at me. He has a creepy goatee, one that's pencil thin, and black eyes. I stand with my two feet in the sand, knees locked. I want to appear strong, so he won't try to kiss me the way he did Lil.

She looks at me with glazed, bloodshot eyes.

"Well, if it isn't the nicest person in Minster High." She slurs her words together so they sound like one big word.

"I want to go home." I say the words again with more force, so Lil knows she doesn't have a choice and the guy next to her will leave.

"I think she wants to stay with me," the guy says, grabbing Lil's arm and tugging her close to him. Lil barely reacts, slumping into his side, her head bobbling like it's on a stick. It's
so
not like her and I think in this moment I know Lil better than I thought because never once have I seen her take a single step that she doesn't mean. And I don't like the way the guy holds her arm, like she might have a bruise tomorrow from his strong grip. I stomp over and yank her away.

"She's my ride and I have a curfew. Clearly you don't because you are, like, 35. I suggest you find someone else at this party as geriatric as you and make
them
kiss you." The words come out smooth and steady without me even thinking. A verbal punch in his slimy gut. I pull Lil away from the side of the lake, making sure to keep my back straight.
Posture tells a person exactly how you feel about yourself.

Even though I don't know how I feel right now. My body is floating above me in a panicked, excited way.

It's hard to get Lil's feet to move; she's all gimpy and heavy, so I hook my arm around her waist and use everything I can muster to hold her up. I heard once about a kid who picked up a car when his mother was stuck underneath it. They say he was able to do it because of adrenaline. As I walk away, that's exactly how I feel. A hot rush of something I'm not used to is coursing through my veins. I don't stop walking until we are at her car.

Grabbing keys out of Lil's pocket, I unlock the door and plop her into the passenger seat. "Are you okay?" I finally ask, out of breath, my arms shaking from fatigue and nerves. Sweat beads have gathered on my forehead and I wipe them away.

"Am I ever okay?" Lil slurs.

"How many beers did you have? I left you for, like, a millisecond."

"Two." Lil holds up her fingers, then drops her hand into her lap like it takes too much energy to hold it up.

"Two? Either you have the tolerance of a toddler or you're lying." I sound like Lil, but a fireball of anger is nesting in my gut. I'm mad that she's not telling the truth and mad that Matt walked away and mad that she's blocking my mind from singing the Bob Marley song over and over with her mess.

"I'm not a liar!" Lil leans across the seat and shouts the words in my face. Her breath is coated in beer and I think I can smell the guy's Axe body wash on her skin. "I had one and that guy gave me another. Now here I sit. How did we get here?"

Everything clicks together, like a scene from one of those movies we watch in Health class about anorexia and crystal meth and date rape, but it's real and I can't believe I'm living in it. "He drugged you," I say, almost to myself. The moment feels unreal and something deep inside of me wants to take a shower and wash all these dirty people and the dirty things they do off my skin. I force myself to remember dancing with Matt and how good it felt. If I erase tonight then that's gone, too. "I need to get you to the hospital."

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Because hospitals cost money, Pollyanna." Lil closes her eyes and rests her head on the seat, her arms and legs limp. She looks so helpless; for the first time, I feel bad for her.

I walk around to the driver's seat and start the car. "Where do you live?" Lil doesn't respond, only shakes her head back and forth. "I can't take you home if I don't know where you live."

"But then you'll know," she wags her finger in my face, "and you'll tell everyone."

"This isn't really the time for you to get all 'cryptic-goth-girl' on me. I'm trying to help. So tell me where you live or I'm taking you to the hospital." I bang my hand on the steering wheel to get her attention.

"Is that anger I detect?" Lil slurs. "Doesn't it feel good?"

"Darn it, Lil! I had a great time tonight with Matt. We danced and he sang in my ear and it was beautiful. Now you're messing it up. So either tell me where you live or I'm leaving you here for goatee guy. Your choice." I cross my arms over my chest, my heart beating wildly. I'm so mad at Lil and so scared something might really be wrong with her. What will I do if it is?