Ricochet (2 page)

“You’re not planning on jumping are you?” I immediately ask
with wide eyes. “There are no pools for you to land in this time.”

She snorts. “No duh.” She lets go of my hand and sets her
beer on the gravel ground. “Do you see this view?”

Skyscrapers light up the
city,
and
people even explode fireworks off other buildings, the colors crackling in the
sky for tonight’s celebration. Cars honk below, kind of drowning out the
majestic atmosphere of the night.

Daisy extends her arms and inhales deeply. And then she
screams at the top of her lungs. “HAPPY NEW YEAR, NEW YORK CITY!” It’s only ten
thirty, so technically it’s still New Year’s
Eve
. Her head turns to me. “Scream, Lil.”

I rub my hot neck, anxious. Maybe it’s the lack of sex. Or
maybe sex is the one thing that’ll help me feel better. So…is sex the cause or
is it the solution? I don’t even know anymore. “I’m not a screamer.”
Lo would disagree
. My cheeks flush.

Daisy faces me and says, “Come on, it’ll make you feel better.”

Doubtful.

“Open your mouth wide,” she teases. “Come on, big sis.”

Am I the only one who thinks that sounded perverted? I look
over my shoulder. Oh yeah, we’re alone.

“Scream it with me.” She bounces on her toes, preparing to
say “Happy” but she stops when I don’t share her enthusiasm for the holiday.
“You’ve got to loosen up, Lily. Rose is supposed to be the uptight one.” She
grabs my hand. “Come on.” She leads me closer to the ledge.

I take a glance down. Oh God. We’re super high up. “I’m
afraid of heights,” I tell her, shrinking back.

“Since when?” she asks.

“Since I was seven years old and Harry Cheesewater pushed me
off a jungle gym.”

“Oh yeah, you broke your arm, didn’t you?” She smiles. “And
wasn’t his name
Chess
water?”

“Lo made up his nickname.” Good times.

She snaps her fingers in remembrance. “That’s right. Lo put
a firecracker in his backpack in retaliation.” Her smile fades. “I wish I had a
friend like that.” She shrugs, as though that time has passed for her, but
she’s still young. She can always grow closer to someone, but then again, with
our mother dragging her every which way, she probably has less time for friends
than any of us did. “Okay, enough Lo talk. He was supposed to be banned from
the conversation tonight, remember?”

“Forgot,” I mumble. Most of my childhood stories involve
him. I can count very few where he isn’t present. Family trips, he was there.
Reunions, he was there. Calloway dinners, he was there. My parents might as
well have adopted him. Hell, my grandmother bakes him her special fruitcake for
no reason at all. She’ll mail it to him every so often. He charmed her somehow.
I still think he gave her a foot massage or something nasty.

I squirm.
Ew
.

“Let’s play a game,” Daisy suggests with a giddy smile.
“We’ll ask each other questions, and if we get them wrong, then the other
person has to take a step towards the ledge.”

“Uhh…that doesn’t sound fun.” My fate will rest in her
ability to answer a question.

“It’s a trust game,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Plus, I want
to get to know you better. Is that so bad?” Now I can’t say no.

She’s testing me, I think.

“Fine.”
I’ll make the questions easy so she’ll know the answer and I won’t have to feel
my heart pop out of my chest.

She positions us so we stand maybe four feet from the ledge.
Shit. This isn’t going to be fun. “What’s my birthday?” she asks me.

My arms suddenly heat. I know this. I do. “February…”
Think Lily, think. Use those brain cells.
“…twentieth.”

Her lips twitch into a smile. “Good, you’re turn.”

“When’s my birthday?”

“August first,” she says. She doesn’t even wait for me to
tell her she’s right. She knows she is. “How many serious boyfriends have I
had?”

“Define serious.” I don’t know this one. I truly do not. I
wasn’t even aware she started dating until I heard Josh’s name thrown around
while we were shopping for Charity Gala dresses.

“I brought them home to meet Mom and Dad.”

“One,” I tell her with a less-than-confident nod.

“I had two. Don’t you remember Patrick?”

I frown and scratch my arm.
“Patrick who?”

“Redhead, skinny.
 
Kind of immature.
He used to pinch my butt, so I broke up with him. I was fourteen.” She takes a
step closer to the ledge since I’m clearly the worst sister ever.

I sigh heavily, realizing it’s my turn. “Uhh…” I try to
think of a good question, but they all contain Lo somehow. Finally I land on
something semi-good. “What part did I play in the
Wizard of Oz
production?” I was only seven, and upon Lo’s request,
his father pulled strings and took his son out of the performance so he didn’t
have to play the Tin Man. Lo was so happy that he never had to rehearse with
the class. He slept in the back of the room, his mouth hanging open, taking an
extra nap time while we tried to memorize condensed, age-appropriate lines.

I miss him.

“You were a tree,” Daisy says with a nod. “Rose said you
threw an apple at Dorothy and gave her a black eye.”

I point at her. “That was an accident. Don’t let Rose spread
lies…” That story is in her arsenal to use against me, I swear.

Daisy tries to smile, but it’s a weak one. I can tell my
relationship with Rose is something that upsets her, so I let my words taper
off. She asks, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”

I should know this. Shouldn’t I? But I have absolutely no
clue. “An astronaut,” I throw out.

“Nice try.” She takes a step forward. “I’m not sure what I
want to be.”

I gawk. “That was a trick question. No fair.”

She shrugs. “Wish you thought of it first?”

I look at my distance from the wall and then hers. Two more
steps and she’s on the ledge. “No thank you.” I’m ecstatic she’s answering my
questions correctly, but I feel a little guilty I’m sucking at hers. I think
she knew I’d fail at this game.

Maybe she wants to lose, and this way, I can’t tell her to
jump down. Not if it’s all part of the game. Jesus, I hope that’s not the case.
But my stomach sinks at the thought. It seems more and more likely it is.

“What’s my middle name?” I try an easy one.

“Martha,” she says with a laugh. “Lily Martha Calloway.
Doesn’t it suck to be named after our grandmother?”

“Look who’s talking, Petunia.” She was saddled with a
second
flower name.

“You know what boys always ask me?”

“What?”

“Have you been deflowered?”

I’ve heard that one before.

Her eyes meet mine briefly. “Have I?”

The cold nips my neck. “Is that my next question?”

She nods.

“You’re a virgin,” I say, hesitant.
Right?
The last we talked about this, we played a game on our family’s yacht, and both
Daisy and Rose said their V cards were still intact.

She takes a step forward, her boots hitting the ledge.

Whaaa…
“You’re lying,” I say with huge, round eyes. When the hell did she lose her
virginity? To whom?!

She shakes her head and her hair flaps in the wind. She
tucks a strand behind her ear.

“Was it Josh?”

“No,” she says lightly, as if it’s not a big deal. Maybe not
for me, it wasn’t. I’ve actually tried to suppress the memory of my first time.
It was awkward, and it hurt a little. Whenever I think about it, I start to
blush. So I’ve buried it deep, deep in the recesses of my mind.

“Who?
When? Are you okay?”

“A couple months ago.
I don’t know…girls had been talking about sex in class, how they’ve had it and
stuff. I just wanted to see what it would be like. It was okay, I guess.
Definitely not as fun as doing this.” She wags her eyebrows playfully.

“But who…?” My eyes may literally pop out of my face.
Please don’t be like me
, is all I can
think.

“A model.
We did a shoot together, and he moved back to Sweden, so don’t worry, you won’t
run into him here.”

I am learning so much about Daisy in one night. It’s hard to
digest. I feel like I’ve just gorged myself on Five Guys Burgers and Fries,
close to puking a little.

“How old is he?”
Please
don’t be statutory rape.
I don’t know if I can hold in that secret.

“Seventeen.”

I relax. “Does Rose know?”

Daisy shakes her head. “No, I haven’t told anyone that I
lost it. You’re the first. You won’t say anything, right? Mom would kill me.”

“No, but…if you start having sex, you should be careful.”

“I know.” She nods a lot. “Do you think…do you think you can
take me to the clinic? I kinda want to be on birth control.”

“Yeah, I’ll take you.” Another secret I’ll have to keep from
the family, but this one I’ll gladly take. Unplanned pregnancy can be avoided,
and girls shouldn’t feel ashamed to be on the pill. “Just promise you won’t go
crazy and have sex with a bunch of random guys.” Because I would and look how
awesome I turned out.

“Ew, I wouldn’t do that.” She scrunches her nose, and the
bottom of my stomach drops. And this is why I can’t tell anyone else in my
family about my addiction. Rose was right. They just wouldn’t understand. “Will
I go to college?” she asks another question for our game. I can’t even remember
if it’s her turn or mine.

“I can’t predict the future.”

“Do I
want
to go
to college then?”

“That…is a very good question…that I do not have the answer
to. Do you?”

She shakes her head. “No. Not yet anyway. I’m ready to be
eighteen and do shoots without Mom there. I’ll be able to go to France alone
and see the city without Mom scheduling my whole itinerary. You know, this year
she wouldn’t even let me see the Louvre.”

“That sucks.”

Daisy nods. “Yeah, it blows.” Then her boot sets on the
cement ledge. My heart lurches into my throat.

“Okay, game over!” I throw up my hands. “Let’s go back
inside.”

Daisy grins from ear to ear and stands, perched on the
fucking ledge with a twenty-story drop off. She straightens up and outstretches
her arms. “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!”

Oh jeez. Quoting
Almost
Famous
does not alleviate my panic.
 

Instead, she screams at the top of her lungs, which turns
into a full-bellied laugh.

This bonding time has gone a little too far. “All right,
game over. You win. Seriously, I’m going to break out in chicken pox.” Or at
least a rash that looks like it. I start pacing, too afraid to move closer and
pull her down myself. What if I tug and she falls backwards like on television?
That’s how people die.

Daisy begins walking across like it’s a tightrope. “It’s not
that scary. Honestly, it’s like…” She laughs into a smile. “It’s like the world
is at your fingertips, you know?”

I shake my head repeatedly, so much my neck hurts. “No, no.
I have no idea what you’re talking about
.
Did someone drop you on your head?”
That
seems kind of likely right now.

And then she hops off.

Onto the gravel.

I breathe. She picks her Solo cup on her way to me and wraps
an arm around my shoulders. “It’s possible that one of the nannies did. Maybe
that explains why I’m not as smart as Rose.”

“No one is as smart as Rose.”
Except maybe
Connor Cobalt.

“True,” she says with a laugh and turns to the door. “Now
let’s see if we can find you a hot guy.”

Yeah, this isn’t going to be good.

* * *

Daisy tries to leave me with a scarily attractive
blond model. Can a face like his really exist without Photoshop? Perfect bone structure,
the prettiest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Dear God, I’m in trouble.

“I’m going to go get some punch. You two stay here and
chat,” Daisy says. I try to grab her elbow before she disappears from me.

“Daisy…” I’m going to kill her.

She spins around and
mouths,
mingle
and tops it with another smile.

I look back. He towers over me and sips from a Solo cup. He
bends to my ear, his hand sinking to my waist.
And lowering.
I swallow.

“You’re like a little hidden gem,” he tells me with a small
laugh. I avoid those intense blue eyes that begin to rake my body, heating up
places that should not, in no way, be hot by anyone except Loren Hale.

I brush off his hands so frantically that I end up looking
like I’m swatting flies. And then I mutter something unintelligent that sounds
like
I have to pee
or maybe
there’s a bee.
Either way, I disentangle
myself from him and the mobs of models in the dance area. I find a safe spot on
the couch by the floor-length window, the glittery city lit up and awake with
cabs and pedestrians.