Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) (11 page)

23. Everyone Wants To Be Liked

T
RIX HAD A
plan. The most brilliant plan she’d hatched in a while. It would make her popular (which she had mixed feelings about, but still), increase Marjorie’s respect for her, and get her noticed by the guys she wanted to notice her. Namely, Ben, Devlin, and Ryan McElvoy. It would bring her closer to her sparkly new life.

She’d thought of it that afternoon as she sat at one of the sewing machines in the home ec room after school.

She was going to throw a party at Emily’s house. A fantastic bash that would put her on everyone’s social map. She wasn’t supposed to care about such things, she knew. Part of her, in fact, disdained calculated efforts to sway public opinion. But then there was the other part of her. The part that wanted to be liked.

She couldn’t let Emily find out ahead of time, of course. It was going to be a surprise. So, on Friday afternoon, Trix breezed into the school computer lab and logged into her Facebook account. From there, she posted an event: Party at Emily Lucas’s house, 2512 Asher St. NW, tonight at 8pm. She sent it to all her “friends” at CHS, then sent a mass email to everyone else she could think of. She invited Sam, who she was hoping would somehow thwart Ryan from Emily’s path. She knew, from there, word would spread like dandelions through a meadow.

Then she went home to get ready.

Her mother sat on the couch, as usual, watching some crime drama while feeding David nibbles of microwave popcorn. “Mom!” Trix said. “He can’t eat that stuff.”

“What?” her mom said, without taking her eyes off the screen. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. What if he chokes on a kernel or something?” She scooped David up and took him into her room where he sat on her dresser and watched her change. She picked out a tight tank top, a fitted cotton jacket with big rolled cuffs and black leggings. She wore the giant hoop earrings she always had on and her wedge boots.

She was ready to rock.

24. Bad Scene

E
ATING A BOWL
of ramen noodles, Emily stood at the counter flipping through
Shape
magazine (Melissa’s). It was boring. Energy drink ratings. Healthy meal recipes. Workouts. And the cover model looked like she’d gotten lost on her way to a Cosmo shoot.

Darkness pressed against the windows like waxed paper, raindrops occasionally pelting the glass. Kristen was staying at her friend Karissa’s, so Emily was alone.

When she finished her noodles, she flicked on the stereo and found some Chairlift. She wanted to call Trix, just to see what she was doing, to alleviate the loneliness a little. But Trix had been acting so weird. Plus, she didn’t want to have to tell Trix she wasn’t allowed in the house.

Emily set the magazine back on the stack of unopened mail and decided she would go online for a while.

She was taking the stairs two at a time when someone knocked on the front door. Less of a knock really, and more of a fist pound.

She paused, not knowing if she should answer.

“It’s me, Em!” Trix’s muffled voice called. “Let me in, I’m getting soaked out here!”

She strode to the door and pulled it open. Even though she wasn’t supposed to, she had to invite Trix in. Trix, who was dripping like a kitten that’d been found face first in a mud puddle. Maybe she was there to talk about things and explain why their friendship had seemed so strained lately. Or maybe they’d just hang out like old times, fighting over music and forgetting about the tension between them.

Trix pulled off her ratty leopard-print coat and let it slide to the floor. She grabbed a hank of her hair and squeezed. “It’s dumping.”

“I know.”

Water streaked Trix’s face like tears, dripped of her lashes. “Let’s invite some people over.”

“No!” Emily said. “God, my dad—”

“What he doesn’t know … ”

“I can’t invite people over.”

“Well,” Trix said. “You can’t, but I can.”

Emily heard a rustling outside the door and another pound. She swallowed hard and swung it open. A couple of guys from school, Isaac O’Leary, Adam Williams, Marjorie King, and three freshman girls stood there. Isaac wore a gorilla mask pushed up on top of his head and one of the girls had a devil’s ear headband. Emily glared at Trix, trying to imperceptibly shake her head.

Trix pretended not to see. The look on Emily’s face when Isaac, Adam, and Marjorie had come in was classic. “Just, you know, an intimate gathering. A pre-Halloween soirée.”

Emily considered turning them away, into the dark rain. But then, how lame would that make her seem? So, okay, Trix plus six kids. She could get away with that, probably, clean up really well after they left. Keep the curtains closed so Claudia wouldn’t notice.

Emily said, “I don’t have beer or anything. Like, 7Up is the hardest stuff in the house.” She wasn’t about to get into her dad’s microbrews.

Everyone looked at Adam who held a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Defeated, she stood back and let them enter. She pointed to the family room off the kitchen, but grabbed Trix’s arm. “Are you that desperate?” she hissed.

Small flames burned where Trix’s eyes should’ve been. “I want word to get back to the Trifecta of Farkette Dunces that fun was had by all, and they weren’t invited.” That was Trix’s excuse, and she was sticking to it.

Emily’s hand flew to her mouth. “How many people did you tell?”

“A few others. Don’t worry so much. It’ll be fine.” She shook free of Emily’s grip, wanting to tell her to grow up, and followed the others to the back of the house.

Emily could hear beer cans popping open. The music’s volume went up. She wished Kristen were home. She’d know what to do, how to handle this situation without pissing anyone off or getting herself in deep trouble.

As Emily started to make her way to the others so she could lay down ground rules, the doorbell rang. She groaned. When she answered it, she saw the blond boy Trix had hooked up with at Jason Bleak’s party. He had four or five guys with him and held a bottle of gin. It wasn’t until Ben Mason showed up, someone Trix had gone out with for a few weeks and really liked, but who’d dumped her, that Emily realized what Trix was doing. Not only was she using Emily to throw Cannon High School’s biggest off-the-hook party of the year, but she was trying to play guys off each other to get attention.

“Trix!” Emily called, looking through the rooms. But there were so many people by then that finding her was impossible.

Above all the other heads Emily spotted Sam standing by the gas fireplace with Jason Bleak, drinking from a small, brown jug. How’d he sneak in?

She scrambled around the house, moving fragile lamps and vases to higher ground, hiding Melissa’s laptop, and locking doors. At one point she grabbed duct tape from the garage and wrapped some around the front of the refrigerator to keep people out.

Her stomach had knotted into an anxious, tumor-like mass.

When it all became too much, she realized she needed air, to get away from the music and smell of alcohol. She burst outside, where clusters of kids stood smoking. The rain had stopped, but a healthy wind still whipped everyone’s hair around their heads, and jackets around their hips. Emily held her skull, frantic. “Crap,” she muttered to herself. “Crap, crap, crap.”

She folded her long body so she was sitting on the curb and wondered how soon before a neighbor called the cops. She sat like that for a long time, vaguely aware of the music thumping from inside, intermittent laughter, and the smell of cigarettes.

Then she heard, “Doesn’t look to me like you’re studying so hard.”

She saw a pair of sneakers. She raised her eyes. Jeans. Gray hoodie. Face. Ryan’s. “It’s all Trix,” Emily said. “And I’m so completely screwed.”

He lowered himself next to her. She noticed he didn’t carry a six-pack or a fifth and was grateful. “I’m such a cliché,” she said. “Such a pathetic cliché. It’s like a bad high school movie. Teenage girl gets bullied into throwing a giant party. People have sex in the bedrooms,” she felt her face flush as she said this, “and trash the house and girl has to work for decades to earn back her parents’ trust. Not to mention send them her first gazillion paychecks after she graduates to pay for the damage.”

“Just call the police,” Ryan said.

“What?”

“Yeah. The party will get busted up, everyone’ll leave and you still come off as having hosted a kick-ass shindig.”

Someone, somewhere, started smoking weed–its pungent, sweaty smell riding the night air.

“But then it’s on, like, our permanent record or something. I mean, will I get a ticket? Will my dad find out about it?”

Ryan’s bent head was close to Emily. She inhaled the scent of him: washed cotton and something faintly evergreen. “It’s better,” he said, “than your dad finding out because the house is a smoldering pile of ashes in the middle of the lot.”

She felt overwhelmed. Totally out of her league.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said, looking back at the house. “But this party is getting huge. And Bleak’s house was so completely thrashed by his throwdown that his parents took his car keys for the rest of the year.”

Emily didn’t have her license yet, but she knew her dad would think up an equally stunting punishment.

At that moment, she saw April, Kennedy, and Vanessa standing in her driveway, holding beer cans, other kids weaving around them.

“The Farkettes,” she said and stood. She stepped on and off the curb, trying to decide her next course of action. It was then that the side door whooshed open.

Trix strode across the driveway, her curly hair bouncing over her shoulders. Even from there, Emily could see her mouth set in an angry line. She busted in on the Farkettes’s circle. “Excuse me! Hello? Excuse me! Were you invited to this party? Because I’m pretty sure I didn’t notify any of you.”

April, a hand stuck casually in her jeans pocket, her head tossed back irreverently, said, “Ben told us about it.”

Emily could almost hear Trix’s jaw crack as she ground her teeth. “Ben Mason,” she said, nodding and taking a backward step. She knotted her arms over her chest.

“The one and only,” April said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Someone in the crowd yelled, “Ben and April are banging.”

Everyone laughed. Everyone except Emily, Ryan, and Trix.

A rushing sound like an enormous wave filled Trix’s ears.

She growled to April, “I have two words for you: consolation prize.”

April came back with, “I have three words for you, Movin’ on Up.”

More laughter.

“All right!” Emily called, hands cupped around her mouth. “This party’s over! Everyone get out. Go do your drinking and trash talking in an alley or something!”

Trix flashed her a look that could’ve liquefied a brick wall.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” someone said.

“Over! Time to go!” Emily yelled.

Furious, Trix went up to Emily and said, “What are you doing?”

“Shutting this thing down, Trix.”

“It’s not yours to shut down.”

Emily actually cackled. A cold breeze rippled through her hair. A cold breeze tinged with the scent of beer and far off burning leaves and teen spirit. “It’s my house.”

Trix’s eyes were wild, her teeth bared. “You can’t,” she said. “Don’t, Em. Don’t do it.” Nothing had gone how it was supposed to. They hadn’t even gotten to the good part of the night.

Emily couldn’t quite believe Trix’s recklessness. She certainly was no shrinking violet, but this exploit? It was over the top.

Just then, a red Honda Civic Emily recognized as Kristen’s friend Karissa’s car pulled up along the curb. Kristen jumped out and jogged across the lawn. “Emily? What is this?”

Emily looked up the street. It was barren. Quiet except for this house and the wind that howled through the trees. She sighed. She turned to Kristen and said, “Help me.”

Together, Emily, Kristen, and Ryan made their way through the yard and into the house, calling that the police were coming and to get out fast.

Kids scattered like ants away from a smoking cigarette butt.

Engines started in unison. Many people just wandered off down the street, still with beers in hand. A few disappeared out the back, hopping fences.

There were some stragglers lingering inside the house, still talking and laughing in the kitchen. A guy and a girl Emily didn’t recognize canoodled at the top of the stairway. She broke them up with a loud, “Take it to Motel 6.”

Trix found Marjorie and they convened on the front porch with Adam and Isaac. Unexpectedly, Sam was still there, lingering. Marjorie said, “This is so effing lame. I thought it was supposed to be awesome.”

“It was,” Trix said, heat creeping up her chest and flooding her cheeks. How dare Emily make Trix look stupid in front of her new friend. The only friend who really understood her. “Emily just doesn’t know how to party.”

“Clearly.” Marjorie lit a cigarette and sat down on the wooden steps. Following her lead, everyone else perched on the stairs or railing, too.

“So, what do we do now?” Adam asked.

Marjorie yelled, “Will you let me smoke this before we decide? Christ!”

Pushing back her curls with shaking hands, Trix said, “Let’s go get hammered somewhere. I’m done with this place.”

25. Cleanup in Aisle Emily

E
MILY DIDN’T SEE
where Trix had gone, but finally the place was empty except for Kristen, Ryan, and herself. Stunned, she swept bottle caps from the table into her palm. “What a mess,” she said.

Kristen carried the recycling bin through the rooms, tossing in heavy glass bottles and crumpled cans. “Will you please explain to me how that started?”

The party had spread like flames across a dry prairie. Emily had never experienced anything like it. “It wasn’t my fault, okay? Word just got around.” Despite her fight with Trix, she was reluctant to tell Kristen that Trix had been the mastermind.