The Last Boy and Girl in the World (19 page)

“It's got to be. I mean, Jesse is crazy, but he's not
that
crazy. And it might be good to be around other people right now.”

I made sure to say it gently, because it was up to Elise.

If it had been up to me . . . well, it really wasn't even a choice.

Tuesday, May 17

Clouds clearing in the late evening, dropping to a low of 50°F

The ride over to the mill was painfully quiet. Morgan had the radio going, but the volume was turned so low, you couldn't really hear what song was on. Elise stared out the window. She opted for the backseat.

“If it's not fun, we can totally leave,” I said. I really wasn't being selfish. I wasn't even thinking about Jesse Ford. I turned around to face Elise. “Whenever you decide you're ready to go, we'll go.” I meant it 1,000 percent.

“Okay,” she said, and managed a smile. “Thanks, Keeley.”

Morgan glanced across the car at me. “Are you excited to see Jesse?”

I didn't feel like I could say yes, not with what Elise was going through. But I was. “I'm more excited that we're finally going to a party at the mill.”

The mill was our high school's backup party spot. By that, I mean it was a place people went to drink when they couldn't find another place.

You didn't have to be invited. Anyone could just show up, after a football game or on a random summer night. It was mostly upperclassmen, and of course, the rare freshman or sophomore who might be hooking up with someone older.

It wasn't our scene. We rarely went to parties in Aberdeen. In fact, the three of us had had our first drinks only a few months ago, when Elise invited Morgan and me to go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with some of her old friends from Saint Ann's. Turns out midnight Mass is the ultimate tailgating party for teenage Catholics. Everyone met up in the Saint Ann's parking lot. The church was a half-block away, but you could hear the choir singing hymns.

The kids who came had stolen some kind of alcohol from whatever family holiday party they'd been attending. It was the most random assortment of booze. I drank way too much Peppermint Schnapps and puked in the bushes underneath the kindergarten classroom windows. Not my finest moment.

That was also, coincidentally, the night Morgan first met Wes. He was a friend of a boy Elise knew.

Morgan liked him right away, I could tell. Of all the boys who were hanging out, throwing snowballs at each other, bouncing from car to car to car to keep warm, clinking beer bottles, she stayed focused on him, smiling like a goofball every time he'd say something. Which wasn't often. The kid was super-shy. He nursed one beer all night. I noticed that he had a habit of checking to make sure the tails of his scarf were of equal length and lying flat against his coat.

I knew Morgan wanted to talk to him, but she usually needed a push from Elise. And Elise was too busy catching up with her old friends to notice. So I grabbed Morgan's hand and walked over to Wes and started complimenting him on his ugly Christmas sweater, even though it wasn't an ugly Christmas sweater, it was just a normal sweater. By this point, I was already pretty buzzed.

It worked, though. I made the joke and Morgan immediately jumped to his defense. “I like his sweater!” she said, swatting me with her mitten. And Wes, blushing, groaned out a “Thank you,” which I interpreted at the time to be said faux-indignantly, but I now understood was just indignantly.

Wes probably hated me from that first moment, even though there wouldn't have been a first moment if it hadn't been for me.

Morgan pulled into the mill parking lot, a crumbling pad of concrete where the parking lines had long faded away and tufts of grass and weeds sprouted between the cracks. There were tons of other cars already there, as if our whole high school was meeting up tonight.

“Cabin fever, I bet,” I said as we climbed out. We snaked our way between parked cars and then along a chain-link fence until we found a rip to sneak through.

There were a couple of different ways to get inside the mill, but that night most people were using an old truck bay with a metal garage door that had been raised. Jesse had set up the Slip 'N Slide a few feet away in a patch of muddy grass, a bright yellow rectangle of plastic, but no one was taking a ride.

I imagined when people came to the mill they had to be quiet and inconspicuous, in case a cop drove by. I guess people already felt the end coming, because no one seemed to care about keeping it down. There was a fire going in a circle of bricks, people smoking and laughing and drinking beers right there in the open, legs swinging on the open loading dock. It looked like a beach party on a cool summer night.

The floodwater had mostly receded, but you could tell it had been pretty deep here at the worst of it because of the puddles and the debris and the mud it had left behind. The river was just across the parking lot. I saw what was left of our sandbag wall. It had been a perfectly constructed thing, but now the bags had toppled over, split open, and spilled out. The river was black, all except for the little whitecaps where it rushed over some sunken thing.

We climbed inside the truck bay and headed into a cavernous room. There was water on the floor, but people had thrown down old boards or ripped pieces of Sheetrock from the walls to make planks to walk on. I'd always wondered how it worked, since there was no electricity in the mill. But people had brought flashlights and lanterns and someone even had battery-powered floodlights like the police had used at Spring Formal when the power went out.

We walked in completely covered in mud, the three of us. People turned to look at us. Elise whimpered a few times, like she was about to break down. I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze and she nodded and said, “Don't worry. I'm okay.”

A bunch of other juniors came over to say hello. Clearly word had spread that her family had lost everything. Elise gladly accepted their hugs, their pats on the back. Morgan turned to me and smiled, like I'd done something good.

I really loved that look.

“Keeley!”

Jesse walked toward us. He was now wearing a pair of brown cargo shorts, an Aberdeen soccer sweatshirt, and a pair of army-green galoshes. He had a cluster of beer bottles in his hands and offered me one.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling graciously. Morgan gave me an excited look, too excited, but she immediately ushered Elise away to give us a minute to talk.

Jesse reached out and scratched away some dried mud from my arm, as if we regularly touched each other. I probably should have been born in Victorian times, because these tiny touches were doing huge things inside me. “What have you been up to?”

“We went to check out Elise's house. It was crazy. Like, you couldn't even tell where it had been. It was just gone.”

“Bummer,” he said. Which did, I guess, cover it.

“So where did you come up with the idea to throw a Slip 'N Slide party?”

“Umm . . . when I dropped my mom off at Walmart this afternoon and saw they had Slip 'N Slides on sale.” He spread his legs apart so he'd be less tall and could look me in the eyes. “Couldn't resist. Plus, I just needed to get out of my house.”

“How's your sister doing?” I couldn't imagine how a kid Julia's age would process what was happening.

“She's good. We've been having a ton of fun together.” His answer was so breezy, I figured he didn't get what I'd meant by the question. He scanned the room, tipped his beer bottle to his lips. “Where are your friends at?”

I pointed. Jesse walked over, me following closely behind. He passed out the rest of the beers he was carrying and the girls smiled. And then he kicked three boys off the milk crates they were sitting on so we could sit down. It was a glimpse at what having Jesse as a real-deal boyfriend might be like. He'd definitely be the kind your friends would be charmed by, who knew how to be cool and friendly and fun.

We
cheers
ed and took big fat sips.

And then a devious smile crossed his face. “All right. Let's get down to business. Which one of you is going to take a run on the Slip 'N Slide to pay for these beers?” My friends and I turned to each other. “It doesn't matter that our little corner of the world is sinking. You are still underclassmen, got it?”

The girls laughed nervously. Morgan asked, “How much are they?”

Jesse shook his head. “We usually accept money. But tonight, we're dealing only in Slip 'N Slide runs. That's our currency.”

“Umm, it's kind of cold out,” Elise said. It had been almost summery earlier in the day, but since the sun had gone down, it had turned downright chilly.

“Come on. One of you had better step up.” When he said it, he was looking just at me, not at my friends, and I exploded in goose bumps.

“Don't they deserve a free round?” Victoria Dunkle shouted from across the room. “She does, at least,” she said, pointing at Elise.

My heart sank. I'd sort of expected that Victoria would be at the mill too, but I'd hoped she might not, because Jesse had invited me.

Victoria had on a long-sleeved baby-doll dress, knee socks, and navy rain boots. She didn't look like a girl who'd been through a natural disaster. She looked like she was shooting the rainy day page of a spring catalog. And mud-covered me looked like a river rat.

But I was the one Jesse was talking to. That was probably why she was interjecting her way into our conversation. He was practically daring me to ride the Slip 'N Slide. Victoria would never take that dare.

I couldn't compete with Victoria on looks. But on this, I could take her any day.

“I'll do it.” And then I lifted my sweater off and handed it to Morgan, who gave me this nervous, unsure look that I totally ignored. I took off my shorts, too, because they were muddy and gross. I stood there in my bikini and running sneakers, arms and legs streaked with mud like it was war paint. I pulled my hair into a little nubby ponytail.

“Wow,” Jesse said, totally checking me out. “Someone came prepared.”

“We were supposed to go swimming at Elise's hotel”—I tried explaining—“but—”

“Keeley! I'm definitely not complaining.” Then he was two steps ahead, booking it toward the truck bay entrance, calling out to everyone at the party, “We've got our next Slip 'N Slider!”

We followed Jesse to where they'd set up the Slip 'N Slide. Jesse positioned me dead center at the start of it. People began to gather around, lining the yellow plastic edges like a gauntlet.

It was even colder than I thought outside. Or at least it felt colder, now that I had my sweater off. I looked down. There was no water running on the Slip 'N Slide. The plastic was mostly dry.

“How am I supposed to do this?” I asked Jesse.

His face lit up. “Right. Sorry. One second.” He took a swig of his beer and then removed my nearly full bottle from my hand. Then, placing a thumb over the top of each bottle, he shook them both up and sprayed them out onto the plastic. The beer fizzed and foamed.

“Okay, wait! Don't slide yet!” he said, tossing the empty bottles across the yard. They smashed in the distance. “I want to film this!” And he positioned himself at the end of the Slip 'N Slide, so he was facing me. “All right now, let's give Keeley some encouragement!” Jesse started clapping and whooping it up and it didn't take long for the others to join in. He clicked Record on his phone and then gave me a thumbs-up.

I counted to three inside my head and then dove down the yellow plastic runway. It was hard to stay straight, but I managed not to slide off the path. I did tumble a bit toward the end, though, and Jesse had to hop out of my way to keep from us getting tangled up.

The crowd roared. I sat up and gave a little wave.

Jesse clicked off the video and offered me a helping hand. “That was amazing, Keeley.”

“Thanks.”

“You wanna know a secret?”

“What?”

He put his face really close to mine. “You're the only girl to do a run tonight.” He shook his head. “Actually, wait. Not even the only girl. The only other
person
to take a turn, aside from me.”

“But I thought you said underclassmen had to do this to pay for our beers.”

“I wasn't being entirely truthful. But I knew you'd be down.” His eyes lit up. “Come watch the video.”

He curled up next to me, held his phone for me to see. He was so close, I heard him breathing. Meanwhile, the cold beer was steaming off my body. Jesse didn't seem to care that I was getting him wet. He pressed Play, and I watched myself go swerving down the yellow ramp. The camera shook when I nearly crashed into his legs.

I wished I looked a little more graceful.

I wished I looked a little more hot.

I wished I didn't reek of beer.

“Is it cool if I post this on my site?”

I wanted to say no. I suddenly felt like such a dumbass. But Jesse's grin was so big. And I felt special. He'd never posted a video of any other girl besides his sister, Julia. “Yeah, sure.”

Victoria walked over and put her arm around Jesse's shoulder. “Jesse, Zito's looking for your car keys.”

“Okay. Keeley, I'll check you later.”

I put my clothes back on and hung out with my friends. A couple of kids came up to me and told me what a badass my dad was, which felt pretty great. But it didn't take long for the same feeling I'd had at Spring Formal to return. That maybe Jesse was off somewhere with Victoria. Maybe
Zito's looking for your car keys
was code for
Ditch this girl already so we can go make out.

I couldn't handle the rejection again.

I noticed Morgan and Elise sitting on a piece of machinery together, staring at Morgan's phone. And then I remembered those texts from Wes he'd sent the morning after the flood. Morgan had never mentioned to me that she'd received them. Maybe she was showing Elise. I feel guilty about this now, but I sort of snuck up next to them, trying to catch Morgan in the act. But she wasn't talking about Wes, she was showing Elise photos of us from Spring Formal.