This Is Not a Test (11 page)

“I have never skinny-dipped in Pearson Lake.” An awkward silence follows and Rhys and Cary drink. A ghost of a smile crosses Trace’s face. “At the same time?”

“Fuck off.” Rhys grabs the bottle from Cary. “I’ve never cheated on a test.”

“Bullshit,” Cary says.

“I’m so brilliant, I’ve never had to.”

Everyone drinks except Harrison.

“I have never engaged in sexting,” Cary says.

Trace. Rhys. Trace freaks when he sees Grace reach for the bottle.

“With who?” he asks. Grace smiles and before she can answer, he says, “Wait. Forget it. I don’t want to know. Wait—one of my friends? Oh, Jesus, was it Robbie?” Grace’s smile gets wider and wider until he can’t look at her anymore. “I hope he’s fucking dead.”

“Sexting is really pedestrian anyway,” Rhys declares. “What happened to love letters? E-mails. Love e-mails, sorry.”

“Love letters now,” I say absently. “E-mail is over.”

“I just got a chill when you said that.”

Lily showed me a dirty text message she got once. It said something like
I want to be inside you
but it was text-speak:
I want 2b inside u.
It made me blush and she acted like it was nothing, like it was just her life that someone would say something like that to her.

“What’s it like out there?” Harrison asks.

I don’t realize what he’s asking and who he’s asking until I look up and find everyone’s gazes divided between me and Rhys. I look back down at the floor quickly because I want him to handle it. But he knows that. He knows that and he is still angry at me because he says, “I don’t know. What do you think, Sloane?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know either.”

“Yes you do,” Trace says. “Tell us what it’s like out there now.”

There’s a beat and then—

“Quiet.”

Rhys and I say it at the same time. It’s such a strange thing that it would be the first word out of our mouths. I look at him and he looks at me and I feel what happened out there will connect us for as long as we’re alive.

“It’s quiet,” Rhys says. “I can’t even describe it.”

They turn to me again, for confirmation, and I can only nod.

“What about when they came?” Grace asks. “I mean, I don’t understand how either of you made it back. Rhys said you were outnumbered but you made it and—” She stops and I know what she’s thinking.
My parents were outnumbered. They didn’t make it.
“You didn’t even get bitten.”

“I came close,” I say.

“Too close,” Cary mutters.

“They’re … they don’t think like we do, you guys know that,” Rhys says. “It was … it’s not like they work together. They’re dumb animals. They were fighting each other for Sloane and holding each other back. I just went at them while they were distracted. We got lucky.”

“The girl was persistent,” I say. As soon as I say it, I see her in my head, I see her eyes staring into mine and she’s hungry, I remember that hunger, but now I remember something else: a longing like … no—I’m imagining that. I make myself picture her again and this time it’s just hunger. That’s all there is, nothing more complicated than that. It’s so uncomplicated, I’d almost call it beautiful and that sounds wrong, but it’s true.

“Were you scared?” Grace asks me.

I can’t lie to her.

“No. I mean … I think when you know it’s really going to happen … that you’re really going to die, just … a part of you accepts it because there’s nothing else you can do.”

“Well, it probably helped that you were semi-conscious,” Rhys says. “I bet you’d have felt differently if you were really awake.”

“You think so? I don’t think so.”

Trace lets out an impressed whistle.

Grace says, “Well I couldn’t … I wouldn’t feel that way.”

“Do you—” Harrison stops. “Do you think they have souls?”

“Oh fuck,” Cary says. “Remember when we were playing I Never? That was a lot of fun and this is turning out not to be.”

Nobody says anything for a long time and then Grace reaches for the bottle.

“I’ve never stolen from my parents.”

“Really?” Trace asks.

He takes a drink. I take a drink. Cary takes a drink. Rhys takes a drink. Even Harrison takes a drink. It’s so nothing, stealing from your parents. Money went missing from my dad’s wallet all the time and he never knew about it. It was the only way I could contribute because he wouldn’t let me work before I turned eighteen. Lily was allowed, just not me. Arbitrary rules. Lily was at the supermarket setting aside what she could for us. But I couldn’t let her do it all by herself. I touch the bandage on my head, let my finger dig into it until I feel the sting. If I’d been caught in his wallet, if he noticed the missing bills, it would’ve been so bad for me. Lily told me that every time I handed them to her but she still took the money because it was for our escape plan.
Our
escape plan. Our. Escape. Together.

“Okay?” Rhys asks me. I lower my hand and nod. He contemplates the bottle next and then, after a long moment says, “I have never fallen in love.”

Depressing. Worse: Trace and Grace are the only ones who drink. Cary avoids my eyes and it takes me a minute to figure out why; he had sex with Lily, but didn’t love her. I don’t know if that kind of thing makes more or less sense to me now.

Cary grabs the bottle from Grace after she has her drink.

“Are we even deciding turns right?” I ask, confused.

Cary takes a swig out of turn. “If we’re doing it wrong, we won’t call it I Never. It’s just sharing, Sloane. That’s all it is.”

“In that case.” Harrison clears his throat. “I’ve never had sex.”

I know if I don’t drink, it’ll just be me and Harrison, so I take the bottle after Rhys has his go and I take a longer pull off it than I should, like I am
so totally not a virgin.

I pass it to Grace. Trace makes retching noises as she sips.

“Sloane, you haven’t gone yet,” Rhys points out. “You’ve never I nevered.”

And then the bottle is back in my hands. I don’t know what to say, share. It’s funny how little I’ve actually done of the things that are supposed to matter—kiss, sex, drugs—but I’ve killed a man. I’ve done that. I close my eyes but when I do, my brain feels a bit liquid. I sort of hate that. But it seems a fair trade-off because the whiskey has dulled my aches. I like that.

“I’ve never…” I stare at the label. “I never…”

“You’re thinking about it too long,” Trace says.

“I’ve never run away from home.”

Cary drinks. When he was five, he explains. He didn’t want to clean his room.

So we go round and round, the questions getting more perverted and inane as we do. The bottle seems endless and I feel sleepy and hot and I’ve lied to them all a lot because I guess I care what they think and I don’t even know why I care what they think.

When Harrison passes on drink number who knows, Trace zeroes in on him.

“Man, what have you
done
?” he asks. “You take drinks when you shouldn’t and you don’t drink when you should. You need to do something about your…” Oops. It’s not a sentence Trace should finish, but he does it anyway. “Life.”

“How world-weary were
you
at fourteen?” Rhys asks.

“I’m not saying he should’ve fucked someone already,” Trace says generously. He’s smashed. “But I mean, Harrison, do you like—do you even know what a kiss is? Like … do you need someone here to explain it to you just in case it happened and you didn’t know?”

“Jesus, Trace,” Cary mutters. Out of all of us, he’s the most gone. Or experienced, I guess. His shoulders are slumped and every so often he tilts forward like he’s lost his balance, even though he’s sitting. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I know what a kiss is,” Harrison whispers.

“He’s
fourteen,
” Grace says, while Harrison sits there looking devastated. “Don’t be so hard on him, Trace.”

“I’m fifteen,” Harrison says miserably.

“Just forget it, Harrison. Please.” Cary grabs the bottle. “It’s not a big deal.”

“But it
is.
I’ve never—I’ve never done anything. I’ve never had anything done to me—”

“Game over please,” Cary says loudly. He takes a gulp of whiskey and swishes it around his mouth before swallowing. “Let’s move on, to straight drinking.”

Harrison presses his lips together, pushes his palms against the floor. He looks away from us and for once I get the impression that he is really, truly trying not to cry and it’s not half-hearted or anything, his body shakes with the effort. Even Trace is quieted by it. He tries to take it all back when it’s too late.

“Harrison, I was just fucking with you…”

“No, you weren’t. It’s nothing. I thought it could be something, I mean, eventually.” He finally looks at us. “My life. I thought—but I mean … it’s nothing.”

Cary groans. “Please shut up.”

“But I still want it to be something,” Harrison says. A single tear trails down his cheek. “That’s stupid, isn’t it? And now it’s too late to do anything about it.”

Cary buries his head in his hands. No one does or says anything for a long time and then Grace scoots over to Harrison. Her nose and cheeks are a warm red from the whiskey. She wraps an arm around him and he starts to cry in earnest.

“Don’t cry,” she says. “You have a lot of time.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“No—”

“Yeah! Yeah, you do. It’s okay. Look—”

She does something that is amazingly selfless and also gross. She tilts Harrison’s face up and gives him a sweet kiss on the lips and it lasts long enough for him to taste her back, to move his mouth against hers. Trace regards her proudly and when it’s over, Harrison stares at her dumbfounded but he’s stopped crying.

She is so nice.

Cary makes a disgusted noise and struggles to his feet. “Well, this was fun until Harrison started crying, but hey. That’s what he does, right? Thanks, Harrison.”

This brings Harrison back. “I didn’t—”

“Yeah, you did.”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Trace asks. “Let the kid cry if he needs to.”

“That’s all we let Harrison do! I don’t want to
dwell.
” Cary rubs his eyes. “I’m tired of dwelling. I just wanted to get totally wasted and—”

“You’re there,” Rhys tells him.

“It was just sharing,” I say. “That’s all he did.”

“Yeah, but not—” Cary gestures to Harrison. It throws him off balance. He sways precariously for a second before steadying himself. “Not
that.
We didn’t need to hear it. I didn’t want to hear it. It’s fucking pathetic…”

“I’m sorry,” Harrison says. “I didn’t mean to—”

“He can fucking dwell if he wants to,” Trace says. “I never see
you
dwell.”

“Oh, let me guess,” Cary replies. “The next words out of your mouth are going to be something about your dead parents that I killed because I’m a murderer.”

“Yeah, something like that. Exactly like that actually.”

They stare at each other. I watch Trace. He holds Cary’s gaze, unblinking. Cary caves first and he does it in a way I don’t expect, that I don’t think any of us expect. He curls his hand into a fist and presses it against his forehead.

“You think I wanted this,” he says.

“Cary,” Grace starts. “Don’t do this—”

“But you must. You think I wanted it,” he says. “You actually think I wanted to be left
with
you guys,
without
them.” He laughs. “You think I wanted that?
Really?
” He takes a step back. “I didn’t. I loved the idea of—I loved the idea of them.” He lowers his hand. “It shouldn’t have been them. It should have been—”

He stares at us, lost, and I keep waiting for him to finish even though I know he’s never going to finish.
It should’ve been me.
Cary changes for me in that instant. From the boy who is crazy good at survival stuff to the boy who thinks he should be dead.

He’s finally become someone I understand.

He shakes his head and weaves out of the auditorium. He’s through with us, with everything. I want to follow after him, tell him he’s not alone.

I want to ask him how we can help each other.

Grace catches my eye. She opens her mouth and closes it and then she looks away. She doesn’t look happy anymore. I feel like someone should do something. I guess it should be me. I get to my feet and the world tilts a little.

“I’ll find him.”

“Don’t,” Trace says. “Let him rot.”

Rhys stands. “I’ll go with you.”

I don’t want his company but I guess I’m stuck with it. Rhys is steadier on his feet than I am and when we leave the auditorium, I end up following him. He seems to know where Cary is: the library. He’s slumped over at one of the tables, his head resting in his arms.

“Just leave me alone,” he slurs. “Please.”

“Let us take you back to your mat,” Rhys says.

“Mat. I don’t even have a
bed
anymore. None of us have beds anymore. You realize this, right? We can’t go home. There are no more beds.” He raises his head and looks at us. His eyes are glassy. “We can’t go home, Sloane.”

“That’s okay with me.”

“Why?
This
is the alternative.”

“Okay. Enough.” Rhys stands behind Cary and pulls him to his feet. Cary pushes away from him and says, “I am
not
going back to the auditorium—”

“The nurse’s office, then,” Rhys says.

So we take him there. Cary needs an arm around each of us to stay upright. Taking on his weight slows us down. His legs are uncooperative, jelly, and as we pass a classroom, he detours inside and pukes in a garbage can and then he spits.

“Better,” he mumbles. After that, he is a little better. He just wants to pass out, he tells us. When we hit the nurse’s office, he flops back on the cot and Rhys unties his shoes.

“I’m a murderer,” Cary says. “I. Am. A. Murderer.”

“No, you’re drunk. Sleep it off.”

I don’t want Cary to stop talking. I want him to finish what he was going to say in the auditorium. I want to hear someone else say they’ve given up. I need to hear it.

“It should’ve been you, right?”

Rhys gives me a look. “Sloane.”