Where the Staircase Ends (11 page)

It was the only thing my mom could talk about for the entire month of November, and my poor father spent the better part of his weekends on a ladder stapling crap to our house while my mother shrieked at him from the safety of our yard
. A little more to left, Todd. No left! I said LEFT!

One year someone stole the baby Jesus from the Cumberlands’ nativity set and poked a hole in the Schmidts’ giant inflatable Santa. I never could prove it, but I swear I heard my mother sneaking back into our house late the night it happened. And it always seemed a little coincidental that our house was one of the few on the street that didn’t get vandalized, or that the Cumberlands and Schmidts were the two previous “Holiday House” winners.

But that’s my mom. Perfection at any cost.

I never really understood how you could want something so badly you’d go all crazy like that, at least not until the whole Justin/Sunny debacle. To clarify, I didn’t want to break Sunny’s legs or anything
that
insane, but something shifted in me and I didn’t like the way it felt. I didn’t like the competitive glances we’d started giving each other after Sunny made her interloping crush announcement, or the way I’d started comparing myself to her. So when I showed up at Sunny’s house the night of The Fields, I made a silent vow to be cool about everything. To
relax
. Sunny was my best friend, I reminded myself, and I couldn’t let a guy come between us. That was almost as dumb as stealing a plastic Jesus to win a yard sign. I vowed that all the drama I’d sensed between us would end the night of The Fields.

We were standing in the kitchen waiting for Jenny Schlitz and Amber Grossman to arrive, passing the time with a game of Blind Man’s Bar. Jenny was perpetually late. She was the only person who could rival Sunny when it came to tardiness, but Sunny’s lateness was considered fashionable. With Jenny it was annoying.

Miss Violet Beauregard was in her usual state of panic at my presence, circling protectively around Sunny’s feet as she snarled in my direction. Her ears were large and bat-like, surrounded by tufts of matted yellow hair. The rest of her tiny body was splotched with bald patches, as if someone attempted to give her a haircut but the hyperactive dog couldn’t sit still long enough to let them finish the job. When she growled at me (which was pretty much any time she saw me), she exposed a row of ragged, half-missing teeth, and her tongue lolled out the side of her snout, making her look like a half-crazed jack-o-lantern.

“That dog is going to give itself a heart attack,” I said, eyeing the hideous creature as it bounced around Sunny on its hind legs.

“She’s just excited. Aren’t you excited Miss Violet Beauregard? Aren’t you? Yes, you are. You are excited, my sweet girl. Such a sweet girl.” Sunny cooed at her as she bent down to pet one of the dog’s oversized ears. It looked back at me with its bulging eyes, one of them veering off to the left slightly so I couldn’t tell for sure if it was looking at the wall or giving me the stink eye.

“Are you ready to play, or what?” I asked, nodding at the sweating glasses waiting for us on the counter.

The rules to Blind Man’s Bar were simple: each person got thirty seconds in the liquor cabinet to create a mystery concoction for their competition. The first person to puke was the loser.

“Drink up, bitch,” said Sunny, clinking her glass against mine with enough force to crack it. I held my nose while I chugged, thinking if I couldn’t smell the drink I stood a better chance of keeping it down. I still almost yakked the mixture back up twice.

Sunny slammed her empty tumbler down and made a gagging noise. “That was disgusting! Are you trying to kill me?”

I made a face and set my glass down next to hers, some of the mystery drink still sitting in the bottom. There was no way I could finish it all.

“Please, you’re the one trying to kill me,” I said between chaser sips of orange juice. “That was your worst one yet!” I tried not to laugh because I could barely hold on to my stomach. Laughing too hard would most definitely make me puke.

“Yeah, you don’t look so good,” she said, making a sympathetic face as she bent down to pat one of Miss Violet Beauregard’s bald patches. “Do you want to know what was in your drink?”

I shook my head. Ignorance was always best when playing Blind Man’s Bar. At least it was in my case; I didn’t have the stomach for it.

“Do you want to know what was in yours?” I leaned over the sink a little because I still wasn’t sure I was in the clear from barfing. I puked about half the time we played. Sunny, on the other hand, never seemed phased by my concoctions. The only time I ever made her yak was when I mixed pickle juice and bourbon together. Man, I got her good that time. She had to take a shower, re-do her makeup and everything.

Sunny sniffed her empty glass and made a thoughtful face while pretending to slosh something around in her mouth. “Was it tequila and Crème de Menthe?”

I nodded. “How do you do that? It’s disturbing.” I wrinkled my nose and stuck my tongue out at her.

“I have the nose of a fine wine connoisseur,” she said in haughty voice, sticking her chin in the air and her chest out with pride. We both laughed at the truth of the declaration. Nine times out of ten she could identify my mystery mixes by smell alone.

“So how did Logan take it when you told him you were meeting him at The Fields instead of riding with him?”

I shrugged, trying to feign indifference, but the truth was he’d been pissed as all get out. He always got annoyed when I made weekend plans with Sunny instead of him, but this time he practically jumped through the phone when I told him. If he wasn’t being such a douche, I might have agreed to go with him instead, but I didn’t want to reward his childish behavior, so I held my ground and said I’d meet him there.

Sunny pulled the vodka out of the pantry and passed it to me so I could make us each a screwdriver. No doubt someone would bring a keg to The Fields, but we always pre-gamed in case. Plus, we never knew what kind of crappy beer we would get.

The doorbell let out a loud gong, sending Miss Violet Beauregard into another panicked fit as Sunny ran to let Jenny and Amber in. I added two more glasses to my line-up on the counter and filled them each with a fifty-fifty mix of juice and vodka.

“Howdy, bitch!” yelled Jenny, waving her cast in the air as she joined me in the kitchen. I noticed it was bare that night—no scarves or jewels decorating the surface, just the blue hospital-grade sling and the white bandaged surface of the cast. Amber followed closely behind in a cloud of perfume, swinging her hips and raising her arms in the air like music was blasting.

Jenny sidled up next to me, backing away from the half-crazed dog that snarled and yipped at her from the protection of Sunny’s arms.

“I think that dog might be retarded,” she attempted to whisper to me, but in usual Jenny form her “whisper” was audible from a mile away. Sunny scowled at us and kissed the writhing creature on the head.

“Stop talking shit about my dog. She’s not
retarded
, she’s just excitable.” She gave us both a dark look even though Jenny was the one who doled out the insult. “Don’t you worry, Miss Violet Beauregard. The big bullies won’t hurt you. Nobody’s going to hurt my sweet girl. No they won’t. I won’t let them. Why don’t you go through your doggy door and play in the backyard, hmm? That’s a good girl. Who’s my sweet girl? Who’s my sweet, sweet girl?” She tossed a few dog biscuits through the flap in back door, then gently set the animal down so it could yip its way into the back yard. The dog’s lazy eye wobbled in my direction one final time before she slipped through the door.

“Where’s my drink?” Amber yelled, skirting past Sunny so she could grind against my backside like I was her date. It was obviously a question, but pretty much everything Amber said sounded like a question. Her voice tipped up at the end of every sentence, as though she was contemplating a riddle rather than making a statement. Like: “I’m having a really good day? The grass is green? My name is Amber? You have two legs and I have a face?”

“If you keep humping me like that you’re going to have to buy
me
a drink,” I said before turning to the rest of the group. “Start your livers, ladies!” I handed the drinks out as we all gathered in a circle and Sunny lead us in our standard pre-game toast.

“Here’s to the king!” she said.

“What king?” I asked.

“Fuh-king!” We all said in unison, clinking our glasses and sloshing some of the orange mixture onto the floor. Sunny hit play on her iPod, and we started dancing around the kitchen, swinging our hips and screaming song lyrics while we emptied our glasses. It was our customary start to any evening.

Jenny and Amber were already dressed in the standard uniform: black skirt and slinky top. Jenny, as usual, had crammed herself into a skirt and top two sizes too small, making her look like a Christmas ham shoved into a Ziploc sandwich bag. It’s not that Jenny was
big
per se, but her stocky frame and mound of brown curly hair made her look bigger than she really was. Her penchant for tight fitting, too-small clothes only exacerbated everything, forcing her to wobble and jiggle her way through a room as her limbs struggled against the constricting fabric.

Amber was Jenny’s exact opposite, so tall and willowy that a strong breeze could probably knock her over. She wore her long dark hair straight down her back, and her wide-set doe eyes made her look constantly surprised and/or perplexed. Sunny used to call her “the seashell,” swearing that if you pressed your ear against Amber’s ear you could hear the ocean. I used to think it was funny, too, until I found Amber crying in the parking lot after failing yet another test.

I was surprised Jenny and Amber weren’t totally pissed that it was almost nine o’clock and Sunny had yet to select her outfit, but they followed happily when she invited us all upstairs to help. I grumbled as I trailed behind them, mumbling my concerns about the time because Logan was waiting. Plus, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Sunny’s ensemble for the evening, especially since I knew who the outfit was for. But I tried not to think about that given my vow to be cool about everything.
Relax
.

“I couldn’t pick which one I wanted, so I bought all three,” she said about the dresses laid across her bed. “
Somebody
left me high and dry to shop by myself yesterday, and I couldn’t decide on my own.” She gave me a pointed look.

“You should have called me,” cooed Jenny as she plopped down onto the massive stack of black and lavender pillows at the top of Sunny’s bed. “I totally would have joined. Next time Taylor ditches you should give me a call.”

Jenny flicked her eyes to where I was seated on the floor. I shifted my attention to my freshly painted nails, scratching at a place on my thumb where I’d painted outside the lines and onto my skin.

“Not that you needed us at all,” Jenny added, looking at the dresses like they were slices of birthday cake. “They’re all
so
cute. I don’t think I could have picked between them either. You did the right thing buying all of them.”

I fought the urge to stick my finger down my throat and barf on all three of them.
Be cool
, I reminded myself.
Relax
.

“That one is
so
cute,” said Jenny when Sunny twirled out of the bathroom in the first option. “You have to wear that one.”

Sunny wrinkled her nose at her reflection as she examined the clingy dress in the mirror. “Are you sure it doesn’t make me look fat?” She put her hand on her nonexistent stomach and turned to the side so we could all see.

“Stop calling yourself fat,” said Amber.

“Are you kidding? You’re so tiny!” Jenny fluffed her mound of dark curly hair and adjusted her shirt.

I kept my eyes down and continued picking at my nails, moving from my thumb to my index finger. The dark polish fluttered onto the wooden floor of Sunny’s bedroom.

The room had started to become fuzzy around the edges, the way it always did when my buzz kicked in. I was glad for the distraction from The Sunny Runway Show, but the spinning room combined with the competing perfumes wafting off of Jenny and Amber were giving me a headache.

“What do you think, Taylor?” she asked me, her voice taking on a pouty edge the way it always did when I ignored her. “Do you like this one?”

I took in the way the dress clung to her body and made her look somehow taller and thinner all at the same time. She looked amazing, which made me nauseated. I drained the rest of my screwdriver and inspected the damage I’d done to my manicure.

“It looks great. You should wear that one,” I said honestly, because at the time I was still her friend, and even though I was jealous as hell, I didn’t want to lie to her.

Her smile got really big, reminding me how much she still needed my approval.

“Do you want to wear one of the other ones?” she offered me. Amber and Jenny exchanged envious glances, like I should be so lucky to have Sunny offer to let me wear one of her never-before-worn dresses. I knew an olive branch when I saw one, and it made me feel even guiltier for the way I’d been acting. But I didn’t feel like cramming my body into one of Sunny’s rejected frocks. It would only make me feel worse than I already did.

“Thanks, but you know how much I hate wearing skirts to The Fields. The grass makes my legs all itchy.” I added an ear-to-ear grin to the statement so she’d know I appreciated the offer.

Sunny nodded, and Amber and Jenny looked back at her with such wide-eyed hope that it made me a little sad. If Sunny could tell how badly they wanted her to offer one of the dresses to them, she didn’t show it. She turned her back and collected her wristlet, and in a weird way it made me proud to hold the coveted spot as Sunny’s best friend.

“Let’s go, bitches!” she said, jingling her car keys as she motioned for Jenny and Amber to lead the way downstairs.

“Yeah, let’s blow this popsicle stand!” said Jenny, grabbing her purse as she jiggled her way through the bedroom door. Amber and I exchanged an eye roll.

I inspected my tight-fitting jeans and sparkly top in the full-length mirror before following the girls out the door. Maybe I should have taken Sunny up on her offer. Everything about me seemed plain by comparison. Or maybe I should have listened to my mom’s critiques for once and worn something different.