Something hits the car. Something big, and we both jump; Brynn lets out a little yelp, hands tightening around the wheel.
“Ladies,” Hugh says, face pressed against the windshield as he sprawls across the hood.
I smack the glass where his face is. “Get off my car, shithead.”
He smiles but moves, and Brynn puts a hand on her chest.
“Scared me,” she says.
I act like it didn’t, like my heart isn’t racing. My bells jingle as I get out, and Hugh flicks at one of them. It spins around and hits me in the eye.
“Sorry,” he says, but it’s a half-assed apology; he’s beelining for Brynn. He passes me and catches up to her, as she hauls her taco outfit under one arm.
“Tacos! Awesome!” he says, and she gives him a side-eye before she realizes he’s serious, and then she starts to show him how she made it. His interest is more on where her leotard gapes at the chest than the properties of foam. I laugh a little to myself, the second beer I’m already chugging starting to flow in my veins. She catches his gaze and chucks him under the chin.
“My face is up here, and you’re a monument to testosterone,” Brynn says.
And one big-ass monument. When we clear the rise he’s backlit by the house, hulking over Brynn, even counting all her taco parts.
“Huge! Wait up!” Dave comes streaking past me, leaving a trail of pot smoke behind him. It’s skunky and cheap. He must’ve got it from Tress.
I help Brynn pull her taco costume over her head, adjusting her lettuce and arranging her hair down the back so that it hangs nicely. I’ve got to admit, she looks good.
“Sexy taco,” I tell her, and she laughs. I forgive her for being such a mom back on the road when she made me hide my beer.
We get past the hangers-on at the porch: underclassmen and people not confident enough to walk right in. A few of the younger football players latch on to Hugh, trying to get him to bitch with them about the canceled game. He talks to them for a second, but it just takes Brynn’s hand resting on his arm, urging him on into the house, and he caves. I hand off my empty can to a kid who’s leaning against one of the pillars, taking the full one off his hands. He treats it like the compliment it is.
Felicity Turnado just acknowledged his existence.
Once we’re inside, I definitely decide I prefer the Allan house without lights. There are holes in the walls, little piles of plaster on the floor and mouse prints running through where it’s been ground to a fine dust. There’s wallpaper still attached in places, sloughing down and sagging from the walls, a few studs visible. The nails that stick out of them are pure rust, with square heads, something Dad says is how you know something is really old. I head for the stairs, which still have a bit of grandeur about them, like the mom at the pool who still has great legs and knows it.
People are crowded on the staircase, and I’ve got to pick my way through them. Somebody sneaks a squeeze of my ass, and I give them a little kick for it. Whoever he is, he yells and drops his drink, earning a shove from whoever he splattered. I don’t turn around to see who it was. I’ve got a goal. I need to find Tress, and sooner rather than later, while I’ve still got a little bit of liquid courage to talk to her. I thread the crowd, slipping past a couple of geek sophomores who are—I think—trying to fix the clock at the head of the staircase.
“Are you serious?” I ask them, and one of them turns to look at me, unfazed by my naked legs so close to his face.
“It’s got a pendulum,” he explains. “Which means it’s a harmonic oscillator. If we clean it up, put the parts in working order, and introduce some kinetic energy, it’s completely feasible that we could get it running.”
“Neat,” I say, which is a nice word that when you say it just right, becomes something else. Years of listening to Mom and Dad have taught me how to wield tone like a weapon.
I brush past the geeks, but they aren’t interested, already lost in a pile of cogs on the floor, heads together. I go to the railing on the second floor, scanning the crowd below for Tress’s hair, black and shining. I don’t see it, and I give a little kick to the railing in frustration, sending a spindle falling into the people below me. Somebody yells, and I give them a little wave.
Because I’m Felicity Turnado, which means I can take a freshman’s beer and kick a guy who grabs me and accidentally rain splintered wood on people, but the one thing I can’t do is ask anybody if they know where Tress Montor is.
She runs a decent but discreet business, setting up somewhere secluded at a party and dealing until her stash is depleted and her pockets full, declaring the store closed and leaving before anyone offers her a beer, or tries to make small talk past ounces or milligrams.
I scout out rooms on the second floor, toeing a few early hard partiers out of the way, freshmen who hit it too fast on their first—and only—night at the Allan house. I’m considering that I might have to wander up to the third floor when I spot her, or rather, I spot her cousin.
Ribbit Usher is the most awkward thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m counting Brynn’s taco in that. But while Brynn can take the taco off, revealing her hard-as-nails volleyball body underneath, Ribbit can’t strip off his freckled skin or take any of the rough angles off his arms and legs. I slam what’s left of the beer I lifted, reconsidering my opinion as Ribbit stretches his arms in the air, illustrating something for Tress’s benefit.
He’s got broad shoulders, and I bet he could fill out with some muscle. Maybe if someone like Hugh pulled him aside and showed him how to bench he could be salvageable. Gretchen and I could lighten his hair, take the red down a touch. But that would never happen, I think, crushing my can. Hugh can’t stand Ribbit, something he’s tried to explain to me before, when we were out on our own, after one of my seizures.
“That kid’s just not right,” Hugh had said, even though Ribbit’s the same age we are. “Something about him . . . I don’t know.” Hugh had shrugged, not able to put words to it. “Remember when Gretchen’s dog bit him?”
“William Wilson?” I’d asked.
“Huh? No, when it bit Usher.”
“William Wilson is the dog, dumbo,” I’d said, swatting at his arm.
“Jesus, what a stuck-up name for a dog. Figures. Anyway, that dog has been at parties with people yelling and screaming, getting shoved into pools, and once, somebody spray-painted him yellow, remember that?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I’d said, not sure what Hugh had been driving at.
“But the one time—the only time—that dog ever bites anybody, it’s Ribbit Usher, and for no reason.”
“So?”
“So, dogs know things, Felicity. You’ve got to listen to their instincts. Dogs and babies.”
“Yeah, well.” My eyes had wandered to a corner, where Gretchen was pressed up between the wall and a junior. “Give Gretchen another few minutes and maybe you can get the opinion of a baby in about nine months.”
Instincts or not, I think Hugh just doesn’t understand a boy who doesn’t know what offside means. Personally, I can’t say I mind Ribbit one bit, especially not when he lights up like one of the strung bulbs the second he sees me.