Tradition Page 13

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m confused.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Shriya said. “Why don’t you eat a bunch of speed and try to keep up with the rest of us?”

  “Stuff it, Shriya.”

  Her phone buzzed in her hand and she swiped at the image. “Oh my God,” she said, eyes wide. She showed her phone to Gillian. “Looks like your buddy Javi is the one doing the scoring now,” she said to me. She and Gillian laughed. Shriya held up her phone. I squinted at the screen. In the grainy darkness, I could make out Javi and Max kissing. Comments scrolled under the video, laughing faces, people making fun of them. I wanted to grab Shriya’s phone and smash it on the ground, but what was the point? All those comments. The video was everywhere. It was already in everyone’s pocket.

  Shriya shrugged her shoulders. “Whoops,” she said with smarmy, fake concern.

  Everything about this night was starting to piss me off. Everyone, too. Even myself. I hated that I was a guy standing there in the middle of a situation like this.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said to both of them.

  “Oh, lighten up, Buckeye. People are just having fun. It’s okay. You don’t have to be so serious all the time.”

  I left them without saying another word and wandered back into the woods. There was something like a tornado whirling within me, drilling down into the pit of me. I felt sick. I’d had almost no vodka—not like what I’d had at the parties I’d gone to junior year—but still, I threw my cup down and crushed it under my foot. I could hear people laughing in the distance, squeals, yelps that weren’t fear but pretended to be.

  Back then, back when I was normal, back when I didn’t care about anything and it seemed like there was nothing to care about and it felt like the world was solidly beneath my feet, I had been one of those voices. I had been one of the kids chasing another kid, pinching a girl in the soft flesh above her hip as she casually danced away from me, not trying to get away, just trying to keep the tease going, because it was the tease that made us feel alive.

  Someone laughed nearby, and two girls, both juniors, ran out of a thicket of trees. One of the hockey players was chasing them, growling, hands in the air as if he was a bear. I walked back toward the main clearing, done with it all. I just wanted to climb down, find the path again, and head home to bed. But as I made my way closer to the clearing, I noticed two people by the edge of the ridge that loomed over the path below.

  “Get out of here.” It was Aileen speaking.

  “Come on. You serious?”

  “Go away.”

  Aileen was sitting on a narrow tree that had fallen and was propped up by two other trees. I knew she was drunk, and probably more so than when I’d last seen her, and I was worried she might stand too quickly and tumble back over it, down the steep slope to the path. Bushes and brambles would slow her fall, but who knows what she might break along the way.

  “I knew the guy was a wimp. Hilarious.”

  It was Freddie. All the anger I thought I’d blown out of me came rushing back. But Aileen had it in her too.

  She jumped up. “Stop saying that. You’re an asshole. You’re all assholes!”

  As I came toward them, she tried to step past Freddie, but he grabbed her arm and swung her around.

  “I’m not afraid,” he said. “How about a little sumpin’ sumpin’ for old times’ sake?” He brought his fist up to his face and poked his cheek out with his tongue.

  Aileen broke free of his grip. “Asshole!” she repeated.

  “Hey,” I said, coming close to them. “I’ll give you something to laugh about.”

  Freddie turned quickly and lost his footing. He stumbled, but he caught himself on the fallen tree.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see my fist connecting. I could see the blood spurt. I could see his black eye and swollen jaw the next day. I could see me sitting in the admin building, back in the same chair I’d sat in when I met with the admissions team, and I could see them saying, “We did our best, but you blew it. You’re out of here. Enjoy your useless life.”

  I could see all of that as I squatted and shuffled forward, readying my punch, but Aileen beat me to it.

  “The Viking likes a closer,” Freddie began, but as soon as he said her nickname, she pounced and shoved him in the shoulders. His back bent more than I thought possible, and then his feet went up and over the log, and he disappeared from sight, sliding into the thorny mess of darkness down the slope. He didn’t even make a sound, or anything we could hear over the crash of his body through the bramble.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  “Oh shit,” Aileen repeated.

  Then, with all the meanness still in me, I laughed, and Aileen laughed too. We heard a groan far below. “Asshole?” Aileen called out. “That you?”

  He groaned again, and it wasn’t something that sounded like shrieking pain.

  Aileen smiled, and I could tell immediately that she was smashed. Her eyes looked wild and she couldn’t focus on me at all.

  “You showed him,” I said.

  “I showed him,” she repeated. She tried to walk forward, away from the log, further up the slope and back toward the heart of the party, but she slipped and went down into the dirt and the leaves. “Oops,” she said, still face-first.

  I helped her up.

  “You are still an asshole.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I agree.”

  We sat on the log, and I made sure there was a foot or so of space between us. I didn’t want to say anything, because I didn’t really know what to say, but Aileen wavered on the log, and I put a hand behind her back to brace her. “I’m really sorry,” I finally said.

  “I know you are, but what am I?” She giggled. At first, I thought she might be flirting again. She was drunk, but it wasn’t flirting at all, I realized. She just didn’t know what to say. Actually, it kind of made sense. I didn’t know what she was: Angry? Sad? Sorry, too? Embarrassed? Why not all of these feelings at once? Seems weird to think of emotions happening one at a time like playing cards being dealt out. They kind of swarmed all at once in confusion, like a cloud of bees busted loose from their hive.

  We heard Freddie, but it was the sound of him breaking through brush again, freeing himself from a bush. “I think we should get out of here,” I said. “Or . . .” I hesitated. “We should see if he is okay—like no broken bones and all that.”

  “No,” Aileen said. “Asshole.”

  “Okay.” I stood up and she followed, but stumbled again. I noticed the empty bottle by her feet. “Is that all you?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, man.”

  She squinted. “I want to go home.”

  “I’ll get you there,” I said, not sure, exactly, how I was going to do that. Freddie yelled something unintelligible up the slope, and if it had been only me there, I might have waited for him to climb, just so I could knock him down again. But I wasn’t alone, and worse, I feared he was waiting for us on the path below. We couldn’t climb straight down, and we couldn’t take the more gradual slope that led down close to the boathouse, because we’d still come across him. We needed to head back the way I had just come.

  “I want to go home,” Aileen repeated.

  “I got you.”

  I threw her arm over my neck and waddled her through the woods to the path back to the small clearing at the far end of the bluff. The moon had risen higher since she and I had been by the horn, and the light coming from it wasn’t as bright. As we stumbled forward together, I could hear her breath close to my neck.

  “Come on, Aileen,” I said, bolstering her again with an arm around the waist. “Help me out here. Keep walking, please.”

  “Please,” she repeated.

  “Yes. Please.”

  “Please,” she said again.

  “Please what?”

  “Please just get me home.” She paused. “Safe.”

  “Don’t worry. He won’t bother you.”

  “No. Please.�
�� She sniffed. “Just get me home safe.”

  I suddenly understood she was talking about me. What had I done to make her feel so scared? I was about to tell her not to worry, that of all the people to be with right now, I was the one who would keep her the most safe, when I realized that I couldn’t say that. She swayed. In her mind, what the hell was the difference between me and Freddie? For once I felt so certain that I knew what the right thing to do was—get Aileen home safe—but I couldn’t do it alone, not if I was actually trying to help her. I didn’t know what to do, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Shriya came up the path from the far end of the bluff.

  “Hey,” Aileen said. “Hey, help.”

  Shriya stopped and stared at us.

  “She’s wasted,” I said.

  “I can see that.”

  “Help.”

  Shriya seemed a little shaken herself. “What is going on here?”

  “Help,” Aileen said again, lunging forward, reaching for Shriya.

  “Seriously,” I said. “I will explain everything, but right now we need to get her home. And away from Freddie as fast as possible.”

  Shriya held her ground, not moving. “Freddie?”

  “Shriya,” I begged. “For real. This is serious.”

  “Whatever,” she said, sidling up on the other side of Aileen, taking her other arm. “This party is a bust anyway,” she said. “Everyone is wasted and acting like idiots.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “You’re an idiot too,” Shriya said.

  “Asshole,” Aileen half whispered.

  “Well, I’m the only sober one here at least,” I said.

  “Wrong again,” Shriya said.

  We hobbled with Aileen to the fork in the path. “Don’t go that way,” Shriya said, nodding toward the small clearing. “Major fight between King and Queen. Gillian is in hell-raiser mode over there.”

  Aileen moaned. She gagged and gagged.

  “Oh, no,” Shriya said, and Aileen sank again. This time we let her down to her knees. I held her up at one shoulder, and Shriya held the two braids in her hand to keep them from swinging forward, and Aileen let it all go. She sprayed the dirt, but got it all over her clothes, too.

  When she was finished, we looked around for something to clean her up with, but she just wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt instead. Shriya curled her lip in disgust, I thought she might start puking too, but she didn’t. Instead, she held Aileen’s head and spoke right at her.

  “We need you to help us get you home.”

  Aileen nodded, but said nothing. Her eyelids were heavy and barely able to lift open. Then she bolted awake and gagged again, and after a few dry heaves, she finally crawled forward, away from the mess, and curled into a ball.

  “How much did she have?” Shriya asked.

  “I have no idea. I stumbled in on Freddie giving her a hard time and then she pushed him down the hill.”

  “Really?”

  “I would have, if she hadn’t.”

  “This is a shitshow.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Aileen or me or the whole party, but it was clear that we couldn’t leave Aileen in the fetal position in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. There was still the noise of some people back at the party, but not as many, and we heard some others on the path below.

  “How the hell are they not all going to get caught?” I asked. “They sound like a parade heading home.”

  “I don’t know,” Shriya said. “Maybe this time they will be. But I doubt it.” She shook her head. “We just need everyone to show up for Sunday sit-down dinner, and everything will be fine.”

  If we waited any longer, Aileen would be dead asleep, and Shriya and I both knew it, so we devised a plan: We’d put her on my back, and I’d crawl backward down the slope so we wouldn’t tumble, and Shriya would crawl down alongside and help me hoist Aileen onto my back every time she slipped off. It was a great plan, but mostly it was a frigging disaster, and after Shriya and I slipped and slid and tried to keep Aileen from falling while her stanky shirt made me want to puke, I finally just spun around on my butt and shuffled down the rest of the slope with Aileen in my arms and lap.

  When we got to the bottom, I tried to give Aileen a piggyback but she was too tired and jelly-limbed to stay on, so I hoisted her onto my shoulder like I was a soldier hauling the wounded out of battle. I crept along the path, Shriya beside me keeping an eye out for whatever we needed to keep an eye out for. Despite her near certainty that we wouldn’t get in trouble, I was worried. The key to Shriya’s belief was getting back into the dorm without being caught by Cray-Cray. If he, rather than anyone else, saw us, we’d be goners. Our teachers didn’t want to play parent or security guard, but that was his actual job.

  Shriya stopped us when we got to the end of the path. We crouched in the tree line as she scanned the academic quad, looking for Cray-Cray. “Nothing,” she finally said, when she was satisfied the coast was clear.

  We made it across the quad, risked the beeline across the wide middle of the lawn to take the shorter route back to the admin building, and then hustled down the road, across Old Main Street, and along the back loop to Mary Lyon. Tomorrow would be another day, but for now we were fine.

  I slumped down underneath the bathroom window and dropped Aileen, who was mostly awake from the jostling of the run, but still droopy-eyed and unstable. Shriya climbed in first, checked the hall, and then poked her head back out the window.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “What do I do? Just push her up and over to you?”

  Aileen moaned. “I can do it.” She tried to climb but couldn’t, so I lifted her most of the way and Shriya eased her down on the other end.

  Shriya got up to close the window, but I stopped her. “Hey,” I said, holding the window up. “Have you ever dealt with someone this drunk?”

  “Yeah, of course.” She tried to push the window down. “Get out of the way, Buckeye. We got all the way back. We can’t get caught now.”

  “Don’t let her go to sleep alone,” I said. I heard my father’s voice in mine. Something that had worked to get me to straighten up and listen all the years of my life until last year, when nothing could. “Don’t let her sleep alone or on her back or on her face. I’m serious.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Stay in her room,” I said.

  Shriya looked at me like I had four heads.

  “For God’s sake. Just take care of her.”

  She nodded. “I get it, Bax,” she said. “I promise.” I let go of the window and Shriya eased it closed, and in a matter of a few minutes she had Aileen out the door and into the hall and out of sight.

  I slumped against the wall below the window, my muscles jittering and finally catching up with the adrenaline that had gotten me there. I smelled like puke everywhere and I wanted to cry and I thought it was almost worth getting caught right then and there just so I could go home—real home, home to Ohio—where I could crawl back into the lumpy bed I’d left there and never get out of it again. But the feeling passed. It wasn’t all that bad. I trusted Shriya, and I believed she’d take care of Aileen, and at least I got her back to bed in one piece. I didn’t want to think in grandiose terms like that, but it was impossible not to, because that night, catching my breath and looking up into the cloudless sky, everything did feel larger than life. At least larger than mine alone, or anything I could really understand.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  The noises from the rest of the party were gone and all I could hear was Ethan’s breath against my neck. “We’re all alone,” he kept saying. “Come on, for old times’ sake.” He grabbed my waist and kissed me.

  “No.”

  “It’s okay.” His face was close to mine. He was smiling, and he brought his hand to my cheek.

  “No, Ethan.”

  He kissed me and pressed down against me. I tried to pus
h him but he was too strong. “Come on. We used to have so much fun.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry. Nobody has to know.”

  “Please stop. I said no.”

  “We are all alone,” he said again, as he grabbed my chest and squeezed. “We had more fun, you and me.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Stop worrying.”

  His hand went down my pants and into my underwear. His hands were everywhere and I couldn’t move, pinned by his weight. I couldn’t see anything because it was so dark, and my breath squeezed from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe, and everything hurt, and I tried to choke out the word “stop.” But it was barely a whisper. I didn’t know if he could hear me. “Please.” I was crushed, all the air pushed out of me, and I couldn’t feel anything. I began blacking out into nothingness.

  “Hey!”

  Everything eased for a second, and I felt my vision refocusing, air stinging my lungs as it rushed back in.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Nothing,” I heard him say, speaking away from me, moving away from me.

  I slipped to the ground, and when I hit the dirt I felt all the pain in my body come pouring back, a fire breaking through a wall and blowing through me.

  “What are you two doing?”

  “Nothing. Calm down. Jules, tell her. Tell her nothing was happening. I’m just drunk. She was helping me so I wouldn’t puke.”

  “What?”

  “Come on, Jules.” His hand was on me again, pulling me to my feet. I couldn’t stand. When he let go of me, I fell back down. “The hell.”

  “I saw you.” It was Gillian. Through my tears, I could see her yelling.

  “No,” Ethan said. “What? No. There was nothing to see.”

  “Oh my God.”

  My throat was raw. I couldn’t speak, but at that moment I was so grateful that Gillian had interrupted before he’d gone any further. I couldn’t think. My pants were still on, I knew that. Or mostly. The top button was undone. The zipper was down. I still couldn’t speak. I swallowed.