Dark Parties (18 page)

“Be nice, Nev.” Sanna swats at me and laughs. If she only knew.

“You’ve got to have some.” She pours fizzy liquid into the glass until it foams over. She hands it to me and licks the bubbles
off her fingers. “Drink up,” she says, nudging the glass toward my lips and tipping it back when I take a sip that turns into
a gulp that leads to me downing the entire glass. I didn’t even taste it, only felt it tingle down my throat. My mouth feels
drawn and dry. She pours me another.

“Braydon wants to make a mask of you,” she says. “Isn’t that a primo idea?”

No. I’ve never heard a worse idea. “I don’t think so. It’s awfully nice, but—”

“Come on, Nev, he likes to collect faces.”

I bet he does. He has collected more than that from me.

“It won’t take long.” She clumsily pushes me down on the bed. I try not to think what they have done on this very bed. I spring
up.

“It’s perfect. You two can get to know each other better.” She stage-whispers in my ear. “Do it for me, Nev. I want my two
best peeps to get along.”

I empty the champagne from my glass.

Braydon walks out of the bathroom with a clear glass bowl full of white goo. “Hi, Neva,” he says. It’s already been decided.
I can see in the twinkle in his eyes that he wants this. He wants to capture a piece of me.

“Nice house,” I say, unsuccessfully keeping the sarcasm from my voice.

Sanna looks from me to Braydon, then downs the last of the champagne from the bottle. She tosses it on the bed.

“So where does the artist want me?” I try to sound flippant and casual, not to give any hint how excited I am to see him.

“Sit wherever you’ll be most comfortable.” He waves his free hand in an arc. He’s trying too. His smile is forced. We lock
eyes, mine begging him not to make me do this and his begging me to let him.

I take a seat in a high-back leather chair. Sanna brushes
my hair off my face with a headband. She slathers thick, oily jelly all over my face. “It feels a little yucky at first, but
it will help the mask peel off when it’s done. Close your eyes,” she says, and gently rubs the cold jelly over my eyelids.
“Keep ’em shut. Got it?”

“Neva, just relax,” Braydon says as he straddles my legs. I grip the chair’s arms. His thighs are pinning my legs together.
My whole body stiffens. “Tilt your head back,” he says, and I obey. “I’m going to start on your forehead. It will feel cold
at first, but your body temperature will warm it up.”

He’s right. The plaster is cold and gritty, but I can feel his fingertips through the chill. He’s making tiny circles. His
touch is light. I imagine his hands slowly making their way down my body. He could master the slightest touch—that torturous
place between a tickle and a caress that raises goose bumps and makes my back want to arch. He is hovering above me, so close
that I can hear him breathing. The rhythm of my breath quickens to match his. I pin my shoulder blades deep into the leather
to keep from reaching for him.

I can hear Sanna singing softly to herself. The bedsprings groan. I assume Sanna has flopped on the bed. I wonder if she’s
watching us. I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

“You need to stay still.” He cups my face and turns my head to its original position. His fingers inch the cool goo down my
temples and across the bridge of my nose. “Your face is so tense.” He smoothes the tension from my jaw line.

I try to relax. I really do. But my body is betraying me. It wants to inch closer to him. My body is on fire, but my brain
is frozen with guilt. He soothes the chilly mixture over my eyes. His fingertips outline my eyelids and wipe away the lines
of tension.

Sanna is probably bouncing ever so slightly on the bed, excited that her boyfriend and best friend are finally getting along.

“How am I supposed to breathe?” I bat his hands away as they approach my mouth. I try to stand up.

“Nev, chill.” Sanna is at my side. I can smell the tart champagne on her breath. She is petting me and pushing me back down.
“He puts this strawlike thing in your mouth when he’s done.”

“Would have been nice if he’d have told me that.” Everything is closing in. He’s making me into someone I don’t want to be.
My feelings for him sizzle below the surface. I’ve got to get out of here. “Listen, I can’t… this is… I’m just…” I gasp for
air.

Braydon backs away.

“Nev, it’s okay,” Sanna coos. “Just think, like, happy thoughts.” Her words are slurring a little. My mind is growing a little
fuzzy with the champagne too. I let my thoughts fizzle away. I don’t want Braydon to stop touching me. It could be,
should
be, for the last time.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I can feel the plaster beginning to harden on my forehead.

“Do you want Braydon to stop?” she asks.

“No,” I whisper. I don’t want him to stop. That’s the
problem. I think I’ll die if he stops. “I’ll be fine. Give me a minute.”

The air around me cools. They have backed off, but I can feel them there, a few feet away, watching me. Their voices and movements
are muted into static. I think Sanna may be giggling.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Are you sure?” Braydon asks, and touches my arm with some part of his hand not yet covered in plaster.

I nod. “But talk to me, okay?” I need a distraction.

“Okay,” he says. He must know my agony. Does he feel it too? “What shall I talk about?”

I have a million questions.
Why are you doing this to me?
being at the top of the list. A close second is
Who the hell are you?
, but all I say is, “Anything. Tell me about yourself.” He’s straddling me again, and his leg muscles tense.

“Fab. Story time,” Sanna chimes in. She thinks I’m showing an interest.

“I will if you’ll sit still.” He moves in closer. “I’m going to put this in your mouth so you can breathe.” He slips a flexible
tube between my lips. “Now close your lips around it.”

I do. I flick my tongue over the end of the straw.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod and push air through the tube.

“I’m sure Sanna’s told you this isn’t really my house.” His meter is slow as if he’s choosing his words carefully. “My parents
got into a little trouble and I was sent to live with a guardian. My guardian had about five other kids
already living with him so I decided to, well, disappear. I don’t think he even reported me missing. He’d lose the money the
government gives him, and nobody really cares about one more missing person, do they?”

I try to ask if he’s really a Bartlett, but the words are unrecognizable through the tube and with the plaster hardening on
my face. Miraculously Sanna translates, “My nosy friends want to know if you’re actually a Bartlett.” She’s farther away.

“Yeah, believe it or not. But my mom’s last name was Benzoni so I’m only half respectable.” He laughs and Sanna echoes with
a giggle.

He’s tracing my lips. He’s circling them again and again. I shift in my seat. He applies more goo to my left cheek. “I found
this house. Learned the Council plans to turn the land into a graveyard. The house will be a mausoleum.” His answer sounds
rehearsed, or maybe I’m making him uncomfortable.

I’ve got so many questions. I try to speak, but it’s no use.

“Biz-zare. This place—a big funeral home,” Sanna says. “Dead people planted like flowers out back.”

I wish she hadn’t said that. I don’t need that image stuck in my head.

“I’m almost finished,” he says. His hands are stroking my face. I imagine him teasing out all the wrinkles, bumps, and blemishes
from my face. “Okay, that’s it.” His warmth is gone. “I’m going to go get cleaned up. You relax. I’ll be back in a little
bit.”

Thoughts of Braydon pierce my brain like long, thin needles, and I try to push them out. I sit, masked, with nowhere to run.
I let myself slip into a fuzzy blackness.

“Neva. Neva.” Braydon is whispering in my ear. I must have fallen asleep. I wiggle in the chair, feeling my body wake up.
“Are you okay?”

I nod.

“The plaster is dry, but I’ve got a few more things to do on the mask. It won’t take long.” I can feel a slight pressure on
my face, and I can smell paint. “Sit very still,” he says.

I do. I’m not ready to reenter my life yet.

“Okay,” he says after a few minutes. “I’m ready to take the mask off.”

Me too.

He runs a finger around the edge of the mask and slowly pries it off my face. It prickles and pulls at my skin but slides
free in one piece. “Be careful opening your eyes.”

I raise my eyebrows and gently tug each eyelid open.

“Do you want to take a look?” he asks.

I nod.

He turns the mask around, holding it by its edges. The white underside gives way to a pale blue. He’s painted it the most
delicate shade. He’s added only one artistic flourish. It’s a snowflake in the shape and place of a teardrop.

“What do you think?” he asks.

I take it from him. “It’s perfect.” I study it, this face that I rarely see. The curve of my cheeks and lips. The line of
my
nose. The angle of my jaw. I don’t recognize myself. “Why the snowflake? Because of my necklace?” I say, and finger the pendent.

He stares at my hand. “Your name, Neva. It means snow, right? That’s how I think of you. As delicate and as unique as a snowflake.”
He reaches up and touches my face.

“I better get this gunk off.” I slip past him. I notice Sanna asleep on his bed. She’s snoring softly. Her limbs are cocked
at odd angles, as if she’s a puppet with her strings cut. Guilt floods back in. I’d forgotten she was here.

I duck into the bathroom. I wash my face more times than necessary. When I work up the courage, I head back to the bedroom.
The setting sun is casting long shadows across the floor.

He’s put my mask on some sort of display stand next to his bed. “It needs to dry,” he says when he catches me staring.

“I’ve got to go,” I mutter, and glance at Sanna, who has turned over and pulled a corner of his shiny purple blanket over
her.

“Stay.” He closes the distance between us.

I’ve got to get away from him. I run down the stairs and out the front door, into the cool evening air.

He races after me and grabs my arm. He spins me around to face him. We are both panting. “I’ve missed you.”

God, I’ve missed him too.

He searches my eyes. I am defenseless, hoping that he will be strong and walk away.

“I can’t. I just can’t,” I say. I can’t leave him, and I can’t stay.

“I’ve never felt like this before.” He whispers what I’m thinking.

With one move, his lips are on mine. Our bodies press into each other. I want to unzip him and slide inside. I can never be
close enough to him. I’m utterly lost in his kisses.

Our lips part first. Our faces inch apart. Air finds the tiniest path between us. Our eyes are the last to break our embrace.

“How could you?” The voice severs the spell between us in one swift slice.

Sanna.

I’ve been plunged from a white-hot fire into an icy bath. I open my mouth, but I can’t speak. My head is still spinning from
Braydon’s kiss. The look on Sanna’s face snaps me into the present. It’s a collage of hurt, anger, and confusion. I stumble
backward, away from both of them.

“Sanna, I’m so sorry,” Braydon says. But I want him to shut up. Please don’t let him tell her. I have to be the one. I’ve
got to make this okay somehow. This is Sanna. I’m the one who comforted her when her mother died, when her father disappeared,
when she went to live with the Joneses.
I’m the one she runs to when she looks like this. I’m the one who does whatever I have to do to pull her back from the edge.
Now I’m the one who’s pushed her to it.

“It’s not what you think,” I blurt. But it’s exactly what she thinks.

She glares at me. “How could you?” she says again so quietly I can barely hear her, yet her words boom in my ears. Her anger
has given way to tears. Her whole body is shaking. She looks from Braydon to me. She staggers between us and springs forward.
She falls, spitting gravel with her feet. Braydon and I rush to her, but she’s up and running before we can reach her. She
races out the gate. The sun has dipped behind the horizon and the last light is slipping away.

I grab Braydon’s arm. “Let me go.”

He nods.

“What have we done?” I ask myself more than him. I don’t realize until he pulls away that I was digging my fingernails into
his arm.

“We can’t help how we feel,” Braydon says, eyes still fixed on the last spot we saw Sanna.

“But we can help what we do.” The urge to kiss him was overwhelming, but there were a million tiny choices between my thoughts
and actions when I could have stopped. I should have stopped. One selfish moment and I’ve lost my best friend.

I run though the gate and strain to see which direction she went. I see her, still running, pumping her arms and kicking her
legs as hard as she can. The look on her face when she discovered us kissing is emblazoned on my brain
and will never, ever be erased. As I stretch each stride as far as my legs can go and swing my arms in high arcs, I know that
I have ruined my relationship with Sanna forever. Even if she can forgive me, she will never forget. Even if she can forgive
me, I can never forgive myself.