Drain You (16 page)

It was a rare feeling, but tonight I had to admit it: I looked kind of pretty. Despite my annoyance at having to attend a real party, my anxiety at having to seem charming to some of Whit’s older friends, and my faint terror at being out past midnight at some stoner’s house in Bell Canyon where anyone could stalk up the hills and nab me and suck my blood—despite all that—I thought I looked okay. My eyes were bright and awake, my lips felt full and shiny under a layer of cherry ChapStick, my skin was slightly tan, my bruises and scrapes were gone, and my long brown hair had that cool, chlorinated, wavy thing going on. I didn’t know when—if ever—I’d get back that way James made me feel, but I’d take just feeling pretty, at least for tonight.

I scavenged my room for some accessories to complete tonight’s look. Under some magazines I dug up my single pair of eighties thrift-store pumps, which I’d totally forgotten even existed. Then I tucked a silky white camisole into my party pants—because Courtney Love would have done that—and put on literally every piece of jewelry I owned.

I was just about ready when I heard the doorbell ring
downstairs, then the door open, then my father’s voice. Oh God, Elliott and Whit. I snatched the ChapStick off my dresser and downed the rest of my soda.

“Quinny,” my dad shouted, “Morgan’s here to pick you up.”

I dashed down the stairs without remembering I had high heels on and so stumbled the last few steps before wiping out into Whit’s arms.

“Careful,” he said, propping me up.

He was wearing a white V-neck and a pair of tight ripped-up Levi’s with his usual high-tops and that stupid necklace with the crucifix pendant. Whit was dressed just like him and it sucked.

“Thanks, Dad, leaving now.” I waved good-bye and pushed Whit out the door, shutting it behind us.

“Your dad thinks I’m Morgan,” he said.

“It’s possible my dad thinks
I’m
Morgan.”

“Hey.” Whit stopped me as I was opening the car door. “You look good.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Oh, cool.”

Up Bell Canyon, still inside the car, parked a couple of houses down, waiting a full ten minutes before we made our entrance, Whit rested his chin on the top of the steering wheel and stared out at the night.

“I want to talk about earlier.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. I didn’t.

“What I meant about Led Zeppelin,” he started, as I rolled my eyes dramatically, “is that Plant really loves this chick, like there’s no question about that, but he’s still got to leave her, you know?”

“Is he bummed about it?”

“Dude, he’s, like…so, so, so bummed.” Whit turned to look at me. “He’s in major pain.”

“I’m in pain.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud.

“You haven’t seemed so bad.”

“I’ve gotten better, I guess.”

“That’s good.” He touched my shoulder.

I shook his hand off and said, “Why are you wearing that?” I looked at the shirt, the necklace, the messy hair. I was getting déjà vu bad.

“Why am I wearing what?” He looked confused.

“I don’t know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Forget it.” I opened the door.

Whit got out too and locked the car, and then we headed toward Jody’s house.

“Hey, don’t ditch me in there,” I said.

He threw an arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the top of the head. “Where’m I gonna go?”

No one answered the door when we knocked, but it was unlocked and we could hear music so we just went in,
through a foyer into a wide living room area that sprawled onto a sweeping back balcony with a stupidly stunning cityscape view. We helped ourselves to glasses of what I guessed from the label was fairly expensive red wine and then wandered out to the deck, which was draped with several canopies of tiny multicolored lights and paper lanterns. There was a nice desert breeze drifting up the canyons, and it struck me then with weird force: Night was beautiful. I’d missed it during my past two weeks of self-enforced house arrest.

I leaned against the wooden railing and closed my eyes, letting the night air float across my face. Then I heard several voices behind me greeting Whit. Everyone said hi, hello, and soon he was deep into a story about a recent run-in with an old mutual friend.

Five people stood in a semicircle around him, rapt, eyes sparkling, mouths on the verge of laughter, waiting for the next punch line, eating up his impression of Howie or Huey or whatever this random guy’s name was. I slipped in beside him while he talked, sipping my wine. I felt somehow in awe. Whit was my best friend now, so I obviously knew he was clever and cool and cute and charming but tonight, under the glow of the lanterns, on my first night back in the real world, his presence was like a revelation. He was the center and, when he reached his hand up and rubbed the soft part
of my back, so, so centering.

A few dudes came up and offered me a drink and tried to flirt, but not a ton. And that was fine. I was happy just to stand near the glow of Whit’s magic, silently sip wine, stare away into the shadowy canyons, and sway slowly back and forth to some Nina Simone record Jody had thrown on. My dad loved Nina Simone, so I felt doubly protected as her heavy, honeyed voice washed over me. Or maybe it was the dry L.A. wind drifting through my hair. Or maybe it was my third glass of Shiraz.

I thought I was doing a good job of hiding my wooziness until one of the dudes who’d been smoking with Jody all night tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was feeling all right. His shirt said
LOSER
across the chest in giant black letters, making it hard to concentrate.

I tried to nod like a sober person. “I’m…awesome.”

He introduced himself as something that I knew wasn’t Owen but sounded like Owen, so I said, “Cool to meet you, Owen,” and held out my hand for a shake. But because he was holding a joint in his right hand I awkwardly grabbed for his left one. And then, because I was so out of it, I didn’t let go.

“Oh, feels nice. Your hand is so cold,” I said, still shaking.

“Are you cool?”

“I don’t think I understand the question.”

“How old are you?” He finally pulled his hand free from mine.

“I just need some fresh air, you know?” I stared at his chest.
LOSER
,
LOSER
,
LOSER
.

“We’re outside, man.” Owen took a deep hit and blew the smoke behind him, gesturing with his face, the joint, the smoke, his whole body, that we
were
in fact outside. “I should get Whit before you go bananas or something.” He nodded above my head and immediately Whit was there, pressurizing the cabin, checking for vitals.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I stuttered.

“I see you’ve met Joey,” Whit said, indicating Owen.

“Joey, yeah.” I tried to shake his hand again, but both of them were full this time so I sloppily shook his elbow. “Don’t drive home,” I said as steadily as possible.

“
You
don’t drive home.” He laughed, already walking away.

Then it was just me and Whit. Like always.

“You don’t have to get drunk.” He leaned in, serious. “No one’s going to hurt you here.”

Before I realized I was saying it—before I even knew I was really feeling it—I said, “I’m scared.” Then I couldn’t hold it in. “They’re looking for me. They want to kill me.”

“They’re not looking for you, Quinn. They have no idea about anything.”

“
You
have no idea.” I tried not to cry. The music was louder now. There was a small blurry dance floor in the
living room. The lanterns gave everyone’s skin an eerie glow.

“Calm down, okay?” He held me at the elbows. “They don’t know it was you.”

I shook my head. “Yes, they do.”

“How do they know that?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Whit tensed up. “What are you talking about, Quinn?” His fingers squeezed harder.

“They know where I live….” My words drowned in drunken slurs.

“They’re not going to—” he started to say, but a voice somewhere called out Whit’s name. He held his hand up, yelled, “One second, man,” and leaned in even closer.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“No.” I wanted to go to his place. His room.

“Quinn. You’re safe here. I promise.”

I rubbed my eyes.

“Nothing’s going to happen. Please try to have a little fun.”

“I am having a little fun.”

“Well, you don’t exactly look like it.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Come on, I’ll introduce you to some people.”

“I have to go to the bathroom first.”

He shot me a distrusting look.

“I do.”

“Fine. But come right back, okay?”

“Okay.”

He gave my elbows a final squeeze and headed over to a group of people down at the end of the deck. I wiped my eyes again and then slid open the sliding doors, went through the living room, past the five people on the couch watching a movie, past the trio snacking from a bowl of popcorn on the kitchen island, past the couple Frenching up against a collection of Jody’s baby pictures hanging in the hallway, and into an enormous Italian marble bathroom. I stood staring at the two-person Jacuzzi for about five minutes before I climbed in. I collapsed in the empty tub and tried to keep my eyes closed, but too many bad things were swirling beneath my lids, so I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyeliner was smudged, but that was nothing new.

On the wall next to me, right above a shelf loaded with shampoos and conditioners, was a small cream-colored telephone. I hit my head with the palm of my hand. There wasn’t a doubt in my fuzzy, sloshed mind that I was going to use that phone—and for evil, not good. This was really happening. I was really dialing his number.

It rang twice.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“I thought you were dead or something.”

“I am. Sort of.”

“So you got my message. Thanks for calling me back.”

“I am calling you back.”

“Are you drunk?”

Then someone knocked on the bathroom door.

I cupped my hand over the receiver. “Hold on!”

“Who? Me, or…?”

“Not you.”

“Where are you?”

“Uhh…” I looked around, unsure of the right answer. Bell Canyon. Jody Bennett’s. A Jacuzzi. None of it really made sense.

“Never mind.”

“Yeah, it’s weird.”

The person at the door banged some more.

“So you’re okay then.”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m gonna go.”

“Right.”

“Say good-bye, Quinn.”

“Thanks for lying to the Spaders for me, Morgan.”

“Good-bye, Quinn.”

He hung up. I listened to the dial tone and the banging on the door for a few seconds before climbing out of the tub.

“Okay, okay,” I said while unlatching the lock and opening the door. Then my heart lurched: A pale guy in a polo shirt with black hair was standing there glaring at me, arms crossed.

“What the hell?” he asked, annoyed.

I shook the flashback out of my head and pushed past him.

Either I’d somehow gotten way drunker sitting in the tub or there were three times as many bodies as before. I scanned around trying to spy Whit or Jody or even Owen, but the lighting was too dim, everyone’s faces looked the same, everyone’s clothes were the same dark blur. Anyone could’ve been Cooper. I thought I saw Dewey for a second over by the kitchen, but when he turned it was someone much older. My heart beat erratically. I bit my lip. Every exhalation was a tiny moan.

I weaved through the crowd to the deck’s edge and leaned against the railing. The hills were blacker than before, no stars and no moon.

Then the ground began to shake. I felt the deck rocking beneath me. Abandoned wineglasses and beer bottles on the railing started to shift, clinking against one another. The overhead lights swayed. The needle on the record player skipped and scratched and then went silent. Everything was vibrating to a low rumble. Everybody grabbed something for support: furniture, a wall, each
other. My insides rattled, the wine sloshing against a stomach full of anchovies and mozzarella. I gasped for breath. The planet was tossing us around, trying to swallow us whole. I crouched down into a ball, waiting for glass to shatter, the roof to cave in, the balcony to crash down into the canyon.

And then it was over. Everyone froze for a second, braced for a second quake or a follow-up tremor. But nothing came.

Then the entire party erupted in cheers and shouts and cuss words and drunken
whooo
’s. I felt hands on my back; Whit had found me.

“There you are!” he said. “Can you believe that?”

Weakly I said, “Yeah, I can believe it.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

People everywhere were still screaming, celebrating.

“Hey, why don’t we go, okay? Meet me out by the car. I’ll be there in one minute.” Then he was gone again.

“Did you feel that, man?” Joey/Owen yelled above the noise.

“Totally.” I staggered, still buzzed, fried.

“How L.A., right?”

I nodded. Then someone put on a new record, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Definitely my exit song. I cut through the chaos all the way to the Camry.

Whit was sitting on the hood of his car when I got there. He looked tan, happy, untroubled. He said, “Hey, you.”

“Hey.”

“How insane was that?”

“Crazy.”

He looked up at the stars. “Kind of a special night.” He paused. “It was good I dragged you along.”

“You always drag me along.” I smiled at him.

I thought about the past ten days, the time it’d taken me to go from meeting Whit to knowing him to trusting him to even loving him. Already he’d been in my life longer than James had. And every extra day that James was gone was another day that Whit was around, driving me all over the city, stuffing my face with goofy foods, drying my tears, making me live, helping me forget. Things were still far from okay, but maybe we were getting closer. I drank in Whit’s face, dark and quiet in the nighttime, already so precious to me. Already transformed from the strange imitation I used to see into an original.

He slid off the hood and stood next to me. “I feel like the earthquake was a sign or something, don’t you?” He was excited.