Emancipated (21 page)

Grace sighed. She gulped down some wine. “Thanks, sis. Now I don't have to worry about keeping that private.”

Candace set down her wineglass, hard. “Oh, please. We're all friends here. Aren't we? Paolo, how old were you? I bet you were young. A hottie like you.”

Paolo gave a bashful grin. “I was fourteen. Not proud of it. A girl who used to be my babysitter.”

Candace guffawed. “Tramp.”

“I know.”

“Man whore.”

“Okay, okay.” Paolo turned to John-Michael, clearly reluctant to share any more about his own experiences. “How about you, John-Michael? When did you first get some sweet gay action?”

Eventually, John-Michael replied, “I was sixteen. A guy at school. We'd known each other since middle school, but we didn't have any classes together until my freshman year. We were lab partners in chem and bio.”

“Classic. The Bunsen-burner meet cute. Who came on to who?”

“I did. He was so gorgeous. Tito, from Costa Rica. I really love Latino boys,” he said with a shy glance at Maya. “The caramel skin tone, the chocolate-colored eyes, the accent.”

“So,” Candace said coyly. “How far'd you go?”

“Your momma never told you?” John-Michael replied archly. “Nice boys don't kiss and tell.”

Grace found herself blushing on behalf of the two boys, neither of whom seemed eager to say any more. She guessed that it might be different in front of other guys. But Candace's slightly mocking tone was pretty off-putting, even to Grace.

Grace broke in: “So how come you couldn't go live with Tito when your dad kicked you out?”

“His family didn't know he was gay. No one knew, only me. I was stupid enough to come out to my dad.”

“Can't have been easy,” said Grace.

But despite Grace's efforts to alter the direction of the conversation, Candace seemed determined to bring it back to sex. “What about you, Lucy?” she said. “What's your number?”

Lucy merely smiled. “As in, how many guys? Sugar, you think I'm gonna give up that particular piece of information?”

“I'll show you mine if you show me yours.” John-Michael grinned.

“I'll take some of that action,” Candace said. “Mine is easy to remember—two. Lame and lamer.”

“Who's lame—them, or you for choosing them?” Grace said. “Okay, I'm in, too. Mine is a one. And he was kind of sweet. I liked him a lot.”

Maya asked, “What happened?”

“Oh, you know. Possessiveness, clinginess, whining.”

“True,” Candace said. “You
were
kind of unnecessarily mean to him.”

Paolo said, “Okay, so we'll assume Maya is a zero, on account of her extreme youth—”

“Hey!” Maya interrupted. “I'm only a year younger than you!”

He turned to her. “Am I wrong?”

She shrugged. “Ehh. Okay, it's true. I'm a good Catholic girl.”

“Okay, so I'm on a two,” Candace said. “Grace has one, Lucy isn't telling, and John-Michael . . . ? How many guys have you ah . . . serviced?”

“A few.”

Candace said insistently, “Be specific.”

“Maybe twenty? I don't remember.”

They were all a little shocked by this, although Paolo pretended otherwise. “You
rascal
.”

John-Michael followed his lead, putting on a posh English accent and shaking his head with mock regret. “I know. I'm an absolute cad.”

Candace laughed with delight at their performance. Grace watched for a moment as Candace drained her glass and filled it up again, almost to the brim. It was at least her third glass. No wonder she was being so outrageous. She already sounded drunk. And it was just getting worse. Candace turned to Paolo. “What about you, Cougar Boy?”

Grace flinched at the nickname. It was easier to forget how dumb it was to have a crush on Paolo when she wasn't reminded of his popularity with those women at the country club. “Come on, Candace, let's drop this.”

Her stepsister turned to Grace with a look of amused disbelief. “Come on! We're finally getting somewhere interesting with these bozos.”

Grace replied, “Maybe they don't want to go there?”

Maya added, “Plus, some of us don't have any stories to share. It's kind of one-sided.”

Paolo merely leaned back, took a sip of wine, and raised his glass with an enigmatic smile. “Like our boy John-Michael says, a nice guy doesn't kiss and tell.”

“But methinks thou liest,” Candace said, slipping into her best Shakespearean English. “The word on
the street, Master Paolo, is that thou art nothing but a goatish knave.”

Amid the laughter that ensued, Paolo smirked and mimed picking up a phone. “Hey, Candace, the British called. They want their accent back.”

“Ha, bloody, ha,” Candace replied with a dramatic flounce. As if in a mood of reconciliation, she raised a glass. “So now we know about everyone—except Lucy. To Lucy giving up her number.”

To Grace's irritation, the rest of the housemates cheered. Lucy shook her head in resignation, smiled a drowsy smile. “What a bunch of sex-obsessed children.”

“Guilty,” Paolo said emphatically, his hand on his wineglass. “Now, Lucy, ‘fess up.”

Grace shook her head. “Come on, guys. Some people don't like to talk about this.”

Candace stuck out her tongue. “Jeez, what's with all the prudery?”

Grace replied quickly, “You didn't enjoy doing it, so now you have to make it all into some big joke?”

Candace laughed in a way that struck Grace as cynical, an imitation of Candace's mother, Katelyn. “Well, if you can't laugh at stuff like this . . .”

Lucy sighed. “I don't mind telling. It's not like I'd be the only blabbermouth around here. . . .”

There was another cheer for Lucy's being a good sport. “Are we counting
everything
?” she asked. “Or does it have to be the all the way?”

“Fourth base,” Candace confirmed with a satisfied nod.

“Okay. In that case,” she said very slowly. “My number . . . is zero.”

They all gasped. Maya began to grin. She held high her right palm to Lucy. “Yeah, baby! Virgins unite!”

Lucy high-fived Maya. She threw the others a defiant stare. Candace and John-Michael joined in with some good-humored, if ribald jeering.

Paolo, however, seemed transfixed. He couldn't look away from Lucy. Grace couldn't tell if he was appalled or enthralled. She felt the familiar stirrings of jealousy once again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THIRD FLOOR, TUESDAY, APRIL 21

“Candace and I are gonna go up to the room,” Lucy said. “Maybe take a couple of hits on the bong. Grace, you want in?”

“But there's all that food left over.” Grace hesitated, but walked with them up the stairs. “We'll just wind up eating even more.”

Maya lagged behind them a few steps. John-Michael was dozing in front of the TV, while Paolo had gamely volunteered to clean the kitchen. Maya kept glancing at Lucy, hopeful, expectant. Lucy guessed that she wanted an invitation to hang out with the older girls. When that didn't happen, Maya seemed to give up and tapped Grace on the shoulder. Lucy could just make out Maya's words, spoken very softly. “Could I talk to you? About that thing we were talking about . . . the other day.”

Grace's eyes widened for a split second. Then: “Oh! Yeah, sure.”

The two girls disappeared into their room.

Candace turned to Lucy. “Grace doesn't really like to do drugs. If it weren't for me, she probably never would have.”

“You're the bad influence?” Lucy said with the beginnings of a grin.

Candace said lightly, “I'm the bad sister, the bad student, the badass.”

“Yeah?” Lucy's grin widened. “Oh, I like that.”

The two girls settled into their room, sitting cross-legged at opposite ends of Lucy's bed. Lucy busied herself with prepping the bong, cleaning out the residue of previous smokes and refilling from the small stash she kept under her mattress in a brown paper bag.

“We probably shouldn't do this.”

Candace shook her head mournfully. “No-oh.”

“You have that math test tomorrow.”

Candace gave a slow nod. “Algebra.”

“You, me, and a myster-ee.” Lucy smirked. “Solve for x.”

“What mystery?”

“Are you kidding?” Lucy asked. “John-Michael.”

“So?”

“Blood test? Throwing us a party ‘cause of the all clear? He knew two, three days ago he didn't have HIV.”

“He said he was waiting for news on other STDs,” Candace pointed out.

“Yeah, I heard that. But it doesn't square with the facts.”

“What ‘facts'?”

Lucy put down the bong for a moment. “Lookit. Our boy John-Michael gets a visit from a detective. He freaks, starts riding out in that car of his. Gone all day, one day. Doesn't say where he's at. Another day, he goes to San Francisco.”

“He was giving Grace a ride to visit her Dead Man Walking.”

“Yeah, sure, I'm not saying there's no reason. I'm saying it was new. You ever see him go anywhere but school until last week?”

“His dad died, Lucy. I'm sure he was depressed.”

“He hated his dad. Dude was a big fat homophobe. Threw John-Michael out for being gay.”

Candace sighed, a little impatient now. “Yeah, boo-hoo. What's your point?”

“He told me that he was worried about passing something on to his kids.”

“Is he planning on having any?”

“That was the thing,” Lucy said. “He was glad he wasn't. So he wouldn't pass it on.”

“Maybe he meant the gay gene?”

Lucy gave her a stern look. “Gay isn't as simple as that.”

“Then what?”

“Guys hardly ever pass on HIV to their kids,” Lucy said, recalling the leaflet she'd read when John-Michael was being tested. “So it can't have been that.”

“Did he ever say it was?”

“No. Now that I think about it, it was me who mentioned HIV first.”

“Do you even know if he got the test?”

Lucy pondered this for a few seconds. Slowly, she said. “Clever.”

“I try.” Candace blinked, as if acknowledging applause.

“Not you; John-Michael.”

“Huh?”

Lucy took out her Zippo lighter. “He let me believe he was checking for HIV. I bet it wasn't even an STD clinic.”

“So what was he getting tested for?”

“Whatever it is, he didn't want me to know anything about it.”

“What's more scary than HIV?”

“Cancer, for one,” Lucy said. “Leukemia.”

“It would majorly suck to get cancer at our age.”

“But it couldn't have been cancer.”

Candace frowned. “Why not?”

“Dude, did you ever listen in bio?”

“No, I already told you,” Candace replied, pouting. “Bad student, remember?”

“You can't pass cancer to your kids.”

“Are you sure? None of the cancers?”

Lucy paused, thoughtful.

Candace seemed to warm to her point. “Maybe there's, like, a kind of cancer that's inherited. And John-Michael was going to get a DNA test to see if he's got the gene.”

Lucy took out her smartphone. Inherited cancer? It was news to her. She thought it came from smoking, drinking, and eating unhealthily. Toxins in the environment, not genes. After a couple of minutes tapping on the screen, she sat back, staring. “Well, I'll be goddamned. You
can
pass cancer to your kids. All kinds of cancers.”

“Really?” Candace seemed surprised. As though she hadn't actually believed her theory would turn out to be true.

“Yeah. But mostly it just increases your risk. Having the gene doesn't definitely give you the disease.”

“Still. That's a scary thing, to have that in your DNA.”

“Yeah. I don't know, though.”

“What d'you mean?”

“John-Michael seemed awful scared. Like if the news was bad, he's
definitely
getting sick. That's why I thought HIV. I assumed he'd been injecting drugs, or having unprotected sex.”

“Well, he did say he'd been with a lot of guys.”

“Yeah, but he also said—did you notice?—that he never injected. And he refused to admit if he'd actually had full sex.”

“True. But you can get HIV from oral.”

Lucy fired up the bong, inhaled the cloud of smoke, held it in for three seconds, and then slowly exhaled. She gazed glassily at Candace. “Maybe, but it's much less likely. HIV ain't it, Candace. He wasn't worried because of what he'd been doing. He was worried because of what his
dad
was doing.”

Lucy was already blissing out as she passed the bong. Candace took a quick hit and then tipped the mouthpiece away from her for a moment, considering. She was finding it harder to follow the thread.

“His dad?” Candace asked. “Where'd you get that?”

“Because that detective sparked all this. I'm sure of that. Something she told him made John-Michael freak. And he started to worry that he had a disease. Maybe . . . maybe he went on those road trips to get the bad thoughts out of his mind? But he couldn't put it off any more. So he took the test.”

Candace inhaled a second time, sighed, and breathed out. Lucy's theory was impressively mysterious. John-Michael did indeed seem to be concealing something. But on the other hand, was it even relevant now? Her thoughts were already drifting toward the remains of the strawberry cream cake that John-Michael had baked for dessert.

Sleepily, she commented, “Great that he's got the all clear.”

Lucy drifted into a world of her own. “Uh-huh.”