Feral (2 page)

Combing his fingers through his hair, Dad smiled.  “Have a good time, Honey.”

“Will do,” I said, cutting across the lawn.  Dark now, the air was growing chilly.  I slid my jacket on as I climbed into the passenger seat and turned to Marcus.

Absorbing my wide smile, Marcus leaned forward to kiss me, but I stopped him with a hand to his chest.  “Just pull down the street first.  My mother’s spying from the bay window.”

“Really?” Marcus asked, amusedly.  “Oh snap, she is!  HI MRS. LLORENTE!”  Waving enthusiastically, Marcus laughed.  “Yeah, I’m gonna get your daughter totally trashed tonight and defile her till the sun comes up.  When I’m done with her she’s gonna—owe!”

“Drive the car turd face!”

“Damn, Thale, there’s no reason to get physical!” Marcus whined, rubbing his arm.  “Look, your mom’s still waving.  She has no idea what I said.”  Sure enough, there stood my mom waving from the bay window.  I waved back as Marcus pulled away from the curb.  “It’s all in the smile, babe.  See?”

Unleashing his charm on me, he indeed looked
harmless.  I kissed him once swiftly then demanded he watch the road.  “There’re kids everywhere.  Remember; only run over the ones with full bags.  Ten points if they’re carrying a pillowcase.  Five it it’s a plastic pumpkin.”

“You’re rocking the look,
Thale.”

“So are you,” I said.  “Who’re you supposed to be, Bozo the clown?”

“What?”

“Your lips are stained all red.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, glancing in the mirror.  “Cherry slushy.”

“Mmm taste.”
  I leaned forward, wetting my lower lip.

“Taste?” Marcus echoed, grinning.  Pulling over to the side of the road, I met him in a heated kiss.  I only half registered that he didn’t taste like a cherry slushy.  The larger part of my mind was occupied with the feel of his lips against mine.  The gentle stroke of his tongue.  The warm caress of his breath.

“You purr when you’re excited,” Marcus murmured, his lips moving from my mouth to the column of my neck.  His mouth was warm.  Goosebumps rose on my skin, cooling from his trail of kisses.

“Do not,
” I denied.  My voice was breathless.

Laughing under his breath, Marcus said nothing, but shifted closer, pulling me against his chest.  His fingers intertwined with mine, drawing them down
between his hips.  I could feel the hard length of him beneath the sturdy layer of denim.  Mentally, I froze, retracting myself from the tangle of limbs we had become, my mother’s words replaying in my head.

Hope she was satisfied.  Images of
babies and breast-feeding flashed wickedly through my brain.  I shivered, trying to cram them into the small file folder in the back of my mind.  Far in the back.  I piled a few hefty boxes of childhood memories atop for added measure, and then recalled as many steamy Marcus moments as I could possibly drum up.

Sullen, Marcus shifted into first and continued up Elm, his lips pressed to a thin line.  He looked like a nine year old who just got his hand slapped for reaching into the candy jar.

“I’m sorry, Marcus.”

“I don’t know what you’re waiting for,
Thale.”

“Um, perhaps a bed and some small sign that it’s the right time.”

“The right time,” Marcus snorted.  “It’s called spontaneity.  It’s widely known that teenagers often act upon it.”

“We’re on the side of the road, surrounded by my
neighbors and their children.”  I fanned my hand in a wide circle, pointing out said neighbors.  “It’s hardly the place.”

“There’ll be beds at the party.”

“Come on, Marcus!”

“We’ve been together a year now,
Thale.  You tell me when is the right time?”

“I don’t know!  We’re not talking about sharing a slice of pizza here.  And I’m not every teenager.  I don’t think about sex as casually as you do.  It’s not something you’re entitled to because we’ve been dating for the allotted time.  I want it to mean something.”

“It will mean a lot to me.”

I bet it would.  “Spontaneity is not love, Marcus.”

The fact that he didn’t object to my argument was proof enough.  Resting my head against the window, I stared into the dark, watching the steady flash of the streetlights above.

It shouldn’t have surprised me, the depth of his feelings or rather the lack of them.  Marcus wasn’t a profoundly emotional person.  He was fun, easy going, affectionate, sexy, and completely shallow.  If I was being totally honest, though, it wasn’t just Marcus.  To be fair, most boys weren’t looking for an emotional relationship with me.  I heard the rumors and the whispers.  I saw the gawking and the stares.  When boys looked at
me, nothing ventured further than the surface of my blond hair, blue eyes, and voluptuous, six-foot, two-inch frame.

Just as we pulled up to the curb, I received a text from Peyton. 
“
WhereR
U
?” she asked. I texted her back. 
“
Outsid
e
.”  No sooner did I flip my phone closed than Peyton bolted out the door of the chalet style home.  She wore—not that I’d ever tell her—a skanky nurse costume, low cut cleavage, pin striped garters and all.  Her lipstick was scarlet red, and as she switched her cherry blow pop from one cheek to the other, she smeared the stick with a bright red ring.

“Wh
y Nurse Peyton,” Marcus drawled, his tone loaded with innuendo.  “Thank God you’re here.  I’m in
dire
need of some serious medical attention.”

“Ooh, poor baby, tell me where it hurts,” Peyton crooned, playing along.  She pushed her lips into a sultry red pout and batted her false eyelashes.

I expected Marcus to cup his balls, the way he was moping, but glancing longingly at me, he patted his chest, just over his heart, mocking a heartbeat with his palm.  “Here.  I think Thale’s broken my heart again.”

“You would need a heart,” Peyton said, “for it to break in the first place.”

Giggling, I looped my arm around Peyton’s and walked with her inside, the gravel of the unpaved driveway crunching under our feet.  Jack o’ lanterns lined the stairs leading up to the small porch.  Huge black arachnids watched furtively from their webs, which stretched from baluster to baluster.  I could hear the Black Eyed Peas blaring through the door.

Inside, the smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol hung heavy in the air, clinging to the ceiling in a thick white veil.  The floors were sticky underfoot with spilled juice, beer and God knows what else.  The ivory carpets were no more.  Bodies filled the sofa, and cans and bottles, the tables beside them.  Several tie-dyed hippies passed a bong clockwise, choking and laughing
, smoke rolling from their noses.  A group of Greek Gods loitered in the corner.

Marcus set off on his own, leaving Peyton and me dancing along the edge of the room.  Having the benefit of height, I watched his head of dirty blonde hair meld into the crowd.

“You two fighting?” Peyton shouted over the music.

I shrugged.

“Did you break up?”

“No.”  Not yet.  “Why?”

“Because he looks pissy.  Be right back.  I need a refill.”  Upturning her empty red solo cup, Peyton disappeared into the throng of bodies.  Only the tip of her nurse’s hat was visible.

Abandoning any effort to dance—because it just wasn’t fun to do it alone—I followed suit, weaving gently through the crowd.  I received looks from several people, trying to discern if I was wearing a costume or not.  From their expressions, they’d decided not.
  I briefly contemplated taking up the attire permanently.

When I finally found the kitchen, I did a few Lemon Drops with Jack.  Jack was a redhead, though closer to auburn
, with bright blue eyes and a tidy goatee.  We ‘dated’ in the sixth grade, but dating at twelve was holding hands and sharing a lunch table, or writing your initials encased in little hearts on your spiral notebooks.  Tragically, we weren’t meant to be.  Our relationship couldn’t withstand the distance of three long months over summer vacation.

“Your house is soooo trashed, Jack,” I said, laughing tipsily.  “I thought the den was bad, but this…whoa.”  Beer from a malfunctioning keg saturated the carpets.  My feet actually squelched when I passed through.  It must have exploded when they’d tapped it, because rivulets of tacky suds streaked the walls.  Bottles and trash lined the counters and floor.  Pizza boxes
stood waist high in the corner.  As I was perusing the destruction, Tom Tierney ran through the room, spraying me with beer as his feet pounded across the carpet.  I curled my back defensively.

Jack leaned closer to my ear so that I could hear him over the base of the stereo.  “I think Amy Madison puked behind the aquarium.”

“How do you know it was Amy?”

Pointing in said direction, one eyebrow rose.  “She’s lying in it.”

I couldn’t help it, but I laughed raucously.  Jack did, too.  Afterwards, I offered to help her up, because of all things, ironic as it might be, I’m a firm believer in karma.  Crazy right?

Jack led the way through the room, clearing an easy path for me.  Amy sat hunched over against the wall, mousy brown hair hanging limp over her face.  She wasn’t all too messy.  The carpet behind the fish tank had taken the brunt of it.  I tried not to gag from the smell.

“What was she drinking?” I asked, checking that she had a pulse.

“A couple of beers,” Jack answered.  “She a lightweight.  Not a drinker at all.  Take her legs,
Thale.  I’ll carry the weight of her.”

Jack lifted Amy from under her arms.  I grabbed her legs, just under her knees.  She murmured unintelligibly and wriggled like a fish for a brief moment
.

“I beewweeaavee I cannn fwwwyyy,” she slurred
then fell slack again.  Jack and I choked on a laugh, staring at each other.

“I believe I can touuucchh thhhee skkyyy.  Think aboutit every nniiiiiighhttt and dayyy.  Spread my wings and fllllyyyyy awaaaayyyyyy.”

After a few more minutes of raucous laughter—and almost dropping Amy on the floor in a puddle of beer, red solo cups and oil soaked paper plates, we remembered the task at hand.

“Where to?”

“Upstairs.”  Jack jerked his head to the left, and we began an awkward waddle across the room.  “We’ll put her in one of the bedrooms.”

“What are your parents gonna say when they see the house?”

Jack shrugged dismissively.  “They’re divorced.  This is my dad’s house.  He’s vacationing in Venice with his twenty-something girlfriend.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.  Anyhow, I live with my mom weekdays, and here on weekends.  Worst thing that’ll happen, I’ll get out of visitation for a few weeks.”

That made sense.  He wouldn’t be attending Rock East if he were living in Bedminster.  Bedminster students attended Rock West, our sister school.  The township had flourished rapidly and they had to build a second school to accommodate the influx of new students.  I was almost separated from Peyton since my house sat on the border.  All summer before my
junior year, we waited on pins and needles while the township drew and redrew the lines, assessing which students would go to East or West.  In the end, I remained a student of Rock East.

One by one, we checked each bedroom door until we found one unlocked at the end of the hall.  I swung the door open, and we maneuvered Amy into the room, heading for the full size bed.  Jack went in backwards, but stopped a few feet in, his eyes fixed behind me.

“Jesus,” Marcus hissed over my shoulder.  Gawping, I watched as he and Peyton scrambled for their clothes.  Their faces were smeared with red lipstick, resembling, disturbingly, Heath Ledger’s Joker.  Peyton hadn’t had too much clothing to begin with.  She shucked her dress back down over her thighs.  Perhaps it was the Lemon Drops, but I giggled, hiding my barmy smile with my hand.  Peyton’s cherry blow pop was stuck in the back of Marcus’s hair, all ratty and knotted with its bright white stick glowing like a beacon in the dim room.  Yes, I’d definitely lost my marbles.  My giggle turned into a full-fledged guffaw.

“
Thale?” Jack said solicitously.

“Jack,” I gasped
between each breath, holding my stomach.  “If. You. Have. A. Phone. Please. Take. A. Picture.  Seriously!  A cherry blow pop!  Lookit it!  It’s stuck in his fuckin’ hair!”

I laughed until I was out of breath and burned most of the alcohol from my system.  And that quickly my temporary dementia waned.  I was left feeling ruthlessly sober.  My face fell, the corners of my mouth dropping into a frown.  My eyes narrowed into an icy glare.

“Cherry slushy, Marcus—you fuckin’ pig!”  I shifted my weight, and Peyton flinched.  “What, Peyton, you think I’m gonna hit you?  No, neither of you are worth it!  You can have each other!”  I turned to leave, but I still had Amy’s legs in my hands.  I dropped her unceremoniously to the floor, leaving her hanging limply in Jack’s arms.  In spite of my verbal attack, I couldn’t leave it at that.  I turned back to Peyton, my face a bitter mask.  “And you’re costume isn’t provocative, it’s skanky.  Just like you.”

Needing desperately to get away, I ran, my feet soaring down the stairs.  I barreled through the room, knocking people to the floor, almost colliding with the sliding glass door.  I fumbled with the lock, hearing
the scumbag, loser Marcus shouting my name behind me.