How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend (15 page)

Chapter
11

D
ante took hold of my arm to get my attention. “I'll get Rich off the table. You take Skipper back upstairs.”

I didn't answer him. I just hurried over to Skipper and picked her up. “C'mon Skip, it's past your bedtime.”

Her lips scrunched into a pout. “But I wanna dance on the table too.”

I hurried to the stairs. “Mommy wouldn't like that, so we're not going to tell her we saw anyone doing it at Dante's party, okay?”

I made it up three stairs before Gabby came down. She saw us, quickened her step, and held out her arms to Skipper. “What are you doing out of bed?”

The pout dropped from Skipper's lips. She reached out her hands to Gabby and batted her lids tiredly. “I tried to sleep, but they were too loud.”

Gabby's gaze switched to me. “Yes, I came downstairs to tell them the same thing.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Dante's taking care of it.”

I waited for her to turn around and take Skipper back upstairs. She didn't. Instead her gaze traveled past me to the crowd in the family room.

Luckily, no one was dancing on the coffee table, or had spilled large quantities of soda on the carpet. Rich stood with his friends in the middle of the room raising his plastic cup with a wobbly hand. In a voice much too loud to let a five-year-old sleep, he said, “I want to offer a toast to our next pres-i-Dante.”

Brett waved him off. “No more singing, man. You suck.”

Rich tried to push him away, but missed. “I'll break your teeth out, and then we'll see who sucks.”

Gabby let out disapproving huff and took a step downstairs. I didn't move out of the way. “By the way, Gabby, I've been meaning to tell you I love your outfit.”

She pushed past me as though she hadn't heard me, and I followed her to the foot of the stairs.

Rich raised his glass. “To Dante, you're going to-quila Wilson on election day.” He let out a laugh and added, “'Cause Wilson don't know Jack . . . Daniel's.”

There was miscellaneous clapping and hoots of agreement, mostly from Brett and Shane.

“Is that boy drunk?” Gabby asked.

“Oh, him? No, that's just Rich. Since his pole vaulting accident last year, he doesn't make much sense anymore, but we all humor him anyway.”

Shane raised his glass. “No worms are good worms!”

More clapping. Gabby's lips twisted into a disapproving frown.

“That's Shane,” I told her. “He's the one who fell off the pole vault onto Rich.”

Gabby put her hand on Skipper's head and turned to me. “I'm going to put your sister to bed. When I come back down, I want those boys gone from my house. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Good.” She turned around and walked up the stairs. Over her shoulder Skipper gave me a wave good-bye and sang, “Worms, worms, worms.”

I trudged downstairs, trying to figure out how to get Rich, Shane, and Brett home. Dante couldn't leave his own party, but if Daphne's date drove them in Shane's car, then I could follow behind him in mine.

I took a deep breath. It would work. Derek had enough muscle that he could handle three drunks. I walked around the room searching for Derek and Daphne but didn't see either one of them. Charity and Raine, however, stood together at one end of the room. Raine picked her purse up from the couch and riffled through its contents. “Hey Giovanna, it's getting late, and Charity needs me to take her home—”

“Where's Derek and Daphne?” I asked.

Raine took her keys from her purse. “They left already.”

“They left?” I repeated. “But I need them.”

Raine raised an eyebrow. Charity faced the crowd and wouldn't look at me.

Dante strode up to us. “What did Gabby say?”

“She wants the drunks gone by the time she comes back downstairs.”

Dante looked around the room, doing the same sort of calculations I'd just done. “Let's see, who can drive? Not your freshman admirers . . .”

“I'll drive Shane's car to his house.” I didn't want to, but I didn't see another option. “Raine, can you please follow me in your car to give me a ride back home?”

“Okay,” she said.

Dante nodded. “Great. I'll tell the guys the party is about to end and you're driving them home.”

Charity finally spoke, but not to me, to Dante. “You can't put your sister in a car with three drunk guys. That has ‘Bad Idea' written all over it.”

“She's a good driver,” Dante said.

“Yeah, be sure to mention that in her eulogy.”

Dante let out one of the tormented sighs he saves for conversations with Charity. “She's not going to crash.”

Charity's eyes flashed with frustration. “I'm not worried about her crashing. I'm worried about her body turning up in a shallow grave after those three Neanderthals flee the country.”

“Um, you guys . . .” I said, not really because I had anything to say, but because it felt weird standing there—invisible—while they argued about me. Neither of them looked at or listened to me, though.

Dante took a rigid step toward Charity. “Do you want me to send along some of her freshman friends to protect her?”

“No, I want you to drive the guys home. You invited them. They're your responsibility.”

“Fine,” he said. “I'll leave my own party, and Giovanna and the rest of you can stay here to entertain my guests.”

Raine jingled her keys. “Except for me. I've got to go with you so you have a ride back home.”

Dante looked at her. He didn't say anything for a moment, but I could tell he was thinking about the ride home with her. The two of them alone the whole way. The conversation he would have to try and come up with.

Dante narrowed his eyes at Charity. “You want me to go with Raine, is that it?”

She shrugged. “Yep, pretty much.”

“Well, isn't that convenient,” he said. Meaning, I suppose, that he thought Charity was in on the conspiracy to set him up with Raine.

“I can drive the guys home,” I said. “It's really no problem.”

Dante kept his eyes on Charity. His words came out with forced politeness. “There you have it; Giovanna wants to do it herself. What's a concerned brother to do?”

I took Raine's arm. “Come on. The sooner we leave, the sooner it will be over.”

Raine walked beside me toward the door, but looked back over her shoulder. “What was that all about? Dante's acting weird all of a sudden.”

“Guys do that sometimes.”

As we walked outside, Charity caught up to us. “I'll come with you, Giovanna. I'll have two free hands to use my cell phone, so at least I'll be able to call for help if they attack us.”

“Great,” I said. “The more the merrier.” I'd seen Shane's PT Cruiser in the school parking lot. I walked up and peered inside the car. A couple of crumpled cans lay in the back along with a suspiciously empty bottle. How much of this stuff could they drink and still stay conscious?

Raine walked over to her Taurus and slipped in behind the wheel.

A minute later Dante came out with the guys. Shane and Brett both swayed as they walked. Dante had a hold of Rich's arm to keep him steady. “The night is still young,” Rich slurred out. “We have hours left to party.”

Dante steered Rich to the back seat of Shane's car. “And you can party at your house, because my parents want to send you home now. But thanks for coming.”

“Parents suck,” Brett said. Dante helped him into the car and then turned to Shane for the keys.

Shane fished around in his jacket pocket and then his other pocket, and then his jeans pocket. Finally, he produced them. He gave them to me and stumbled into the back seat with his friends.

Charity got into the front seat without telling Dante good-bye. He watched her for a moment, his face unreadable, and then stalked back to the house.

I pulled onto the street, and Raine followed me. “Okay guys, whose house am I taking you to?”

This caused an eruption of laughter from the back seat. “Mine,” Rich said.

“No, it's my house,” Brett said. And they all laughed again.

Drunk people are so strange.

“Where do you live, Shane?” I asked, because it would be easiest to take the car there and let Shane's parents worry about the guys.

“I'll give you directions,” he said. “Go down this street.”

“Remember to stop at the stop sign,” Brett said.

“And then go again,” Rich added.

A shuffling noise came from the back seat. “Is there anything to drink back here?” Brett asked.

“Man, if you stopped stepping on my hands I could tell you,” Rich said.

I tried to block them out as much as I could except for the pertinent directions, like which roads to turn on. They always told me these between fits of laughter. Then they started up the worm song again.

Charity sat silently beside me, her cell phone open and the number 9-1-1 already pushed. Her finger hovered over the send button.

“So,” I said to her, “besides all of this, did you think it was a fun party?”

She gave me a humorless stare. In a near whisper she hissed out, “I can't believe you told Dante I liked him.”

“I didn't tell him.”

Charity tried to blink away the emotion in her eyes. “You said something to him, because he said he'd feel all weird around me, and he'd have to avoid me until I liked someone else.”

“That wasn't you. He was talking about Raine.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she leaned toward me. “Raine likes him too?”

“No.”

More laughter from the back seat. “Turn left at the light,” Shane yelled. I turned from downtown Bickham, up the hill to a residential area. I hoped Charity would let the subject drop, but she didn't.

“If Raine doesn't like Dante, why did he say all those things about her?”

I hesitated, reluctant to admit my scheming, but there was no way around it. “Because I sent the freshman girls off with Stephen and Brandon, so he figured out that one of my friends liked him.”

She didn't say anything for a moment. Her foot tapped against the floor. “You must have said something else, because just sending off two freshman girls isn't enough to trigger that lightbulb above his head to flicker on. I've been flirting with him since you moved in, and he hasn't figured out that I like him.”

I resisted the urge to take my eyes off the road and stare at her. “Charity, when have you ever flirted with Dante?”

She let out a grunt of protest. “I talk to him all of the time. I help him with his calculus homework.” She waved one hand at the darkness to emphasize her point. “I'm constantly telling him to be careful on his motorcycle and to stop hanging out with people who skip school.”

“That's not really flirting. That's more like trying to reform him.”

“Well, I'm doing it in a flirting way.”

I turned on a street that led to Bickham's most exclusive neighborhood. I hadn't realized Shane lived in such an upscale place, and I hoped he didn't live on one of those estates that was surrounded by vicious guard dogs. “Look, Charity, I didn't say anything to him. But since we're twins, we may have a bond that allows him to read my mind. I'm not sure about that yet.”

Charity folded her arms, her expression turning to resignation. “He'll probably ask Raine to prom now that he thinks she likes him. After all, she's pretty and tall.”

Shane leaned over the back of the seat. I could smell him before he spoke. “It's that house right over there.”

Mansion was more like it. I pulled farther down the road but didn't see a place to park. Vehicles lined the streets, and the driveway already had cars in it.

“Why are there so many cars here?” Charity asked.

Which only made the guys laugh all over again. Did I already mention how strange drunk people are? If so, it's worth repeating.

Brett rolled down his window and yelled out, “We're home!”

And then I saw them. The people standing on the porch. The potted palms lining the walk. I gripped the steering wheel. “This is Wilson's house.”

Rich leaned over the seat. “Hey, a party is a party. You wanna be our dates? I bet they'd let you all in.”

Charity turned around and glared at him. “You think this is funny? We ought to leave you here.”

The idea was tempting. We could kick them out of the car and let them walk home. Only then they might call the police and report that I'd stolen their car. That would be bad.

See, you know your life is messed up when you don't think in terms of whether something is right or wrong, but by how many years in jail it would get you.

“Look in the glove box for a registration slip,” I told Charity. “That should have Shane's address on it.”

Charity opened the glove box, and I slowly eased past Wilson's house, hoping none of the people out on his porch could recognize me.

Brett stuck his head out of the open window, flung an empty bottle toward the house, and yelled, “How do you like Jack now?”

I heard the crash. I wasn't sure if it was a window or just the bottle breaking against Wilson's driveway. The sound made my stomach twist inside of me.

“Why did you do that?” I yelled, and stepped on the gas. I wasn't sure where the street led to, but I couldn't back up, because Raine was right behind me. I hurried down the street, driving down the middle so I didn't sideswipe any of the parked cars. Brett still hung out the window, hollering some sort of war cry at the top of his lungs.