Perfectly Dateless (21 page)
“Where’s Claire?”
“Claire’s celebrating! Let’s go celebrate.” He drops the empty bottle. “You know, your boyfriend tried to sell me an Excedrin instead of a roofie. What does he think I am, some kind of idiot?”
I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My heart stops for a moment as I realize Max told me the truth. How could I have questioned it? He came to the party and never left the front porch for us.
“What’s a roofie?” I ask in my best innocent voice.
He laughs. “It’s a relaxing pill. You know, for people who have a hard time relaxing. They’re perfect for high-strung people like us.” He slides to the grass. “I need to sit down.” He pulls me down beside him. “You sit down too.”
My dress, already having been pulled from the brick, will now have mud spots and grass stains. “There’s nothing more disgusting than a drunk person,” I say.
“See? Too high-strung. You need to relax. Relax with me, Daisy.”
“You’re drunk, Chase.”
“Come on. Give me a fact, Daisy. Tell me something about drunk people. You know any facts about drunk people?”
“I know they’re ridiculous. Where’s Claire?” I stand up and brush off the back of my dress.
“I told you, she’s with Greg. They’re celebrating.” He lies back with his head on the patio and his legs on the grass, and bodies gyrate over him on the makeshift dance floor. There’s a sea of kids, and I don’t recognize any of them. They’re all wearing casual shorts and ripped T-shirts, that type of thing. I feel panic as I search for a familiar face.
“Sarika!” I see her near the pool with Angie. “Angie!” I wave, running toward them. Both of them look like they’ve been pegged by a laser.
“We called the police,” Angie says. “We’re going home.”
“Where’s Claire?” I ask them.
“She was hanging all over Greg. That’s the last time we saw her.” Sarika shakes her head. “You were supposed to watch out for her.”
“I didn’t know it would get like this,” I yell over the crowd. I look to the outdoor kitchen. Two guys built like linebackers are throwing the empty keg around in anger. It crashes on top of the grill, and the dent it makes is substantial.
Then life happens as if in slow motion. I hear myself yell, “Noooo!”
I run to close the sparking barbecue as the empty keg crashes into the nearby gas line. I push the guys away, but fire erupts almost immediately and climbs the vine and wooden trellis, igniting the corner of the house. Then the sirens begin. Thank goodness Sarika and Angie had the sense of mind to call.
Why didn’t I do this? Where is my sensible brain? My
designated-driver soul?
“Why didn’t I do this?”
Chase curses. “The cops! I gotta get out of here!” His slurring has evaporated, and he runs like the wind. I’m stunned as I see the back of him getting smaller in the distance.
My hero is a complete zero. It can’t be true.
“Where’s Claire?” I ask everyone I pass, but they’re all running to get away from the house. I lift up my dress to cover my face and nose and enter the house. I’m pulled from behind.
“No, Daisy.” Max pulls me out of the house. “I’ll go. Where’s her room?”
“In the front, where you saw me from earlier!”
The band has stopped, and they do their best to get their instruments far from the house. The yard is nothing more than garbage, empty cans floating in the pool.
The gas line is still open, and the fire quickly engulfs the whole side of the house. I run to search for the shut-off valve. My dad always taught me to get out of the house and go for the shut-off valve. I run around the house, looking for the red valve that is so easily marked at my own house, but I see nothing like it.
As I watch the flames lick the edge of the house, I have visions of an explosion and I am frantic to find the line. In my head, I recite prayer after prayer
. Please, Lord, get us out of
here alive. Nothing else matters. Get us out of here alive.
Greg and Claire come running out of the house together. Claire catches sight of the flames at the edge of the house, and her face turns stone cold.
“Where’s Max? He went in looking for you!” I shake her shoulders. “Where’s Max, Claire?” I’m feeling frenzied by now as an upstairs window blows out, followed by a flash of flame. The roof has caught now, and the flames are well into the sky.
I run around the house and am met by a line of firemen. “Max is in the house,” I yell, panting for breath. “My friend Max. He went inside. In that room there! That’s where he went. Please!” I scream. “Please, get him out!” One of the firemen pushes me out of the way, and I watch as men in full gear head into the house. Just then Max staggers out of the house with a girl in his arms and collapses on the lawn. Two of the firemen immediately go to work, and I stand by, screaming out prayers. I think I’m hysterical. I just hear my own cries as I struggle for breath.
“You’re burned,” a firefighter says to me.
“No, I’m not burned. Get Max. Please!”
“Come with me,” the fireman says. He tries to put me on a stretcher, but I protest. “Max!”
Max, still unconscious, lies flat on the front porch while I’m led away. The girl who was in his arms rouses. It’s Amber Richardson. They load her into the ambulance with me, her blonde hair splayed in a sunshine pattern on the ambulance bed. It’s not the pretty sight I’d once imagined.
I never imagined I’d be in this position. I never imagined that Claire’s bright idea for a party might lead to this. I’m left to dwell on my lack of perfection as I watch the casualties of my mistakes.
I’m sorry, Lord
.
I think I say something about roofies to the fireman, and it’s my last memory.
“Daisy!” I hear my mother’s voice. “She’s awake!! Doctor, she’s awake!”
“Too loud,” I hear myself moan. “Shut up.” Now, I have never told my mom to shut up in my life, and I’m in this twilight state, so I can’t tell if I said it aloud or not.
“Daisy, what a terrible thing to say!”
I said it out loud.
“But I’m so glad you said something. You were in shock, so they put you under for the pain. Do you feel any pain?”
“What pa—” I don’t even get the word out. “My wrist!”
“You’ve got third-degree burns, but only on a very small part. Most of them are second-degree, but that’s what hurts,” my mom says. “The kids at the party said you saved a lot of lives by shutting off the gas valve.”
“Couldn’t find it.” I shake my head. “I didn’t—”
“Couldn’t find what, honey?”
“Water,” I tell her. She holds a cup up to my lips, and I sip the cool water.
“The police want to talk with you when you’re ready,” the doctor says.
“No, not yet,” Mom says. “I told them later.” My mom busies her hands by moving the blankets around my feet. Just her slight action induces so much guilt. That’s the thing about having the Holy Spirit. You can’t get away with much, not without conscience anyway. Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Don’t I know it. “You shut the barbecue lid.”
“Claire?”
“Claire’s fine, honey. She wasn’t hurt. She won’t be fine when her mother gets home, but for now, she’s fine. She’s going to be staying with us until her mom flies in tonight. Her dad is still trying to get a plane.”
“Max?” I croak.
“I haven’t heard about him.” Mom puts her hand on my hip gently. “Is he a friend of yours?”
My hand is throbbing, and though it’s loosely wrapped, I can feel a blistering wound underneath. “Where’s Dad?”
My mom doesn’t say anything. “Are you feeling all right, Daisy? They gave you something to help with the pain.”
I look at my hand. “It hurts.”
“Second-degree burns hurt more than third, apparently. They don’t kill the nerve endings. Luckily, you have third-degree only in a very small area. That’s great, isn’t it?”
I laugh. “Now who is giving the facts?”
My mother starts to sob in her hands. “What were you doing, Daisy?”
“Why isn’t Dad here?”
She busies herself with pillows, walks around the room, and finally sits down next to me. “I haven’t told him yet.”
I swallow hard. “Why not?”
“Because his baby girl, whom he has worked so hard to protect, doesn’t appear to value the life she’s been given enough to act responsibly.”
“Excuse us, Mom,” a nurse says. “We need to check and dress the wound. Would you please wait outside?”
My mom gives me that look that makes me want to scream, but the simple act of the nurse moving the wrap on my hand causes it instead.
My mom is there in a second, and when she looks at my hand, she starts to bawl. “Daisy! No!”
The nurse escorts her out the door again while another one smiles sweetly at me. “You got off lucky, you know.”
“Is Max Diaz here? Is he all right?”
“I’ll have to check for you. We’re giving you fluids to replace anything lost. Your blood pressure looks great, though.”
“Is this going to scar?” I ask, looking at the oozing, pale skin.
“Probably,” she says. “But you were so fortunate.”
“I feel so weak.”
“That’s your body healing. I’ll let you rest, and I’ll send your mom back in.”
After a few minutes, the curtain pulls back and shuts again. Claire is standing beside me. “Oh my gosh, Daisy. I thought you were dead or something. What are you doing to me?”
I laugh, which makes me hurt more, and I laugh again. “Only you would blame me for this. I was on the porch, having a lovely time dancing the tango with a hot Argentine who looks like Taco, and you—you were throwing a keg party.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Nacho,” I say. “He looks like Nacho. Have you seen Max?”
She shakes her head, with that sad look people give you when they don’t want to tell you bad news.
“If you know something, you’d better tell me.”
“I promise, I don’t know anything. Amber Richardson is alive and well. Never thought I’d be happy to hear myself say that, but I am.”
“Did you talk to your mother?”
“No, but I listened to her quite a bit. She’s on her way home now. So’s my dad.”
“I blame you for this. If you hadn’t numbed yourself with all that shopping, you would have been fine with going with me and soothing yourself. How many times have I shadowed you at the mall, lusted over what you’ve bought, and come home totally empty-handed, and now, in my time of need, where were you? Getting a job at the wiener barn and planning a
Gossip Girl
gig.” I shake my head. “I knew when you started playing terrorist with Greg in his front yard that you were up to no good.” I exhale. “Normal people don’t blow things up in their front yards.”
“I blew it.”
“What’s your house look like?”
“Like we had a barbecue.” She laughs. “Oh, Daisy, I am so sorry. I never should have gotten you involved in this. Now you’re going to be under house arrest until you’re thirty. We probably won’t graduate with our class, and Amber’s hair didn’t even get singed.”
“It had to happen. At some point my parents were going to find out I’m not perfect. Why not have it be in a blaze of glory? Literally.” I grab her hand with my good one. “Go find out about Max. He went back in the house to get Amber.” Recognition hits me like another flame. “Chase left. He just left.” The shock I feel is incredible. “He was my hero. How could I have it all wrong? All these years?”
“He hasn’t had basic training yet. Maybe he’ll learn something about being a hero after that.”
“He’s no hero. Not to me. All the emotion I’ve wasted—”
The curtain snaps back, and my mother stands there. “Claire, sit down. I need to talk to both of you.”
I swallow all thoughts of wasted emotion. Something tells me I’m going to need to save some strength for this talk: a verbal beating to conquer all sermons.
Claire sits down as she’s told. Her dress is a wreck, and we both smell like a fireplace. The painful reminder of our evening, and what disasters we are on our own, rushes through my head.
“Daisy’s father can’t take this kind of stress,” my mother begins. “It’s going to break his heart, so I haven’t told him yet.”
Here we go. “It would stress me out to dress as a pirate with mutton chops and rap too. You know? This isn’t all our fault.”
My mom is quiet. She pets her own hand like a lap dog, takes a moment, and then starts again. “Your father had a series of small strokes a few years back, Daisy. He’s not the same as he once was.”
“Mom, I feel guilty, all right! You’re going to make something up to make me feel worse? What more can I do, Mom? I screwed up, I know it!”
My mom, who never yells, snaps, “Listen, Daisy! You are acting like a spoiled brat! Did you hear what I said? Your father could have taken you out of that school when he lost his permanent job after the strokes, but he didn’t. He did whatever he could to put food on the table. He couldn’t drive at night, so he knelt by his chair every night until you came home safely. This is how you repay him! You make fun of him, you laugh behind his back, you have no respect! What’s the one thing the Bible asks of you as a child? To obey your parents, and you can’t even do that!” She sobs again, but her scowl returns. “You think you know it all, don’t you, Daisy? You’re too good for the likes of us!” She storms out of the room.
Claire blinks repeatedly. “Your dad had a stroke?” she asks.
I blink away the tears. “No, she’s just making it up.” I shake the thought away. “Don’t you think?”
Claire shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so. Your mom doesn’t lie, and I can’t imagine she’d lie about that.”
I think back to the wad of cash my mother gave me for clothes, and it occurs to me that my parents are total strangers to me. My dad, the man who always has everything under control and never lets anything ruffle his feathers, had a stroke. It’s almost too much to digest. But for some reason my thoughts go back to that foreign wad of cash and the realization that my parents harbor a separate, inner world not discernible from my vantage point, which makes me question everything.
“I wonder where she got that money.”
“I don’t know.” Claire shakes her head. “I may have burned my parents’ house down, and I’d still rather be me right now.”
