Speechless (3 page)

Two Jell-O shots later and I’m thinking about what Natalie said—about me being Kristen’s mouthpiece. I know that’s how I’m seen, and if I’m being honest with myself, it’s kind of true. It’s no secret that Kristen is the ringleader of our social group. The real thing that’s bugging me is what she said about me being tossed aside. Being Kristen’s friend is a balancing act, yes, but it’s one I’ve pulled off for a few years; if she wanted to get rid of me, she would’ve by now.

I don’t know why Natalie’s stupid comment is annoying me so much. After all, it’s
Natalie;
her opinion doesn’t matter.

Brendon hands me another shot, and I notice his outstretched arm is a perfect golden tan.

“
God,
you’re tan,” I tell him, running my fingers over his wrist and marveling at the deep red-brown shade. His skin feels hot to the touch, and the butterflies in my stomach flutter again.

“Yeah.” He laughs. “I spent Christmas in Miami with my grandparents.”

“Oooh, nice!” I look at my own arm and cringe. “I’m so
pasty,
” I moan, and Kristen laughs.

“You’re such a ginger,” she says. She lowers her voice like she’s confiding a secret. “Still, it could be worse. So I’m in the locker room before P.E. the other day, right? Steph Lidell comes in and starts changing right next to me, and she takes off her sweater, and I am, like,
blinded
by
orange.
”

This isn’t news to me. Steph sits in front of me in Geometry, and whenever she passes back papers, I get a full view of her streaky orange hands. Still, I know better than to point out that it’s totally old news. Kristen doesn’t like being one-upped when she’s telling a story.

“It’s already bad enough that she has that fried, bleached-out hair, but a gross spray tan?
Really?
” Kristen shakes her head sadly. “It was horrible. I mean, she’s like seven feet tall! So she’s just this giant orange giraffe who smells bad. Like some weird combination of mustard and sweat or something. Seriously, I almost passed out.” She laughs, then sighs and adds, “I swear, it was tragic.”

“
Seriously
tragic,” I agree, tipping the Jell-O shot back until it slides down my throat, weirdly warm and cold at the same time. These things are like ninety percent vodka. As it hits my stomach, I shake my head hard and grimace.

Joey claps me so hard on the back I nearly choke. “You drunk yet, Chelsea?”

Yes, actually, I am. More than a little. I turn around to face Joey, and the room spins around me. Maybe that last shot wasn’t such a good idea. I’m really feeling it now.

Joey slides his hand up and hangs his arm loosely over my shoulders. I hope he doesn’t think we’re hooking up tonight. I’ve made out with him a few times, but never actually enjoyed it. Kristen keeps pushing me toward him, though, with the hope that if I start dating Warren’s best friend we can all go out on double dates. I might be on board with this plan if I found Joey even remotely attractive, but to me he’s just another beefy, boneheaded jock. He’s definitely no Brendon Ryan. The fact that he’s pulling me in under his sweaty armpit makes me want to puke.

No, wait, that’s the alcohol.

“Um…” I shrug out from under Joey’s grip. “I think I’m gonna—” I stop and clutch one hand over my swirling stomach.

My nausea must show in my face because Kristen laughs and says, “Oh, my God, if you puke on my carpet I’m going to be
so
pissed!”

Brendon looks at me, concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I insist. My stomach, however, does not agree. “I just need to… Bathroom. Bathroom would be good.”

I bolt out of the room, shove past two juniors molesting each other on the staircase and take the steps two at a time. When I reach the top, I see a line of bored-looking girls outside the bathroom. Yeah, I don’t know if I can wait that long. I’m definitely not willing to take the risk.

There’s another bathroom in the guest room, I know, and Kristen won’t mind if I use it. I rush to the end of the hallway and throw open the door without a second thought. Before I take more than a step in, I’m stopped in my tracks by what I see. Someone else is already in here.

Two someones.

I’ve never seen guys together. Not like this. The two boys are entangled, one lying on top of the other, panting hard. The dark-haired boy on top has his hand in the hair of the blond boy underneath him. The telltale sound of jeans being unzipped makes me gasp; the blond boy must hear it, because his head jerks up and his eyes meet mine, and I realize I know him. It’s Noah Beckett. We’re not friends, exactly, but we’re in the same grade. I sat next to him in Spanish last year. He used to let me borrow his pencils, and now he’s making out with some guy I don’t recognize in my best friend’s guest room.

Suddenly my nausea is the last thing on my mind.

I’m still processing the sight in front of me when Noah sits up, looking panicked. Instinct kicks in and I back out hastily, knocking my shoulder hard against the door frame. Noah calls after me, but I ignore him, stumble down the hallway and down the stairs, where I lean against the banister, trying to catch my breath.

Noah Beckett is gay? I never would’ve guessed. To me he was always just the kid who rides around on his skateboard in the school parking lot. I think he’s on the soccer team or something. He’s the kind of affable guy who hangs out with a lot of different groups and gets along with just about everyone. Who blends in with the crowd. I’ve never really noticed him before.

Well, I don’t think I’ll have a recognition problem now.

“Feeling better?”

Brendon approaches me with a cautious smile, like he’s afraid I’ll hurl all over his shoes at any given moment. Not a total impossibility. At this rate, I’m pretty sure my hand on the banister is the only thing keeping me upright.

“Uh—” Why is it that I always sound like such an idiot around Brendon? Seriously, I am incapable of forming a complete sentence in his presence, even when I’m stone-cold sober. It’s kind of pathetic. Okay, a lot pathetic. I breathe out and try to focus. “Where’s Kristen?”

“In the kitchen, I think,” he says. His brow furrows. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” I say, “I just—I need to talk to her.”

I find her in the kitchen surrounded by half of the basketball team. The guys are all rummaging through her cabinets looking for snacks. Kristen’s lucky her parents are out of town; this place is going to be a disaster area come tomorrow morning. I’ll probably have to help her clean it up, too. Somehow I’m the one who always ends up cleaning out the vomit-ridden toilet bowls.

“Kristen!” I say, louder than I mean to. Everyone’s head swivels around to look at me as I wobble up to her on unsteady legs. Balance is a tricky concept at the moment.

Kristen looks up at me over her cup of beer, one part amused, one part embarrassed. “God, Chelsea, you’re a hot mess.” Which is pretty lame of her, because her cheeks are apple-red and her eyes are just glassy enough to let me know she’s only a fraction less drunk off her ass than I am.

I ignore the insult and grab her arm urgently. “Kristen,” I say again, “you’re not going to
believe
what I just saw.”

This catches her attention, and everyone else’s. Warren closes the refrigerator door and looks over at us, and Brendon comes up next to me. Joey hops off of the counter and crosses his arms. Everybody’s gone quiet, wondering what I’m going to say. And really, this is the best gossip I’ve heard all year. Considering the year is less than an hour from being officially over, that’s saying something.

I don’t know what I expected to happen when I told everyone. I guess I thought it’d be a funny story, or at least a memorable one. It’d be the kind of thing where later, every so often someone could bring it up by saying, “Hey, remember when Chelsea walked in on Noah and that random guy macking on each other?” And that’d be the point where I’d jump in and give my firsthand account, and everyone would be both amused and scandalized, and maybe Brendon would be bowled over by my charismatic storytelling skills and declare his undying love for me on the spot. Or something.

I didn’t realize Kristen would have the reaction she does—which is less laughing and more one of extreme disgust, like I just told her that her guest room has a cockroach infestation. Once I spill the details, she gives a full-body shudder, mouth hanging open with a mixture of shock and revulsion.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my
God! Ew!
” she exclaims, appalled. “He got
fag
all over my
sheets!
” She says it like being gay is a highly contagious epidemic or something. My stomach drops, and I open my mouth to say something.

Before I can, Derek Connelly, the team’s small forward, laughs. “That dude?” he says. “Seriously?”

Warren stalks over to us, one fist clamped tight around a bottle of beer and the other clenched at his side. “Whatthefuck?” he slurs. Redness creeps up his neck and flushes his whole face. “That fucking— I swear— I’m gonna—” He doesn’t finish the thought, but somehow I don’t think the rest of that sentence would be “give him a hug.” Warren is about as affectionate as he is articulate.

“Seriously. What. The. Fuck,” Joey echoes, useless as always.

“Who was he even
with?
” Kristen asks me.

“I… I don’t know,” I say uneasily. “I don’t think the other guy goes to our school.” This conversation is not going the way I imagined it would.

“Who the fuck does he think he is?” Warren growls. He wipes the sweat off his upper lip with the side of his fist. “All right, where’s the fag? I’m gonna go talk to him.”

“Fucking right,” Joey agrees.

The two of them push their way out of the kitchen and head for the staircase. I trail after them and manage to catch up halfway through the living room, nearly bowling over five people in the process.

“You guys, don’t.” I reach out, snagging Warren’s shoulder.

Except because I’m so trashed, I stumble and almost fall down. Joey and a few other people see and laugh. Brendon, though. Brendon isn’t laughing.

“Look,” I say, “they’re leaving anyway. Just leave them alone, okay?”

I point to where I can spot Noah’s shock of white-blond hair. He hurries to the front door, red-faced, with a cute black-haired boy behind him. The black-haired boy seems to be dragging his feet, intent on going at a leisurely pace, his fingers wrapped around Noah’s wrist as they move through the throng of people packed at the bottom of the staircase. Noah stops and says something to him, the words impossible to make out over the music and the conversation. The boy says something back, and Noah frowns, tugging the boy’s hand, and they disappear through the door together.

The irony is that if I hadn’t been drinking, I probably wouldn’t have spoken up at all—not right there in front of anyone; I would’ve waited until it was just Kristen and me alone. And I definitely wouldn’t have touched Warren—he’s not the kind of guy you pal around with.

Of course, if I hadn’t been drinking, I wouldn’t have needed to find a bathroom so badly and I wouldn’t have seen what I did.

Warren shakes me off with a scowl, and I fall sideways into Kristen, who laughs and props me up against the wall.

“You’re
sooooo
drunk,” she says. “Oh, my God.”

“They’re fucking holding hands? Shit.” Warren spits into his plastic red cup—so many kinds of gross—before he nods at Joey and says, “You coming?”

And Joey says, “Fuck, yeah,” because Joey is an idiot.

“You guys.” I push myself off the wall. “You guys, seriously. Don’t. Just leave it, okay? Okay?”

“Don’t worry,” says Warren, “all we’re gonna do is teach them a little lesson.” But his smile is all wrong, twisted, and there’s something else in his voice, too, warning me not to push it.

And so I don’t. Because it’s easier. It’s easier to let them go.

* * *

My plans to have Brendon sweep me off my feet at the stroke of midnight are thwarted when my nausea catches up to me, and I instead ring in the New Year vomiting my guts out in the bathroom. I must pass out sometime after that, because I wake up the next morning curled around the base of the toilet the same way you’d curl yourself around another person. Kristen didn’t even think to wake me up and help me into the bedroom, and now I have a sore hip and a crick in my neck. Not to mention a severe case of dry mouth.

I use the counter to pull myself to my feet then turn on the tap. As I scoop the cold water with both hands and splash it over my face, I try to piece together exactly what happened last night. I remember Warren and Joey taking off, but everything after that is a little fuzzy. It’s kind of freaking me out; I’ve never gotten that drunk before. Never to the point where I can’t remember what happened the next day.

Things start to come back to me when I rub my face dry with the thick terry-cloth towel hanging on the rack. Kristen cajoling me into one more shot even though I was already falling-down drunk; jumping up on her coffee table to dance until I fell off and landed on some freshman girl; Brendon—oh, God. Brendon. I’m pretty sure I totally threw myself at him in the most embarrassing manner possible.

“Yup, you totally did,” Kristen informs me cheerfully after I’ve managed to stumble down to the kitchen and collapse in the nearest chair. She sets a mug of water and two Advil in front of me—which for Kristen is as considerate as she gets. “You kept rubbing up on him and babbling about how hot his box of mints is. He was so weirded out. It was pretty hilarious.”

“I’m sure,” I mutter. It would’ve been nice if Kristen had intervened to spare me the humiliation, but I guess she was too busy getting a kick out of the situation.

She picks up the empty beer bottles littered on the table and takes them to the sink. “Cheer up,” she tells me. “At least you weren’t
abandoned
by your supposed
boyfriend.
”

An unsettled feeling twists in my gut. “He didn’t come back last night?”

“No,” she scoffs. “Fucking jerk. Probably went off to hotbox his truck with Joey. I swear—” She’s cut off by her phone on the counter ringing. She grabs it with a sigh. “That’s probably him. He better
grovel.
”