The Opposite of Hallelujah (30 page)

“I thought you had to call it off,” I said.

“Nah, my parents decided to go to Wisconsin this weekend instead, so I had to postpone it,” Derek said. “But it’s still on. Saturday, nine o’clock. Will you be there?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I’m sort of … grounded.” Even though it felt like I was approaching probationary period of my incarceration, I was pretty sure my parents were not going to authorize a party, and I was tired of lying to them.

“Really? What’d you do?” He grinned at me like I was about to confide something hilariously naughty.

I shook my head. “Nothing. It was stupid. Never mind.”

“You sure you don’t want to tell me?” He stared hard at me, like he was trying to use Jedi mind tricks to get me to confess my sins. It gave him this intense look of concentration that I used to think was proof that he was deep and mysterious. I squinted back at him. I thought about kissing him, just lunging at him, pressing my stomach against his and clutching the tuft of hair at the nape of his neck and kissing him the way I had two weeks into our relationship, when I’d gotten over my fear of scaring him off. Not because I wanted
him
. I just wanted something meaningless and physical to make me feel in control.

Finally, he relented. “I guess not.”

“Nope,” I said. The urge to kiss him passed, and I knew I had to go, as if on its way out of my head the fantasy would project itself onto the wall and Derek would know I was thinking about it. It meant nothing—I knew that for sure—but it made me sad. “I can’t come.”

“It’s not like you’ve never snuck out of your house before,” Derek said.

“Yeah, but …,” I protested, although I didn’t feel one way or the other about it. The thought of waiting until everyone went to bed (including Hannah, who never seemed to sleep at night) and then tiptoeing out of the house and waiting in the freezing cold for Reb to pull
up at the corner was exhausting. There wasn’t anything good waiting for me at that party. But I knew I would probably do it anyway, because I felt as though it would mean something if I didn’t go.

“I’ll think about it,” I told him.

“For the record,” Reb said as Erin leaned forward with her forehead against the dashboard to let me crawl into the backseat, “I never thought this was going to happen.”

“What?” I asked as I settled in, clipping my seat belt and pushing my hair out of my face.

“That you would come to this party,” she said. Erin handed me a water bottle full of Gatorade and vodka. I took a big swig and gave it back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Yeah, well, I just felt like it, I guess,” I told her. The vodka warmed me immediately, creating a crackling heat that skimmed my skin. It was nice; the ever-increasing tension at
casa de
Mitchell was wearing on me, and it was good to be free of it, if only for a couple of hours.

“Aren’t you worried about seeing Pawel?” Erin asked, and I couldn’t shake the sense that she was rooting for drama to unfold. Erin liked a good soapy incident, sometimes going so far as to court them, but her life, like mine and Reb’s, was pretty bland most of the time. She
sounded excited. “Or Derek? I saw you talking to him yesterday in the hallway.”

“That’s impossible, your last class is in the other building,” I said. “Who told you Derek and I were talking?”

“I saw,” Erin said. “I see all.” She was already very drunk.

“What did Derek want?” Reb asked, jabbing Erin in the side with her elbow. Erin shrieked and clutched her side, then laughed.

“Hey! That hurt,” she said.

“Leave Caro alone,” Reb said, then asked me again, “What did Derek want?”

“To invite me to the party,” I said, turning up my hands in confusion. “God knows why.”

“Well, I guess we’ll find out.” Reb turned down his street and parked as close as she could to his driveway, which was already overrun with cars. When we stepped out of ours, we could hear the pounding bass and loud murmur of people on the porch, smoking and drinking beer out of party cups and talking at each other. Just looking at them made me cold, but they didn’t seem to care.

We strolled into the party arm in arm, mostly to prop up Erin, who was a little wobbly getting out of the car. We made our way through the throng of people in the living room to the kitchen, where Derek had generously provided a keg of cheap light beer. It
could’ve been Reb’s party a month or so earlier; they all seemed the same to me these days. Cup in hand, I gazed around the room. Everyone looked unfamiliar to me, and even though Reb and Erin were right behind me, I felt alone.

Just as I was finishing my beer, I lowered my cup to see Pawel gently shove his way past a crowd of identically dressed bleach-blond girls in almost impossibly high heels. For a second I thought he was alone and my whole body relaxed, but then I noticed Briana behind him and my vision contracted, bending at the edges so that Pawel and Briana were enormous, like I was seeing them through a telescope.

Briana waved at me and I cringed. “Hey, girls!” she called out, causing Reb and Erin to turn. Erin bumped me lightly in the small of my back with her fist and I heard Reb whisper, “Mayday.”

“Hey,” I said, then gulped. Erin, trying to help but hitting hopelessly far from the mark, started filling my cup back up with beer. “What’s up, guys?”

Pawel had a strange look on his face, a melting pot of surprise, confusion, and discomfort. “Caro. Cool, I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I said, bristling. This was my school, these were my friends, Derek was
my
ex. If anyone’s presence should have come as a surprise, it was his.

He shook his head and feigned innocence. “No reason. Can I get past you?”

I was blocking the keg. “Oh,” I said, stepping aside and draining half my cup for something to do. Reb gave me a tight smile and glanced at Erin, who was about to open her mouth.

“I’m going to take drunky here to the den,” she said quietly. “You come find us when you’re done.”

“I’m done,” I said, but Briana had grabbed hold of my elbow.

“Caro, Pawel told me about your science fair project, and I have to tell you—you are totally insane!” She laughed. “I mean, you take ass kissing to an entirely new level! Single-bubble sontonomolescing? Are you nuts?”

“Are you drunk?” I asked, catching a whiff of malt liquor on her breath.

“Of course!” she cried.

“Great.” I turned to Pawel. He shook his head and tossed me a nervous little grin. I felt like a glass of champagne, all liquid, bubbles rising through my arms and shoulders up to my head. He was wearing a green polo shirt, slightly wrinkled, and without closing my eyes I could picture lying down with him on a couch and burying my face into his chest, breathing in the smell of laundry and cotton fibers.

Get a
hold
of yourself
, I commanded, wrenching my
eyes away from him and focusing on Briana. “Single-bubble sonoluminescence,” I said, correcting her.

“Whatever! Dana and I are doing insulation,” she said, grabbing Pawel’s hand and squeezing it.

“Spicy,” I mumbled. “Okay, well, this has been fun, but I’ve got to go. See you kids later.”

My face was fever-hot as I bolted from the kitchen, pissed at myself for not getting another glass of beer for the road. I had to either leave right away or get good and drunk so that nothing could upset me, but due to my extremely good luck, I ended up running into Derek instead.

“Caro,” he said, pulling me in for a tight hug. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

“Yeah, well … I did,” I said, attempting to sound upbeat. I tried to wriggle out of the hug, but his grip was inescapable. “Are your arms made of titanium or what?”

He laughed. “You’re funny, Caro.”

“Funny-looking, right?” Oh, God, I was cracking bad jokes at my own expense. I could feel the night slipping from my control. My brain buzzed. Derek’s skin had a warm glow in the lamplight. I surrendered and let him keep his arm around me. He ran his hand over my left shoulder and I closed my eyes. Soon he would get distracted and let me go, and I had a plan for that eventuality: I was going to run like hell.

“It’s loud in here,” he announced, though nobody but me was listening. “Let’s go find a quiet place to talk.”

There was a change in him. All the careful distance he and I had created between us had vanished with time and beer, and I knew that once we were alone he would try to kiss me. I followed him to his bedroom anyway, hoping that by the time it happened I would want it, that I wouldn’t wish it was Pawel who’d corralled me into a private place and put his lips on mine.

We didn’t make it to his bedroom. The upstairs hallway was almost deserted, and Derek pulled me into a dark corner near the stairs and pressed me up against the wall with his entire body. He raked his right hand through my hair, lifted my head, and kissed me, lightly at first, and then with more pressure. He wrapped his left arm around my waist, and I let him. I let him kiss me, too, closed my eyes and remembered a time when all I wanted was to kiss him. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant; Derek was a good kisser, something my crush on Pawel had entirely erased from my brain, and the part of me that still liked him lit up like a candle in a dark room, sending a column of warmth shooting up my body from my feet to my forehead.

With my lips and hips thus occupied, my mind wandered into the future. What if this was the moment when my life changed? Maybe Derek and I would rekindle things; maybe I’d even go so far as to
fall in love with him; maybe I’d forget about Pawel, and Derek would be the boy I wanted. Maybe we’d make a pledge to each other on graduation night, to stay together through college and emerge four years later with a rock-solid relationship. We could move to the city and live together in an apartment in Lakeview, spend a few years making money and raising hell, and then settle down, get married, and have kids. It was crazy, the thought of it, but I let my mind race on with the fantasy anyway.

Suddenly, and without any reason, Hannah glided over the horizon of my thoughts like a hot-air balloon. I wondered again if she’d ever done this, kissed a boy she liked, or could like, in a dark hallway with a party raging below.

“Oh, God, excuse me, sorry.” I opened my eyes to see who had stumbled upon us, and when my gaze met Pawel’s, I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Hey, dude, what’s up?” Derek said. His words were casual, but his tone wasn’t. He had to have heard about Pawel and me. His fingers closed around my arm possessively.

“N-nothing,” Pawel stammered, embarrassed. For the first time, I noticed that Derek’s hand had found its way up my shirt, and I pushed down on his wrist to dislodge it. “I was just using the bathroom.” He gestured at the door behind him with his thumb.

“You having fun?” Derek asked. I stared at Pawel, trying to discern something besides discomfort in his face.

“Uh, yeah, tons,” he said. “I’ll leave now.”

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll, uh, go downstairs with you.”

“What?” Derek asked as I extracted myself from his grip.

“I need more beer,” I said, shrugging apologetically. “Be right back.”

Pawel took off down the stairs without waiting for me, but I caught up quickly when he was slowed moving through the crowd in the foyer. I put a hand on his shoulder and he turned around.

“What?” he said coldly.

“What you saw up there …” I didn’t know how to explain, but I wanted to, even as I realized how little I owed him.

“Big deal,” Pawel said, his eyes on the banister over my shoulder for no reason other than it wasn’t my face. “You’re back with your old boyfriend, congratu-frickin’-lations.”

“Hey!” I snapped. “You don’t get to be mad at me,
you
broke up with
me
, and
you
were the one who brought a date to this party. I came with my friends.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but Derek also broke up with you, and yet you were upstairs with your tongue down his throat.” I could tell that as soon as the words
left his mouth, he regretted them. His eyes widened with the knowledge that he’d betrayed a personal secret.

I could’ve let him off easy, but I didn’t. It wasn’t in my nature. “And why do you care about that? I thought we were
friends
.”

“We are friends!” he cried. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not going to get hurt. Derek doesn’t want anything from me besides what you saw up there, and I don’t want anything from him,” I said, knowing the words were true as I was saying them. Derek was never going to be more than my ex-boyfriend and a casual acquaintance from now on. I’d let my imagination get away with me, because I’d screwed up with Pawel and I wanted to grab hold of something, so I built it myself. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“I need to go home,” I said. I felt a surge of pride, like I was finally starting to get it. Finally starting to figure out why Hannah had gone to the Sisters of Grace: she couldn’t find peace with God on her own, so she looked for a way to create it.

“I’m too drunk,” he said. “I can’t drive you.”

“Yeah, whatever, I live ten blocks away, I’m just going to walk,” I told him.