EDGES Page 12

  “I’m done with her.”

  “You’re not done with her until she wants you to be done.”

  “Whatever. We’ll see about that. So what is it? What’s so important?”

  George took another hit off the pipe. He seemed to be enjoying keeping Josh in suspense on some level. And it was quite annoying, but Josh wasn’t in a position to demand he speak. “It’s another reason it’s partly my fault what happened. Simone and I, we wanted to make you jealous that night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she and I were planning to kiss right in front of you, just to see how you’d react.” He laughed hurtfully. “I only twirled her around a few times, I wonder what you would’ve done if I had actually kissed her.”

  Josh felt like he’d been doused in cold water.

  “You look stunned,” George said.

  “Why?” Josh asked, a trembling in his voice. His whole life was hanging in the balance and Simone had done it all on purpose?

  “I dunno, for fun maybe. She wanted to see how much you liked her. That’s what girls do sometimes.”

  “For fun?”

  “It sounds worse than it really is.”

  Josh launched to his feet, anger pulsing in his temples. “I’m facing jail time, god damn it!”

  “Easy, easy,” George said. “Wrong choice of words. Just sit down.”

  Josh sat back down, realizing he was about to fly headlong into rage again. It was clear now that George was relishing the opportunity to disturb him with this information. There was a little drama queen buried under the skin of this guy. A small part of Josh was happy he’d pounded his face in. “Why would you agree to it?”

  “I couldn’t pass up the chance.”

  Josh hunched forward and sighed. “She really is a bitch.”

  “No,” George said. “Not a bitch. A squid. It’s her nature. She’s done it her whole life. She can be a bit manipulative from time to time, I mean that’s obvious, look what she planned to do with me to make you jealous. But you can’t be angry over someone’s nature. Not if you love them.”

  Josh sat there, chin high, trying to reserve what dignity he had left.

  “She never wanted to be your girlfriend, I don’t think.”

  “Good.”

  Josh felt a deep puncture in his heart.

  “I have something, some information that will rock her fucking world. Something that if people knew about—”

  George shook a finger. “I said you couldn’t do anything to retaliate.”

  “You said I couldn’t tell her that I know you two planned it.”

  “Yeah, and if you retaliate, she’ll know something is up and it will come back to me.”

  “This isn’t right,” Josh said, shaking his head disgusted. “She’s evil.”

  George took one last hit off the pipe and set it down. “I told you, she isn’t evil. You couldn’t love her if she was.”

  “I don’t love her.”

  “Of course you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t care this much.”

  That made Josh even angrier.

  “And you will keep this between the two of us,” George said, holding his eyes steady on Josh with an authoritative glare. Josh had no problem staring into that wretched eye of his now. “Or there will be consequences. And also I want you to pay my hospital bills.”

  Josh gritted his teeth and nodded. He just wanted to get out of there now. Get back into his car, and get the hell away from all of them. He extended his hand and faked a calm expression. “I appreciate your honesty. I won’t say a thing. And again, thank you for not pushing this further than it needs to go.”

  George shook his hand. “I need eight hundred dollars a month for the next six months to cover the ambulance and my doctor visits.”

  Josh closed his eyes, restrained every fretful urge within, and said, “No problem.” He got up and walked to the door and George followed him. Josh reached for the knob.

  “If it’s any consolation,” George said, “she mentioned that you were pretty decent in bed.”

  Josh didn’t even look back at him, just opened the door, walked out and shut it behind him. There was hardly any feeling left in him.

  “Josh!”

  Simone called out to him. She had apparently been waiting, sitting on her walkway in her little skimpy shorts and top. As she hustled over to talk to him, he hustled equally fast into his car. The squid, he thought.

  “Josh, hold on,” she called.

  He fired up his engine, and the car zipped backward out of the spot. He didn’t meet Simone’s eyes before roaring out of the parking lot. He just couldn’t.

  Patrick

  AFTER JOSH GOT OUT OF jail, Patrick spent the next several nights watching TV alone on the suede couch in the living room, eating his evening staple food, a bowl of Cheerios. Every so often he would glance back toward Josh’s room. Stone Temple Pilots songs played again and again for hours from behind the door and the rich scent of weed wafted from the crack below it. After almost a week of this, Patrick decided he’d seen enough, that he had to get Josh out to have some fun.

  Friday night came and Lindsey, the cute freshman, texted Patrick to let him know there was going to be an amazing house party a few miles out of town. They hadn’t hung out since the night he led her into the back yard, but they texted often.

  Tiffany also texted, asking what he was doing that night. His mind was made up to somehow get Josh to that party, so he told Tiffany it was going to be a guy’s night and left it at that.

  When Josh got out of the shower, Patrick ambushed him, cornering him in the hallway. Somehow he haggled Josh into going, but not before having to listen to Josh go on about what Simone had done to him for about the fourth time while he held a towel pinned around his waist, looking stick and miserable.

  Patrick wasn’t surprised in the least bit when he heard what Simone had done. He didn’t even think it was all that vicious, to tell the truth.

  Patrick stood there, empathizing with his friend, but he couldn’t deny that a great deal of the guilt building up inside him over fucking her while Josh was locked up started to melt away.

  Simone was too wild for relationships, Patrick knew. She and Tiffany were like north and south poles. Tiffany was the type who always had to have a boyfriend. Before she left one, she’d always have another lined up to fill the void, which was a practice that ended up really hurting a lot of good guys along the way, a lot of guys who thought they’d met their princess. She’d admitted this to Patrick when they first met, just before leaving her old boyfriend to be with him. She was that frog that never wanted to get wet, leaping from lily pad to lily pad.

  Simone couldn’t hold a boyfriend down to save her life. It just wasn’t in her DNA. Patrick knew she liked the danger, the risky sex, everything that came with the proposition of messing around with him.

  Within a few hours the two of them were in Patrick’s van driving out of the city. Patrick was thinking of ways to break it off with Tiffany. He planned to do it very soon. Most likely right before the end of school in just a few weeks, right before the summer, hoping she would then change plans and move home. It would be easiest for her and easiest for him.

  The party was far out of town on a desolate county road. They rode along the empty stretch of road, led only by the van’s dim headlights and the washing light of the full moon overhead. Patrick leaned forward over the wheel and glanced up several times. It stood alone in the deep black sky, a massive, textured white ball, looking cold and lonely. It seemed bigger out on the open land. Josh didn’t want to play any music as they drove, so they sat in silence while the van’s tires whirred.

  Patrick’s dad had given him the van. It was the fun kind that you could sleep in the back of, or park somewhere and all have drinks in the back. It was a party van—with windows, Patrick always pointed out. The inside was amazing. Patrick had turned the back into a little nook with pillows, and had stapled colorful vines of Christmas lights into
the upholstery. On special nights, there was room for a small cooler where he could keep champagne or vodka on a bed of ice. During the early spring, he’d taken Tiffany way up to the radio towers in it and they’d watched the city lights from high above on the mountain with the rear doors open wide. They’d stayed the night high up on the overlook getting drunk, fooling around, and listening to music. He had lain there in the afterglow while she fell asleep and then when it was late enough and getting cold, he closed the doors quietly and fell asleep with her. Patrick loved his van, had so many good memories in it.

  After miles of nothing, cars began to fill in on both shoulders. The cars stretched a good half mile down the road from where the actual house was. They ended up driving past it while Lindsey guided him by phone to an open spot that she had found. She waved them into the one empty spot on the dirt shoulder.

  Lindsey threw her arms around Patrick when he got out and the cool air bit at his cheeks. Beyond the dirt shoulder was a flimsy barbed-wire fence, and beyond it a dark empty field. Josh was standing there, staring out into the emptiness.

  “What’s he doing?” Lindsey asked.

  “He does this before each party,” Patrick answered. “It’s like a meditation. He stares out into the night for several minutes determining who his next victim will be, and which body parts he’ll remove first.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  Patrick gazed down at her. The moonlight got caught in her brown eyes and sparkled when their fingers interlocked.

  “You coming?” he called back over his shoulder to Josh, and it broke Josh’s trance over the empty field. Patrick whispered to her. “You got any friends who know how to mend a broken heart?”

  She nodded as he led her down the road by the hand, each step of her heels echoing loud on the road and each step of his boots muffled.

  At the front of the massive yet somewhat run-down house they climbed a dirt slope with weeds and small rocks that served as a driveway. The party was a full blown rager. The last of the year probably, at least before all the grad parties.

  There was a small paved path leading to the front steps. The front door was hanging open, and college kids were spilling out. Lindsey dragged Patrick in, keeping hold of his hand, and Josh trailed behind them with his hands wearily gripping Patrick’s shoulders. It was a fire marshal’s worst nightmare. They wormed through the glut and came into a tiled entryway area where there was at least enough room to turn and face one another.

  People bumped them as they formed a tight circle. Lindsey shouted over the music and Patrick shouted back. He was happy to see her. And she looked equally pleased to have him there, far away from the city, far away from Tiffany.

  Josh stood with his arms tightly crossed, scowling, visibly agitated at the people and more so by the fact that Patrick had misled him as to how big a party it would be.

  Off to their right, in a sunken living room, there was another separate mass of people. The room’s white carpet was trampled with black and brown footprints and spilled drinks. In the middle of the room people were hunched and crowded around a single keg. Patrick watched as one person pumped while others stood around like beggars, holding out plastic cups.

  There was no rush to join the mob to get beer. They had brought a flask of Jameson that was tucked into Patrick’s back pocket. Lindsey started engaging Josh in a little small talk. They were trading turns turning their heads so one could holler into the other’s ear, and she would laugh at whatever Josh was saying, even though from Patrick’s perspective Josh looked like he was delivering ‘last rites’ to someone.

  Even Patrick had to admire how lovely a girl she was, all short and cute. Her hair looked perfectly done, a shining and radiant dark umber. And she had a quirky sense of style to match her good looks. She was wearing a plaid gray and blue flannel button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up above her elbows and the top of the buttons all undone so everyone could see the low-cut undershirt she had on. How routine and easy it must be to get someone to buy alcohol for her and her friends.

  Lindsey leaned toward Patrick once her conversation with Josh ended. “My friend Lisa is out back. There’s another keg out there.” She came closer and pressed her fingers against his chest. Her breath was fresh, smelling like spearmint gum with no traces of booze, but he didn’t believe that she hadn’t been drinking.

  “The best stuff is hidden. Lisa’s sister lives here. Her room’s locked up, but I bet she’ll let us in to have some. There’s jungle juice, bottles and mixers and everything.”

  “Make it happen.” Patrick gave her a firm slap on the butt. “Go find her and me and Josh will walk around a bit.”

  She nodded and then went off into the adjoining kitchen, slogging through people.

  From his back pocket, Patrick brought out the pint of Jameson. He pushed it against Josh’s stomach.

  “Been a while since we’ve rocked one of these,” Patrick said.

  “How long do we have to stay?” Josh asked, his face glum.

  “As long as it takes for you to have fun.”

  “I don’t want to have fun.”

  “Fine, as long as it takes for you to find a girl.”

  “I don’t want a girl.”

  “As long as it take for you to find a guy.”

  Josh didn’t laugh.

  “What if you meet a girl that really likes you?” Patrick suggested. “How about that? You’re just going to turn her down?”

  “We don’t even know anyone here.”

  “I hear Lindsey’s friend Lisa is pretty cute.”

  “She’s not Simone.”

  Patrick huffed, growing exhausted by his friend’s pessimism. “You promised me we weren’t going to mention her tonight.”

  Josh turned away.

  Patrick stole the whiskey back from him. “I can guarantee you one thing. Simone’s going to move on, and you’re going to have to also. They’re having a girls’ night tonight. They’re out having fun, getting crazy. I didn’t want to have to say it, but guess what? Simone doesn’t care how sad you are. And staying sad won’t get whatever you had with her back.”

  Josh gave Patrick a begrudging scowl. He took the whiskey after Patrick had swigged it and drank three large gulps.

  “That’s my boy.” Patrick rubbed Josh’s messy brown hair until it was covering his eyes. Josh almost smiled and combed the locks away so he could see again.

  Josh looked down. “It’s normal to be sad sometimes. It’s not like I tried to kill myself.”

  “All I’m saying is that the sweetest revenge is living well. And I know you want revenge for Simone doing that stuff.” He put his hand firmly on Josh’s shoulder. “Let’s live well tonight.”

  Josh shrugged and then gave happy nod. A glimmer of hopefulness shone in his friend’s green eyes.

  They walked around the party, passing the bottle of Jameson as they went. Turns out there were a few people they recognized. Inevitably, because it was a small college, they always ran into someone they knew. Especially at the bigger parties. But the majority of kids there were freshmen and sophomores.

  They wandered out back where there was a sizable open patio lined with cool, authentic-looking flaming torches and beyond it, a huge plot of grass that stretched until it was too dark to see what lay beyond. People were covering every inch, even far out into the dark where Patrick could only see the outline of heads in the moonlight. And of course, there was another glut of bodies in the grass where the second keg was.

  The sound system was on the patio, tucked against the house along with an ice luge. Two guys stood on a small platform behind a massive block of ice. Twin tracks twisted down an incline that had been cut out of the ice with a chainsaw. They dumped liquor down the tracks and people waited at the bottom with their mouths held to the ice, swallowing furiously as the chilled booze avalanched against their lips. All sorts of mixtures were being had. At the moment two girls were receiving a river of Jose Cuervo mixed with blue Gatorade.

&nbs
p; People were dancing in the middle of the patio. Patrick and Josh watched for a while and as people drifted in and out of it, Patrick noticed Lindsey and an attractive girl—presumably Lisa—dancing in the middle of the crowd with two guys who were latched onto them.

  Patrick cocked a glance at Josh, who was staring at Lisa. “You’re welcome.”

  “Are they with those guys?”

  “I doubt it. We’ll steal them away in a little bit.”

  A few girls passing by stopped to chat with them along with a loud-mouthed fat guy with a PBR trucker hat on who claimed to know Patrick. They were three-quarters of the way through their Jameson bottle and the booze was sloshing in Patrick’s belly. He sensed the haze creeping up on him.

  Josh was keeping pace. There were glimmers of him opening up with the girls that came by to chat—him smiling a lot, becoming more charming, embodying more and more the great guy Patrick knew was in there, suffocating beneath the sadness.

  Lisa and Lindsey eventually tired of their dancing partners, and spun off into the crowd. Patrick didn’t keep obvious tabs on them, but did notice that they’d settled over by the ice luge.

  He talked to a few more people, mostly just messing with the under-aged kids, telling them the cops were out front with shotguns and other such stupid stuff to amuse himself. He then caught sight of Lisa and Lindsey again. They were two bubbles of energy, just drifting around, shutting down guys who were trying to hit on them.

  Patrick eased up behind them a few minutes later so that he could watch them take shots from the ice luge without them noticing. Both girls kneeled into a squat. Lisa had to be particularly careful in her short skirt. They laughed with each other and then squealed just before their soft lips met the ice. The same two guys were over the luge, standing on the stools, and began pouring pink lemonade from a container in one hand and Stoli from a bottle in the other. Patrick watched the girls take heavy, uncomfortable gulps. Soon they stood up together, laughing and wiping their mouths.

  Lindsey saw Patrick standing there after she’d swung around, and grabbed Lisa’s arm. “You have to meet him.”