Page 30 of Blade
Jolene and Kayla shifted into their roles, performing their duties. Jolene wrapped her arms around Indy and let her bury her face in her neck.
Then Kayla pulled the flask of Jack Daniel’s from her purse. Only this time, she didn’t take a swig herself, but handed it to Indy, who shrugged, not sure whether to drink or not drink from Kayla’s flask, but the indecision stopped her crying.
“Going once ...” Kayla said, waving the flask between them. She’d started to pull it away when Indy reached out and grabbed it with both hands.
Without a single beat she opened her mouth and tilted it back, wrapping her lips around the metal rim as she took a drink.
“God!” she blurted out, her face twisted and her throat gagging. But she swallowed it, only to have Kayla tell her to take another.
“Trust me,” she said. “Just take one more.”
Which Indy did, and then her face grew curious, and then she took a third sip, this time prepared and determined.
“It’ll kill the pain,” Jolene said.
“Which one?” Indy asked with a devilish smile. “The bruise—or my mother?”
Indy held on to the flask, drinking until she got a good buzz, while they spun plans and solutions to the problem of the bruise. They had no idea what to do about Patrice, who hadn’t even bothered to chaseIndy down. Hadn’t come here to look for her. Apparently, she was more mad than worried.
Ice packs, heating pads, ACE bandages? What would help heal a bruise? A bruise that kept getting injured every day. Suddenly, Jolene knew.
“Wait!” she said. “Hugo told me about something he did back home. Something he used on a bad bruise.” Hugo—the Spanish skater who had a crush on Jolene and was bringing the booze to the field tonight for the underage skaters. Not exactly a reliable source for medical advice.
“He’s there—with the other guys from Avery!” Jolene continued, making her case for leaving now, for the field, because everything could be solved, satisfied, relieved—at the field.
And this was enough. This and the Jack Daniel’s were enough to get Indy into a pair of loose shorts and a T-shirt. Sandals and even some lipstick and then down the stairs and out the front door.
Jolene drove. Kayla sat beside her in the front, Indy and Ana in the back. The top was down, the wind drowning out Jolene’s singing until they were stopped at a light, and again until another light, and then a final time when they reached the field.
It was total chaos, cars everywhere like in a parking lot where someone forgot to paint the lines. Music blasted from a speaker propped up in the trunk of a hatchback. It was so loud the bass notes shook the ground. One giant party on the last Saturday before the start of school.
They found a spot between a black windowless van and a silver sedan. Everyone could see them with the top down.IndyAnawith cans of soda they’d sneaked out of the kitchen at Avery Hall. Kayla with her Jack Daniel’s. Jolene lit a cigarette.
The passenger door to the black van opened, and a wiry boy hopped out, his jeans falling from his narrow hips. He pulled them up, tucked in his T-shirt.
The driver’s side door opened next. Another boy. Then the double back doors, two more boys.
It was dark, well past nine. And dark in Echo wasdark, even with all the parked cars, and the headlights of a gray pickup behind them. Even with the overhead lights shining from inside the van.
And in that darkness, the boys were just shapes in jeans and T-shirts. Still, they were boys, and Ana felt her brain out of sync, like she, too, had taken three swigs of Jack Daniel’s and her emotions were now drunk, not doing their job.
The show was over. Indy’s bruise crisis was over, for now, because Jolene had convinced her that they could make it better. The getting-ready part was over, the drive with the singing and wind in their hair—also over. It was time forthis—boys getting out of vans in the dark—and where were the emotionsthisrequired?
Ana tried to analyze the boys like a science project, because the thinking part of her brain never failed her.
The tall wiry one. The sporty one. The two from the back, somewhere in between. Short hair. Long hair. Straight, wavy. One wore a jean jacket.
Then Jolene, with a different, more astute observation, said, “There’s four of them ... and there’s four of us.”
“Cool,” Kayla said, taking another swig of Jack Daniel’s.
Indy leaned over, her eyes still red and swollen from crying, her breath smelling of alcohol and her face relaxed. “I need to find Hugo,” she whispered, as if she hadn’t noticed the four boys and what was about to happen.
Which then did happen when Jolene opened her door, and then Kayla opened hers, and the wiry boy from the passenger side said, “Want to party?”
They were around them in a second, Wavy Hair by Indy’s door, Wiry by hers. Jean Jacket went to the front to meet up with Jolene, and Sporty went straight for Kayla. As if they’d decided all of this beforehand.
And there they were, at last, Ana’s emotions catching up to the facts. Excitement.Check.Curiosity.Check.Anticipatory humiliation.Check.Fear.Check. Check.