Page 14 of My Fault
“Honestly, I feel for you,” he said, and that made me feeleven worse. “Nicholas Leister is the absolute worst.” He shifted gears and slowed down as we pulled into a residential area.
“So you know him?” I tried to bring together in my mind the gentleman to my left and the delinquent in the 4x4.
“Unfortunately, I do,” he replied. “His father saved my father’s ass in a pretty nasty case with the IRS just over a year ago. He’s a good attorney, and his little bastard son can’t help rubbing it in my face every time he gets the chance. We went to high school together. I can assure you he’s the most egotistical, rude son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.”
Damn! Apparently I wasn’t the only member of the Anti-Nicholas Leister Club. That made me feel a bit better.
“I’d like to say something nice about him,” Zack went on, “but he’s got more dirty laundry than anyone I’ve ever met. Take my advice and stay away from him.”
“Easy for you to say. We live under the same roof.” I guess I wasn’t feeling better after all.
“He’s at the party I mentioned, in case you want to give him a kick in the ass,” he said with a grin. That information was a complete surprise.
“He’s going to the party?” I felt hot shame burning all over my body.
“You’re not really thinking…” he started to ask apprehensively.
“I’m going,” I told him, as sure of it as I’d ever been of anything in my entire life. “And I will give him that kick in the ass.”
Twenty minutes later, we were on the beach in front of an enormous house. But the size wasn’t what caught the eye so much as the quantity of people gathered around it, on the entrance stairs, anywhere you turned.
The music was audible from a mile away, so loud I thought I could feel my brain bouncing around in my skull.
“Are you sure about this?” my new best friend asked. Since I’d told Zack my plan, he’d been trying to convince me to abandon ship. It seemed my new stepbrother, apart from being a hardhead and a moron, was prone to scrapping. “Noah, you have no idea what you’re getting into. You already saw how it didn’t even bother him to leave you back there. What makes you think he’s going to care what you have to say to him?”
Gripping the door handle, I responded, “Trust me. He’ll never do anything like that to me again.”
We got out of the car and walked toward the immense entryway of the house. It was like going to one of those parties you see in movies, like inNever Back DownorThe Fast and the Furious.Just crazy. Beer kegs were laid out all over the front yard, and a bunch of guys were shouting and encouraging each other to drink more. The girls were wearing bikinis, some of them just bras and panties.
“Are all the parties he goes to like this?” I asked, looking grossed out as a couple hooked up against one of the walls of the house, not even caring that everyone was watching them. It was repugnant.
“Not all of them,” he responded, chuckling. “This one is mixed.” That threw me off. Mixed? What did he mean?
“Are you saying because there are guys and girls at the same party?” I returned to memories of my past, when I was twelve and my mother had organized my first party with boys. A total disaster, so far as I recalled: the boys had thrown me and my friends in the pool, and we’d ended up founding the Anti-Boys Chapter of the Best Friends Forever Club. I knew it was stupid, but I had been twelve, not seventeen.
Zack grabbed my arm and dragged me forward. His fingers were warm, and I felt calmer knowing he was there. This party could intimidate anyone, let alone an outsider like myself.
“What I mean is anyone can come,” he said, pushing through the crowd and going inside. The music was wild and repetitive and drilled into your eardrums so deep it hurt just to be there.
“I don’t get it.” He pushed me into one of the rooms where the music killed you slowly rather than instantly and where I could talk without shredding my vocal cords.
“Anyone who pays can come,” he told me, waving at some of the guys there. I didn’t like him having the kind of friends I saw there. “They use the money to buy all kinds of liquor and…” He looked at me a few moments, maybe wondering whether I was old enough to hear this. “And all the stuff you need for a party to get lit.”
Drugs.Great. And he thought that was funny. What the hell had I gotten into?
There were couples lying on the sofa and others standing up dancing to the rhythm of the music, and I realized that among the rich kids in expensive clothes, there were people who could have been from the worst neighborhoods. It was an explosive mix.
“I’m starting to think this was a bad idea,” I told my companion, but by now he was sitting on one of the couches with a bottle of beer in his hand.
“Come here, Noah,” he said, tugging my arm till I fell in his lap. “Let’s have fun tonight. Don’t waste your time on that asshole.” His fingers stroked my hair and my shoulders, and I tensed up and then stood as fast as I could.
“I’m here for one reason.” I glared at him. I’d been wrong about Zack, it was obvious. “Thanks for bringing me.” I turned around and walked away.
I didn’t really know what to do here after giving the cold shoulder to the one guy who wasn’t so drunk he’d smash his car into a tree if I asked him to take me home. But I couldn’t stop imagining the confused look on Nicholas’s face when he saw me. Had Zack lied to me, though? Maybe he was just a crazy drunk trying to drag me to the worst place ever. Well, I was going to look, and if I found Nicholas, I was going to do what I came there for.
I went toward the kitchen, where there were fewer people,thinking I’d get a glass of cold water. I didn’t know whether to drink it or dump it over my head to try to wake up from this nightmare. This day seemed like it would never end.
When I turned down the little hallway leading there, I stopped.
