Page 2 of The New Year's Party
She knows she’s never fit in. Knows they probably judge her for a hundred things. Her manners—too polite. Her reserve. Her forced laugh, her forced everything. Of course she’s heard the odious nickname Doug and Hellie coined for her years ago,Miss Prim and Proper, she’s not deaf, and it’s not like she was under any illusions that she was actuallycloseto any of them like Bennett is, but... do they hate her that much?
She should leave. She doesn’t belong, but you know what, she doesn’twantto belong anymore. She’s done.
It hits her that, even if her car is still here, she doesn’t even have her car keys—Phelps confiscated everyone’s keys at the beginning of the night—but who cares. She can call an Uber... if they even have Ubers in middle-of-nowhere Indiana... Or just walk until she finds a motel... Another spasm rocks through her stomach and she lets out a low groan. Ready or not, her guts are about to empty themselves.
Supporting herself on the wall, she crosses to the bathroom, its closed door covered in Hulk stickers and handprints from Phelps’s kids.
She jerks the doorknob and growls with frustration. It doesn’t give. She rattles it again because that is what Phelps’s rental house is like—sticking doors, paper-thin windows, everything crumbling a little, everything a little grimy, a little broken. Just like Olivia.
“Occupied!” comes an energetic, cheerful voice that sends a jolt through her.
Olivia nearly jumps back from surprise.
She is not alone.
The voice belongs to Alessia “call me Allie,” Phelps’s date,too young for him by the way, annoyingly intimate with everyone, as if she hadn’t just met them all that very night.
“I need the bathroom,” Olivia rasps.
“I’m literally on the toilet!”
“Sorry, it’s kind of urgent. Could you hurry?” Ugh. She hears herself and hates it. Even in desperate circumstances, she still apologizes. Softens things withkind ofwhen what she really wants to do is scream,It’sreally fucking urgent!
“No!” Allie squawks.
A surge of acid fills Olivia’s mouth and stops her from responding. She swallows and stumbles back down the hall. There’s an en suite bathroom in Phelps’s master bedroom—but he said the plumbing went kaput. Isn’t there a bathroom in the basement? She only went down there briefly, earlier. Wood paneling and checkerboard linoleum tiles and a light whiff of sewage. A nasty old plaid couch and a huge gaming set. A bar. Electronic darts. She retraces her steps to the kitchen. The basement is behind the door tucked to the left of the stove. That door sticks too, but she wrenches it open anyway, to darkness and an unpleasant smell.
She’s starting to feel angry now.
What a stupid idea, getting back together, like their lives were going to mesh again, like irreparable damage hadn’t been done years ago. Why did she ever want to fit in with these people anyway? Everything is a joke to them. Sure, fourteen years ago, that was part of the appeal, the fun, wasn’t it? The excessive cursing, the bullshitting, like words are things to play with, toys of no consequence. But wordsmatter. The truthmatters.
“Stupid,” she mutters to herself, beginning her descent as tears spill down her cheeks. Stupid for trusting. Stupid for coming tonight. “Stupid,stupid—”
The basement stairs are totally unsafe—a rail on one side,but open on the other—and she gropes for a light switch along the wall as she goes. The rail is slick under her left hand. A leak? This house is a hazard. They’re probably all inhaling mold—
She loses her footing and falls down the remaining few stairs, landing on her ankle with a sharp cry.
“God,” she says, tears rolling faster, thick with self-pity, as she reaches for her ankle and massages it. Why can’t she do anything right—anything? Seeing the truth—handlingthe truth—walking down a set of freakingstairs—
As she struggles back to her feet, something tickles her head. A string. Connected to a light bulb.Finally.She pulls it. The light flickers on, and she sees her own left hand. Wet. Red.
Covered in blood.
A dry yelp bursts from her and her eyes fly up.
There are times in life that you see something but it doesn’t connect right away.
This happened to Olivia when she birthed her first child. Delirious with pain, she was handed the small alien creature covered in a whitish substance and told, “This is your daughter.” She said, “Oh, thank you,” as if someone was passing her an object of unclear usage, because even though she could see her brand-new daughter, and feel her, and watch her as she slowly maneuvered up Olivia’s chest, head bobbing, it simply had nothing to do with her.
A similar thing happens to her now, and she takes in the pair of bare feet coming out from behind the couch, and connected to her by a trail of blood—the trail she followed down the stairs—
Incongruously, her mind starts playing a song, like something in her wants to provide a soundtrack to this life-changing moment. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”Yes, Elton John had the exact right lyrics to describe this, she thinks as she limps forward, herankle throbbing, through the blood—Don’t look at the blood—toward the figure on its back.
She’s about to clear the couch to see who it is. She hopes with a strange, vague part of her that it isn’t Bennett—they have their problems, but whether they end up together or apart, the kids—the kids need themboth—
No. It can’t be.
She takes in the pale face. The open, unseeing eyes. The blood pooling under the head.
