Page 32 of The Rebel of Raleigh High
It feels like the gold chain around my neck is choking the life out of me. Thank fuck it doesn't seem like Jake actually expects an answer out of me, because I don't trust myself to speak right now. I ignore the heat rising up the back of my neck, giving Jacob a tight smile. If he were concerned with anything but his own shitty perspective, his own self-centered point of view, then he might notice the cutting edge that's crept into my voice.
“Yeah, you’re right. He’s far better off without anyone giving him shit. It’d suck if he couldn’t throw parties anymore.”
I wouldkillto have my mother back.
I would kill to know where my father was, if only so I could throat punch the fuck for abandoning us all after Ben was born.
Jacob’s probably never even considered the possibility that Leon might sacrifice this house and his unfettered freedom if it meant that he could have his mother back in his life. He grins at me like I’m seeing things his way, we’re cut from the same cloth, and he’s pleased that we’re so much alike. “Come on, man. Let’s get this fucker started before the others show up. Leon’s dad’s got a stash of high-end Japanese whiskey, and I know where the key to the liquor cabinet is.”
* * *
Everywhere I look,I keep seeing her face. The place is thumping, loud, bassy music echoing around the cavernous interior of the house, but everything feels very quiet and very still inside my head. I know she’s not here. This is the last place on earth Silver would appear, but still my eyes continue to play tricks on me, making the back of every head of long golden-brown hair look like hers. I can feel the slight buzz of alcohol jittering through my veins, but I’m far from drunk. I’m used to drinking. I’ve been knocking back stuff way harder than the pissy beer one of the guys on the football team managed to scrounge up for a very long time now. Even Leon’s dad’s whiskey didn’t have any real impact on me. I laugh and joke along with the other revelers, though, pretending to be as fucked up as them, and all the while I’m biting my tongue, hating every second of this bullshit, tasting blood in my mouth.
Leon's not like Jake and his brainless cohorts. I'm not sure how I haven't run into him until now, but I think, under different circumstances, I'd like the guy. He’s quiet and steady, thinking a lot as he looks around, watching our school mates treat his father's pad with complete disregard. He flinches every time something breaks, but he doesn't do or say anything about it. When a large, expensive looking painting hanging over the fireplace is hit with a flying football and the canvas tears, he just walks blankly into the kitchen, his eyes glazed over. The guy looks like a teenaged ken doll in his stiff, button-down shirt and his khakis. On the outside, he and I couldn't be more unlike. But when I catch the look of open disgust on his face when he finds three guys in the hallway, gathered around a phone, rapt, talking about someone's wet pussy, I get the feeling we're pretty fucking similar on the inside.
I spend an hour dodging both Zen and Halliday for different reasons and wind up in the kitchen, back to the wall, observing the drunken debauchery that’s taking place in every direction with a cold, unimpressed mask of indifference on my face. The mask’s a warning, a threat: come within five feet of me and expect to lose a limb. For the most part, it’s an efficient way of making sure no one bothers me, but Leon seems impervious to it. He enters the kitchen, hands empty when everyone else is holding at least two drinks, and when he sees me, he actually looksrelieved. He heads straight for me, smiling tightly, and I wonder what he's going to say; he wasn't all that talkative earlier when Jake introduced me to him as his new ‘boy'—a title that I resent beyond words. Somehow makes me feel complicit with him.
When Leon reaches me, he spins around and sags against the wall beside me. “Just like every cliched movie you’ve ever seen, right?” he says wearily. “We are the children of America. The country’s brightest and most promising.” He seems resigned as a girl with bright green hair runs into the kitchen, diving for the sink, leaning over it and retching her guts up. The moment couldn’t have been timed better. Neither could the roar of laughter and cheering that goes up as everyone turns toward the spectacle and begins to celebrate the fact that the party’s arrived at its drunken zenith.
A series of high fives are traded around the kitchen. A grinning, slack-faced girl with lipstick on her teeth laughs like a hyena, turning to me, holding her hand up for me to join in. The icy, unamused lift of my left eyebrow is all I require to decline. The girl’s smile falters. She lowers her hand and turns away, hiding her face in her red solo cup.
“Impressive.” Leon laughs softly, scratching at his jaw. “Think you could teach me how to do that sometime? I use way too many words to tell people to fuck off. Very ineffectual.”
This earns him a wry smile. “It’s a gift,” I admit.
“You’re hating this,” Leon observes, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
I throw back a mouthful of beer, draining my cup. “Whatever gave you that impression. Aren’t I the life of the party?”
“I’ve seen nuns have more fun.”
A full smile this time. “Hey, I bet those broads are freaky as fuck underneath those habits.” And then, “You don’t seem to be having the best time yourself.”
Leon lets out a derisive huff of laughter. “Yeah, well, I’m sure I’d be just as moronic as those idiots if I drank, but I’m not quite as enamored with the whole ‘typical high school experience,’ as my father calls it.”
“Your dad encourages this?” I say, empty cup in hand, pointing at the ceiling, encompassing the entire party in one circle of my finger.
Leon pulls a face. “Yeah, well, high school was the best time of his life, apparently. He expects these blow-outs. Means I'm enjoying my life, even though he's never around to witness it. If I don't throw the occasional rager, he tells me I'm working too hard and threatens to ban me from the swim team, so…” He holds out his hands, palms up, shaking his head a little as he takes in the scene in his kitchen. Two guys are holding teaspoons to their mouths, a challenge in both their eyes as they count down from three. Once they reach one, they both shove the spoons into their mouths, attempting to swallow back what looks like a heaping mound of cinnamon. A hale of choking follows after, spluttered brown clouds of fragrant spice coughed up as they both struggle to gasp around the cinnamon. It's the most moronic thing I've ever seen.
“…here we are,” Leon says, finishing his sentence with an air of resignation. “I swear, I have no idea how people can get dumber as they get older.”
“These guys certainly make it look real fucking easy.”
Outside. Apart. I feelotherthan these people, I always have, and it sounds to me like Leon feels the same. He takes my solo cup from me and heads to the large marble island in the center of the kitchen, punching Austin, one of the guys in my History class, in the shoulder when he tries to give him a tittie twister. Looks like the slug hurt, but Austin laughs it off, slapping Leon on the back. Leon ducks his head, quickly pouring a number of different liquids from a number of different bottles into the cup he took from me and then adding a splash of coke at the end.
I can smell the liquor fumes rising out of the cup as he passes it back to me; I’m gonna be in trouble if I drink this. I sure as shit won’t be riding home, that’s for sure. I can scheme and bust my ass all I like to get Ben back, but if I end up with a DUI on my record, I can kiss goodbye to any hopes of getting guardianship of Ben. EvenI’mnot that stupid.
“Come on,” Leon says, jerking his chin toward the large set of sliding glass doors to his right. “These assholes are giving me a headache. I wanna show you something.”
I don’t argue. Any excuse to get the fuck away from the party, really, and I’m curious. What this guy wants to show me in particular, I have no clue, but it’s got to be better than watching two dickheads choke on cinnamon.
I haven't been out the back yet. A manicured lawn stretches down a slope toward a few outbuildings, and I can hear water running somewhere. Lord knows why anyone would bother with a fountain when the sky is basically a permanent water feature. Leon walks off down the slope into the looming dark without saying a word. I sniff the contents of my solo cup as I follow after him, risking a sip and then wincing at the sheer volume of alcohol within the drink. It’s Long Island Iced Tea level shit.
“My dad has trouble finding new and interesting ways to spend his money. He set this up for me a couple of years ago, I guess back when he was trying to inspire some sort of masculine, boy’s club attitude in me.” His face is pale and solemn as he looks back over his shoulder. “As usual, I disappointed him.”
I knock back a mouthful of the drink, my insides burning as the alcohol slides down my throat. “Wouldn’t worry about it. Sons are born to disappoint their fathers.”
We reach the first of the outbuildings—a large, white, corrugated steel structure with a flat roof, the size of a small barn—and Leon takes out a set of keys, unfastening a weighty, industrial sized lock that secures a large steel sliding door. A moment later, Leon steps inside and hits a light, and bank after bank of strip lighting blinks to life inside.
