Page 10 of Riot Rules
A tall, gangly guy with the beginnings of a shitty mustache turns around and walks right into me. “Yo! Yo, hey man! Take a video for us? We’re gonna shotgun these beers.” He hands me a cell phone with a stupendously shattered screen, gesturing to his friend—a much shorter guy with a face full of acne—who’s prepped and ready with a beer in his hand.
“I’m gonna dessssttroy you, Travis,” his friend slurs.
Wren whoops, grabbing the short guy’s head; he shakes it like his skull is an uncracked shell and he’s rattling the nut inside. “Yeah, dude! Destroy him! You got this.”
The short guy’s too drunk to realize that Wren’s fucking with him. He thinks he’s genuinely trying to hype him up, which is fucking ridiculous. I know my friend; he’d rather loosen a few of Shorty’s teeth with a right hook than participate in this kind of dumb, machismo bullshit. We have a pretense to maintain, though, and that means we have to play along.
I can do it.
Wren can do it.
Pax is physically incapable of pretending anything. He wouldn’t be able to play-act convincingly if his life fucking depended on it. He stalks off into the crowd, abandoning us to our fate like the unconscionable bastard that he is.
I film the idiots sucking on their beer cans, absently wondering if they’ve had their tetanus shots.
“Yeeeewwww! Yeah! FuckingKILLER!” Travis wins the absurd display. He hurls his crushed PBR can down onto the kitchen tile, throws his head back and bays like a rabid wolf. “You two! Come on! We’re doing shots!”
Wild-eyed and mentally protesting (I can hear him screaming inside his own head), Wren punches the guy in the upper arm hard enough to leave a bruise, laughing like a maniac. Both Shorty and Travis have been assaulted by my friend now but neither of them is astute enough to realize it. “Yeah! Lead the way, man!” Wren cries. “Fucking SHOTS!”
Four unreasonably large measures of Jim Beam later and I’ve reached my breaking point. I seize Wren by the back of his t-shirt and begin to back away.
“Sorry, boys. We need to find our friend. He has an anti-social behavior disorder. He’ll nail someone to a wall if we don’t keep him in check.” The crowd swallows us. Two seconds later, we’re on the other side of the kitchen and our new friends are nowhere to be seen. “Jesus fucking Christ, I need a shower,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “I hate faking that shit. I need to wash myself off me.Myself, Jacobi. You made me not like myself, and Ialwayslike myself. It’s one of the many things that I’m skilled at.”
“Quit griping, dude. Your seventeenth century manor house in the English countryside is showing.”
No one can deflate a guy like Wren Jacobi. Exceptme, when I really put my back into it. I give him a dour look, rolling my eyes. “You ever been cathed?”
“Cathed?”
“Yeah. Had a catheter jammed down your dick hole. It really sucks, dude. Hurts like a motherfucker. That’s how I feel right now. Like I’ve been cathed with barbed wire and I’m pissing razor blades. And that’s only when I’m standing still. When I walk, it feels like someone’s shoved broken glass down my urethra and they’re using a bottle brush to really wedge it down there good—”
“Oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with you?Stop!” His eyes are legit watering. “You look like a Grecian fucking god. We’re at a party full of half-naked, liquored-up girls. Find someone to kiss it better. I’ll grab Pax and take care of this. Be ready to bounce in thirty.” He melts into the sea of writhing bodies, which is perfect and also really fucking sucks at the same time.
People make assumptions about me. They assume I’m a good boy. They assume, because of my heritage and my upbringing, that I’m a gentleman, and they couldn’t be more wrong. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a fuck up. I like to scheme. I like to fuck. I like to set things on fire just to watch them burn. Nothing would make me happier than heading upstairs to join the boys in the next level fuckery they have planned, but I reallyamin a serious amount of pain.
I comfort myself with the knowledge that I’ll hear all of the details when I get back to the House. In the meantime, I snag an unchaperoned bottle of vodka and a Sharpie from the stand in the hallway.
“What the hell is that guydoing?”
I throw up a middle finger at the group of idiots who have gathered to watch me work and then get back to it. I’m no Picasso, but I step back from my masterpiece when I’m done feeling rather proud of myself. The Edmondson kids aren’t the only ones who like to draw dicks on things, and the one I’ve drawn on the photo of my father is a veiny, hairy monster, aimed right at the dipshit’s mouth.
“There we go.” I toss the Sharpie over my shoulder, grinning. “Takethat, fucker.”
6
CARRIE
“Ahh shit.Incoming. I spy Mara. She’s heading this way.”
Mara never misses a party, regardless of where it’s being held. The two kind-of-hot guys Pres and I have been playing beer pong with elbow each other, laughing under their breath as an icy wind blows against my back, making me shiver. The wind isn’t real. It’s just Mara’s frosty mood. “What in theactualhell, Carrie?”
I spin around and face her, already cringing. Mara, with her long, jet-black hair, her bright blue eyes, and her impossibly high cheekbones, is extraordinary to look at. She’s beautiful in the same way that avalanches and hurricanes are beautiful: impressive and awesome from a distance, but incredibly dangerous up close.
She was curvy and cute when we first became friends, her button nose and her over-sized manga cartoon eyes making her seem a little childish. Her puppy fat burnt off two years ago, though, and her features became angular. Sharpened. Her eyes, once innocent and full of curiosity, took on a more predatory look. Now, she’s a straight up smoke-show.
“You’re here and you didn’t even message me,” she complains.
I should have let her know we’d arrived right away. Sometimes, Mara can be a little intense at these things. Boy hungry. It used to be charming, but after a while it just became exhausting. Honestly, I needed a moment to chill with Pres before we tracked her down.
