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Copyright 2020
Ginger Scott, Little Miss Write LLC
It’s quite a thing for a girl to watch her future go up in smoke. I suppose I’m being a little melodramatic, given that it’s my mom who lost her job, not me. And honestly, I hate how dependent my dreams are on her hard work. I’ve never found it fair, but there are a lot of things in my life that I consider unjust but nonetheless are sewn into my fabric. What’s one more?
My mom worked at Tiny Prints Studio in the mall at the edge of Allensville, our town that’s like a pimple on Indianapolis’s forehead. We’re a nice zit, but economically? Full-on parasite. Most of the department stores closed when the huge outlet mall opened off the turnpike a year ago, and the empty spaces taken up by a charter school, pawn shop and thrift store. Other than the few remaining fast food joints, the photography studio was the only original business still operating in the plaza . . . until Tuesday.
Rent on the studio was too much for the couple who owned the business, and retirement was far more inviting than negotiating. They gave a few of the oldest pieces of equipment to my mom, sold the rest, then rode off for warmer temps in some retirement burb near Phoenix. Meanwhile, Kristen Mabee is once again working the wedding circuit, shooting weddings all over the tri-state area so we can stay in this shitty house full of shitty memories of how my shitty dad decided to walk out on us.
And me?
Well, no more Montessori school, for starters. It’s not posh private-school expensive, but it does cost, and public school is nice and free. And anything beyond community college is out of the blueprint too, unless the bowling alley gives me a hundred-dollar-an-hour raise. Not likely. In my immediate future, though, I wish like hell there’s a way I could borrow my mom’s photo tech to touch up the photo on my ID before my first day back at Public. I seriously miss the warm cocoon of the tiny Montessori school I got to go to for junior year.
“June, it’s fine!” My best friend Abby rips the card from my hand and tosses it into her back seat. It’s a mess back there so I’ll be lucky to find it before school starts on Monday.
“I’m cross-eyed.” I sigh, pulling the visor down and flipping on the light for the mirror. Am I always that way or just for this one picture?
“Nobody will ever see it. I promise,” she says.
I flip the visor back up, not convinced that I don’t actually look that way in real life, and flop back into my seat. Six people have already seen it, and the school photocopied it twice for registration. At this rate, my high school ID photo is in line for billboard placement any day now.
“You promise I’m going to know people at this party?” I’m not great with socializing. It was part of the appeal of going to a small school for the last year. The closer we get to the D’Angelo house, the more ill-fitting my T-shirt feels. I swear it shrank in the wash. I don’t buy belly shirts, but I see my flesh when I raise my arms up halfway. And the top of my jeans is folding in on itself. It makes the zipper part bulge like I’m some jock with a huge cup. I squirm in my seat and shimmy the tight black pants down my hips while simultaneously tugging the black and white striped T-shirt toward my waist.
Abby glances at me and laughs.
“You’re being nuts. You look great. And it’s everyone you remember from sophomore year. It’ll be like you never left.” She pulls into a free space at the side of the road about four houses down from the twins’ house. Cars line up both sides of the street, and we can hear the music thumping the moment Abby opens the driver’s side door.
“I don’t really like everyone from sophomore year. And I did leave for a reason.” Perspiration builds at my neck despite the coolness of the late summer air.
“You left because you thought people didn’t like you.” She actually rolls her eyes when she says it, which pisses me off a little. She makes it seem so insignificant. She’s always thought most of it was in my head, but a few things were plainly undeniable. The dog poop left on the hood of my car about a dozen times when it was parked at school was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Abby, someone literally picked my car up and moved it into the middle of the drainage area by the school. Being a dick like that takes a coordinated effort. That’s a bit of a sign.”
“Yeah, I know. But people at this school are just dicks, like, unilaterally. To everyone.” She nods in halfhearted acknowledgement, flipping her own mirror down to touch up the red on her lips. She turns to me and holds out the gloss. I recoil and she shrugs. Abby is pin-up beautiful. Her hair is this caramel color that lightens every summer, and her skin is a rich, cocoa brown. She got curves in eighth grade, and her skin is expensive and flawless. Her mom got her into modeling when she was young, and she’s been landing some big print ads lately. At a thousand dollars a gig, the money in her college account has grown to Ivy League proportions over the years. I’ve always been her alt-friend with near-black hair that I sometimes wear in braids on either side of my head because it’s literally the only hair style I know how to do. My friend has always said she’d trade me her hair and curves in a heartbeat for my green eyes. I wish trades like that were a thing. Done deal. Enjoy the lanky body with knobby knees and size A cups.
“Look, everyone has gotten older,” she begins, flipping her mirror closed and flicking her long-nailed fingertips toward my door handle in a gesture that urges me to get out. My hand grips the handle, but I can’t seem to bring myself to open the door. “You’re living in the past too much. People don’t care about pranks and childish things like grudges or whatever.”
“You mean bullying,” I correct. A grudge would mean I did something wrong, and I would know who I wronged. I’ve never known any of it. It’s just these little things that always came out of nowhere and built up. And yeah, maybe Abby is right—our school is full of immature pranksters. I’ve seen others get hit with the fallout, too. But for me, it wore me down.
“Fine, bullying. All I’m saying, June, is we’re going to be eighteen this year—all of us. This is it, the last moments of unabandoned freedom and youth! We’re supposed to party and stay out late and maybe even—gasp!—fail a class that doesn’t count on our transcripts. And there are so many boys we need to kiss! I know you wanna kiss boys at parties, June.”
I hate that I blush when she teases me. I get out of the car just to escape her conversation, but it only delays the inevitable. She’s going to bring this all back to Lucas Fuller. It always comes back to him.
I’ve been in love with my neighbor since the day he moved in at the start of our sixth-grade year. We were instant friends, though admittedly, my attraction to him was heavily dimples and blue-eye driven at first. Our moms took turns with school carpool duties. We swam together in the same summer league. We wasted away afternoons licking sticky grape-flavored popsicle juice from our arms while we sat in the sun on the roof of the old Buick my dad stored in our back yard. Technically, Lucas Fuller was my first kiss—it was an eighth grade dare in the back of a field trip bus. Our lips were puckered, there was zero tongue, and our eyes were wide open. Even after that awkward kiss, not a single day passed without us either hanging out or texting each other good night. I made my mom drive me two hours away once to watch his freshman football game, and I was always the one yelling the loudest for his home ones.
Mostly—more than anything—Lucas Fuller was my person. I’m shy, painfully so, but never around him. We had a pact that we would never lie, and there would be zero secrets.
Now, that’s all that’s left.
The summer after our freshman year, it all just stopped. Everything—no rides, no glances in my direction, no acknowledgement of my existence. I called and texted and left so many unanswered messages. When I went to his house, nobody opened the door, even when I knew they all were home. My parents divorced around then, and my grandmother moved in because she got too sick to live on her own. My mom worked and took care of her, and when she couldn’t, I did. Hospice came and went, my grandmother’s belongings were set out in our driveway for people to pick through so we could collect quarters and dimes to piece together enough to cover her last few expenses. My world was falling apart, and my best friend, the one person who swore we would never keep secrets from each other, was both right next door and a million miles away. That’s when Abby and I got closer. She’d been through a lot of the same things I was going through, and she’s the kind of person who insists on helping.
Dragging me out to this party, though? It doesn’t feel much like help. It’s more of the torture variety.
“And would you look at that. It’s a black Nissan pickup truck with . . . oh! FULLER1 license plates!” Abby points in the direction of an oversized tire as if I don’t know it’s Lucas’s truck she’s talking about.
“He’s at every party, Abs. And no, I’m not going to talk to him. It’s not like he doesn’t know where to find me. If he wanted to talk, we would have by now.” I look down at my feet while I push my fists into my pockets and shuffle along the blacktop. After a few steps, I run into my friend’s waiting palms as she grips me by the shoulders and shakes me until I meet her gaze.
“Maybe you should just finally move on and spend tonight talking to someone—hell, anyone—else.” Abby’s eyes plead with mine for a non-verbal agreement that I’ll try to be a normal high school senior for just one night.
“You’re someone else. I talk to you,” I quip. I’m only partly teasing.
Abby shoves off me and walks backward a few steps, giving me a challenging stare before spinning on her heel.
“I meant someone with a penis. And no, before you make another joke, I do not have a secret dick tucked away in my pants.” Her pace picks up, bringing us closer to the front door of the party house. I laugh a little, silently, because her penis joke was funny, but by the time her hand is firmly on the D’Angelos’ doorknob, my amusement has shifted to a need to vomit.
“Ready?” she asks.
“No.” Her mouth twists to say “tough shit,” and with one push, we’re inside.
Competing music blasts from two separate rooms, the hard thump of indie punk trying to drown out rib-shaking hip hop beats. Faces I don’t really recognize nod at Abby then me as we walk through the crowded living room toward the kitchen area. Two girls face each other over a coffee table littered with beer cans and vape pens, yelling about who is disrespecting whom. The overwhelming cacophony ratchets up my urge to run. Abby must sense it because she grabs my hand and tugs me close, keeping me right at her side until we get to the open doorway that leads to the back yard.
“Why is this fun again?” I say close to her ear. I’m still not sure she can hear me.
She bends down and flips open a red cooler filled with freezing water and melting ice. She fishes her hand around, coming up with two beers.
“Here. You’re drinking one,” she says, pulling back the tab then pressing the lip of the can to my mouth as if I’m a baby needing to be fed. I shake my head and step back, taking the can from her hand.
“I don’t like beer.”
“You’ve never tried beer,” she retorts.
Our mini staring competition lasts about two seconds before I give in and take a small sip. Her mouth ticks up with satisfaction, but when she tips her head back to take a drink from her own beer, I spill a little of mine on the rocks and let my mouth sour. Beer is gross.
“Oh, my God, is that—? No. It couldn’t be!” I recognize Tory D’Angelo’s voice without having to turn and face him. His presence motivates me to take another drink of my beer; I suddenly regret pouring so much out.
“June Mabee!” He snakes his hands around my hips as he steps in behind me. I spit out what’s left in my mouth and move away from him with a jerk of my elbow. We aren’t close. In fact, the only real interaction he and I have had was when I let him copy my science quiz answers during freshman science. I hate myself for letting peer pressure work on me. I should have let the asshole fail.
“Aww, maybe Mabee, what’s wrong?” He’s drunk, which amps up his assholeness a little. He’s been teasing me about my last name since junior high. So clever, saying it twice.
“You were right, Abby. Everyone’s grown up so much,” I say, giving my friend an icy glare. Her dry smile puckers on one side but she doesn’t argue with my reasoning. Kinda hard with Tory still hovering around us, breaking all kinds of personal space rules. Most girls let him get away with it because, in terms of good looks? He’s damn near perfection. While he’s smug about it, his twin brother Hayden is nearly oblivious to the power he could have at his fingertips. Bronzed skin, chiseled jawlines, light brown hair that somehow makes them both look like they just got in from a jog along the beach—the D’Angelo boys are Calvin Klein models in the making.
“Don’t you have some freshman to hit on?” Bless Abby’s confidence. One of the best perks of our friendship is her ability to say those things I wish I could.
“Still sore that I wouldn’t let you suck my dick this summer, Abs?” He actually pushes his tongue in his cheek to accentuate his crass reply. What a fool. She’s going to burn him to the ground.
“Isn’t it more like . . .” My friend takes a thin pretzel stick from a bowl on the patio table nearby and pinches it between her thumb and finger, holding it a few inches away from Tory’s face. His eyes haze and his jaw twitches. Even though it’s only the three of us here to witness her rip on him, the joke breaks through and embarrasses him. I wish I could trade her my green eyes for that skill right there.
“Come on, June. Looks like the cool kids are all over there,” my friend says. She purposely ignores the raging bull she leaves standing alone and weaves our hands together to drag me along the deck.
“He’s probably going to remember tonight all wrong and think I’m the one who said all that, you know.” I step on a wooden beam and lift myself to sit on the deck’s guardrail. Abby does the same, but swings one leg over so she straddles it facing me.
“Good. Then you’ll have a reputation of not putting up with shit from douchebags,” she says, pulling her phone from the small purse she’s wearing across her body. She holds it up before I can protest and snaps my photo.
“Why? Why do you always do that? You must have an endless collection of me making dumb-as-hell faces,” I protest. I start to laugh a little, too.
“If it didn’t work on your foul moods so well, I wouldn’t do it.” She takes one more shot before tucking the phone into the zipper pouch of her bag.
That she has hundreds of those pics scratches at me a little. It means I’ve been in a foul mood hundreds of times. I had to come back to Public because we couldn’t afford the Montessori school anymore, so maybe it means I get to reinvent myself a little. Maybe Abby is a little right in saying that we are all getting older—none of us are the same people we were two years ago. I’m not the same. At least, I don’t have to be.
“I’m sorry.” I half shout the words to my friend because the music is still making it hard to hear. I’m probably not going to be able to apologize to her more than this one time, so I have to make sure she hears it.
Her mouth curves slowly and she flits her thick black lashes at me before leaning forward enough to push gently at my shoulder.
“Aww, June. You’re getting all mushy.”
I squeeze my eyes shut in playful shame.
“Apology accepted. I’m not sure what you’re apologizing for, but I’ll save it up and cash it in when I feel like it,” she says.
“Okay.” I laugh, opening my eyes as my friend tips her head back and drinks the rest of her beer. When she’s done, she leans forward again, reaching for my can to test the weight. It’s still nearly half full, even with the portion I dumped, so I give it to her reluctantly.
Her eyes haze with suspicion.
“One of us is driving home. Let it be me, okay? I’m not a big beer girl anyhow.” I hold her stare as we each grasp the cup between us. She hasn’t fully committed yet so I don’t let go.
“Abby, I promise. I’m going to stay, and I’ll have fun, just not with the beer, okay?”
Her eyes squint a little more. She’s still not buying it.
“How about this? Whatever they’re doing in there, on the sofas”—some stupid game I would normally make fun of—“you take my beer and I’ll go play that game.” I regret my offer the second the cup leaves my grip. She gulps nearly half of it down before wiping her chin along her forearm and kicking her leg over the beam to stand on the deck.
Shit. We’re going to play a party game.
“Well, all right then,” she says, threading our fingers together and tugging me forward until I lose the balance battle and fall to my feet.
Not wanting to look as though I’m being dragged into this—even though I am—I loop my arm around my friend’s and smile at her. She isn’t convinced. She tosses her head back in laughter, but lets me save face while we make our way inside. At the huge sectional sofa , people are tossing dice on a giant trunk-style coffee table and picking small papers out of a bowl depending on the number they roll. Abby and I kneel on the floor behind a few of the others.
“I’m not next. You’re next!” One of the many faces I don’t know but recognize shoves playfully at another vaguely familiar girl. In their fit of nervous giggling, the one holding the dice glances in my direction.
“New girl! Your turn.” Bile shoots up my throat and burns.
“Oh, no.” I hold up a palm and shake my head as if refusing hors d’oeurves.
“She’s being shy. She’ll play. What’s the game?” Abby takes the dice and plops them in my palm, which she has to pry open after lifting my fist from the carpet.
I make wide eyes at her while I hold my breath, but she shakes me off.
“You promised,” she says, holding up the rest of her beer and tipping it back with an “ahh.”
I inhale deeply while the girl who volunteered me explains the rules. “You roll a number and pick out that many dares.”
“So, I could have to do twelve dares?” I ask this as though I’m really going to roll these dice.
“Oh, my God, no! You pick them and then the last person who went gets to pick which one you do. Like, Naomi made me walk to the kitchen and back in her bra!”
This game seems incredibly complex for what it really is: Truth or dare, sans the truth part. I’d like to make a motion that we add the truth part back in, but that’s because I’m painfully boring.
“So, who gets to pick my dare?” I’m still acting as if I’m really planning to play.
“I do.” I recognize the voice without turning around. Of all of the faces I don’t recognize here, that voice belongs to one I know I will. For as long as I have loved Lucas Fuller, Ava Pryor has hated me. I’d blame her for all the lame pranks I endured sophomore year, but overt bullying isn’t her style. She’s more of the “burn you with a glare” kinda girl, and that glare has this amazing power to make a person feel insignificant with a bat of her lashes. I glance over my shoulder and that stare is ready and waiting to zap my ego—what little there is of it—to shit.
“Lola went last,” the girl I’ve identified as Naomi says.
“That’s because I had to refill my beer. Scoot.” Ava flits her fingers and the girls slide apart to make space for her on the center of the couch. She steps between Abby and me on her way to sit down.
“I’m not doing this,” I mumble to my friend. She’s already taken the dice from me, though, and thrown them on the table.
“It’s time to stand up and show some balls.” I meet her eyes, trying to plead my way out of this, silently begging her to take my turn, but with the slight cock of her chin I can tell she’s going to make me walk through this fire.
“Four,” Ava says, a tinge of disappointment in her tone that I rolled such a low number.
“Okay, so I just . . .” I reach toward the bowl and Ava taps it toward me with the toe of her white canvas shoe.
I pull it toward me and search the contents, hoping to find clues in the poorly folded strips of paper, but it’s no use. It doesn’t matter how deep I dig into the plastic snack bowl. I pick out four from the top of the heap and toss them on the table as I sit back on my heels.
“Let’s see,” Ava says, leaning forward and rubbing her palms. I’m sweating watching her meticulously unfold the first paper and drag her gaze along the scribbled line. She’s twirling a lock of her white-blonde hair around her finger while her mouth moves slightly with the words. I stare intently at her face, trying to read her lips. She stops and flits her thick black fake lashes up to stare at me from underneath. Her mouth curves up on one side.
“This one.” She tosses it on the table, but before I can grab it, Abby does.
“You didn’t read them all yet,” my friend says, looking at the paper and chuckling lightly.
“Don’t need to. That one’s the winner.” Ava leans back on the oversized sofa cushion and folds her arms over her chest while crossing her legs.
“You afraid of the dark? Spiders?” Abby flicks the paper toward me with her index finger. I pick it up and read.
SPEND FIVE MINUTES IN THE GARAGE IN THE DARK
“Uh, not really . . . I guess.” I feel as if there’s probably a trick so I’m not going to boast confidently. There’s a catch. I know there is.
“Good, then the time should just fly right by,” Ava says, both sides of her mouth curved into an ominous grin. She glances down the darkened hallway behind me, toward what I assume is the garage door.
“Now?” That sounded stupid. Of course now.
“Uh huh,” she says, flitting her fingers at me with the same nonchalance she had when she forced the girls to give up their seats. Ava is a stereotype. That stereotype is bitch.
“All right,” I say through a sigh. I get to my feet and tug up my jeans a little, my shirt now feeling like a goddamn halter.
“Atta girl,” Abby says, slapping my ass just before I make my way to the garage. Naomi is quick on my heels, probably to lock the door behind me. Do any of them realize I can hit the button inside?
The escape plan zips through my mind just as I open the door, but then it’s quickly replaced with panic and dread so toxic that my knees buckle a little. Naomi pushes me inside and slams the door shut. The lock clicks behind me, and Lucas meets my stare. He’s sitting on a folding chair with his phone in his palm.
“Oh, fuck me.” Disdain slips from his mouth the moment everything goes black. This was the catch. Five minutes in the dark, locked in the garage, but not alone.
With Lucas Fuller.
I spin around and flatten my palms on the wall, feeling in search of a switch or the garage door opener. Something stabs at the side of my palm as I slide it closer to the door.
“Shit!” I mutter under my breath and feel along my skin. It’s damp. I cut myself on something. My phone is in my back pocket, so I take it out awkwardly with the opposite hand; it slips from my grip and bounces at my feet. I want to cry. I also want to punch things.
I’m mid-squat when the glow of a phone light brightens the ground a few feet in front of me. I glance up and squint at the flash from Lucas’s phone.
“Thanks,” I say. I feel humbled, and mortified. My phone is just underneath the front end of one of the cars. Lowering myself, I reach out until my hand lands on it to drag it closer. The garage goes dark again.
Tapping on my phone with the hope it still works, I rest back on my legs, resigned to this pathetic position for the remaining four minutes I’m stuck here. The cracks on my phone screen take up most of the surface, and one of the corners is badly chipped. With my luck, I’m sure I’ll find a way to prick my finger on it . . . again.
The metal chair Lucas was sitting in screeches along the floor, so I glance up to see whether I can see him. I can make out his form. His long arms stretch upward, and I bet if he jumped just a little, his fingertips would graze the ceiling. He’s wearing a light T-shirt and jeans, a flannel tied around his waist. It’s too dark with only my phone light to tell whether he’s looking at me or not, and I’m not sure which I prefer.
As his feet slide closer, I let my body relax into a sitting position, legs folded around each other like a pretzel. I cup my broken phone in my lap and graze my fingertips along the screen to send shouty-cap swears to Abby. The dome light from the car flickers on at my right, and from my periphery, I see Lucas lean inside. He taps a button near the rearview mirror and the garage door lifts.
I stand to brush dust from my knees and ass, and flip my hair back just in time to come face-to-face with the source of that sharp pain I sometimes feel when I look out my bedroom window. Those blue eyes still glow like sapphires, even in the faintest of light, but the boyish dimples have given way to harsh angles and a set jaw framing emotionless lips. Lucas has always been three or four inches taller than me, but that difference feels even greater as he stares down at me.
“I didn’t know you were in here.” Fuck, I haven’t spoken to him in two years and the first words I say are a pathetic apology for being in a garage at the same time. I roll my shoulders and force myself to stand straighter—taller. His head cocks to the side ever so slightly and he lifts his hand, holding the garage door opener out for me to take. I do, and I hate that I do. This is not how this conversation between us was supposed to go. He was supposed to apologize, not me. And he should be giving me flowers, not some taped-together garage clicker from one of his asshole friend’s cars.
“Tell Ava she’s a dick.” He doesn’t stick around to wait for my response, turning and taking long strides out of the garage with his hands shoved in his pockets and his pace evident of just how much he wants to get away from me.
There’s a little more than a minute left on my time in here, assuming those assholes plan on sticking with their own dumb rule. By the time Lucas disappears around the bushes at the end of the long driveway, I’ve made up my mind to take his last bit of advice. With the garage remote in my hand, I leave the same way Lucas did and reenter the house through the front door, elbowing through the people gathered in the front room. I toss the opener into the bowl of paper dares, and the gossip fest that’s probably going down on the sofa ceases immediately. I feel my best friend’s eyes on me without having to look. My focus is set on the ice princess leaning forward and folding her hands on her pushed-together knees like she’s some sort of lady.
“You’re a dick, Ava.” I hold her stare for a breath, just long enough for her to understand that I mean it, and I’m not afraid of her opinion of me anymore. I don’t know where the chip on her shoulder came from, but I didn’t put it there. If she wants to keep it, that’s on her.
I glance down to where my friend is still sitting on the floor, and the approving grin that has spread across her entire face tells me two things: one, I’ve just entertained the shit out of her; and two, she’s giving me a gold star for the night.
“This game is juvenile. Next time, I’ll bring the games to the party, ladies, and we’ll have some real fun.” Abby winks at Ava as she gets to her feet and walks right through the middle of the group of girls still huddled around the scene. She reaches into her pocket and hands me her keys, then links our arms together as we turn our backs on only the first dose of drama we’re bound to see this year.
I don’t say a word and she doesn’t ask questions as our feet hit the blacktop and we cut through the rows of cars lining the street. I notice that Lucas’s truck is still here about a second before his headlights flick on and the engine roars to life.
“Looks like someone else thought that party was pretty lame, too,” my friend says. And because she’s my rock, and because I don’t lie to her, I tell her everything.
“He was in the garage. And he’s a dick, too.” I save that last part until we’re walking right next to his unrolled window. I glance his way after I say it, and our eyes meet for a brief moment. When Abby and I get another full car length away, his tires peel out as he takes off.
“Well, if this ain’t a new June Mabee,” she says, swaying her hip into me. I gurgle out a faint laugh and smile with tight lips. My smile falls as soon as our arms part and my friend walks to the passenger side of her car.
Sure, I’m proud of what I did. Doesn’t mean I don’t wish like hell that none of it happened.