Party (2 page)

The waves, uncaring, crash against the beach.

•    •    •

It took less than two years.

Less than two years for the illness to eat her, one bite at a time, chewing on my mother’s breast, then wiping its mouth and moving on to the main course of liver. Mom was a fighter. Back and forth for months at a time, fighting the cancer, trying to keep her spirits up. I started reading
Batman
right when it began, alone—at first—in the school library. I named the cancer Joe Chill, after the character who killed Martha and Thomas Wayne. Fitting name for the monster who took my remaining family.

I knew she would lose. Mom had even had her liver transplanted. The survival odds were about 65 percent after five years if everything went well.

It hadn’t gone well.

But Mom cried only once that I know of. Ever. I was feeding her soup when she burst into tears. I assumed at first it was the pain, or the anguish of the cancer.

“It’s not right,” Mom said. “You’re so young, Beckett. You shouldn’t be doing this. You should be out with your friends. Out having fun.”

I don’t have any friends anymore
, I thought, but didn’t say it.

“You should stay up all night,” Mom said. “Watch the sun rise. From the beach. You should come home after dawn. So I can ground you. But you won’t care. Because you had such a great night. It’s not fair.”

“It’s okay,” I said, but knew it wasn’t. I knew exactly what my mother meant. My childhood was over. We should have been warring with each other, typical mother-daughter stuff,
where I could scream
You don’t understand!
and Mom would yell at me or ground me and I could slam my door and cry and listen to music and write dumb angsty poems in my empty velvet-covered journal.

I hadn’t done any of that. I couldn’t. I was busy. Dad had been the big moneymaker, bringer of bacon, before he left, and Mom was too proud to ask for help. She didn’t ask me to help, either. I just had to.

The crying took too much energy, and Mom was sliding into exhausted sleep.

“Go to the beach,” she slurred, chicken soup trickling out of the corner of her mouth. “Watch the sun rise. Beckett. Go …”

She fell asleep.

I cleaned her face with a damp washcloth and dumped the rest of the soup into the kitchen sink. Then I walked to my room, closed the door, knelt at the edge of my bed with a pillow stuffed against my face, and screamed, screamed, screamed.

Joe Chill only laughed.

I can’t sit on the pier anymore, so I get up and wander off. Part of me knows where I’m headed, while the other part tells me not to do it. I do it anyway.

The tide is ebbing when I reach Shoreline Beach. The ocean is magnetic, tempting me to fling myself into the waves and float away, wherever the tide takes me. I won’t do it, though, not really. I don’t want to die. It’s the absolute last thing I want. Seen enough of it up close.

But I still wonder if anyone would notice if I did.

I hunker and stare out at the water, debating the possibilities of the party. Out in the Pacific, a boat bobs on the waves, its white lights arcing back and forth as the boat cruises along. Behind me, a high cliff blocks any sound from the rest of the city, making this solitary spot on the beach my own domain.

It’s one of the reasons I spread her ashes here.

All I have to do is walk up the steps behind me, to Shoreline Park, and up the street to the party. It’s easy. I could just do it.

But why? I mean, what’s the point? Some pointless exercise in validation? “Notice me, notice me, show me I’m alive!” Meet a guy, have a passionate romance during my non-senior senior year?

Ridiculous.

Even if there is a guy out there for me somewhere, I’ll never know it.

This is dumb.

It’s like I’m
already
dead. If a tree falls in the forest, does it make any sound? If a girl doesn’t speak, if no one knows her name, does she really exist?

But I have to know. Does anyone know who I am anymore?

This becomes my new motivation: Go to the party. Walk around. See if anyone, just one person, says my name. Says “Hi!” Says “I had Spanish with you sophomore year.”

If no one does … then case closed. My high school career, my existence, will be proven invisible.

I force myself up the stairs built into the cliff face, and down Beachfront to the party. I regret my decision the moment I open the door.

•    •    •

Later, I run up Beachfront, away from the party, and sit down on the curb and rest my arms on my knees.

Stay out all night? Watch the sun rise? Be with my friends?

Dreams. Ravings, really, from a half-dead woman succumbing to pain meds and disease. Why couldn’t I have figured that out before I stepped foot in that dumb house?

I open my
Batman: Year One
book again to keep myself from crying.
Maybe it’s all I deserve now
, I read on page one.
Maybe it’s just my time in Hell
.

I hear ya, Lieutenant Gordon.

I struggle to read beneath the light of a streetlamp, and at first, I don’t pay any attention to the sirens wailing in the distance. They are background noise to any city of moderate size like Santa Barbara. I do pay attention when three police cars and an ambulance turn onto Beachfront from Shoreline and park in front of the house where the party is still in full swing.

I wipe my face and watch two cops go toward the house. I’m too far away to see exactly where they go, but they’re headed toward the front door. I see one of the paramedics wave over his partner farther down Beachfront, near the intersection with Shoreline.

Something’s happened.

A minute later, two different cops head up the lawn. I stand up, shove my book in my bag, and start walking slowly back toward the house, drawn by morbid curiosity. Suddenly there’s a flood of kids on the front lawn, not running but scattering all the same toward their cars or sitting on the sidewalk.

I walk until I can see the house in full view again. I wander up to a guy standing by himself near the sidewalk and ask him what happened.

I wonder if he knows what color my eyes are.

What grade I was going to be in.

What my name is.

T
ONIGHT IS THE BIGGEST PARTY OF THE YEAR, AND IF MY DAD DOESN’T STOP YELLING
, I’
M GOING TO MISS IT
.

This is so stupid.

What happened was, I just got my first car late last week for my sixteenth birthday. An old powder-blue Super Beetle my dad got from some car dealer friend of his. I had my license, but only by a matter of days. I was still sort of learning to drive the Beetle because it’s a stick, but I’d
obviously passed the test
to get the license in the first place, right?

So I told my mom I was going to this party, and she gave me twenty bucks for food (more like five for food and fifteen for a little pot, to be purchased on-site from this dude in the drama
department who was hosting the party, not that my mom knew that). Ashley and I spent all day today talking on the phone about what we were going to wear; who was going to be there; if we should smoke weed too or just drink; if you
had
to have sex with one guy, who would it be … the usual stuff.

(Answers: Black cargo shorts, red tank, red Chucks;
everyone
from school; drink first, smoke later; and this guy Ryan from my English class … I mean, if I
had
to. Ashley declined to “speculate on the latter.”)

What I
told
my mom was, we were, and I quote, “going to this party.” No big, right? What I guess I
should’ve
said is, “I’m driving to this party in my new (old) car.”

My mistake, because:

About twenty minutes ago, I walked into the living room. There was a baseball game on. (There’s always a game on, of some sort.) I stood in the doorway and said, and I quote, “I’m going to drive on over to Ashley’s now.” Who lives like three miles away.

My mother, deeply into her daily crossword puzzle, said: “Uh-huh …”

My father said: ___________

Which is not unusual for either one of them. Unless I have spontaneously burst into flame, which only happened that once (just kidding!), I blend into the beige walls of my house as far as they are concerned.
Keep those grades up!
and
Don’t you get pregnant!
are my only rules as far as I know. Outside of those, I do what I want. Which is cool. For the most part.

Case in point: Mom has no problem with me going to a party, or giving me money. So she’s like all awesome, right?

Sure.

Since my mom had acknowledged my plan, I walked out to the old blue Super Beetle, got in, started her up, and began driving (slowly) over to Ashley’s house to start getting ready for the party. It was already eight o’clock, and the party was supposed to have started at seven.

No kidding—two minutes later, my cell rang.

It was Mom.

“Where are you!” she screamed.

I seriously could not stop myself from laughing. I laughed out loud, and it was one of those laughs that starts with a sound like you’re spitting milk out.
Pppppppth, buh ha ha ha!

Something like that.

I’m amazed she even noticed I was gone. Before I got a chance to tell her, “Uh, I’m like a block away,” she screamed, “Get
back
here with that
car
right
now
!”

For a second, I thought something must be wrong with the car and Dad didn’t tell me. It’s not like I have to drive on the 101 to get to Ashley’s or the party, but maybe the brakes are worn or something. Funny, you’d think he would have mentioned something like that, right?

So I said, “Uh, okay,” and turned the car around. I wasn’t laughing anymore. I got back to the house and went inside.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I went into the living room. Again.

“You put those keys on the table,” my dad said. His eyes didn’t leave the TV screen.

I set the keys down, functioning on autopilot because I swear to god, I was
so
confused.

“Ohhhh-kay,” I said, and waited.

He didn’t say anything. I had no idea where my mother was.

“So,” I said, “what is it? What’s wrong with the car?”

My dad: _____________

I swear, you know? Say something!

I tried again. “Dad …?”

And that’s when my mom came in. “There you are!” she shouted, and—again, I am unable to help myself—I started laughing.

“Glad you noticed!” I said back. “What’s going on?”

“We told you not to take that car anywhere until you ask us first!” Mom declared.

I felt something in my head make a sound like this:
DOINK!

Huh?

So I said, “Huh?”

“Don’t grunt, Morrigan, you sound like a caveman,” Mom said, and plopped down on the couch again and picked up her crossword puzzle. Like,
This conversation is over
.

Which, I assure you, it was not.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, and held up my hands. (And god, that television was on so
loud
! And they complain about my music, you know?) “I stood here like five minutes ago and told you I was going to Ashley’s.”

And here … here is where it all went south of heaven.

My mother said, and I quote: “You said no such thing.”

Well.
Now
it’s on.

“Mom!
I stood right here and said ‘I am driving to Ashley’s,’ to which you responded, and I quote, ‘Uh’ and ‘Huh.’ Which,” I added, because I get a bit sarcastic when I get pissed, “when spoken together, is apparently
not
a grunt.”

I didn’t hide a grin. That was pretty good, if I said so myself.

Mom didn’t agree. “Don’t be smart, Morrigan.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up past my bangs. “It’s what you said!”

“You don’t raise your voice to us, young lady!” Dad snapped. And his eyes, I swear to god, have not, do not, and will not leave the TV screen.

Asshole.

“Well, could you please turn the TV down so you could hear me better?” I asked. Perhaps a shade too politely.

This earned a glance from my mother to my father, who did not glance back. Mom shrugged her eyebrows as if to say,
Well, you have a point, the TV was on really loud so maybe I didn’t hear you correctly, and maybe since you’re such a good kid I should give you the benefit of the doubt just this once so you can go to the biggest party of the year with your best friend
.

At least, that’s what it looked like she was thinking. Then she filled in a word on her puzzle and the moment was gone.

I paused. I waited. I hesitated.

Then I flung my arms up in the air and turned for my room.

From the couch, Dad barked, “Where are you going?”

As if we were having a conversation and I’m walking out in
the middle of it.
Uh, except you stopped talking three minutes ago
. Please tell me my parents are not the only ones this lame.

I stopped. “To call Ashley and get a ride, I guess.”

And he says, “You’re not going anywhere.”

By that point, I was literally shaking with rage. My hands were freezing and coated with sweat. I could kill them both.

“What?” I asked, just to clarify.

“You took the car without permission, you’re staying home,” my mother said, as if this made the most sense in the entire world.

And with that, I had officially
Had It
. I’d already driven the Beetle all by my responsible self, what the crap was up with this? Maybe it was only around the block, but
still
. Do I have to ask permission every time I need to drive somewhere until I’m eighteen? And I
did
ask—or
told
, anyway, and they didn’t say no, which is pretty much the same thing.

So I bolted back into the living room and
unloaded
. I repeated my side of the story (a little loudly) and stood in front of the television, partly so they’d hear me and partly to piss off my dad. Well, the second part of the plan worked—he jumped up and started yelling at me about responsibility and my tone of voice.