We Are the Ants (6 page)

“You ready for the chem exam?” Audrey asked. I'd never driven with her, and it was a strange experience. She drove with both hands on the wheel, checked her mirrors religiously, and always used her turn signals. She even kept the music so low I could barely hear it.

“No.”

“I'd heard Faraci was supposed to be an easy A.”

“Joke's on you. Maybe she'll zone out and accidentally mix sodium phosphide with water and kill us all with phosphine gas.”

Audrey giggled, but it sounded forced and more like a hiccup. “I've missed you, Henry.”

I didn't know how to respond. Audrey was doing me a favor driving me to Marcus's party, but I'd only called her out of desperation. Sometimes I wondered if I was being too hard on her. We'd both lost Jesse, and most of the time I thought we were both to blame for his suicide. But it was easier to stay mad at her, and it wasn't like she didn't deserve it. I pulled a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and stuffed it in the cup holder. “For gas.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  •  •  •  

Marcus lives in a mansion. Not one of those faux McMansions that everyone seems to live in these days, but an actual mansion with two garages, twelve bedrooms, a formal dining room, and a kitchen the size of a tennis court, which is ludicrous to me since, as far as I know, Mr. and Mrs. McCoy never cook.

Audrey drove past the security gate and parked on the side of the winding driveway. Sloppy rows of expensive cars sparkled under the decorative lights strung from the palm trees that kept vigil over the yard.

I was a fraud; I didn't belong. No one had invited me, and no one would miss me if I fled.

“If you're having second thoughts, we can grab a bite at Sweeney's instead.” Audrey was in my head, and I wanted her out. “I haven't eaten there in ages.”

“Me neither.” In fact, I hadn't been to Sweeney's since the last time Audrey, Jesse, and I had gone together. We'd shared a tower of onion rings and celebrated Jesse being cast as Seymour in the CHS production of
Little Shop of Horrors
. Jesse sang all the time. He was singing the night I realized I loved him. It wouldn't surprise me to learn he'd been singing when he died.

“Henry?”

I shook Jesse from my thoughts. “If you knew the world was going to end, and you alone had the power to prevent it, would you?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

A shiny black pickup truck parked beside Audrey's car, and four girls from our class spilled out, chatting and smiling, probably sharing the delusion that they were going to have the best night of their lives. “Give me one reason why you think humanity deserves to live.”

I recognized the look she was giving me. The poor-­pathetic
-­
Henry look that made me want to gouge out her eyes with a plastic knife. “If this is about Jesse—”

“Forget it.”

“What?”

“Do you honestly believe any of this is important? That in a hundred years, one of your great-great-great-whatevers is going to write about how you went to a party, got hammered, and tried to avoid being groped by every boy with hands? None of this matters, Audrey. We're all fucked.” I opened the car door but didn't get out.

Audrey's bottom lip trembled, and tears welled in her eyes. It was a dirty trick, and she knew it. “I miss Jesse too, but you deserve better than Marcus McCoy. Please tell me you get that.”

“If I really deserve better, then maybe Jesse shouldn't have killed himself.”

I was out and walking toward the house before Audrey could kill the engine and follow. Calling her was a mistake, and I vowed to walk home before asking her for another ride.

  •  •  •  

The two-story tall front doors of Marcus's house were wide open and welcoming. Couples and crowds flowed in and out—their cheeks flushed, pleasantly drunk—stumbling and stoned or just laughing at some joke I'd never hear. I was worried as I entered that they'd see me and cringe, wonder who let Space Boy in, but no one noticed me. I snagged a beer from the kitchen and wandered through the house. I knew the rooms; the rooms knew me. Marcus and I had made out on that leather couch, I'd gone down on him under that baby grand piano, he'd chased me through the library and caught me on the stairs. We'd fucked on that counter and that floor and in that bathtub. After all we've done, I'm still his dirty secret.

Marcus fucks Henry. In the grammar of our relationship, I am the object.

I chugged my beer and grabbed another.

“Henry Denton?”

Diego Vega was standing with his back against a wall, holding a bottled water. He said something to the girl standing near him and met me at the keg. He was wearing faded jeans and a thin orange hoodie that made him stick out like that one dead bulb in a string of lit Christmas lights. When he reached me, he gave me a stiff one-armed bro-hug.

“Only in school a week and already at the coolest party in Calypso. I'm impressed.”

Diego buzzed with energy, like the physical confines of his body couldn't contain him. “I've never been in a house this big.”

I sipped my beer and tried to think of something witty to say. I hadn't expected to see Diego, but I was glad he was there. “They've got two pools.”

“What?” Diego cupped his hand to his ear. Someone was blasting shitty power-pop in the other room, and it was drowning out our voices.

“Come on!” I pulled Diego away from the kitchen, toward the family room. I was hoping it would be empty, but there was a group playing pool. It looked like girls against guys, and the girls were kicking ass. The music wasn't as loud, though. “That's better.”

Diego took in the room. Shelves stuffed with books were built into three walls, and a TV dominated the fourth. “How rich is this guy?”

“Marcus?” I shrugged. “The McCoys are super rich. His dad's an investment banker or something.”

“Who?”

“Marcus McCoy? The guy who lives here?”

Diego smacked my chest. “That's his name! He's in my econ class. It's been driving me crazy.” He had dimples like quicksand, and his hazel eyes reminded me of the sluggers' skin. “Anyway, I was hoping I'd run into you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously.”

“Why?”

Diego shrugged. “You're the only person I've met who hasn't asked me what kind of car I drive.”

“Well, then you're the only person at this party who actually wants me here.”

“I doubt it.”

“That's because you're new.” Diego had an honest face, but I found it difficult to believe he'd come to the party to see me when I was practically invisible to everyone else. “How're you liking Calypso?”

“Honestly? It's weird. Sometimes there are too many people and I just want to find a quiet closet to read in. Other times I want to surround myself with as many people as possible. But I love the beach. I'm there so often, my sister jokes about buying me a tent so I can sleep there.”

“Keep the zipper locked or you'll wake up being spooned by a bum.”

“So long as I get to be the little spoon.”

Diego's laugh made me smile in spite of myself. Maybe I'd been wrong to fear the party. I'd been there an hour, and not only had it not turned into a disaster, I was actually having fun.

“You'll have to work that out on your own.” I finished off my beer and set the cup down on a bookshelf ledge.

We lingered in that awkward stage of a conversation where there was no logical next topic but the silence hadn't yet grown uncomfortable.

“If you knew the world was going to end, and you could press a button to prevent it, would you?”

Diego raised his eyebrow. “Is there something I should know?”

“It's a hypothetical question.”

“Then hypothetically, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm not keen on dying.”

The girls at the pool table squealed with delight, razzing the losers. I tried to block them out. “But you're going to die anyway.”

“Sure, when I'm old.”

“You could die at any time. A freak lightning strike could fry your heart, or you could drown in a molasses tsunami.”

Diego's face was difficult to read. He seemed to take my question seriously, but I hoped he wasn't going along with it while he devised a way to escape. “If I don't press the button, I'm definitely dead. At least if I press it, I've got a chance at a long life. I like having choices.”

Having choices is the problem. Everything would be easier if someone told me what to do: push the button, stop seeing Marcus, get over Jesse. The problem with choices is that I usually make the wrong ones.

Diego reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair off my forehead. “Sorry, that was driving me crazy.”

“Great, now everyone's going to figure out my secret identity.”

“Space Boy?” Diego said, smiling. “They already know.”

My smile disappeared, and my defenses snapped up. I shoved my way past Diego without a word. His apologies bounced off my back because I was fucking bulletproof. I needed to leave, to escape the house and party and all those artificial people, but the front was crowded, so I stumbled onto the patio, where it was quieter and I could breathe.

“Space Boy!”

Marcus and a mixed group, some of whom looked familiar, were sitting around a patio table by the hot tub. Natalie Carter lounged across his lap. The moment he said my name, I became visible. People who hadn't noticed me before were suddenly glaring at me like I was covered with festering sores. They parroted “Space Boy” and invented semicreative variations of their own. None stung as badly as when Diego had said it.

“Who the fuck let you in?” Marcus's voice was cough syrup, but his words were acid.

“Front door was open.” A burning pang began in the center of my chest and spread to my limbs. Marcus was treating me like I was nobody—less than. I wondered how his friends in the hot tub would react if they found out what we'd done where they were lounging.

Marcus elbowed Adrian Morse. “We need to start charging at the door. Keep out the trash.”

I'm sure when Adrian's mom looks at him in the mornings or brushes his sweaty hair off his forehead while he sleeps through a fever, she thinks he's a nice boy, but when I look at him, all I see is a demented thug with an inferiority complex and hardly a thought of his own bouncing around in his empty head. “I can get rid of him.”

“If only getting rid of your herpes was as easy,” I said.

Adrian stood, but Marcus pulled him back. There was a dangerous gleam in Marcus's eyes, a flicker that scared me. “Fuck it. I'm feeling charitable. Space Boy can stay. Maybe he can phone home and convince the aliens to join the party. If you do, ask them to bring ice. We're running low.”

I had no intention of remaining at the party. All I could think about was how I'd been so wrong. I never should have come. Once Marcus was done torturing me, I planned to leave and never speak to him or anyone else again.

“But first,” Marcus said, “you have to take a shot.”

From where Marcus's friends sat and stood on the patio, drinking and smoking and judging, I felt their contempt. It burned through my skin, melted the fat from my body, chewed through my muscles until I was nothing but a ­skeleton—­bleached bones held together by duct tape and the tattered remnants of my pride.

Jay Oh flicked a bottle cap at me that bounced off my chest and skittered across the table. “What would aliens want with a jizz stain like him? Aren't there better people to abduct?”

“Better looking, certainly,” Marcus said, which earned him a kiss from Natalie. He kept his eyes on me while she sucked his lips.

And I stood there and took it because I was an object. We were all objects to Marcus McCoy.

Marcus began chanting, “Shot, shot, shot!” and it was taken up by the drunken horde surrounding me. Adrian set up a round of shots, sloshing a dark brown liquid into the glasses, spilling some over the sides. Marcus watched me with a manic, sweaty grin.

Adrian finished pouring and rolled his eyes. “Space Boy's a little bitch. He won't—”

I grabbed the nearest shot glass and threw it back. The liquor tasted like pureed licorice and blood. I shivered as it hit my empty stomach. When I finished, I downed a second shot. “Thanks for the drink.” I tossed the glass onto the table and left.

Their laughter hounded me, but I refused to look back. The world was going to end, and none of this mattered. I tried to convince myself I was all right.

But I was so far from all right.

  •  •  •  

I was too drunk to walk home, and I couldn't find an empty room to hide in, so I ended up sitting by the edge of the lap pool, obscured by fake rocks and palm trees. The pool was far enough from the house that I wasn't worried about being found, but still near enough that I could hear their laughter. I couldn't escape it. I couldn't escape being Space Boy.

The moon was hardly a scratch in the sky, but underwater lights illuminated the tiled bottom of the pool. All the way down to the deep, deep end. It had to be eight or nine feet. I bet I'd sink. It would have been easy to roll over the side, fully clothed, and let the weight of denim and cotton drag me to the bottom while my last breaths escaped my lungs. The world was spinning around me, so maybe the alcohol in my blood would prevent my survival instinct from kicking in, and I could drown peacefully without all that unnecessary flailing and screaming.

It didn't matter why the sluggers had chosen me, only that they had. Hell, why wait for the world to end at all?

Diego was wrong. Pressing the button wouldn't give me choices. Only this. Only humiliation. Loneliness. Death was easier. I could lean forward and let my weight carry me into the water. Gravity would do the rest. Everything would end, and all I had to do was let it happen.