Blade

Chapter Fourteen Ana

Chapter Fourteen

Ana

Before—Eight Months at The Palace

In the back of the van, the wiry guy tossed Ana a beer, then dropped back into the beanbag next to her.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Ana,” she answered, popping the tab on her beer. She took a sip, swallowing a gag because it was warm and bitter and also because she couldn’t find the nerve to look at him.

He was tall and skinny, his fingers digging into her arm when he’d pulled her down to sit, bone on bone.

Who was this guy, and where was he from?

He smelled like sweat, and now cheap beer, and this was not at all what Jolene and Kayla had described.

Butterflies (Jolene), heat (Kayla)—either way, Ana was supposed to want things now.

Like him moving closer, leaning into her, turning her face toward his, lining up for a kiss.

And how many times had she imagined her first kiss?

Back home, before she left for Echo, it was with a hockey player whose name she never knew. The way he moved on the ice—with an even pace and steady gaze. Like he knew what he was doing.

She had pictured that face gazing at her. Strong hands around her cheeks, not one moment of doubt or hesitation as he leaned closer, and then his lips were on hers. Sheer, utter confidence, like don’t worry, I’ve got you, and this kiss is going to shake the earth.

Earthshaking. That’s how Indy had described her first kiss with a boy back home, a pairs skater named Brian, behind the rink. She’d been thirteen as well.

This wiry boy with his bony hands and smelly concert T-shirt, and the warm beer . . . no. This wouldn’t even cause a tremor.

The decision made, she pictured her next move. Getting up and walking toward the back door. Then what? He’d probably grab her arm again, ask where she was going, and she could say she had to check on Indy, who was drunk and upset.

She took three more sips of beer, bigger ones, nearly finishing the can. Wiry did the same, leaning back against the wall of the van, closing his eyes like “Stairway to Heaven” was reaching his soul.

Back to the exit plan.

He’d let her go, maybe offer to help find Indy.

Or, and now this thought barreled in, the beer reaching her head. What if he didn’t let her go? What if he grabbed her arm again, bone on bone, and pulled her back onto the rug?

Excitement gave way to fear as the beer impaired her judgment.

“Are you okay?” Wiry asked, his eyes open and trying to look sexy. Or maybe he was stoned.

And oh my God, what would happen next in the exit strategy—if he didn’t let her go?

She would fight as hard as she could—scream, yell, pound on the sides of the van until someone heard it and rescued her.

And then, the doors would open, and Jolene would be there and Kayla would be there, and Jean Jacket and Sporty too, and Wiry would be like, What the fuck?

We were just talking, and she would look like a complete freaking idiot.

Because—that was actually what had been happening.

They’d just been drinking beer and talking.

It was the fear of not knowing. That was all this was. She should be used to it by now, having not known one single thing, the day she arrived at The Palace and Avery Hall, about the things that really mattered. Like this.

And it felt so ironic that fear was now creeping into this part of her life—her first kiss of all things—that she laughed out loud, and let her head fall against the side of the van.

Wiry got them more beer, and when he placed it in her hand, his bony finger lingered on hers. “You’re pretty,” he said.

“Thanks,” she replied, feeling her cheeks blush.

She drank the beer and laughed again, this time thinking about Dawn and her dream, and fight the fear, and Dr. Fear’s lessons, and wasn’t she doing that now? With a little help from the second beer, chasing away the flight response?

Still, he hadn’t leaned in for a kiss, so after the beer, and after this song, she would implement the plan to leave and find Indy. That would be long enough to have been here with him, alone. No one would think less of her.

But “Stairway to Heaven” was a freaking long song, so she chugged beer number two, her mind already at the door, then outside, and then in the car with the Orphans, heading back to Avery Hall, where they would be dying to know what happened, and she would tell them that he smelled bad, and no way was she kissing him.

Jolene would bump her shoulder and Kayla would shake her head and Indy would laugh.

Suddenly she felt his bony fingers running through her hair, spreading like a claw around the back of her head, pulling it forward, twisting it to the right, toward his thin, bony face and open mouth. Which was now on hers.

Wait! she thought. But he was too fast, and she was too stunned to say it, as he thrust his tongue into her mouth.

Saliva, hot breath, strange, guttural sounds, mmmm and yeaahhhh and the beer swimming in her head, overriding the fear as his hands reached inside her shirt, his mouth moving to her neck, then his teeth, and . . . wait! Was he biting her?

Now she wondered if every kiss she’d ever heard about had been a lie.

Was this what it really was? Tongues, saliva, beer, biting.

And what now? Then a voice in her head said: Just let it happen.

Learn. And anyway, it was over now, the first kiss.

Like a fall on a jump. You had to get through shit like this to get past it, to the other side.

And what would she give to not be so ignorant of so many things?

The kiss and the biting didn’t stop until the song ended, finally, and a new song began to play. Was that Meat Loaf? Kayla would hate this so much.

It was enough, she thought.

“I think I need to find my friend.”

Wiry didn’t answer. He put his empty beer can down with one hand and reached inside her shirt with the other, searching for things that were barely there, then moving down. When he reached for the button of her jeans, she stopped observing the situation so passively.

Because she’d been an Orphan for nine months, with girls who weren’t ignorant.

Girls who knew things and who talked about those things, constantly.

About hand jobs and blow jobs and doggy style and reverse cowgirl.

Jolene had demonstrated with a pretend man she made with two pillows, and Kayla rolled her eyes but then couldn’t help but laugh because watching Jolene fuck a pillow had them all rolling on the floor in hysterics.

And, even though this knowledge was like someone telling you about the time they climbed Mount Everest—a story that leaves you totally ill equipped and unprepared to climb even a small boulder—she was able to weigh the likely outcomes and consequences of where this was going.

A new plan formed in her mind—it involved needing to pee, from all the beer, because who would want to put his hands in her jeans under those circumstances?

And in her mind she was getting ready to push him away and tell him this.

But in these last few moments while she’d been assessing and reflecting and making her plans of escape, she must have been frozen, still, because Wiry stopped biting her neck and reaching into her open jeans.

“Are you okay?” he asked. And she realized that he thought she’d passed out and that had made him stop.

Without her having to run for the door or make excuses about Indy or peeing. He’d just . . . stopped.

So she stayed still and quiet. An opossum playing dead. And Wiry shook her by the shoulders.

“Ana?”

And then. “What the fuck.” Annoyed.

And then. “Oh shit.” Scared.

And then the bony fingers slid out of her jeans, and Wiry moved away, off the beanbag. She heard metal on metal again, the back door opening.

Moments later, more voices came, so she sat up and hung her head in her hands like she was feeling sick. But she wasn’t. Not at all. Still, this plan had fallen into her lap, and she was committed now, like she’d just taken off for a jump. In the air, turning, turning.

Before she knew it, Jolene and Jean Jacket were there, in the back of the van.

“What did you do to her?” Jolene yelled, with Jean Jacket yelling too.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

“Nothing!” Wiry answered. “We were just making out . . .”

Jolene sat down on the beanbag where Wiry had been. One hand was on Ana’s back. The other picked up the second empty beer.

“You gave her beer?”

“Yeah, man,” Wiry said. “Why not?”

“Asshole!” Jolene said. “Because she’s only thirteen!” Even though she’d offered Ana plenty of beer since the first week she arrived.

Collective gasps and oh shits from Jean Jacket and Wiry, and then Jolene grabbed her arm and helped her up.

“Girl, what did you do?” Her voice was lighter when she looked in Ana’s eyes and saw that she wasn’t dead and looked at her clothes and saw that they were intact. “Let’s get you out of here.”

When Ana was safely returned to the car, she in the back and Jolene in the front, Indy appeared from the other side of the gray pickup.

She’d managed to ditch Wavy Hair, who climbed into the black van.

It started up and peeled away like a bat out of hell, Ana thought—the Meat Loaf song still playing in her ears.

Indy got in beside her. “What happened?”

Jolene watched the van disappear through the maze of parked cars, leaving tracks in the weeds.

“They gave her beer, and she passed out!”

Indy moved closer until her hands could reach Ana’s face. With two soft palms on her cheeks, she turned it square to her own and studied Ana for damage. Then one hand slid down to her neck.

“Oh my God!”

“What?”

Jolene turned around and saw what Indy was seeing. “That little weenie.”

“What?” Ana asked again.

“Tell her,” Indy said to Jolene.

“You tell her,” Jolene answered.

“Tell me what!” Ana demanded, now touching her own neck. Feeling a spot that was tender. Then another and another. Remembering his teeth and his tongue. His entire mouth sucking on her skin.

“He gave you hickeys,” Jolene said, stifling a laugh.

“Like, huge hickeys,” Indy confirmed, touching Ana’s neck. Running her fingers over each one. Both girls stifled laughter, but just barely.

Ana sat up so she could see herself in the rearview mirror. “It’s not funny!”

Indy wrapped her arm around Ana’s waist and pulled her back into the seat.

“Sorry,” Jolene said. “We’re just relieved that you’re okay. Jesus—how many beers did you drink?”

Ana leaned her entire body into Indy, who stroked her hair.

“I don’t remember,” she lied. “When will they go away?”

Jolene told her it could be a few days. Indy said her friend back home once had a hickey for over a week.

“Toothpaste will suck the blood out,” Jolene said.

“That doesn’t work,” Indy said. And then they argued about it, but neither one had ever had a hickey, so there they all were, in another Mount Everest situation.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jolene promised.

“Yeah,” Indy said. “It’ll be fine.”

And then there was Hugo, the boy from Spain who knew about some stuff that would heal Indy’s bruise, walking toward them. All the boys from Avery Hall had come in a separate car.

“Hey,” he said. “We’re heading back. This place is lame.”

Jolene turned to face him. “Same. Let’s get out of here.” She put the keys in the ignition, then stopped, suddenly.

“Wait—where’s Kayla?” Jolene asked, looking back at Ana and Indy.

“I haven’t seen her since she left with that guy—they went into the woods,” Indy said.

“The short one,” Ana said, remembering nothing more about him.

Jolene turned back to the front of the car and the tree line about four car rows away. “You two stay here,” she said. And then she hopped out and grabbed Hugo, and the two of them marched toward the woods where Kayla and Sporty had disappeared.

Only Sporty had been in the van when it drove away. He was the one driving.

Ana and Indy sat for a few minutes, contemplating everything. A silent, subconscious recalibration taking place inside their brains and their bodies.

“What else happened?” Indy asked Ana, her eyes looking out to the woods.

And Ana told her the truth. About how she’d just pretended to pass out after she realized he thought she already had because the beer made her dizzy, and because she had somehow detached from the whole scene by making plans to escape.

Indy shook her head. “That’s fucking pathetic.”

Then she kissed Ana on the cheek and laughed.

Ana laughed with her, but with the laughter came a release of a million other things that had been trapped inside.

Indy’s fall at the show, the bruise on her hip, the marks on her own neck, and the feel of Wiry’s hands up her shirt and down her pants, his tongue in her mouth when she didn’t want it there, and how she could still feel all of those things like they were still happening.

Maybe more so now that she was safe, here with Indy.

And then her face flushed and her eyes welled with tears, even though she was laughing so hard her stomach hurt and she actually did have to pee.

“Indy,” she started to say, thinking she needed to tell her how scared she was in that van, but how the fear had disappeared.

How a switch was flipped inside her, a reckless acceptance of what was happening.

Maybe even wanting it to happen so she wouldn’t have to fear it ever again, and how stupid was that?

But before she could begin, they saw Hugo running out of the tree line and across the weeds, weaving through the parked cars. He reached them breathless and didn’t speak as he got in the front seat of Jolene’s car. The keys were in the ignition, and he started the engine.

“What happened?” Indy asked.

Hugo drove through the open spaces between the cars until they got right up to the first row of evergreens.

“Stay here,” he said, and they did. They stayed right there, this time frozen with a new kind of fear.

Both girls leaned forward, staring at the trees where Hugo had disappeared—until they saw them. Three figures emerging from the woods. Hugo on the left. Jolene on the right. And in between them, draped in their arms, was Kayla’s listless body.