The Old Wheel, page 16
part #2 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
Ariana frowned at the soot-blackened concrete; overhead, security lights behind wire cages threw an egg wash glow that barely inched back the darkness. “Rich kids are crazy.”
Behind us, Holmes plodded along. He’d been dragging his feet—sometimes, literally—about this party since we’d decided to come, and nothing I said could change his attitude. He’d refused to let me pick an outfit for him, so he looked the way he always did: perfection buttoned into an oxford and driving coat. He caught me looking at him, and something like hope kindled in his eyes.
“It’s going to be fun,” I said.
Hope died. “I changed my mind. I am no longer willing to support you in this plan.”
“Too bad.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Jack,” Ariana said, “if he doesn’t want to go, he shouldn’t have to go.”
“He has to go. He has zero choice.”
Ariana frowned. Her natural human decency was clearly overwhelming her desire to ice me out—at least partially—as punishment for the last few days. Finally, she pulled me closer and whispered, “He looks terrified.”
“He’s fine.”
“Why does he have to come with us? I know he’s your friend—”
“It’s complicated. I promise, it’s going to be worth it.”
She frowned again, so I kissed her cheek. Ariana rolled her eyes. I went in for a kiss again, and this time, she pushed my face away.
I laughed, and by accident, I caught a glimpse of Holmes’s expression: his features narrow and hard, almost unrecognizable. They smoothed out a moment later, but for a moment, what I had seen there had looked a lot like rage.
Fortunately, we reached the tunnel then, and after that I was too busy navigating to have to think about how much shit I was getting myself into.
The Walker School wasn’t actually all that old, but at one point, in the sixties or the seventies, one of the headmasters had decided they needed tunnels. You know, in case those Commie bastards decided to bomb us. So, the massive project had been carried out with, apparently, McCarthy-esque zeal. The buildings already had basements, but in the process of connecting the buildings, they’d added bunkers and fallout shelters, as well as a maze of connecting passageways, some of which seemed to go nowhere. It was a mix of cinderblock and concrete slabs, chain-link security fences and cast-iron grates, old pipes and conduit running overhead, and in the distance, the drip of water, the hiss of steam, the clank of tired machinery. Coming down here was a rite of passage for a lot of Walker kids, as evidenced by the roaches of joints and the used condoms and the empty vape pods clumped up at the base of the walls. Sometimes, just to be a hardass, Taylor made Dad and me come down here and clean some of it out.
I’d been down here alone, and it had scared the shit out of me; the silence had gnawed at me, and once, an explosion of movement—a rat, I guess—had left me close to shitting myself. I’d been down here with Holmes another time, and that had been a lot better. I didn’t know how guys came down here to get their rocks off; the creep vibes were a major boner killer.
Tonight, though, the tunnels were different. As we followed the instructions that had come with my invitation from D’Layne—after I’d promised to bring Holmes—decorations began to appear: strands of lights, plastic evergreen garlands, gold-foil decorations shaped like snowmen and stars and snowflakes that had been taped to the walls, even gold ornaments hung on fishing wire from the ceiling so that they looked like they were floating in mid-air. The thump of a bass line reached us, and then a sound that registered as the noise of bodies and voices, albeit too many and too muffled to separate out into individual sounds. The smell of a blunt mixed with the frigid air of the tunnel.
“Oh my God,” Ariana whispered, forgetting to be mad in her excitement and squeezing my hand. “This is dope!”
Holmes shuffled along behind us, refusing to pick up his feet.
A massive iron door at the end of the corridor stopped us. It was flaked with rust, and it looked like it weighed a ton. When I touched it, though, it moved surprisingly easily. I checked Ariana’s face; she was smiling, her eyes bright with anticipation. Holmes was a shadow—nothing more than an elegance of bone and those colorless eyes. I decided my death was going to be historic. I was going to be the first person Holloway Holmes ever murdered.
I swung the door open, and a wall of sound and light met us. It looked like half of the student body had been packed into the room, and if I’d been the fire marshal, I would not have been pleased. A DJ was set up at one end, with colored lights swiveling in time with the music. Kids danced, made out, vaped, drank. At the other end, an impromptu bar had been set up on an ancient I-beam that rested on the floor. The air felt moist and warm from too many sweating bodies, and the smell of weed was much stronger, mixed now with the stink of overheated synthetics and a hundred different perfumes and a chemical fruitiness I decided was the vape juice.
“Holy shit,” Ariana breathed, leaning into my chest. She turned her face up for a kiss, and after, she laughed, her eyes wide.
We went inside, and I swear to God, Holmes kicked me in the back of the knee.
Before we’d managed to wriggle more than a few feet through the crowd, Emma and Glo appeared. The differences between the two girls were even more apparent tonight: Emma statuesque, the red tone to her skin even more noticeable when the colored lights splashed over her; Glo petite, her golden complexion accented by sparkly eyeshadow.
“Are you Jack’s girlfriend?” Glo asked, grabbing Ariana’s arm.
“That skirt is amazing,” Emma said.
Then something happened, and I have no idea how to explain it. All three girls started talking at once, and then they were all laughing, and then they were talking again and looking at me and laughing, and Glo even pointed and started laughing harder. I stood there. I realized I had no idea what people were supposed to do with their hands when they were doing nothing but standing there while their girlfriend made friends in that totally impossible-to-understand way girls had. I thought about shoving my hands in my pocket, but that seemed wrong, like maybe normal people didn’t do that. I felt like I was covered in hives.
“Ok, bye,” Ariana said with a huge grin, and the other two girls towed her out into the ocean of bodies. They disappeared almost immediately, even though—if the world were still sane and the rules of logic applied—I should have been able to track Emma because she was so tall.
“What the hell was that?” I asked Holmes.
But Holmes was gone too. There was no sign of him in the crush of bodies around me.
Well, fuck.
I thought about going after Ariana, but there had been no mistaking the chattering and the laughing and the pointing. Sure, if I wanted to shred the last scraps of my ego and then set them on fire and piss on them, I could go after them and learn what they were saying about me. Or, dear God, what Ariana was telling them. But, because I’m so smart, I decided maybe that wasn’t the best use of my time.
And, anyway, I was here to find a blackmailer—or, at the very least, a blackmailer’s accomplice.
Someone jostled me, and a guy swore, and that was my sign to get moving. I threaded a path through the bodies toward the bar. I got a rum and Coke—open bar because, well, rich kids—and I found a spot along the wall and watched. I recognized most of the faces. These were kids I had class with, kids I’d seen throughout the school year. Kids whose rooms I’d vacuumed. Kids whose trash I’d picked up. Kids whose shit I’d plunged. Tonight, they looked transformed: faces hot and sweaty, in expensive clothes with brands I’d probably never heard of, most of them high or on their way.
I drank the rum and Coke too quickly and then, because I was a coward, I fished out my vape. It was good stuff. Strong. I hit it, and then, to be safe, I hit it again. Less than a minute later, some of the tightness had gone out of my skin, and I could feel my pulse in my face, and it felt excellent.
Ok, I told myself. Technically, you have two options. You can talk to rich kids and try to find a blackmailer. Or you can track down your girlfriend and pretend you don’t have fourteen how-to-break-up articles open on your phone.
I went in search of a blackmailer. Like I said, I’m smart.
At first, it seemed impossible. The best I could do, moving through the throng of bodies, was keep my feet as I got tossed back and forth. Guys and girls screamed along with the music. Or they screamed to talk to each other. Or they screamed just to scream—one girl, a pocket-sized little blonde with glow sticks in each hand, screamed directly into my ear like she was trying to rupture an eardrum. There was no way, in this madness, that I was going to be able to gather any information. Hell, there was no way I was going to get out of it with my ribcage intact, to judge by how many bros wanted to chest bump me.
No homo, of course.
I cut across the room at an angle, shading my eyes against the dazzle of the colored lights, trying to catch a full breath—which is harder than it sounds when someone body-slams you every half second. I scanned the crowd around me as I moved. No Ariana, no Emma, no Glo. I guess I should have been worried since, technically, Emma was on my list of suspects. But the truth was that Emma and Glo had actually been kind of cool, and the weed was taking the edge off everything nicely, and, most importantly, Ariana knew how to take care of herself better than I did. If I’d tried to pull her away, she would have been pissed—and if I’d explained why, she would have been even angrier.
No Holmes either, which was more worrisome, even under the insulation I’d packed inside my head. I’d expected him to be glued to my side tonight. I’d expected that it would be weirdly endearing—him being at the edge of what he could stand, and me being there for him, because I knew him, and I knew how to help him and take care of him and shit like that. I’d expected it to be—well, about us. The two of us, together, the way we were when we were at our best. And instead, the little shit had ditched me.
Someone checked my shoulder, and when I turned, Aston was stumbling through the crowd—his face sagging with a chemical looseness that told me he was already massively stoned. I changed course and went after him. At the far end of the room, additional passageways opened up, and Aston turned down one of them. The suffocating noise and heat faded, leached from the air by cinderblock and steel. Aston’s sneakers scuffed the concrete as he shuffled along.
When I caught up to him, I said, “Do you seriously think it’s a good idea to get high tonight?”
For a moment, Aston stared at me, eyes empty. And yes, I was aware of the hypocrisy. But then he mumbled, “Hey, man,” and tried to shuffle off again.
“No,” I said. “Come on, back to the party. Whatever’s going on tonight, you shouldn’t be wandering around alone.”
He said something, the word too mushy to understand.
“What?”
“Fake!”
“Uh huh.”
“They’re all fucking fake!”
“So, you’re not even fun when you’re high. Fantastic.”
“What’s going on down here?” The voice echoed off the bare walls, and I recognized the half-breed of macho playfulness and overdeveloped testosterone. Dawson was in the lead, with Axle, Jaxon, and Riker behind him. The whole Boy Band. No Paxton, though, which was interesting—even though I’d only met him once, I had the feeling he wouldn’t be able to stay away from something like this. Who had he glued himself to? “Getting a quickie from Abercrombie?”
“He wishes,” I said. “What’s he on? He’s seriously messed up.”
“He was freaking out.” Riker was one of those annoying humans who never seemed to suffer any of the ill effects of puberty—no blemishes, no voice cracking in the middle of sentences, not even a single awkward boner on record. “He needed to chill.”
“What’d you give him to ‘chill’?” I let the contempt in my voice form the air quotes.
“He’s fine.” Some of Jaxon’s family was from the Middle East—Dubai, or maybe Qatar; I forget—and you could see it in some of his features: the silky black hair that fell to his jaw, the olive skin, a strong chin. “Aren’t you fine, Aston?”
Aston made a noise. Saliva glistened at the corner of his mouth.
“Somebody needs to take him home,” I said.
“Sure,” Dawson said with a leer. Caveman hot or not, nobody could pull off a leer. Not since, like, the 80s.
“Not you.”
“Abercrombie, what the fuck?” Dawson laughed, and that meant the rest of the hyenas laughed too. “You his nanny or something?” Before I could answer, Dawson said, “I always take care of him; he’s helpless. We’re going to stay and smoke for a while, and then I’ll take him home.” The leer was back—barely a tracing of it around his mouth. “I’ll make sure he’s fine.”
Axle snorted a laugh—he had that tousled, hockey-boy hair and a pink cast to his skin, and snorting didn’t exactly help his cause.
I opened my mouth, but Dawson produced a joint and said, “Wanna smoke?”
I thought about the joint. I thought about my vape, which was almost empty. I thought about what Holmes would say, but he wasn’t here to say it. Besides, this might be considered an interrogation tactic. “Fuck.” I shrugged. “Why not?”
Dawson sparked the joint, and we passed it around. I hadn’t sold him the weed, which meant either somebody else was dealing or—more likely—this was from Paxton. It was good. It was also some seriously strong shit, and after my first hit, I felt like I was swimming. After a while, somebody pressed a shot into my hand, and I did that too. Whatever it was, it was fire in my throat, and as soon as it hit my belly, I felt like somebody had kicked me between the eyes.
“See?” Dawson said. It was like somebody talking while you were underwater. “Abercrombie can be cool.”
“Fuck yeah I can,” I said, but the words dribbled out.
This was investigative work, the last rational part of my brain said. I was investigating.
And another part of my brain said, You are seriously fucked.
And a very quiet part said, This’ll show him.
The joint went around again. It was like someone blowing the smoke straight into my brain, packing it in until there wasn’t room for more. I could feel it leaking out my nose and my ears, and somebody must have said something funny because Riker burst out laughing and said, “He thinks it’s coming out his ears.”
“Settle a bet,” Jaxon said, pausing to take a toke. He tilted his head back, the smoke escaping in a thin stream, and then he shook himself all over. “Are you fucking him, or is he fucking you?”
I burst out laughing. “I’m not fucking Aston.”
“Not Aston,” Axle said. He started to say something, and then he stopped himself and grinned. “Holmes.”
I stared at him. That underwater feeling had changed into a kind of pressure. Someone had packed too much of the smoke inside my head, and my skull was tight like it might burst. I wavered, turned, started off toward the party, but Dawson caught my shoulder.
“Relax—hey, relax! It’s a question, that’s all. Come on, hit it. There you go.”
I barely felt the joint being pressed between my lips. Dawson’s other hand found my cheek. His face swam in front of me: the strong brow, the dark stubble. I thought I could feel the texture of his skin just by looking at it. The heat from the toke ran through me, snaking down, down, down. Dawson’s eyes studied my face. He ran his thumb at the corner of my mouth.
“You’re some kind of lightweight, huh?” he said softly. “Abercrombie is full of surprises.”
Maybe I was still smart enough to realize it would be a bad idea to tell him I’d been pregaming, and my own shit was catching up to me, and I was in a state of serious crossfade. Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe I couldn’t make words anymore.
“Come on,” Dawson said, and he hooked two fingers in my waistband and tugged me down the hall.
Jaxon groaned.
“Seriously, Daw?” Riker asked.
“He’s pretty,” Dawson said with a laugh and tugged me after him. “What do you want?”
“You’re messed up,” Axle said.
“Abercrombie’s going to be a good boy,” Dawson said, and he pulled harder on my jeans this time; it felt like he was pulling me up off the floor. “Aren’t you?”
“Hey—is that Jack?”
I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t put a name to it.
“Fuck off,” Jaxon said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dawson said to me in a low voice. “We’re having fun, right? We’re going to have fun.”
“You know Aston’s right here,” Riker said.
“Aston’s so blitzed he doesn’t know he’s standing up,” Dawson said. “Quit being dicks, and I’ll have Abercrombie blow you when I’m done.”
I shook my head, but Dawson had caught one of the loops on my waistband, and he used it to pull me in his wake. My vision was blurry, and I had an impression of dark spaces, the flutter of fluorescent tubes like wings against my face, the smell of urine and old iron.
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” Dawson said, and then his body pressed against mine. I hit the wall, and my knees buckled, but I didn’t fall because there wasn’t enough room. “You think you’re so fucking tough, but all it takes is a couple of hits, and you’re like all the rest of them.”
Even through the fog of the weed and the rum, I knew, then, what this was about. It was about him on his knees, taking it while Paxton watched himself in the mirror. It was about the fact that we’d seen it. That we knew.
He parted my flannel and slid his hand under my tee. His fingers were cold. I pushed on his wrist, and he laughed and moved my hand away. He found my nipple and twisted, and I cried out. This time, I grabbed his wrist, but he broke the hold and pushed my hand away again.
“Knock it off,” he said, laughing. And then he pressed his knee against my erection. “Just go with it.”
