houses, the paths crisscrossed with flashlight beams and candle glow, laughter spilling over into the darkness. The adults were drunk, some of them, which shouldn’t be any surprise because they were all so fucking hypocritical, Sammi could hardly stand it.
Dad and Cass
No. No. She wouldn’t think about it, wouldn’t let herself remember the way they were groping each other, hands all over each other like they’d just die if they couldn’t—but no.
The adults were drunk.
Earlier tonight she’d been having fun, the kind of fun that came along unexpectedly sometimes when you had no expectations at all. When you had resigned yourself to the idea that everything was going to suck, and then some small thing would shift or change and suddenly it was like you were in grade school again and it was chocolate cake for lunch, or your best friend gave you an invitation to a party, or your mom painted your nails with a brand-new bottle of nail polish. Sammi remembered feeling that way, that pure clean happy feeling that used to be part of her life, just like Sunday pancakes and riding in the BMW convertible her mom bought herself for her fortieth birthday—but she had forgotten what the feeling felt like, if that made sense, which was somehow sadder than all the rest of it put together, and then there would be a moment like tonight when it all came back for just a second or a minute, enough to trick her into feeling like maybe things would be okay.
Tonight it was when Luddy and Cheddar and their stupid friends with their lame-ass retro-emo band were messing around, and Sage and Phillip were making out in the corner, and Sammi and Kyra were helping set out the pies, and then all of a sudden the Lazlow kids were in the middle of the room where the ladies were trying to set up tables, and they started dancing. Only not really dancing. They were taking running starts—or Dane was, anyway, since Dirk was too little, and then flopping down on his knees and sliding across the polished wooden floor like some sort of old-timey break-dancer. Dane got on his back and kicked his legs in the air, and Sammi was reminded of a time when she was six or seven, when she used to take classes at Tiny Troup but she couldn’t keep up with the other girls, she couldn’t do a plié for anything, so her mom told her it was okay if they quit and they went home and cranked the speakers and got on the floor and made up their own dance, right there in the living room of the house in the mountains, under the fake log beams and the elk-antler chandelier, they jumped and danced and rolled until they were piled in a heap, the two of them, laughing so hard her sides hurt. And her mom had said, Who needs any stupid Tiny Troup? and Sammi said, Yeah, who needs those guys?
Of course, her mom had been dead two months and twenty-four days, and so had Jed, and Sammi kept a count in silver Sharpie on the inside of the plastic box she stored her last few tampons in, the days since she stopped being her old self and started being…well, her half self. Because that was how she thought of herself now, as half of what she used to be.
Not that you could tell from the outside. That was all fine, and from the way the boys looked at her, more than fine, and Sammi knew she looked good—she had sun on her face even though it was so damn cold all the time, and her hair had gotten really long and kind of wavy since she stopped using the flatiron. So the outside, yeah. But inside she was only half there at any given time. Sometimes it was her thinking half that was there, like when she was working on her chords, Red tapping out time on the back of a folding chair in the music room. And sometimes it was her bad half, her remembering half, the one that kept hold of all the things she wished she could let go. And other times it was her numb half—yeah, that was three but who was counting—the numb self she’d learned to call up from deep inside with the help of the herb cigarettes that Sage made for them. She swore they got you high and Sammi wasn’t so sure but what did it matter, eleven herbs and spices or whatever was good enough for her, so she and Sage smoked like they’d been smoking forever and that was what mattered, putting that paper to your lips and sparking it up and sucking it down, with your friend beside you. And getting to the numb.
Thinking. Remembering. Going numb. But never all at once.
Right now, pulling herself up the low branches, swinging up to the ledge, the different parts were coming and going. That thing with Cass and her dad—
What the hell? Her dad would fuck anything that moved, but he wouldn’t even let Sammi walk down to the water with Colton after dinner. But she couldn’t think about it tonight. That had to wait. So she was pushing back on the thinking half and calling up the numb half. She was just killing time, it was nothing.
“Sage,” she said kind of soft, tapping on the window glass. She had one arm wrapped around the branch, the wood digging into her inner elbow painfully, leaning down against the cold window. Sage and Kyra were no doubt sleeping, they’d left the party at least an hour ago, Kyra looking like she was going to puke again, which was nothing new. Kyra had been puking since they got to New Eden, so much that Corryn had started making her special crackers out of kaysev flour, she even poked holes in them to make them look like saltines.
“Sage!”
But Sage was already there, pushing the window open, yawning.
“You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Sammi lied. “Dad’s snoring again.”
It was a pretty good lie. Her dad did snore, sometimes, if he’d been out all day on the road with Earl, or if he’d been doing something hard-core like cutting wood with the axe or hauling stumps with chains. Sammi figured snoring was just one of the ways old people dealt with physical exhaustion. Which was okay—would have been okay, anyway, back when they lived in a six-bedroom house and her mom and dad were, like, in a whole other wing—except that now they shared a trailer barely big enough for one person to live in, much less two, and it was nice of her dad to let her have the bedroom except he slept in the living room, which was the only other full room in the trailer, and she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without having to walk right past him, which was just wrong since her dad was longer than the twin mattress he’d put on the floor and he always had a leg or arm falling off the side. She didn’t want to see her dad like that and she figured he for damn sure wasn’t proud of it either.
Of course, that was all before she knew about him and Cass. Cass! When he was supposedly with Valerie, who was totally boring except at least she was old and normal, someone her dad should date—not Cass, who had been cool until they got here when she had some sort of breakdown and barely even cared about Smoke anymore and besides she had a kid for God’s sake, but evidently Aftertime meant that parents could just fuck around and do whatever they felt like and to hell with the kids even while they were still ordering them around.
“I thought I’d hang out,” Sammi said quickly, not wanting to go down that path. “You know, I thought we could be quiet if Kyra’s, like, needing her sleep or whatever.”
“Oh, dude, get this,” Sage said, forgetting that she was exhausted and pulling the window open wide so Sammi could scramble inside. Sage and Kyra were roommates in the House for Wayward Girls, which wasn’t actually what the place was called, just their nickname for it. Red and Zihna, who were really old, were like the housemom and housedad and had the big bedroom downstairs. Kyra would probably have to move over to the Mothers’ House when her baby came, but that was months and months away. Sage had been impregnated at the Rebuilders’ baby farm too, but she had miscarried right after they got to New Eden so it was kind of like she hadn’t even been pregnant. “Kyra’s getting this, like, line on her stomach.”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess it’s a pregnancy thing. That’s what Zihna says, anyway. Zihna says it’s probably going to be a boy because the line’s from testosterone and you get more testosterone in your system if you’re having a boy.”
“Like with the bacne?”
“I know, right? That’s so disgusting.” Sage made a face. “Here, look, she won’t wake up.”
As Sage tugged the blanket carefully off their sleeping friend and shone a flashlight on her, Sammi thought about how Sage always acted like pregnancy was the worst thing that could happen to anyone.