LITMIR.BIZ

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not the kind of guy you pal around with.

      Of course, if I hadn’t been drinking, I wouldn’t have needed to find a bathroom so badly and I wouldn’t have seen what I did.

      Warren shakes me off with a scowl, and I fall sideways into Kristen, who laughs and props me up against the wall.

      “You’re sooooo drunk,” she says. “Oh, my God.”

      “They’re fucking holding hands? Shit.” Warren spits into his plastic red cup—so many kinds of gross—before he nods at Joey and says, “You coming?”

      And Joey says, “Fuck, yeah,” because Joey is an idiot.

      “You guys.” I push myself off the wall. “You guys, seriously. Don’t. Just leave it, okay? Okay?”

      “Don’t worry,” says Warren, “all we’re gonna do is teach them a little lesson.” But his smile is all wrong, twisted, and there’s something else in his voice, too, warning me not to push it.

      And so I don’t. Because it’s easier. It’s easier to let them go.

      * * *

      My plans to have Brendon sweep me off my feet at the stroke of midnight are thwarted when my nausea catches up to me, and I instead ring in the New Year vomiting my guts out in the bathroom. I must pass out sometime after that, because I wake up the next morning curled around the base of the toilet the same way you’d curl yourself around another person. Kristen didn’t even think to wake me up and help me into the bedroom, and now I have a sore hip and a crick in my neck. Not to mention a severe case of dry mouth.

      I use the counter to pull myself to my feet then turn on the tap. As I scoop the cold water with both hands and splash it over my face, I try to piece together exactly what happened last night. I remember Warren and Joey taking off, but everything after that is a little fuzzy. It’s kind of freaking me out; I’ve never gotten that drunk before. Never to the point where I can’t remember what happened the next day.

      Things start to come back to me when I rub my face dry with the thick terry-cloth towel hanging on the rack. Kristen cajoling me into one more shot even though I was already falling-down drunk; jumping up on her coffee table to dance until I fell off and landed on some freshman girl; Brendon—oh, God. Brendon. I’m pretty sure I totally threw myself at him in the most embarrassing manner possible.

      “Yup, you totally did,” Kristen informs me cheerfully after I’ve managed to stumble down to the kitchen and collapse in the nearest chair. She sets a mug of water and two Advil in front of me—which for Kristen is as considerate as she gets. “You kept rubbing up on him and babbling about how hot his box of mints is. He was so weirded out. It was pretty hilarious.”

      “I’m sure,” I mutter. It would’ve been nice if Kristen had intervened to spare me the humiliation, but I guess she was too busy getting a kick out of the situation.

      She picks up the empty beer bottles littered on the table and takes them to the sink. “Cheer up,” she tells me. “At least you weren’t abandoned by your supposed boyfriend.”

      An unsettled feeling twists in my gut. “He didn’t come back last night?”

      “No,” she scoffs. “Fucking jerk. Probably went off to hotbox his truck with Joey. I swear—” She’s cut off by her phone on the counter ringing. She grabs it with a sigh. “That’s probably him. He better grovel.”

      While she takes the call I swallow the Advil, downing all of the water in the mug in a few long gulps. My head is totally throbbing. I feel like death warmed over. No, scratch that. Like death left out on the counter for two days and then reheated in the microwave for thirty seconds. That’s exactly how I feel.

      There’s an issue of National Geographic lying half-open on the table. I pick it up and leaf through it idly. I’m not a big recreational-reader type, other than celebrity gossip blogs and Us Weekly, but Kristen’s a talker, and I’m sure she’ll be arguing with Warren for a while before he gives in and promises to buy her something shiny in exchange for bailing. The magazine is open to a striking photo of an old Buddhist monk swathed in a yellow robe kneeling in prayer. Below the picture is a profile on the monk, who’d taken a vow of silence and hadn’t spoken a word in sixty years. I guess the idea was that by not speaking and staying in a constant state of contemplation, it made him closer to God, or enlightenment, or whatever.

      I’m too preoccupied skimming the article and nursing my hangover to eavesdrop on Kristen’s conversation, but then she lets out an especially sharp “What?” that makes me snap to attention. When I look at her, she’s speechless, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. But she turns her back to me and lowers her voice so I can’t hear whatever it is she says next. It isn’t until she hangs up the phone and drops into the seat next to me, the shocked expression etched into her features, that I get an answer out of her.

      “What’s going on?” I demand.

      She drags her eyes off the phone in her hand and meets my gaze. “Noah Beckett is in the hospital,” she tells me.

      “Wait, are you serious?” Kristen just nods, and my mouth goes dry again. I wrap my hands around my empty mug and ask, “What the hell happened?”

      “He was in the parking lot of the Quality Mart, and he…he got beat up really bad,” she says. She pauses for a long time. “I guess he’s unconscious.”

      My heart kind of stops, thinking about Noah like that. Who would do that to him? And then I realize.

      I don’t want to ask the question because I’m so afraid I already know the answer, but I have to. “Did Warren and Joey do it?”

      Kristen doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to. The look on her face says it all.

      “Oh, my God,” I breathe, slumping back in my chair. “Oh, my God.” I cover my mouth with one hand. “I thought they were just going to talk to him!”

      “You can’t say anything.” Kristen’s tone has a careful edge to it.

      “But—”

      “I mean it,” she says, more emphatically this time. “I’m not kidding. If anyone asks, nothing happened. You don’t know anything. Got it?”

      I stare down at the open magazine, but the words there are a jumbled mess. I can’t wrap my mind around this. I’m an expert at finding out secrets, but keeping them—especially a secret of this magnitude—is something else.

      “Yeah, I got it,” I say. “Nothing happened.”

      * * *

      Except I know better. We both do. Warren and Joey are behind this. They have to be.

      Kristen wants me to pretend like last night never happened. Like I should just push it out of my mind and ignore the fact that her boyfriend put a boy in the hospital. I drive home in a daze, trying to do just that. But no matter how loud I crank the radio, I can’t escape my thoughts, and they keep circling back to Noah. What the hell was Warren thinking? I know he was kind of drunk, and I know that he’s not the nicest guy under sober conditions, but still.

      I promised Kristen I wouldn’t say anything. If I do, I’m going to be in so much trouble—a kind of trouble I can’t even fathom. My parents will kill me. Kristen will disown me. Everyone will hate me. Besides, why should I have to be the one to rat them out? There were other people at that party who heard my story about Noah, who saw Warren and Joey get mad and leave. They have to know. Or they will, soon enough, once word spreads about what happened. So why should the responsibility to tell fall on my shoulders?

      All the rationalizing in the world isn’t making me feel better about this decision.

      Mom’s doing dishes when I walk into the kitchen. Dad sits at the table, reading the newspaper. It’s so perfectly normal I want to cry. I lean against the doorway and watch them, swallowing against the crater-size lump lodged in my throat.

      “How was

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