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“Okay?” Rhys asks me. I lower my hand and nod. He contemplates the bottle next and then, after a long moment says, “I have never fallen in love.”
Depressing. Worse: Trace and Grace are the only ones who drink. Cary avoids my eyes and it takes me a minute to figure out why; he had sex with Lily, but didn’t love her. I don’t know if that kind of thing makes more or less sense to me now.
Cary grabs the bottle from Grace after she has her drink.
“Are we even deciding turns right?” I ask, confused.
Cary takes a swig out of turn. “If we’re doing it wrong, we won’t call it I Never. It’s just sharing, Sloane. That’s all it is.”
“In that case.” Harrison clears his throat. “I’ve never had sex.”
I know if I don’t drink, it’ll just be me and Harrison, so I take the bottle after Rhys has his go and I take a longer pull off it than I should, like I am so totally not a virgin.
I pass it to Grace. Trace makes retching noises as she sips.
“Sloane, you haven’t gone yet,” Rhys points out. “You’ve never I nevered.”
And then the bottle is back in my hands. I don’t know what to say, share. It’s fu
“I’ve never…” I stare at the label. “I never…”
“You’re thinking about it too long,” Trace says.
“I’ve never run away from home.”
Cary drinks. When he was five, he explains. He didn’t want to clean his room.
So we go round and round, the questions getting more perverted and inane as we do. The bottle seems endless and I feel sleepy and hot and I’ve lied to them all a lot because I guess I care what they think and I don’t even know why I care what they think.
When Harrison passes on drink number who knows, Trace zeroes in on him.
“Man, what have you done?” he asks. “You take drinks when you shouldn’t and you don’t drink when you should. You need to do something about your…” Oops. It’s not a sentence Trace should finish, but he does it anyway. “Life.”
“How world-weary were you at fourteen?” Rhys asks.
“I’m not saying he should’ve fucked someone already,” Trace says generously. He’s smashed. “But I mean, Harrison, do you like—do you even know what a kiss is? Like … do you need someone here to explain it to you just in case it happened and you didn’t know?”
“Jesus, Trace,” Cary mutters. Out of all of us, he’s the most gone. Or experienced, I guess. His shoulders are slumped and every so often he tilts forward like he’s lost his balance, even though he’s sitting. “Shut the fuck up.”
“I know what a kiss is,” Harrison whispers.
“He’s fourteen,” Grace says, while Harrison sits there looking devastated. “Don’t be so hard on him, Trace.”
“I’m fifteen,” Harrison says miserably.
“Just forget it, Harrison. Please.” Cary grabs the bottle. “It’s not a big deal.”
“But it is. I’ve never—I’ve never done anything. I’ve never had anything done to me—”
“Game over please,” Cary says loudly. He takes a gulp of whiskey and swishes it around his mouth before swallowing. “Let’s move on, to straight drinking.”
Harrison presses his lips together, pushes his palms against the floor. He looks away from us and for once I get the impression that he is really, truly trying not to cry and it’s not half-hearted or anything, his body shakes with the effort. Even Trace is quieted by it. He tries to take it all back when it’s too late.
“Harrison, I was just fucking with you…”
“No, you weren’t. It’s nothing. I thought it could be something, I mean, eventually.” He finally looks at us. “My life. I thought—but I mean … it’s nothing.”
Cary groans. “Please shut up.”
“But I still want it to be something,” Harrison says. A single tear trails down his cheek. “That’s stupid, isn’t it? And now it’s too late to do anything about it.”
Cary buries his head in his hands. No one does or says anything for a long time and then Grace scoots over to Harrison. Her nose and cheeks are a warm red from the whiskey. She wraps an arm around him and he starts to cry in earnest.
“Don’t cry,” she says. “You have a lot of time.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“No—”
“Yeah! Yeah, you do. It’s okay. Look—”
She does something that is amazingly selfless and also gross. She tilts Harrison’s face up and gives him a sweet kiss on the lips and it lasts long enough for him to taste her back, to move his mouth against hers. Trace regards her proudly and when it’s over, Harrison stares at her dumbfounded but he’s stopped crying.
She is so nice.
Cary makes a disgusted noise and struggles to his feet. “Well, this was fun until Harrison started crying, but hey. That’s what he does, right? Thanks, Harrison.”
This brings Harrison back. “I didn’t—”
“Yeah, you did.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Trace asks. “Let the kid cry if he needs to.”
“That’s all we let Harrison do! I don’t want to dwell.” Cary rubs his eyes. “I’m tired of dwelling. I just wanted to get totally wasted and—”
“You’re there,” Rhys tells him.
“It was just sharing,” I say. “That’s all he did.”
“Yeah, but not—” Cary gestures to Harrison. It throws him off balance. He sways precariously for a second before steadying himself. “Not that. We didn’t need to hear it. I didn’t want to hear it. It’s fucking pathetic…”
“I’m sorry,” Harrison says. “I didn’t mean to—”
“He can fucking dwell if he wants to,” Trace says. “I never see you dwell.”
“Oh, let me guess,” Cary replies. “The next words out of your mouth are going to be something about your dead parents that I killed because I’m a murderer.”
“Yeah, something like that. Exactly like that actually.”
They stare at each other. I watch Trace. He holds Cary’s gaze, unblinking. Cary caves first and he does it in a way I don’t expect, that I don’t think any of us expect. He curls his hand into a fist and presses it against his forehead.
“You think I wanted this,” he says.
“Cary,” Grace starts. “Don’t do this—”
“But you must. You think I wanted it,” he says. “You actually think I wanted to be left with you guys, without them.” He laughs. “You think I wanted that? Really?” He takes a step back. “I didn’t. I loved the idea of—I loved the idea of them.” He lowers his hand. “It shouldn’t have been them. It should have been—”
He stares at us, lost, and I keep waiting for him to finish even though I know he’s never going to finish. It should’ve been me. Cary changes for me in that instant. From the boy who is crazy good at survival stuff to the boy who thinks he should be dead.
He’s finally become someone I understand.
He shakes his head and weaves out of the auditorium. He’s through with us, with everything. I want to follow after him, tell him he’s not alone.
I want to ask him how we can help each other.
Grace catches my eye. She opens her mouth and closes it and then she looks away. She doesn’t look happy anymore. I feel like someone should do something. I guess it should be me. I get to my feet and the world tilts a little.
“I’ll find him.”
“Don’t,” Trace says. “Let him rot.”
Rhys stands. “I’ll go with you.”
I don’t want his company but I guess I’m stuck with it. Rhys is steadier on his feet than I am and when we leave the auditorium, I end up following him. He seems to know where Cary is: the library. He’s slumped over at one of the tables, his head resting in his arms.
“Just leave me alone,” he slurs. “Please.”
“Let us take you back to your mat,” Rhys says.
“Mat. I don’t even have a bed anymore. None of us have beds anymore. You realize this, right? We can’t go home. There are no more beds.” He raises his head and looks at us. His eyes are glassy. “We can’t go home, Sloane.”