Drain You by M. Beth Bloom Page A

over best friends, but I never held it against her because I would’ve done the same thing—if I’d had a boy. I’d never wanted to be a loner, never wanted to be alone, but I realized I was except for Libby, and holding her was like holding the last person on earth who really knew me. I wanted to tell Libby that I couldn’t keep letting her drift away, and that I had to do the opposite now: I had to reclaim her. To protect the only real relationship in my life, I had to revive the bond we had back when we were fragile fourth graders who loved each other more than candy.
    But first I’d have to stop this craziness. And that meant stopping Stiles.
    “I’ll kill him,” I said. “I’ll get Morgan to run him over in his Dodge Shadow.”
    “Won’t do any good,” she whispered. She looked up at the moon. “It’ll be midnight soon. I’ve got to go…home.”
    “I want to come with you.” I shouted, “I’m coming with you!”
    “You can’t go with her.”
    The voice was behind me: James.
    “Is she okay?” I asked.
    “She can drive.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I just do.”
    “But she’s been hurt,” I said.
    “Quinn. Believe me.” Then, “You want your parents’ friends to see this?”
    I imagined the woman in the pashmina sweaterdress walking out arm in arm with her husband and discovering this teenage meltdown so close to their Infiniti.
    Together we lifted Libby up and walked her to her car. She paid no attention to James, didn’t ask who he was, didn’t even look at him.
    “James,” I said, not wanting Libby to go, not wanting Libby to stay. Not knowing what to want. And when he opened the driver’s-side door and helped Libby climb into her Mustang, I still didn’t know.
    Libby turned on the engine, and James reached in and flipped the headlights on. Then, finally—and for the first time—she noticed him. Her eyes fixed on his face. She reached out a hand, put it on his cheek. James gently removed it and placed it back inside the car and leaned in to say something I couldn’t hear. Libby nodded and drove away, never looking back.
    James turned to me. “Are you crying?”
    “No.” Not anymore.
    “I went to the video store.”
    “Why did you even come here?”
    “Didn’t you get my note?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So don’t be like this.”
    “Whatever you want, James.”
    Everyone’s hopeless tragedies just bled into one another. In an easy world I’d be with Morgan, James would fade away into the Valley, the hills, to Massachusetts or wherever he came from, and Libby would tell Stiles to chill on the drugs and violent stuff. But in a perfect world all the Spaders would disappear, so would Morgan’s feelings for me, and James would love me.
    “This is what I want,” he said as he reached out a hand for my neck.
    I didn’t collapse into him, or wrap my arms around his waist, or press my face against his chest. I didn’t know how to get the things I wanted now that I knew to want them. I didn’t move as he stroked my hair.
    “But I want something more,” James said.
    I wanted something more too, so badly, but he didn’t mean that, or anything like that. He was talking about our trade.
    “I can’t give you my dress,” I said, looking down at it. “I don’t have anything else.” I thought of my body, what there was to give. A fingernail. An eyelash. A lock of hair. But James wasn’t a forensic scientist. He was my date. Sort of.
    So I unclasped one of the knotted gold chains frommy neck and held it up for him. He fastened it around his own neck. It hung just slightly lower than the small gold cross shining against his pale white chest. I never wanted it back.

6.
STUFF
    James didn’t ask questions because he didn’t want to answer questions, but he did give me small, warm looks as we walked quietly through the canyons. I noticed it most when we passed under one streetlight, then another. Everything was better in the dark, cooler, like in a black-and-white