do it or not do it, but either way, it’d be great if she’d stop making such a huge thing out of it. Why is it such a big deal?” I listen to my voice falling flat in the unfinished cement basement and realize I sound like a whiny, jealous brat. What is wrong with me?
When I hear Tracy trying to navigate the basement steps in her ridiculous spiked heels, I just know she’s been standing at the top of the stairs for the previous thirty seconds, listening. I’m suddenly very tired of myself. I need a lot more candy if I’m going to make it through this night.
She appears, looking an awful lot like Stephanie. Maybe they’re both supposed to be Lady Gaga or Katy Perry—again, I can’t tell. She takes one look at the table covered with the “spooky” Halloween tablecloth I brought that suddenly looks like it’s for two-year-olds and starts rearranging everything to cover it. She turns, looks right through me and asks, “Steph, did you get the vodka?”
“I almost forgot,” Stephanie says, practically running toward the stairs. Then the doorbell rings, and Stephanie stops in her tracks, screaming in unison with Tracy, “They’re here!” Tracy flies up the stairs behind Stephanie, yelling over her shoulder, “Get dressed, Rose! Now!”
“I am dressed,” I shoot back, but she’s not listening to me. She never is.
I hear the front door open. There’s a lot of high-pitched squealing that makes my ears hurt even though I’m still in the basement. The cheerleaders have arrived.
I need to get out of here.
I can practically hear Tracy’s voice in my head, calling me a snob. She’s always called me a snob, ever since we were five and I told her the Wiggles were dumb. I’m not a snob, I just don’t feel like spending the evening with Tracy’s new best friends.
The entire squad starts making its way down to the basement, and my first instinct is to find a place to hide. But I freeze when I hear Regina’s nails-on-a-blackboard voice say, “Put the keg over there.”
A familiar pair of construction boots descends the stairs behind the gaggle of pop-star wannabes in wigs and heels. Jamie appears, carrying a keg. It didn’t even occur to me that he would be here. I’m so happy to see him that I smile and wave before I actually think it through. Regina is standing two steps away, and I don’t want to give her any reason to ask why I’m waving at her boyfriend. My hand freezes in midwave, and he looks at me, slightly puzzled. I stop smiling and turn away as the girls coo over how great Jamie is for getting the keg with his fake ID.
Matt comes down wearing a baseball hat with horns on it, carrying a tub of ice. He looks me up and down and says, “Scary costume. What are you supposed to be?”
I’m about to tell him to shove it when Stephanie runs in with a huge bottle of vodka and goes straight to Tracy, carrying it like it’s a beating heart needed for a transplant operation.
“Here it is!” she squeals, jumping from one foot to the other, nearly falling over with excitement and balance problems, thanks to her shoes. Stephanie is an extremely enthusiastic person.
Tracy takes the bottle and holds it up like a trophy while everyone in the basement—except Jamie and me—cheers like morons. I’m not sure why a bottle of vodka is so much more exciting than a keg, but then again, I’m not much of a drinker.
Tracy unscrews the cap and starts pouring the vodka into a bowl of punch.
“Don’t pour the whole thing in there, Trace—save some for later!” screeches Regina, slapping her hard on the arm. Tracy laughs her embarrassed laugh while rubbing her arm. Someone jams an iPod in a dock and the Crash Kings starts playing so loud that I can feel my skull vibrating. I stick my fingers in my ears and realize that I’m acting like an old lady.
Regina screeches again, making some sort of weird, unearthly cheer call that reverberates off the concrete walls, and suddenly the cheerleaders turn on Tracy like a coven of witches who just happen to wear tight spandex skirts and push-up bras. They grab her, cackling as they pin her down on the table. Regina takes a plastic funnel from her bottomless bag. For a second, I can’t figure out what she’s going to do with it—at my house, we use funnels to transfer maple syrup from a huge tin canister into a carafe that looks a lot nicer on the breakfast table than the canister does. But there’s no maple syrup transfer going on here.
Regina jams the funnel in Tracy’s mouth while Kristin, her evil little freshman protégé and kindred spirit, lifts up the punch bowl and starts pouring it into the funnel. It takes about two seconds before Tracy can’t swallow it fast enough, and it spills all over her face and costume. She starts choking, which makes the witches laugh even harder.
I look at Stephanie, who is tugging on her skirt and twirling a lock of her red hair—peeking out from under her purple wig—which is what she always does when she doesn’t know what to do. I look around for Matt to see if he has any plans to help out his girlfriend, but he’s in the corner flirting with Lena, a junior, and has no clue that Tracy is being force-fed vodka. Or maybe he just couldn’t care less. I stomp over to the punch bowl table and yank the funnel out of Tracy’s mouth, knocking over our platter of cookies and sending punch flying. It splatters across everyone holding Tracy down.
“What the fuck?” says Regina, staring at me as if no one has ever taken anything away from her before.
“You’re choking her!” I yell.
“This is her initiation, bitch, so back off,” she says in a quiet, scary voice.
Even though I can tell Regina is about half a second away from ripping my eyes out, I stand my ground. Tracy turns over, still coughing and spitting out punch, her eyes watering, her triple-action mascara running down her face. The other cheerleaders are frozen, looking at Regina—who is staring at me—waiting for their cue to do something. Kristin is watching me like she’s never seen me before, even though we’ve been in all the same classes for almost two months now. For some reason, she’s not dressed as a pop star. She looks more like a demonic fairy princess, with iridescent wings sprouting from her shoulders and a nasty scowl on her face.
I reach over and whack Tracy on the back a few times, trying to help her get the vodka out of her lungs. But her choking turns into giggling, and she whirls back around, yelling, “Hit me again!” The banshees scream and throw her back down on the table.
And suddenly I can see the future so clearly I can’t believe I couldn’t see it before. There is no room for me in this world of vodka and cheer-witches, which is fine, because I don’t want to be in it anyway. At least, I don’t think I do. But is it possible that, even though we’ve been friends since before we could read, Tracy and I might not make it through this year?
As they jam the funnel down Tracy’s throat again, Matt and Lena sneak up the stairs, not even bothering to go separately so no one gets suspicious. Regina leaves the funnel ritual to her minions and plops herself down on Jamie’s lap on the couch, shouting instructions to the girls. My heart sinks. I didn’t want to believe that he was with her, but if he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t let her do that to him. Not to mention that he wouldn’t be in Tracy’s basement in the first place.
Jamie is watching Tracy’s initiation, looking like he’s confused about what he’s doing here and wondering if he should attempt to stop the madness. I understand the feeling. And then, without any warning, he looks up at me.
I can’t look away. And of course that is the very moment Regina stops squawking for a second, turns on Jamie’s lap to say something to him and then follows his gaze to me. She looks at
