Secrets (8 page)

Anthony rubbed the back of his neck, feeling for a tag. That was the last thing he needed-to go walking into his
first Sanderson Prep party with a friggin’ tag hanging off him. That’d be the same as announcing that he’d gone out
and bought new clothes so he’d look nice. Absolute humiliation.

Get the hell in there,
Anthony ordered himself. He pulled in a deep breath and strode up the front walkway, but he
hesitated outside the front door. He didn’t belong here. New clothes or not, he just didn’t belong here.

You’re being such a weenie,
he thought.
You were invited. Now, go.
He jerked open the door and stepped inside.

Now what? Now where should he go?

A bunch of people were dancing in the living room-to a sound system that probably cost more than his mom’s car.

Didn’t matter. Anthony definitely wasn’t going to attempt dancing-or asking anyone to dance.

Kitchen. Safest bet. He picked a direction and headed off, trying to look purposeful.
Just going to get myself a

beer, everyone. See how well I fit in? I know all about parties.
He nodded at the people who looked familiar, but
didn’t slow down. Bad things could happen if you slowed down.

He passed the long line leading to one of the bathrooms-in a place this size there must be, man, at least three-then
spotted another crowd farther down the hall. Spillover from the kitchen. Had to be. He inched his way inside and
over to the keg on the closest counter. Some of the tension seeped out of his muscles when he saw a bunch of
guys from the team gathered around it.

“Fascinelli, you’re just in time to hear what a loser Salkow is,” Sanders called. Anthony relaxed a little more. What
had he been so wigged out about? Clearly they wanted him here.

“Yeah, Salkow’s trying to get his old girlfriend back, and she’s not having it,” McHugh added. “And the girl’s a total
nut job. She spent the summer in a mental ward, and Salkow still can’t score with her.”

Anthony’s hands curled into fists. It took a conscious effort to shake them loose, but he managed it.

“Rae’s not a nut job,” Marcus defended, his eyes flashing. “Just shut up.”

“I agree,” Ellison told Marcus. “She turned down the chance to come to the party with you. That’s a sign of
extreme mental health. Now, if it was me she turned down, ’nother story.”

Anthony filled a plastic cup with beer to have something to do with his hands other than throwing punches. These
bozos had no idea what Rae had gone through.
And it ’s not your job to explain it to them,
Anthony thought.

“What does she want from me, anyway?” Marcus asked. He drained his beer and squeezed the plastic cup until it
splintered.

“Has she seen the size of your package? ’Cause if she has, that could be your problem right there,” Sanders
answered.

Anthony took a swig of his beer but had trouble getting it down. Had Rae seen-had she and Marcus-
None of your

freakin’ business,
he told himself.

“If she hasn’t seen it, maybe you could start stuffing,” McHugh suggested. “Or there are those pump things-”

Marcus bounced his cup off McHugh’s head. “I’m serious. I want her back, and I’m getting nowhere.”

Anthony mumbled something about checking out the pool table-he didn’t even know if there was one, but it
seemed like the kind of house that would have pretty much all the rich-guy toys-and pushed his way out of the
kitchen. He liked Marcus and everything. But that didn’t mean Anthony was going to listen to him bitch and moan
about how much he wanted to get in Rae’s pants.
Get back together with her,
he corrected himself.

He could see it. Could see them as a couple. Rae and Marcus. Marcus and Rae. Prom queen and king and all that
bull. And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he’d seen the look in Marcus’s eyes when his friends cut on Rae. The
guy really did care about her.

A rhythmic chant started up from deeper in the house, and Anthony followed the sound, wanting some kind of
distraction. As he got closer to the sound, he could make out the words of the chant. “Jack-ee, Jack-ee, Jack-ee.”

The chant got louder as he entered a room with, yeah, a pool table. A tight circle of people had formed near the
double doors leading to the backyard. They were all leaning down, staring at something on the floor. Some of the
guys were practically drooling, and a couple of girls looked repulsed.

Got to see this,
Anthony thought. He elbowed hisway into the circle. The first thing he spotted was a halo of blond
hair. He tilted his head and saw-big surprise-Jackie. She had a funnel in her mouth. Some guy Anthony had never
seen was pouring vodka into the funnel, and Jackie was sucking it up like she’d learned to breathe the stuff instead
of air.

Christ,
Anthony thought.
She probably only weighs about a hundred and ten. How is she still even conscious?

Nobody seemed too worried about it. The chant grew frantic. “Jack-ee, Jack-ee, Jack-ee.” Anthony couldn’t take his
eyes off her as she arched her back, raising her head up to meet the vodka stream pouring into the funnel.

“New record!” someone shouted. Jackie held up one hand, and the guy pouring reluctantly stopped. The crowd
let out a long cheer, and Jackie smiled. She licked the end of the funnel, getting the last few drops of the vodka and
earning herself another cheer.

So this is how the other half parties,
Anthony thought. If he’d seen Jackie walking down the street, all perfect hair
and polished-rich-girl thing, he’d never have imagined her like this, lying on the floor, vodka slamming. Never
imagined her shoplifting, either.

Jackie pushed herself to her feet and grinned. “Baby just kicked some butt,” she cried. Her eyes locked on
Anthony, and a second later she had herarms wrapped around his neck. She backed him through the crowd,
pushed him against a wall, and started kissing him. His mouth tingled from the traces of vodka on her tongue.

What the
-
? What? Me?
Anthony was incapable of completing a thought. But whatever was going on here felt way
too nice for him to stop it. He licked her bottom lip, then his tongue was brushing against hers.

“Can’t believe Jackie would-” he heard a girl say.

“Hey, Marcus, Fascinelli’s getting some.” The words sounded like they were coming from the end of a long tunnel.

“Maybe you should forget about Rae and go for Jackie.”

The sound of Rae’s name brought her face into Anthony’s mind so clearly that he jerked away from Jackie. “Oh,
no, you don’t. I’m not done with you,” Jackie said. And her hands were on his back, pulling him back to her.

Rae wants nothing to do with you, remember?
Anthony thought.
She doesn’t even want to be around you in her

freakin’ school.
He wrapped his hands around Jackie’s waist, feeling a little stretch of soft, warm, smooth skin, and
deepened their kiss until his whole world was all sensation, no thought.

“Jackie, hey, Jackie!” The words forced their wayinto Anthony’s head. He wasn’t sure how much time had gone by.

Could have been a minute. Could have been an hour. “Jackie! Want to try to break the tequila record?”

Jackie wriggled away from Anthony. “I don’t want to try-I want to do it!” she exclaimed. She started toward the
vodka guy, who was now the tequila guy.

Anthony snagged her by the elbow and leaned close so that only she could hear what he had to say. “Mixing is
going to make you sick as a dog,” he told her. “And you’ve probably had enough of everything.”

Jackie gave him a little shove away. “Just because we exchanged saliva for a few minutes doesn’t mean you get to
start telling me what to do.” She spun and stalked off, leaving Anthony standing there like a complete idiot.

“This is the address,” Yana announced as she pulled up in front of one of the Victorian houses in Little Five
Points, one of the houses that had been carefully refurbished.

“I still have no idea what to say to her,” Rae said. “I can’t just ring the doorbell and go, ‘Hi, I want to ask you a
bunch of personal questions about your dead mother.’”

“You could try pretending you’re the Avon lady,”

Yana said. “Yeah, it could really work. First we’d have to get some truth serum,” she continued, getting into it. “And
we’d mix it in with some foundation. Then we give the Amanda girl a free makeover. The serum seeps into her
bloodstream through her face, and she tells us everything we want to know.”

Rae laughed, and some of the tension building inside her crumbled. “Really, though, what am I supposed to say?”

she asked. “I’m trying to think what would get me to talk to a stranger about my mom, and there’s nothing. It’s not as
if I even talk to my friends about it.”

“Yeah, we only talked about her, like, one time,” Yana agreed.

“And that was because I trusted you,” Rae said. “You’d seen me at my absolute worst in the hospital, and you still
were actually willing to talk to me.” Rae still remembered how amazing it felt when she realized Yana wasn’t just
being her friend because it was part of her job as a hospital volunteer.

“So Amanda needs to trust you,” Yana said.

“Yeah, tonight,” Rae answered. How impossible was that?

She and Yana sat for a minute in silence. “It seems like the only way to do it is to tell her the truth,” Yana finally said.

“Not all of it, not the part about you maybe being sick-that would freak her way out. Butyou both have moms that
are dead. You want to know more about yours. She’d probably get that.”

Rae unfastened her seat belt. “Okay, you’re right, you’re right. Count of three, we just go up there. And the right
words will… they’ll come to me. Somehow.” She opened the car door halfway. “One, two, three.” Rae forced herself
out of the car and slammed the door behind her.
The girl’s mother has been dead a year,
she thought as she headed
for the front door.
The scab has probably just started to really form, and here I come to rip it off. But what choice do I

have?

Before she could think too much more, Rae reached out and knocked on the door. A girl a few years younger than
Rae answered, only opening the door partway. “Um, hi, are you Amanda Reese?” Rae managed to ask.

The girl didn’t open the door any farther. “Yeah. Well, but everybody calls me Mandy.”

“Mandy, okay,” Rae said. “I’m Rae. And this is my friend Yana. I don’t know if you remember, but I called you a few
weeks ago-”

“You’re the one who called and asked for my mom.” Mandy’s eyes began to glitter with unshed tears.
Oh God,
Rae
thought.
Oh God. Worst nightmare here.

Rae’s mind raced frantically.
Just do what Yana said,
she thought. “I think your mom and my mom might have
known each other,” Rae said, her throat tightening. “I… my mother’s dead, too. And I’ve been wanting to find out
more about her. I thought maybe you’d be able to help me, that maybe your mother mentioned-”

The tears that had been glistening in Mandy’s eyes started spilling down her cheeks. She made an awful choking
sound as she tried to get control of herself. “Go away. Please just go away,” Mandy managed to get out. “I can’t talk
to you.”

"
L-ee, Jack-ee,Jack-ee.” The chant grew
I softer, almost inaudible, as Anthony slid the ^^ glass door closed behind him and pulled in a deep breath of the
cool night air.

A moment later the glass door was pulled back open. “Jackie’s funneling tequila,” someone shouted, and most of
the guys who’d been splashing around in the pool with their clothes on headed inside.

“Don’t know what antibitch drug Jackie’s been taking, but I like it,” one of them said as he passed Anthony.

Anthony shook his head. The girl was going to be hugely sick-not that it was any of his business, as she’d pointed
out.
Like I really wanted to stick around and hold her hair while she puked,
Anthony thought. He walked around the
pool-thefreakin’ pool-sidestepping the couples making out on the lounge chairs. He needed a few minutes by
himself before he could deal with the party again.

“Fascinelli,” someone called. Anthony squinted and saw Marcus leaning against one of the magnolia trees near
the back fence. Reluctantly Anthony headed over to him.

“Hey,” he said, wondering why Marcus was hiding out.

Marcus took a long pull on his cup of beer. “Do you know Rae?” he asked abruptly. “Rae Voight.”

Crap,
Anthony thought. Talking about Rae with Marcus was not his idea of a party. It was more like his idea of hell.

“I think I’ve seen her around. We’re not in any classes together,” Anthony answered. He didn’t know if Rae had told
Marcus that she was in group therapy. If she hadn’t, he wasn’t going to be the one to do it.

“Well, what do you think of her?” Marcus asked.

“She’s cute,” Anthony said. “Do you think the Sabertooths-”