Almost Dead (Dead, #1) (2 page)

A wide grin stretches across my face. “How you manage to obtain alcohol is beyond me.”

She shrugs. “It’s simple. My parents buy it for La
ney and me, but they tell us we can only drink it as long as we stay home.”

I give her a pointed look. “Yeah, when has that
ever
worked for you, Miss Queen of Partying?”

Giggling, Mia responds, “Sssh. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Then her face switches to a more despondent expression as she stares at the bottle in her hands. “It’s not like they’ll ever find out. I mean, most parents would know stuff like that about their kids by now.”

“Most, but not all,” I say in an attempt to cheer her up. We can’t exactly have a good time if one of us is in a depressed mood.

In true Mia fashion, she blows off her thoughts
and starts the mini party. Having found apple juice in the fridge, we mix it with the vodka for a tastier beverage.

“
All right. Upstairs, hooker!” Mia jokingly orders. “It’s time for a jam session. I downloaded, like, a hundred songs earlier on my iPod.”

Mia’s room might be considered one of the most dismal places on the planet, but that’s why I love it so much. Her walls are painted a shade of purple so deep that if you squint, they appear black. Her curtains are made of
horrendous red lace, which matches nothing but the lingerie she bought for her ex-boyfriend, Matt, one year ago. (She had to trash the sexy outfit after she puked all over herself and Matt in the bedroom. What can I say? The girl knows how to get down and dirty.) All sorts of gruesome art and posters are paper-mâchéd on portions of her purplish-black walls, and Mia’s equally-disturbing canvas collection rests in the corner of her room.

“I haven’t painted much lately,” she says after noticing me side
-eyeing her most prized possessions.

I glance
at her. “Why not?”

Mia shrugs. “Don’t know. I haven’t really received much inspiration lately.”

Sitting down on the edge of her bed, I shimmy backwards, careful not to spill my drink. “It’ll come to you. I’m sure something tragic will happen to someone you know, and then you can paint your interpretation,” I say, teasingly.

Mia is always melodramatic when it comes to
insignificant events. One time, Laney, Mia’s annoying sister, slipped and fell off the stage during a pageant (I wasn’t there, but I heard it was hilarious) and had to be driven to the hospital by ambulance. Laney had a mino>

Needless to say, it was depressing
and overly theatrical.

“Ha-ha! Very funny,” Mia states, punching me on the arm and causing me to spill my juice. “Way to ruin my comforter, loser.”

Laughing, I run into Mia’s bathroom and grab a hand towel to absorb the spatter. “There. The rest will dry on its own.”

Mia
gives me the stink eye, but then flips through her iPod and places it on the speaker dock. Let’s be honest here—neither of us has impressive dance moves. Mia makes a strange attempt at dancing, where she raises her arms above her head, bends over at the waist, and begins a hacking motion from the elbow down. I think she’s trying to do the robot, but I’m not one hundred percent positive about that. And me? My booty shakes are completely out of control. I bump my ass into Mia once, and she nearly topples over. I do, too, but from laughter. My sides hurt.

Everything is spinning. Me. The walls. My brain. It’s like I’ve been sucked into a time-slowing whirlpool and can’t escape.

I love it, though.
This
is what weekends are all about. People might say that Mia and I are the black sheep of our families, but we see ourselves as independent. What we do is a form of expression. While our siblings receive all the love and attention from our parents, smothered twenty-four-seven, we’re entirely free.

“I feel like I can fly,” I say, stretching my arms straight out on either side. I close my eyes and imagine I’m high above the world, watching over everyone and everything.

“Yeah, well, if you’re flying, then I want the ability to run super fast,” says Mia. She takes off, sprinting out of her bedroom and running through the hallway. Seconds later, I hear a
thud
.

“Oh, my God! Are you okay?” I yell, trying not to choke on my drink. I poke my head out of Mia’s room…and she’s laying face-down on the hardwood floor.

“I’m all right. I’m okay.” She pushes herself up to a sitting position, clearly embarrassed, as she won’t look at me. But she eventually stands up. “Well, that was fun while it lasted.”

Grabbing the vodka bottle
in her room, clear liquid sloshes back and forth against the container. “Want some more?”

“
Duh
,” she says, lifting her cup. I think she forgot to add apple juice. That’s going to burn like a mother…

Focusing on the music again, I allow it to blare against my eardrums. The sound is enticing to me, and I begin to feel m
y body move in ways I’m not familiar with. If Mia’s dancing, I don’t care. It’s just the melody and me, like long-lost dance partners.

But my trip from reality is cut short when Mia
sways her hips the wrong way and knocks over her lamp. It shatters when it hits the floor. At first, she laughs, but the longer she stares at the broken pieces, the more she begins to comprehend the mess she made.

“
Shit. Help me clean this up, will you?”

I
stagger downstairs to grab a broom and dustpan, surprised Mia didn’t just call for Coletta, their housemaid. When I get back to Mia’s room, she’s on her hands and knees, picking up shards of glass.

“Here, take this,” I say, handing her the broom and dustpan, “before you cut yourself.” She drops the pieces from her palm and u
ses the cleaning equipment. “Dude, where’s Coletta? I didn’t see her downstairs.”

Mia puffs out a heavy sigh. “My parents got rid of her. They said she wasn’t doing a very good job of cleaning.” She shrugs. “Whatever. It’s their money, not mine.”

While Mia’s making a concentrated effort of removing glass fragments from her carpet, I lay back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. God, I haven’t been this fucked up in a while, and it feels
amazing
. The longer my eyes attempt to focus, the more they lose focus, if that even makes sense. Bright spots speckle my sight. The walls expand and shrink. Mia has a twin I never knew about.

“Have you ever seen these?” I ask
, pointing toward the ceiling.

“Seen what?” Mia
looks up. Instead of glancing at the ceiling, she stares at my finger.

“No, up there,” I say.

She squints in the direction I point and shakes her head.

“Look harder. There are faces,
I swear.”

She laughs. “Oh
, my God. We’re so shitfaced right now.”

I
rise up, taking another sip. The vodka doesn’t burn as much anymore. As a matter of fact, I can’t savor it, because my taste buds are numb.

Mia dumps the remaining pieces of her lamp into her trash bin (may it rest in peace), grabs her cup, and then plops down
beside me. We’re silent for several seconds, until she takes the reins on a new conversation.

“So
oo…I saw Gabe the other day.”

The party music
suddenly isn’t so engaging; it’s like scraping a cheese grater across my nerves. Bringing up my ex in any conversation is a bad idea, but it’s even worse when I’m drinking. This is supposed to be my mini vacation away from reality, my getaway, except she just shoved my ass onto a plane and sent me home early.

“Oh, yeah? What’d he have to say?”
I’m
somewhat
interested every time I hear his name. Rumors were legit, though: he cheated on me. So, while the mention of his name turns my stomach and stirs my curiosity simultaneously, the fact remains that he’s still a cheater, and I hate him for that.

Mia distractedly runs her index finger along the rim of her glass. “Not much. I mean, he
did
ask how you’re doing.”

The
racket exiting my nose and mouth is a cross between a snort and a cough. “Like he actually gives a shit.”

“Well, he wouldn’t
inquire if he didn’t,” Mia says.

I narrow my eyes. “Are you actually
defending
him?” There goes my perfect buzz. “See, this is why I didn’t want you to bring him up in our conversations. The douchebag doesn’t deserve to know how I’m doing, or what I’m feeling, or how my day has been. You know why? Because it’s none of his damn business.” I forcefully set my cup down on Mia’s nightstand, vodka splashing back and forth against its frame. Standing up too hastily causes my vision to smudge, like the acrylic paints Mia uses on her morbid canvases. “I have to get going. My mom ordered me to clean the house before they return later tonight.”

Mia bolts upright. “Ummm…maybe you should wait until your buzz wears off.”

“Thanks to you, it’s already gone,” I snip as I head for the stairs.

“We’re drunk and you
can’t—”

“
I’m fine,” I butt in, but if my barely being able to descend the stairs is any indication, I’m screwed in the driving department.

“Whatever. If something happens, I won’t feel sorry for you,” Mia
retorts.

“How many times have I driven like this before? I know these roads like the back of my hand.
I’ll text you later or something.”

As
I open the front door, Mia says, “Swear?”

“
Yep.”

She stands in the entryway
, watching me, like I can’t even walk to my car without a chaperone. I mean, it’s a chore, but damn…I don’t want to hear about Gabe anymore. Too much of a damper. And if that means canceling my Friday-night plans with Mia, then so be it.

Wintry air pinches my cheeks and nose, and I instinctively try to bury myself further in my jacket. The driver’s side door sticks when I try to open it, finally cracking as I pull.

“Stupid car,” I mutter.

I have to wait a couple oncht a couf minutes for the windshield to defrost—enough that I can see the road. When there’s finally a circle large enough to glimpse through, I back out of the driveway.
My head is alive with electrical energy. Everything comes in and out of focus. I can’t concentrate on simply one thing, which is
driving
at the moment.

Making it to the end of the street is easy, but
distorted cars bypass me in a haze when I merge onto the main road. I can’t tell if they’re real or not. I think they are.

My vision is waning.

One car.

Two.

Three.

Horns blow
. My eardrums ring. Then the other vehicles disappear, and I’m alone on an empty stretch of highway. Only a few blocks away now. On this road, there are no shoulders to pull off of. The yellow lines dotting the black tar separate into two. I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles become pale.

“
Just get home. Just get home,” I chant.

Death’s Cliff
hugs both sides of the overpass, which means I’m almost there. But it’s
cackling
at me, sucking my body toward its gaping mouth.

I squeeze my eyes shut and
open them again, only to stomp my brakes. Tires squeal; I smell their rancid odor. My airbag deploys with a loud
bang
and punches my face.