Текст книги "He's So Not Worth It"

Автор книги: Kieran Scott

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“Ally, no.”My stomach was in knots as Annie pulled me away from the others, but I managed a casual laugh. I didn’t want Cooper to think I was going to chicken out—that I might let my buzzkill friend talk me out of it.“What’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re actually going to take anything,” I whispered to her, glancing over my shoulder.No one seemed to be in a huge rush. Cooper and Dex were chugging beers while Stoner tried to open a package of jerky for Jen. I shivered violently against the wind and hugged myself, hard.“How do you know that?” she asked.“Because! I won’t let them.” I took a sip of the beer I’d stolen from Cooper, trying to look like this whole thing wasn’t bothering me, too. “You should come with us. You hate Chloe. This is the perfect chance to get back at her.”Annie crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows. “How, exactly?” she asked dubiously.“You can . . . I don’ t know . . . go into her room and mess things up,” I improvised. “Or snoop! Maybe she has a diary in there or something.”I took another slug of beer, holding my wind-whipped hair back from my face with my free hand.“Right. Right. Because everyone keeps their innermost thoughts recorded in a diary that they leave at a house they only go to for two months out of the year,” Annie said, glancing up at the darkened windows. “If they go there at all.”“God. Where do you get off?” I said. The sarcasm and put-downs were getting old fast. “This from the girl who spends her entire life stalking innocent people and recording their every move.”Annie’s jaw dropped. “Since when are they innocent people? Have they totally brainwashed you?”“I’m not the one who’s brainwashed. You’re brainwashed!” I shouted. “You think every single person who lives on the crest is evil, no matter what! Well, guess what! It looks like I’m gonna be living there soon again, Annie! So I guess now I’m too cool to be friends with you.”“Oh my God. You are so far off the deep end,” Annie said through her teeth.“Whatever. Why don’t you just go away already? I don’t remember asking you to come along.”Behind me, the guys reacted to my diss with a loud chorus of “oh!” Annie’s face burned red. I felt suddenly hot and guilty and wanted to take it back, but why? She’d insulted me first.“Wow. I really hate you when you’re drunk,” Annie said, her eyes narrowed into angry slits, her arms crossed over her chest. The guys shouted again. Dex even slapped his knee. My face was on fire.“Yeah? Cuz I really hate you when you’re all self-righteous and know-it-all,” I retorted. “Oh, wait! That’s all the time!”Annie’s face completely fell. She glanced at the others uncertainly as they basically cackled in her face. A thump of regret hit my chest hard, but I didn’t take it back. I was too furious, too embarrassed, too far gone.“I’m outta here,” Annie said, her mouth a tight line. “At this point, I think I’d rather hang out with Faith anyway.”My eyes stung with tears. The guys didn’t know it, but that was actually the biggest insult yet. Annie turned and walked away, her feet spraying up sand in her wake. This night simply could not get any worse. I chugged the rest of the beer and threw the bottle in the sand. Suddenly my stomach swooped and I felt like I was about to lose my dinner all over the beach, but I managed to hold it back with a few deep breaths.Okay. So maybe I was drunker than I’d thought.“All right, are we doing this or what?” Dex asked, clapping his hands together.“You really staying?” Cooper asked, moseying up behind me and slipping his arms around my waist.“I can do better than that,” I told him. I turned around and covered my mouth to keep from burping in his face. I swallowed hard, then spoke. “I know the security code to kill the alarm and open the door. No breaking in needed.”Cooper’s head flinched back in surprise and then he grinned a grin that flipped my heart. “This is gonna be epic.”He turned around, slinging his arm over my shoulders. “My girl knows the code!”“Shut up!” Dex shouted.“Omigod! Let’s go!” Jenny said, running for the stairs.Stoner and Dex were right behind her, Stoner gripping the side rails and swinging himself up three steps at a time like an orangutan. Cooper kept his arm around me as we navigated up awkwardly, our hips bumping and our feet tangling. My stomach turned again as we reached the deck, and when I opened the flap over the alarm pad, my teeth started to chatter. Cooper put his big, tan hands on my shoulders and kneaded them lightly.What are you doing, Ally? What are you doing? This is not you.And then I saw Chloe and Jake crossing Orchard Avenue together. Saw their hands touching. Imagined it was their lips.I swallowed back bile and closed my eyes for a moment while my brain righted itself.Screw Chloe. Screw Jake. Screw my mom. Screw all of them.I typed in Chloe’s birth date and heard the telltale beep. Then I closed the flap and nodded at Cooper. He held his breath and tried the door. It slid open, and nothing happened. No sirens, no flashing lights. Nothing.“Whoooohooo!” Cooper shouted, leading the way inside. The others followed, jumping over the threshold like little kids. I had to steady myself on the doorway for a moment, then tripped inside.Chloe’s house was exactly how I remembered it. The décor was all shabby-chic beach cottage with slatted ceilings and weathered wood chairs and cushions in stripes and florals and plaids. Her dad’s sailboat collection was displayed proudly on the bay window that faced the water, and Dex went right for it, smashing the two-hundred-dollar-and-up wooden models into each other like they were at war. Cooper made for the liquor cabinet and opened a bottle of something brown, drinking straight from it and sloshing the liquid onto the pink-and-white dining room rug. Stoner was in the pantry, rooting around through bags and cans. Jenny instantly disappeared around the corner and up the stairs. I knew she was looking for Chloe’s room and the fabulous clothes she figured she’d find there. I started to follow, but the metal dolphin sculpture on the coffee table tilted in front of me. Then the boat-wheel chandelier tilted the other way. I found myself stumbling sideways into the overstuffed couch, too dizzy to take another step. I sank into the cushions gratefully and held my head between my hands. The crashing and banging and shouting jabbed at my brain like violent stabs of a very sharp knife.“Hey. Are you all right?” Cooper asked me, sitting on the coffee table across from me, clutching the neck of the bottle.I nodded, but the action brought chunks up the back of my throat. Before I could do anything to stop it, I threw up all over his feet.“Oh, shit!” Cooper jumped up and away from me. “Fuck! Ally! What the fuck!? That’s disgusting.”“M’sorry. M’sorry.” My eyes burning with humiliation, I lay back on the couch with my arm over my forehead. My mouth tasted like bile and banana. Citric acid burned the back of my throat and my nostrils.But I was not going to cry. I would. Not. Cry.Cooper slipped and slid over to the kitchen, leaving puke prints on the tile floor. The squishing and slurping made me want to hurl all over again, but I managed to hold it back this time. I heard him complaining to Dex about me. Heard them groaning as they cleaned his feet and flip-flops in the stainless steel sink.Cooper’s disgusted moan was the last thing I registered before I fell asleep.

I left the flowers in the car. I was still going to give them to her, but I didn’t need to carry them into a house filled with all my friends, plus Ally’s mom. When I opened the door to Faith’s house, the party was raging. Parentals danced like no one was watching, which was never a good idea. At first it seemed like there weren’t a lot of people my age around, but once I got downstairs I found them. Everyone was either in the hot tub or around it. The first person to spot me was Shannen.Great.“Hey!” she said as she walked over to me. Either she’d forgotten the last time we talked or didn’t care. She looked good. Her hair was brushed back from her face and she looked . . . pretty. “What are you doing here?”Yeah. She didn’t want to hear the answer to that.“Looking for Ally?” Faith asked. She was wearing a wet, white bikini and had a see-through sarong tied around her waist. She took a swig of champagne and rolled her eyes. “She’s probably halfway to California by now.”“What? Why?” I asked.“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Shannen snorted a laugh. “Dr. Nathanson popped the question to Mrs. Ryan. Looks like Ally Ryan’s moving back to the crest.”My heart fell. “You’re kidding.”“Nope. He did it in front of everybody,” Faith said, waving her glass around. “Except me, of course. I missed it because of Connor.”“You mean because you were trying to seduce Connor in the hot tub,” Shannen said.Faith blew out a sigh. “Whatever. He started with me.”I shook my head. Did they not realize there were more important things happening here?“So . . . what? Ally bailed?” I said. “Do you know where she went?”“Todd saw her on the beach with Annie, that’s all I know. But that was, like, fifteen minutes ago,” Faith said.“Thanks.” I shoved between them and started for the door.“Good luck!” Shannen called after me.I paused for a second, my back to her, wanting to ask her what the hell she meant by that—because she couldn’t actually wish me and Ally luck, could she?—but I shook it off. It wasn’t about that right now. It was about finding Ally before she completely went off the deep end. I wove through the crowd at the open glass doors, ignoring the shouts from my friends, and hit the sand. Of course, once I got there, I had no idea where to go.“Dude.”Hammond came jogging down the steps from the deck. Connor Shale, Josh Schwartz, and the Idiot Twins were behind him. I reached out to slap hands with him, but instead he grabbed my shirt and pulled back a fist. My stomach hit my shoes.“Hammond!” Shannen screeched from the basement door. I saw her and Faith out of the corner of my eye, running toward us.I stared at Hammond’s cocked fist. “What the fuck are you—”“Jake! Hammond! Stop!”Hammond released me as Ally’s friend Annie ran up behind me. She looked panicked.“It’s Ally,” she blurted, wheezing for air.All the tiny hairs on my neck stood on end. “Where is she?”Annie bucked forward, bracing her hands over her knees.“God. It’s a lot . . . harder to . . . run in the sand . . . than it looks,” she gasped.“Where’s Ally?” Hammond demanded.“She’s . . . at Chloe’s,” Annie said between breaths. She pointed back over her shoulder, up the beach toward my house and Chloe’s. “Her and those guys . . . those local guys . . . are breaking in.”“What?” Hammond blurted, his voice like a woman’s screech.“She’s pretty drunk,” Annie said, hands on her hips as she straightened up. “She’s being a total bitch, in fact. She wouldn’t come with me, but . . . she’s gonna get in a lot of trouble.”“Shit,” I said under my breath.“I just want to make it clear,” Annie said, holding up her hands, “that I would not be asking you guys for help unless I had no other choice.”I exchanged a baffled look with Hammond. Whatever that meant.“So let’s go get her,” Hammond said, slapping my shoulder. I guess whatever reason he had for wanting to punch me in the face was temporarily forgotten. He jogged up the beach with the other guys and Shannen, of course, went along too. I started to follow, but then a hand closed around my wrist.“Wait.”I looked down at Annie—at her fingers on my arm. They looked very wrong there. A few yards up, Shannen paused. “What?” I said. “Let me go.”“I don’t think you should,” Annie said. “Let them handle it.”“Why?”My adrenaline was slamming through my veins. I couldn’t believe those guys were getting such a head start. Shannen moseyed back toward us, eyeing Annie. Finally, the girl let go of me and wiped her palms on her denim skirt.“Because she knows.”My heart thumped extra hard. I had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn’t sound good. My eyes darted to Shannen and Faith. Clueless.“Knows what?”Annie pressed her lips together. “She knows about you and Chloe.”

There was no way I was about to deal with that. Not with Annie’s revelation, not with Shannen and Faith’s reaction. Not with any of it. All that I cared about was getting to Ally. Getting her away from that surf loser. Getting her safe.But how did she know? How had she found out? Had Chloe called her or something? Had she posted it on Facebook? I mean, how the hell could Ally possibly know?All of this went through my mind as I sprinted up the beach toward Chloe’s alone. Shannen had apparently decided not to come after all, which was fine by me. One less person to worry about. When I got there, I heard a crash and someone screamed. I took the stairs two at a time and vaulted through the door, fists clenched.The first thing I saw was Hammond and Ally’s surf loser wrestling on the living room floor. There was a broken bottle of scotch next to them and some girl stood over them, screaming at them to stop. Todd and Trevor were whaling on a skinny dude in the kitchen and Connor and Josh were nowhere to be found.Part of me wanted to rip Hammond off the asshole that had kissed Ally and take a swing at him myself, but then I heard a moan. I looked right and saw Ally lying on the couch. She had puke on her shirt, and there was a puddle of yellow and brown on the rug at her side.I jumped over the puddle and knelt near her feet.“Ally?” I said, taking her hand. “Ally, wake up. We have to get out of here.”Her eyes fluttered open and focused for half a second. “Jake?”Then the front door burst open and two guys in rent-a-cop uniforms came barreling in.“Everybody freeze!”“Omigod! Omigod! Omigod!” The girl started wailing and shaking, like she was having a fit. One of the security dudes reached down and hauled Hammond off the local dude by the back of his neck. Hammond started to swing, but then froze when he saw the guy’s face.“Charlie?”“Hammond? What the hell are you guys doing in here?” The surf loser took the moment to grab the screaming girl and run. His friend in the kitchen wasn’t far behind. Then Charlie, whoever he was, looked over at the couch.“Oh, shit, is that Ally?”“She’s kind of out of it,” I said.He came around the table, grimaced at the puke, and leaned toward her. I did a double take when I finally recognized him. It was Charlie Moore. The dude in all the pictures in Shannen’s room. Her long-lost brother.“Get her out of here,” he said, standing up straight.“What?” his partner said from the other side of the room.Charlie ignored him. He looked me in the eye. He looked exactly like Shannen, but with a beard. “Get her out of here now.” He took out his radio and glared at Hammond and the twins. “All of you, get the hell out of here. You have about two minutes before the actual police show up, and then I’m gonna have a hard time making them believe I didn’t see anything.”I didn’t ask questions. I scooped Ally up in my arms, stepped over the puke puddle, and followed Hammond and the Idiot Twins outside. Surf loser and his friends were nowhere to be seen. Nice that he cared so much about Ally to just bail like that. The twins sprinted ahead of us, back toward the party, cackling like they’d just had the best night ever. We had passed Connor’s house and were almost to Hammond’s when we met up with the girls.“Oh my God! Ally!” Faith said, running over to me. “Is she unconscious?”“I think she’s just asleep,” I said, out of breath. I jostled her in my arms, trying to get a better grip, and she opened her eyes again.“Jake?” she said.“Yeah. I’m here,” I told her.I imagined her saying something dramatic. Something like “you saved me” or “thank you” or even “I love you.”But she looked me right in the eye and said, “You hooked up with Chloe.”And then she turned her head and barfed on Faith’s feet.“Nice,” Annie said with a grin.Faith shrieked louder than any seagull I’d ever heard. She turned to glare at Annie, her fingers curling like claws. I swear I thought she was going to tear the girl’s eyes out.“What?” Annie said happily. “You can’t tell me you didn’t deserve that.”Faith groaned and ran for the water. Shannen bit back a laugh. Hammond shot me a vicious look, then took off up the beach. Clearly, he already knew about me and Chloe, and clearly this was why he’d wanted to pummel me. I expected Shannen to follow him, but she just looked sorry for me.“We have to get her home,” Annie said.Ally groaned and rested her cheek on my chest.“Her mother’s gonna kill her,” Shannen replied.“So, what? Should we take her to a hospital?” Annie asked.Shannen scoffed. “The ones down here suck. She’ll end up getting a kidney replaced or something.”“Fine,” Annie said firmly, taking charge. “You get her back to Gray’s. I’ll go tell her mom to meet us there.”“Okay,” I said finally, starting up the beach again.Faith trudged back from the water, her feet, legs, and sarong wet, her sandals dangling from her fingers. I walked with her and Shannen toward Dr. Nathanson’s house. For a second I wondered where the hell Connor and Josh had gotten off to, but it didn’t exactly matter. All that mattered was getting Ally into bed and making sure she was okay.That, and figuring out how the hell I was going to explain about Chloe.

My mother was sipping tea by my bedside when I woke up the next morning. All the blinds were closed and the entire room looked gray. Even my mother’s skin looked gray.“Mom?” I croaked.My throat was dry and felt like it was covered in sour-tasting fuzz. She put her tea down on the bedside table and leaned toward me as I rolled onto my side. There was a huge bouquet of colorful flowers in a vase next to my bed. Where had those come from? Was I sick enough to merit flowers?“Are you okay? Do you need to throw up again?” my mother asked.My eyes rolled in disgust as the memories of last night came flooding back, and just like that, my head began to pound. It was like someone was playing a timpani drum at the center of my skull, radiating sound waves out to every corner of my head.“I don’t think so,” I said, bringing my hand to my forehead.She lifted a glass of water from the nightstand and I tried to push myself up. I couldn’t get there, though, and settled for leaning back against the pillows at a forty-five-degree angle, where I slowly sipped the water. My mother sighed through her nose and pushed the hair back from my forehead with the palm of her hand. The way she was studying my face made me sad. She’d never looked at me that way before. In that what am I going to do? helpless kind of way.“You’re getting married,” I said finally.She tilted her head. “Oh, Ally.”My lip started to tremble and a tear plopped from my eye onto my hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry. It’s just—”“You’ve had a rough few days. A lot’s gone on,” my mother said. “We don’t have to talk about it now.”I took a deep, broken breath and looked toward the window, trying not to cry for real. I choked a little, though, and a few sobs came out. I felt like such a loser, all hungover and gross, with my mother waiting on me. And like I didn’t know which way was up. Who were my friends? Who was my boyfriend? Where was I going to live? Would my dad move away again? And all the while, that timpani drum was pounding away, trying to shatter my skull.“Here. Take these.”My mom held out a couple of Tylenol. I swallowed them gratefully and lay back again.“We don’t have to talk about it now, but we are going to talk about it,” my mother assured me, smoothing my hair again. Her hand felt cold and steady, comforting and perfect. “You and I are going to be doing a lot of talking over the next few days.”I nodded slowly. “I know.”“Good,” she said. “Right now I think you should try to get some more rest.”“Okay,” I replied, my voice thick.I shakily put the glass down on the table, next to the flowers. She picked up her tea and started to go.“Mom?” I said when she got to the door.“Yeah?”“Was . . . was Jake here last night?” I asked.“He’s still here. He’s asleep in the guest room,” she replied.My heart pounded against my rib cage. I had this odd memory of him holding my hand, looking into my eyes, but that was it. What was he doing here? What had happened between us? What had I said?My mother turned to face me. “Hon, you know that I love you, right? No matter what.”My throat closed over. “Yeah.”“Good. And I have to tell you . . . I think that kid does too,” she said.I blinked, confused. “What kid does what?”“Jake. After what he did for you last night, it’s pretty clear to me that that guy is in love.”Then she smiled and quietly closed the door.