In the cluster of bikes at one end, Sam spots Romney’s Harley. Romney must be one of the chaperones. If he’s got the parking lot duty, he’s wandering around with an eye out for potential fights, and discouraging with his presence any standing on the roofs of other people’s vehicles, guzzling openly, throwing bottles, public pissing or other mayhem.
Inside, the amplifiers are cranked to nosebleed levels and the gym reverberates to Skinny Puppy’s kettledrum synthesizer assault, a deafening apocalyptic chant just right for Hell’s waiting room. In deference to the holiday, the decoration committee has gelled the lights in red and green, producing a bilious bad-trip atmosphere. The writhing dancers over which the peculiar light spills could easily be the tormented denizens of the Bad Place itself. A life-size Santa Claus has been lynched from one of the raised basketball backboards. The late Merry Old Elf sports Freddy Krueger’s razor fingerblades, strung with tinsel made poisonous and bloody by the red and green gels. It looks as if the Mutant had a hand in the decor.
Todd Gramolini comes up to hang an arm over Sam’s shoulder and deliberately huff beery breath into his face. “Slammer!”
“Seen Woods?” Sam asks.
“Token was here with Sarah but”—Todd pumps his eyebrows lasciviously—“they left.”
Deliberately, Sam works the room. He ignores a lot more beer breath from his teammates. Making a joke of it, with his hand to his ear, he pretends to be deaf to invitations to sample Christmas cheer in the parking lot.
When the season is over, he assures himself, he will treat himself to a major blowout. In the meantime there is a kick in the noise and exuberance and the girls strutting their stuff on the dance floor. The clashing lights highlight and kaleidoscope their forms into moving parts, a jazzy cubist vision of the infinite variety of the female body. He’s suddenly hellishly horny.
Drifting to the refreshments, he is buying himself a Coke when Nat sidles up. Blinking, she pops out a contact and deftly reinserts it.
“Oh shit,” she giggles, and then grins at him. “Wanna dance?”
She’s a little bit toasty, he realizes, and bending closer, he picks up the hot scent of booze on her breath. Not the yeast of beer but a creamy coffee smell—coffee brandy is popular with the girls because it’s sweet.
The music’s frenetic, so it won’t be a slow dance and there won’t be any contact between them. Then her hand is in his and she’s looking up at him, a warmth in her eyes that makes him feel a lot warmer himself in every way. It’s a little bit surprising she’s not with someone and it occurs to him, with a little jolt, that maybe that was on purpose—maybe she was hanging out, looking for him. All at once, he wants the music to change, he wants something slow so he can hold her against him. Nat’s one of the most popular girls in school. He’s suddenly sure she’s had a hard-on pressed against her at least a few times. Maybe she’s not even a virgin. Probably not. Most unlikely. He wants to hold her real close and see what happens, see if maybe she presses back.
Something flutters down from overhead and he reaches out automatically to catch it. It’s his sweatshirt. Letting go of each other’s hand, both he and Nat take a step back to look upward.
“Check it out,” Nat giggles.
The Mutant straddles a lighting catwalk in the shadows of the roof above them. Face impassive, she waves desultorily. Around the eye on the unchained side of her face, she’s blackened a distorted joker’s diamond with an elongated, downward point. Though her skull is naked, her headwrap knotted at one hip, she’s at least not bare-tit; for the occasion she wears a red lace bra with her ragged jeans and chains. She’s not even the only girl with her bra visible—sheer or semi-sheer blouses are on every other girl tonight.
Sam’s face heats at the immediate evocation of the night they were on the verge of making it. His hand clutching the shirt is sweaty and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Yo, Nat baby,” the Mutant calls down. “Come on up. The view’s awesome. Bring Bigger with you. It’s the only way to get him high.”
Around them, everyone is turning to look at them. Suddenly Romney shoulders his way through the crowd.
“Come on down from there, Gauthier,” he advises her with a grin.
She sticks her tongue out to jeers, cheers and pleas to take it off, but she comes down. Romney heads off to intercept her as she reaches the floor.
Sam realizes Nat is looking at him curiously.
“Bigger?” she asks and giggles again.
She really is a bit tight. She’s hectic and her makeup’s a little smeary. He takes her parking, it could change their whole lives—and not necessarily for the better if she’s not on the Pill and he isn’t able to score a rubber off Rick or somebody else who won’t retail him looking for one all over school.
He remembers the shirt in his hand. “ ‘Scuse me, I should take this over to Gauthier.”
Nat blinks. “Sure.”
But in the mob, he can’t locate Romney, let alone the Mutant. Maybe Romney hauled her off to the Office or her locker to find her something to put on. Nor does he see Rick. Until he does, he’d rather avoid Nat and the pull to take a stupid chance. At least he’s got his shirt back.
Going outside, he tosses his shirt
