Silver Stilettos

13 | the damsel and her distress

There was already a party in full swing at Baron Fernley's house. I'd never been there before and was surprised to find out that his house was a cramped one-story with most of the furniture outside of the house than in it.

"He actually lives here?" Disgust curled my lip as I watched some guys I didn't recognize pass around a freshman girl in the inflatable pool.

"His parents flip houses. You know, buy them cheap at auction, usually because there's been a death in the house or the previous owner went bankrupt. They have loads of crap houses like this all over town." Reed's face was impassive.

We worked our way through the sluggish, beer-soaked bodies. I clutched onto the hem of Reed's shirt, not wanting to be left alone for an instant. The place gave me serious creepy-crawlies.

"You made it!" exclaimed Baron the moment he saw us. A girl was biting his ear but he swatted her away from him like an insect.

"Hey," said Reed.

"Hi," I said, somewhat more reluctantly.

"Want a drink?" Baron extended an open bottle to me, the one he'd been drinking from. He straightened his slouch on the armchair, struggling to align his back and neck with the rest of him.

"No thanks."

"Sit, sit." Baron waved his hand at the sofa pushed against the perpendicular wall before digging in his jeans for a lighter. Without preamble he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his other pocket.

Reed wordlessly accepted the thin, white offering. Baron seemed to know better than to ask me if I wanted to join them. Within seconds both boys had lit up, the ends of the cigarettes glowing a fierce orange-gold.

"So you and Reed, huh?" Baron exhaled a wisp of fragile smoke that dissipated upon greeting the air. "He paying you to hang out with him or something?"

My skin flushed. I resented the implication that I could be bought, that I was some novelty trinket who prostituted herself for money. "No," I snapped. "I'm his imaginary friend."

"Ouch," laughed Baron, and it sounded more like he was laughing with me than at me, so I laughed, too.

Reed looked relieved that we weren't at each other's throats, and I saw his stiff shoulders relax. He leaned against the back of the couch and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table.

I waited for Baron to tell him to knock it off, but the ivory-haired boy just closed his eyes and took another drag of his cigarette, pursing his pouty lips against it in a caricature of a kiss. "Does she know about your"—white smoke spidered from his mouth in another exhale, twisting limbs fading into the air—"problem?"

"Yeah." Reed took short, rapid puffs on his cigarette like a soldier reloading a canon. Smoke danced from his mouth in twisting, transient shapes.

Unsure of what was happening, I just watched them. Did Baron know about Reed's family?

Reed said something to Baron and the two laughed, but I missed the joke. I stared at Baron's long, white neck, and wondered what I was doing with them. Shrouded in hazy O-rings of smoke, eyes stinging from the dry air and the acrid smell, I knew I had to look as out of place as I felt. I sank deeper into the lumpy sofa cushions. The springs had long worn down and all that was left was saggy belly.

"Reed."

All three of us looked up.

Dominika and Fenris stood in front of us, both of them dressed in black leather jackets and sporting identical expressions of distaste. Dominika's lips pursed as she addressed the boys, ignoring me. "What the fuck," she said, "are you doing, Reed?"