Within/Without

chapter thirty-nine.

Val - May 2011

The party had gotten loud enough that I was considering calling Dad and telling him to pick me up. It was Gracie Beaumont's thirteenth birthday party, and most, if not all, of the grade was there. The Beaumonts' living room was already littered with crushed red solo cups and crinkled paper plates, bent pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table like strange modern art. Gracie's parents weren't home ("They're out of town for like, the whole weekend. Absolutely all of it," she'd said), so it was likely the event had gotten more rowdy than it would in normal circumstances.

Everyone had migrated upstairs, where Tommy D'Angelo was probably treating them to the peach schnapps he'd made sure everyone knew he smuggled in. I, on the other hand, lingered by the television, which was tuned to a random news station. My cell phone was in my pocket; I touched it mindlessly, still debating whether or not to make the call. If I disappeared here, I'd never hear the end of it. They'd make fun of me for it for years. But staying was just as torturous.

I sat down on the couch, trying to breathe through the alcohol and pizza grease-scented air. It was Friday night, the weekend's very beginning. Friday nights were supposed to be simple and easy and fun, a time and place where anything could happen, where opportunity hung so heavily in the air that you could smell it. So why did I feel so...miserable?

A flurry of footsteps as someone came down the stairs interrupted the nightly news, as well as my dilemma. I turned, and just as he reached the bottom step, I saw Oliver.

His hair was so black it was almost blue in the darkness. He was wearing a tie-dyed Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt and some black jeans, and he wore enough rubber wristbands up his right arm to reach the center of his forearm. I wasn't sure what it was, but the tension seemed to flow out of me.

Oliver blinked at me for a moment, then smiled. "Val!" He said. I'd never exactly told him it was okay to call me that. He'd just kind of started doing so until there was no point in enabling him in the first place. I was sort of convinced that was his plan all along. "Glad to see someone had the same idea as me. Tommy and everyone are getting a little too crazy up there."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Someone just dared Gracie to jump topless into the pool."

"Oh." It was late spring and the temperatures still sat comfortably in the high fifties here in northern Massachusetts—upper forties at night. That was not skinny dipping weather. That was hypothermia-dipping weather.

Oliver laughed, showing a full set of bright teeth. He held out his hand to me. "Wanna get out of here?"

"God," I said, getting up and taking his hand. I tried to act like the feel of his skin so close to mine wasn't making my heartbeat speed, when in fact, it was. You see, just two weeks ago I had come to the realization that I wanted Oliver to be more than a friend to me. It had been a rather sudden and scary realization, actually, but it was inevitable. "More than anything."

Oliver, satisfied with my answer, dragged me outside and into the night, the wind cool and biting against the bare skin on my ankles and neck and hands. I was in a sweater and one of my favorite knee-length skirts. Gracie, in a miniskirt and V-cut sweater, had given me a weird look when I'd arrived, but it was a weird look I was well accustomed to receiving by now.

Better that look than the ones I'd get if I showed more of my mismatched skin, anyway.

Oliver marched around the side of the house; leaned against the side fence was a blue and white bike that I vaguely recalled seeing at the school once or twice. For some reason, though, I remembered it belonging to someone else.