Cheerleaders Don't Cry

30

*EXPLICIT WARNING*

Albert Cooper

I had left the crowded living room to get a soda from the kitchen. There were considerably less people in the kitchen than before, and the music was quieter since it was several rooms away from the sound system. I appreciated the brief pause in the chaos. I'd never liked parties. Throughout my entire high school experience, I could count the number of house parties that I'd attended on one hand.

I could see the bathroom door in the hallway through the kitchen entryway. Marcy had been gone for a little over fifteen minutes, so I was surprised to see the door open and Travis Reynolds stumble out.

He was clearly very drunk - the entire basketball team was. Most of the athletic teams had assembled outside by Josephine's pool and were doing keg stands.

Travis was holding a wad of toilet paper to his head. When he removed it, he revealed a heavily bleeding thumb sized gash in his forehead. His expression was warped in frustration as he looked up and down the hallway, briefly looking in the kitchen, as if he was searching for somebody, before he shook his head and disappeared around the corner.

My phone vibrated moments later.

Can you drive me home?

I found Marcy outside. She was sitting on the curb of the sidewalk by my car, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked as if she were trying to disappear.

Marcy looked up as I approached her. She got to her feet, brushing the gravel from the back of her skirt.

"Found me," she said. A smile was plastered to her face, but her eyes looked anxious. "Sorry to make you leave so early. I was going to ask Amber, but I think she's had a few too many drinks, and the closest available Uber is a half hour away ... " Her voice trailed off when she saw the undisguised shock on my face.

Her hand was tucked against her shirt, folded in the blood-spotted material.

"What happened to your hand?" I asked.

She quickly hid her arm behind her back. "Nothing."

I reached forward and grabbed her forearm, holding her hand closer to my face. A deep cut snaked across her palm, fresh blood surfacing every few seconds. Similar, smaller cuts were spattered across her forearm. "Jesus, Marcy, what'd you do?"

"Nothing," she insisted.

I gave her a look, eyebrows raised.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine, so I broke a vase. Don't tell Josephine."

The image of Travis with a gash in his forehead flashed in my mind for a brief second, but I quickly dismissed it. He'd probably just fallen and hit something while he was doing a keg stand.

"There's band-aids in the glove compartment," I told Marcy after we'd gotten in the car. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life. "You should probably still clean those cuts when you get home."

Marcy opened the glove-compartment and began rifling through the contents. "Believe it or not, Cooper, I do have basic medical instincts."

"Right, which is why you decided to use your shirt as a bandage instead of asking Josephine where her band-aids are."

Marcy flipped me off. She was still searching through the glove compartment. "You know, you'd think that somebody as smart as you would be a little bit more organized."

"They're in there," I promised. Raindrops steadily began splattering against my windshield. I switched my windshield wipers on as the rain quickly intensified.