Page 2 of Intrepid

I hadn’t pegged her as a pill popper, though, and I sure as hell didn’t think she’d be dumb enough to wash them down with a pint of Jack.

Then again, I’d only met her two hours before.

“Kutscher.” I corrected my last name, swallowing back the nervous wobble in my throat.

“Right, right.” She snorted a laugh and tapped the driver, who I’d also just met.

Simone. Her girlfriend. Though Bea insisted that she, herself, was actually bisexual and willing to fuck a guy if he happened to be hot enough—another bit of personal information two hours managed to buy me. Like Bea, Simone also majored in art. Not that it took a genius to figure that out. With her long, silvery gray braids, and the paint-spattered bibs she wore, along with Bea’s flamboyant style, the two of them looked like characters off a kids TV show.

Simone passed Bea the cigarette she’d just puffed on and cranked up the Rage Against The Machine song droning in the background.

Beside me sat a dude I couldn’t bring myself to look at, mostly because he hadn’t stopped staring at me since we’d left the dorm, eyes hooded as he swayed in his seat. Like the sole rider of his own Tilt-A-Whirl. Probably high as a giraffe’s ass right then. His brain seemed to have gone satellite after two shots of Jack, and he’d acted like I’d become his source of gravity since then. Bea and Simone had introduced him, but I couldn’t remember his name. I was too busy wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

Years of living cooped up in a soul-sucking hell made a girl a little antsy for some fun, so when the two of them had suggested a party? Well, I was all in. Who better to trust than the chick I’d be living with for the next year, right?

Which went back to my feelings of being trapped. In spite of having learned her sexual and food preferences, along with why she’d opted to live with me instead of her girlfriend, I hadn’t bothered to gather whether, or not, my new roommate was the kind of person to take advantage of my newfound freedom.

“You could be a model,” the kid beside me garbled, interrupting my thoughts. A cloud of warm whiskey breath hit me before the slap of his next words: “If you didn’t have that scar. D’jou know ‘at?”

“Thanks.” I shot him a quick glance and turned back to the window. “You could be somebody’s hot date, if you didn’t smell like fried pickles from the local watering hole. Asshole,” I muttered.

Instinct begged me to thumb the deformed, imperfect skin that stretched from my ear to my chin, but he wasn’t the first to tell me that. I’d grown up in a school where perfection was bred, and plastic surgeons were on speed dial. Having a scar that extended ear to jaw and down my neck ensured that I’d never land a cozy spot on the cheerleading squad. Not that I wanted to. Didn’t matter that my father had more money than the homecoming court, or that I could’ve easily attended any one of the Ivy League colleges they pined after. Guess my scar had always made me inferior, though somehow I thought attending a public university smack in the city would’ve made it less of a marvel.

Hadn’t taken long after graduation for me to fully embrace my fuck it all attitude, adding ombre blue streaks to my boring blond hair and burning my school uniform as a show of just how much I’d given a shit about fitting in. So, as much as the guy’s comment should’ve hurt, I really just wished he’d breathe in the other direction.

“How’d it happen?”

No filter. Truly. And his breath seriously came with its own proof. I felt sickly drunk just having to breathe it in.

“A skiing accident.” The same lie I’d told most of my high school classmates, except that I didn’t ski, and it wasn’t an accident. Just sounded better than telling them a psychopathic lunatic out to teach my father a lesson about karma had decided to use me as a human cutting board. Less questions that way. Because the last thing I wanted was to field anymore of the guy’s shameless interrogations.

“Oh, that’s too bad. See, modeling agents, they go through hundreds of photos a day and can be really harsh—”

“I’m truly not interested in modeling,” I cut in. “It’s like … not even in my galaxy of ambition.”

He biccuped—burped and hiccupped—the wet gurgle making me nervous that he’d puke all over my lap, as his head swayed back in my direction. “Love your hair. Like … fuckin’ blue ribbons hanging off your head.”

How poetic.

Sighing, I stared back out of my window and wished he’d pass out already.

“Hey, Jack Kerouac used to stay at the Hotel Savarine,” Bea said. She passed the cig back to Simone, and a blast of cool September air, mingled with the sour sulfur scent of the city, hit my face as she rolled the window down and made a piss-poor effort to blow out the smoke. “Pretty rad, huh?”

Again, deferential vulnerability. As a suburbanite, I’d had no idea until after we’d left the dorm, that the place we were headed was an abandoned hotel about eight miles east of the college. And why would I give a shit that Jack Kerouac had once stayed there? In his lifetime, the place likely hadn’t been a rundown hellhole, teeming with homeless junkies and kids looking to get blitzed out of their minds.

I’d somehow imagined Bea’s idea of fun to be an underground coffee house, where all the art majors cheered on slam poetry, and that the only hangover I’d suffer would come from sipping espresso past nine o’clock at night.

I should’ve known better.

“So … there aren’t, like, any gangs hanging out, right?” I hated sounding like a naive white girl whose every fourth word was ‘like’, but the fear was real. It was Detroit, after all. Even the suburban kids knew there were places in the city we didn’t belong, where we’d stick out like chopped tuna in a pool of pitiless sharks.

“I cannot guarantee that you won’t run into a gang member at this party, no. But I can, without a doubt, guarantee you’re going to have a fucking blast, so relax freshie. You’re in good hands with Bea.”

In an hour-long conversation, about ninety percent of which was about her, I’d found out that Bea was a fifth year fine arts student, working as an apprentice for some bigwig artist who’d been contracted by the city to design a massive mural made of thousands of small tiles. She hailed from the suburbs, too, but the significantly less posh Hazeltucky side of town. Which meant the abandoned building scene was probably the norm for her.

A silver object flashed in my periphery, and I glanced up to find a flask shoved in my face. Behind it, Bea offered a wink.

“Calm your nerves. You look pale.” Her slur waned between sharp and slurrier, making it hard to tell how deep into her high she’d fallen.