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But I can’t say that to these two, because you don’t, do you? You can’t talk to your mates about the dark things in the corner of your mind, about the wounds that cut where no one sees, about how nothing you do to yourself can ever hurt enough to make up for the pain you caused someone else. So instead I say what they expect me to say. “I bet the new girl is hot as fuck in the sack, as long as she doesn’t give my dick frostbite.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Eli snaps, then clamps his hand over his mouth.
With a snarl, Noah hurls his glass at Eli’s head.
Eli ducks just in time, and the crystal hits the palm tree, shards raining down into the garden.
“What crawled up your ass and died?” Noah’s usually a mess when he stresses about school, which is pointless because he’ll probably be valedictorian unless Eli swipes the crown. But this is worse than I’ve ever seen him. “It’s not as if you’re lining up for a go. Or are you? And you’re pissed I got in first. All’s fair in love and war, and if it’s any consolation, she seems immune to my many charms—”
Noah slams his book shut. He flashes me a murderous look and storms toward the house. While Eli watches him, I tip my Scotch into a planter box.
“Fuck, Gabe.” Eli glares at me.
“What?” I pull a platter of cheese across the table and start loading up a cracker. Whenever we show up at Eli’s house, his maid Maria throws food and drinks at us like she’s afraid we’re being starved. Maria was Eli’s nanny, and she stayed around to look after the house when his dad went away. She still dotes on him like he’s her own son – just as well, because Eli’s mother’s too busy with her yoga instructor to remember Eli exists. And Eli’s dad… the less said about that sanctimonious wanker, the better.
“How can you be so dense?” Eli looks at me like I’ve sprouted tentacles. His Southern accent appears on the edges of his words. That only happens when he’s upset. He assumes I don’t notice shit like that, but I haven’t made a career putting emotion to music by not noticing shit. “You can’t talk to him like that. The new girl is Mackenzie Malloy. Malloy.”
Oh.
Shit.
“As in the Malloy’s Supplements Malloys?” I ask, as if there could be any other Malloys that would elicit such a reaction from Noah.
Eli nods. “And you just told Noah all the ways you want to fuck her.”
“All the ways I want to shag her. You Yanks have no sense of poetry.” I lift an eyebrow. “But you’re right. I’m an insensitive prick. I should’ve made the connection. Blame the distraction of Mackenzie’s glorious arse. I’ll apologize to him. Later. When he’s had a chance to cool off.”
“That’s good.” Eli’s looking out in the distance, and I know it’s not Noah that’s bothering him.
“What’s up with you? Did the Ice Queen freeze your dick, too?”
“If I tell you something, do you swear you’ll keep it to yourself?”
“Of course.”
Eli grabs the bottle and pours himself another Scotch. I notice his hand shake, but I assume that’s because the booze reminds him too much of his father. He leans back in the lounger and closes his eyes.
“We used to be friends.”
“You and Ice Queen?” Curious.
Eli nods. He drains his glass. “We’ve been in the same classes since I can remember. One day at school, some kid made fun of my accent. Mackenzie stole the class snake and hid it on his chair. When he sat down, it bit him on the ass. We were friends ever since. But her parents and my dad had this stupid rivalry. Some kind of business deal that went sour when Dad first came to the city. I brought her over for dinner one night, and you’d have thought I proposed marrying a streetlamp the way they reacted. Our parents forbid us from being friends, so we hung out in secret.”
“Noah doesn’t know?”
Eli shook his head. “We didn’t want to risk trusting anyone in case it got back to our parents, and then when it all happened with Noah’s brother and her family disappeared, I couldn’t tell him. You didn’t know him then, but he barely held it together.”
I grin. “Considering what a picture of mental fortitude he is now, I’ll take your word for it.”
“Anyway, I’ve been looking for her ever since she disappeared. I even hired a private detective last year, but he couldn’t tell me anything. I’d given up hope of ever seeing her again. But today, she walks into school and looks at me like I’m scum. I tried texting on her old number, and I can see she read my message, but she hasn’t replied. I can’t understand it. Mackenzie and her parents have been missing for four years – what has to happen to a person to turn her into a stranger?”
I want to say that people are turning into strangers in front of you, every single day, and you don’t notice until they’ve swallowed every pill in your stash and died in your arms in a rancid hotel bathroom. I want to say that sometimes you’re closer to random people on the public bus than you are to the people you profess to love. (Not that I’ve ever ridden a public bus. Like a commoner. No thanks.)
I want to swipe the bottle from Eli’s hand and toss the whole thing back, to feel the burn of whisky in my throat and the sweet oblivion that alcohol brings, the void of nothingness where I can live with myself until the hangover comes.
But that’s fucking morose, and Eli already looks like he’s fronting a 90s emo band, so I keep my mouth shut.
Eli stares at the sky. Notes dance around in my head – snatches of a song that might, in the hands of someone who hadn’t completely bollocksed up his life, become something sorrowful and beautiful. But the notes are snatched away like a firefly snuffed out, and I’m left with only the darkness in my own head.
