Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [57]
Lolli Chasuble is getting a little angry with me. “Hello, Chris? Your problem is? Are you in or what?”
I bite my upper lip with my lower teeth. My belt loops have not lost their interest. Up, then down. Up, then down.
“Christ, we don’t have time for this.” She runs her hand nervously through her hair with a crackle of dried mousse. “You’re gonna have to kill sometime, dude-o’-mine. Might as well be right now, tonight.”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know? Don’t know? Like, way to be the most annoying person on earth. Do you know the . . . Never mind! What do I have to say? Omigod! Live a little! You gonna stand there playing with your belt loops?”
“Lolli, I’m just having —”
“Shut up. Okay, look. You’re not like getting it through your thick head that people are killers, too — they kill to save themselves just like yours truly. Think of that? That’s what they do. That’s what we do. No difference between us. And you’re not like getting it through your thick head that it isn’t a goddamn choice for you. You’re going to be dead in a few weeks if you don’t suck some major gore and quick.” She steps forward, her hand on my arm, and her chest grazes mine. Her face is so close. So hard. “So don’t waste my time, Chris. Let us all in on the secret. You gonna come out of the coffin? What’s it going to be?”
“There must be —”
“Stop arguing!”
“I am not going to kill anyone!” I yelp. “Anyone I know! Forget it!”
“What are you up to? You’re buying time.” She’s menacing. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t . . .”
“You lie like shit. What do you think you’re doing? Damn, man, you are . . . !”
“I have a respect for human life and —”
“Yeah? Go, girl! They don’t have any respect for yours!”
“So you think I should just give up and throw in my whole life just so —”
“I think you’re up shit’s creek, is what I think!”
“— so I can go and dine with the damned!”
She glares at me. Her lips pull back and reveal her fangs. “Not ‘damned,’” she hisses. “Just trying to live.” And with that she moves swiftly past me to the door. She opens it. “Bat!” she calls.
I am used to having things happen to me, instead of me doing things. Now I realize that it is high time for me to do something quickly. Something escape-like. I have screwed up. She’s looking angry, murderous, leaning out the door, her arm spread across it to bar my way. I crouch and fling myself into the hall. Bat is thumping down the hall toward me, bellowing like a Viking. “Let’s PARTEEEEEE! PARTEEEEE! OWWOWOWOW!”
Then he sees me.
“What’s the —?” he asks.
She’s pointing at me and shouting, “Dickless here isn’t going to —”
But I’m running low, trying to pass him.
He jabs his arm in my side. I slam against the wall and fall into a squat, but even then, I’m jumping forward toward the stairs.
I have to get into a large crowd. They can’t risk a large crowd. He grabs at my shoe, but I’m slithering down the stairs like a snake, on my belly. Beer pools stain the carpet. Girls are screaming and standing up as I fall past them.
“. . . so goddamn drunk!” one sneers.
And I’m in the thick of the party at the bottom of the stairs, and Bat in his muddy Keds is clomping down toward me with the look of an animal in his face.
My brother has gotten out his video camera and is trying to capture the essence of the party for future generations and anthropologists; big Pete Gallagher is growling, “Let me borrow it! Just one sec! Let me borrow it!”
“Come back here, weeeeee-zull!” I hear Bat yell.
“Let me borrow it!” says big Pete Gallagher and he yanks at it.
“Stop!” says Paul. “You’re gonna screw up the picture!”
“Let me borrow it!”
“Okay, already. Here. Careful,” says Paul. “The button on the side —”
“This?”
“No, look. No, don’t do that one! God! No, you’ve got to push . . .”
Bat is shoving his way through the crowd toward me. Pete swings the camera