Black Mamba: Part IV
Part I
Part II
Part III
In a strange twist I ended up liking Bucky the most...
Maybe it was boredom, or maybe it was avoidance. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t heard from Lola in four months, or maybe it was something else that had drawn Buck out to that particular patch of dirt down at the back of his parents property. Bob and Rita Mason were still in Europe and to be fair, Buck had thought more than twice about starting to dig where he had. So maybe this time he wasn’t being completely irresponsible.
For at least a week he’d gone back and forth, toying with the idea. There was something down there and he was sure of it. He was sure it was down there. Something. Instead of working on his final exam studies or the immense history assignment that would soon be due — the things he should have been doing, and he knew it — he found himself kicking up dust and walking to where the space between the trees called to him.
Most of the properties in Coster Park were sprawling and Buck had heard about the Dupont twins finding a half-pound lump of gold out near their dam. He wanted something like that to happen to him. Shit, he wanted something to happen to him and he was sure there was something down there, under the dirt.
So once school had let out on Wednesday afternoon, a couple of days before the party that he and Stacey were planning, Buck took a large shovel from his father’s tool shed next to the stables. The dirt was hard and compacted, dry on the top, but darker and easier to move the deeper he got. He couldn’t tell you how long he was down there because it was morning by the time he woke up in his bed, dirt and mud caked on his skin and bed sheets. He was late for school.
Eating a peanut butter toast and using his cell phone to take photos of the hole, Buck managed to get later and later for school. He was impressed by how deep he had gone. He found it almost hard to believe that he’d done it by himself. He quickly texted one of the pictures to Stacey and then jumped on his push bike.
At school he promptly got detention.
“Bucky,” Stacey said as they sat down to an early lunch and the cog continued to turn inside Buck’s head. “Buck, what is this man? Are you missing her or something?”
Buck shook his head. He knew that Lola was a distant memory. A very fucking close distant memory, but still, that wasn’t what was bothering him. “I found something.”
“You found something?”
“Yeah man. It’s this big, flat, stone thing. It’s like ancient, something. Egyptian maybe.” He shrugged, “I dunno. It’s big and flat and it’s at the bottom of the hole that I dug last night.”
Buck saw Stacey roll his eyes in frustration. “You dug a hole?”
“Yeah man. I mean, I had this feeling, and I’ve been thinking about it and —”
“You had a feeling?” Stacey unwrapped his lunch burrito.
“Yeah man. It’s like —”
“And it’s Egyptian or something?”
“Yeah. Man, it’s fucking incredible. Wait until you —”
Stacey looked up sharply and Buck knew he was in trouble.
“What about your history essay?” Stacey asked accusingly.
Buck was silent. Stacey took a bite of his burrito. Buck knew the point his best friend was trying to make but that didn’t really matter. What he needed to do right now was go to the library.
“Look man, this Lola business is no good for you,” Stacey said with a mouthful of burrito. “Focus on Robbie. She’s happy — Jesus, she’s nice — she’s good for you.” With a shrug and a look of forfeit, Stacey remained at the lunch table while Buck continued turned away and continued on with avoiding his detention.
The library wasn’t unknown to him, but it was definitely not a place he frequented unless he wanted to spy on Lola. She was usually in the corner of one of the couches in the fiction section with her legs tucked underneath herself and her mind somewhere far away. Buck liked to watch her facial expressions as she leafed through paperbacks or scrolled in her phone or stared off into space. She wasn’t there today.
He made his way to the history section and felt a stab of guilt that he wasn’t working on his essay. He brushed it away. Robbie would text him about it later anyways, after a prompt from Stacey, and the guilt would stab again. No need for Buck to worry about it now.
Ancient Egyptian history encompassed a large amount of books, but he didn’t have to spend too much time looking. There were quite a number on hieroglyphics and translating them.
Buck flicked through his photos trying to find one that was clear enough to make out the inscriptions on the flat piece of stone at the bottom of his excavation hole. There was one that was fairly decent but some of the markings were still too hard to make out. At the end of a half hour, and with his ignored detention probably earning him another, all Buck had deciphered was — The Snake Leader something something again lift.
It seemed wrong and he knew he’d fucked it up, but his mind had stopped lingering on the hole he had dug. It was wandering now and it was wandering to Lola. He flushed with guilt, feeling as if someone had been watching him. His phone buzzed. It was Robin.
Hey baby. So, Safety Stacey is telling me you’ve dug a fucking hole and are avoiding your essay.
Buck like Robin. He liked how crass she was, he liked her bright painted nails, he liked her unbreakable happy smile, he liked how eagerly she had gone down on him on multiple occasions.
Bucky knew he was a dick.
He hesitated and then flicked off the message without responding. Maybe he could convince Lola to come to the party instead of Robin.
Showing posts with label snake eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snake eyes. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Friday, July 15, 2016
Black Mamba: Part III
Black Mamba: Part III
Part I
Part II
I suppose it's ironic that my chattiest character ended up having the least amount of dialogue...
Robin was cold but the night was good, so it didn’t really matter. Convincing Min had been one thing; convincing Min’s mum had been entirely another. The second vodka sunrise was going down just a treat and Robin knew that Bucky was absolutely pining for her.
As she sat on the edge of his ‘excavation site’ — which was really just a big fuck-off hole in the ground — she couldn’t remember feeling this good for a long time. Mini was lost in Stacey’s new-found attention, and it didn’t really seem to matter that Buck was acting like an idiot. Robin arched her back and cracked her spine. Buck always acted like a fucking idiot, so; whatever.
She was happy with how her makeup had turned out tonight. More than happy. And Mini looked damn good in the red v-neck top she had leant to her. Robin felt the cold dirt shift underneath her skirt and wished they were back at the fire — at their little detached party. But Bucky was intent on shovelling away at his hole, just like he had been for the last couple of days.
Robin watched from across the hole as Stacey held Min back, making sure she wouldn’t fall, sneaking glances at her cleavage, and appearing far more nervous than Robin had expected. The two of them were enviably cute. Much more so than Bucky and Robin, and she hated them for it.
It was hard to be on the outside. Robin wondered if she was already done. She was the same age as Min, but she’d done so much and she felt used up. She ached for that new feeling — that ‘just scratching the surface’ feeling — she resented how weathered she felt herself to be. Mini was a brand new, budding flower. Mini was gorgeous and completely unaware of it. Mini was enviable.
Robin was all talk and all sex. She always had been. And she hated that about herself.
Robin knew the things that boys liked.
Boys liked you to make a solid first move. Boys liked you to want them. Boys liked you to act as if their dick was the greatest thing you’d ever seen, even when they knew it wasn’t. And Robin was no fool — she knew girls wanted similar things, she had just never really been into girls. Robin liked boys and so she had learnt how to do the things that boys liked so that she could have boys.
Boys wanted to chase, but not so long or so far as to make them legitimately tired. Boys wanted to woo, but not so much as to max out the credit card or find themselves at a craft fair. Boys were willing to go as far as it took to get the pussy, but once they were done it was nap time and that was that.
Robin knew she was generalising, she knew she was lumping the male collective into an immense, unrealistic stereotype, but she liked Buck, and unfortunately there seemed to be nothing that wasn't stereotypical about the man-child that he was.
Robin sipped her vodka sunrise and surreptitiously watched Min and Stacey. She knew they must have kissed early. Of course they had. Min’s face was flushed and the pair of them had a different dynamic to earlier. Robin smiled to herself. She saw Stacey pull Min in close, on the other side of the hole and all she wanted was for Buck to hold her like that — to want her as if she was something special; something to be sought after and treasured and adored. She wanted him to give half a shit.
Robin looked down into the hole and saw Buck trip, drunkenly, on his own shovel. Just as she was about to stand up and yell at him for being clumsy, an ice cold wind rose up from the excavation hole.
Robin felt as light as a cloud. Something cleared in her mind. Her thoughts were. She dropped her drink.
Bucky?
But before she could actually say his name. She was not herself.
Her body felt long and curved and twisting.
She was not herself. She would never be herself again.
Part I
Part II
I suppose it's ironic that my chattiest character ended up having the least amount of dialogue...
Robin was cold but the night was good, so it didn’t really matter. Convincing Min had been one thing; convincing Min’s mum had been entirely another. The second vodka sunrise was going down just a treat and Robin knew that Bucky was absolutely pining for her.
As she sat on the edge of his ‘excavation site’ — which was really just a big fuck-off hole in the ground — she couldn’t remember feeling this good for a long time. Mini was lost in Stacey’s new-found attention, and it didn’t really seem to matter that Buck was acting like an idiot. Robin arched her back and cracked her spine. Buck always acted like a fucking idiot, so; whatever.
She was happy with how her makeup had turned out tonight. More than happy. And Mini looked damn good in the red v-neck top she had leant to her. Robin felt the cold dirt shift underneath her skirt and wished they were back at the fire — at their little detached party. But Bucky was intent on shovelling away at his hole, just like he had been for the last couple of days.
Robin watched from across the hole as Stacey held Min back, making sure she wouldn’t fall, sneaking glances at her cleavage, and appearing far more nervous than Robin had expected. The two of them were enviably cute. Much more so than Bucky and Robin, and she hated them for it.
It was hard to be on the outside. Robin wondered if she was already done. She was the same age as Min, but she’d done so much and she felt used up. She ached for that new feeling — that ‘just scratching the surface’ feeling — she resented how weathered she felt herself to be. Mini was a brand new, budding flower. Mini was gorgeous and completely unaware of it. Mini was enviable.
Robin was all talk and all sex. She always had been. And she hated that about herself.
Robin knew the things that boys liked.
Boys liked you to make a solid first move. Boys liked you to want them. Boys liked you to act as if their dick was the greatest thing you’d ever seen, even when they knew it wasn’t. And Robin was no fool — she knew girls wanted similar things, she had just never really been into girls. Robin liked boys and so she had learnt how to do the things that boys liked so that she could have boys.
Boys wanted to chase, but not so long or so far as to make them legitimately tired. Boys wanted to woo, but not so much as to max out the credit card or find themselves at a craft fair. Boys were willing to go as far as it took to get the pussy, but once they were done it was nap time and that was that.
Robin knew she was generalising, she knew she was lumping the male collective into an immense, unrealistic stereotype, but she liked Buck, and unfortunately there seemed to be nothing that wasn't stereotypical about the man-child that he was.
Robin sipped her vodka sunrise and surreptitiously watched Min and Stacey. She knew they must have kissed early. Of course they had. Min’s face was flushed and the pair of them had a different dynamic to earlier. Robin smiled to herself. She saw Stacey pull Min in close, on the other side of the hole and all she wanted was for Buck to hold her like that — to want her as if she was something special; something to be sought after and treasured and adored. She wanted him to give half a shit.
Robin looked down into the hole and saw Buck trip, drunkenly, on his own shovel. Just as she was about to stand up and yell at him for being clumsy, an ice cold wind rose up from the excavation hole.
Robin felt as light as a cloud. Something cleared in her mind. Her thoughts were. She dropped her drink.
Bucky?
But before she could actually say his name. She was not herself.
Her body felt long and curved and twisting.
She was not herself. She would never be herself again.
Black Mamba: Part II
Black Mamba (Part I)
And now, Part II...
Stacey was jittery with nerves as he set up the tables of snacks and drinks and ice.
Buck watched him from a chair out on the lawn. “We better get that fire started soon.”
Stacey balked. “Bucky, you should get the fire started. I’ve been doing everything else while you’ve been lounging there going on and on about your ridiculous ‘excavation site’.”
“Fucking Safety Stacey. Man, sometimes I think you have little to no faith in me.”
“That is exactly what I have Bucky — little to no faith.”
Buck grinned at him and Stacey couldn’t help but roll his eyes in amusement. The two of them were on the very cusp of graduating and with Buck’s folks away in Europe for the month, they decided it was the perfect time to throw a preemptive celebratory bash. More so, and Stacey had thought it to himself as they had quietly discussed it at the back of algebra, he knew Buck would invite Robin because of their current far-too-obvious tango, and that was good. Robin would definitely bring along her cute friend Min. Those two were hardly seen apart at school.
Stacey’s mind was on Min as he set out plastic cups and emptied bags of corn chips into Buck’s mothers’ serving bowls. The poem had been what had first stuck to him. The girl was pretty, of course she was, but he didn’t want to be that kind of guy, even though he knew he was. He was just like everyone else who would be at the party tonight, but Min — there was something about her. Something else. She was so quiet, and yet so close to Robin, as if the two of them were bound by blood instead of friendship. Sometimes Stacey couldn’t really understand it, the girls just seemed like such opposites.
Stacey!
Buck was calling from where he still slouched in his chair.
Stacey shrugged and gave up. He scuffed through the dirt and over to the crude fire pit they had dug earlier that day. As he started tossing in chunks of wood from the pile and scrunched up newspaper pages, Buck similarly started his inevitable interrogation.
“So, this Asian bird.”
“Don’t say Asian bird, Bucky. She’s Chinese and her name is Min.”
“Oh my god, Safety Stacey, why are you being so precious about this?”
“I’m no being precious, you dick. I just like her. And you should know her name, she’s Robbie’s best friend.”
Buck hauled himself out of the chair to grab another beer from the table. “I only need to know Robbie’s name, she’s the one I’m banging and she’s the one I want to continue banging. Speaking of, please tell me you’re gonna bang Mindy tonight?”
Stacey was on the edge of angry, but he bit his tongue on what he really wanted to say. “It’s Min, not Mindy, and no, we’ve barely even spoken.”
Buck cracked open the beer and it fizzed up out of the can. “Woah!” he said, shaking his hand over the dirt. “Anyways, what was I saying?”
“Something about being an impolite, racist oaf?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Buck crossed his eyes idiotically. “No, what I’m saying is that is perfect. If you don’t know her that well, you can bang her and not have to worry about anything else. You made it nice with that Latino chick for like weeks without having to bother with the back and forth bullshit that I get from Robbie.”
“Jesus Bucky, don’t say Latina chick. Her name was Cindy and she was Portuguese. We dated, casually, and it just didn’t work out. I wasn’t using her.”
Buck picked up the matches from the table and came over to the fire pit next to Stacey. “Cindy,” he repeated, “sounds very fucking close to Mindy, doesn’t it old boy?”
Stacey didn’t bother with a response this time. He crouched down and started rifling through the pile of wood for the larger pieces.
Buck seemed to feel the tension. “Look buddy, I’m sorry. I’m only having a go because you seem to really like her, yeah?”
Stacey shrugged. “I guess I probably do. I don’t know…” Stacey paused, remembering that day in english class. “Did we have eleventh grade English together?”
Buck scoffed. “The fuck would I remember?”
“Nothing, I just…”
“Go on, spit it out Safety Stacey. I know you’re tryin’ to tell me something right now. May as well go ahead.”
Stacey worried he was about to blush, but he stood up and willed himself to be the Stacey that most people knew him as. “There was that day that we had to read out our poems. You didn’t even write one, remember? Anyways, that was the first day that I really noticed her, Min. She read out her poem and it was called ‘From The Trees’ and it was not at all what I was expecting.”
Buck was poised with his beer just an inch from his face, his eyes narrowed; the cogs were turning; he was remembering. “Wait — wait wait wait. I do fucking remember that day.”
Stacey was almost taken aback. “You remember her poem?”
“No, not the poem, the day. It was free ice cream day at the caf.”
“What?” Stacey was pretending he didn’t remember that fact, but of course he did.
The devilish expression on Buck’s face was not a good sign. “Oh. My. God.” He took a step back, feigning shock. “You salty dog! Here I am, thinking Safety Stacey is a reformed man. Thinking that he likes girls because of poems and rainbows and unicorns.”
Stacey shot Buck the bird but at the same time he was gritting his teeth, bracing for what he knew was about to come.
Buck paused again, savoured the moment before he took the kill shot. “I know you know what I’m talking about. Free ice cream day?”
Stacey said nothing.
“At the caf?”
Stacey stayed silent.
“We sat outside on the green, and it was like a million degrees out, and we were on that bench opposite Robbie and her little Asian chick friend, and the ice cream was melting down onto their hands and they were licking it up, and I said, damn I wish Robbie was licking my —”
“Don’t even fucking say it.” Stacey was standing up and his tone was mush angrier than he had meant it to be.
Buck held up his hands in forfeit. “Dude, I was only gonna say that you were thinking the same thing. I know you would never say it out loud, like me, but there’s nothing wrong with thinking it.”
Stacey looked off into the trees. He wasn’t really angry, he was more embarrassed. Of course the ice cream thing had stuck in his mind. He had watched Min as she carefully — delicately — licked melted pink ice cream from her fingers and wrist. He had been almost hard just at that. But that wasn’t it.
It had been the poem. He hardly paid attention in English class, let alone for stuff like poetry, but something about Min’s quiet voice and measured pace had pulled him in. He couldn’t remember the words. He remembered the poem — it was aggressive, violent in a way, and she used swear words, which Mrs Heller had said was okay but shouldn’t stand as an opening for everyone else to include cussing in their work.
Stacey remembered the ice cream as well, and he wondered what her tongue felt like. Was it sweet like melted ice cream? Was it wet? Was it warm?
He knew he wanted Min, but he knew they were from different places. Not that she was Chinese. It was that he was a big idiot and she was intellectual and withdrawn. He was a jock in most ways — he had a reputation that she had no doubt heard about — but he hoped he was more than that. He wanted to be more than what most people thought about him. He wanted to write poetry as good as Min’s. He wanted Min.
Buck’s face was serious when Stacey finally looked up. “Safety Stacey. I'm sorry I was a dick. It’s been a while since you liked a girl — actually I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you like a girl before — so let’s leave this baby to burn a little,” he said, looking at the growing fire, “and go check out my awesome excavation site where we are gonna find some stuff that’s gonna make us so uber rich.”
Stacey gave in. “Fine. Just please promise me that there won’t be any goddamn snakes out there. I hate snakes.”
And now, Part II...
Stacey was jittery with nerves as he set up the tables of snacks and drinks and ice.
Buck watched him from a chair out on the lawn. “We better get that fire started soon.”
Stacey balked. “Bucky, you should get the fire started. I’ve been doing everything else while you’ve been lounging there going on and on about your ridiculous ‘excavation site’.”
“Fucking Safety Stacey. Man, sometimes I think you have little to no faith in me.”
“That is exactly what I have Bucky — little to no faith.”
Buck grinned at him and Stacey couldn’t help but roll his eyes in amusement. The two of them were on the very cusp of graduating and with Buck’s folks away in Europe for the month, they decided it was the perfect time to throw a preemptive celebratory bash. More so, and Stacey had thought it to himself as they had quietly discussed it at the back of algebra, he knew Buck would invite Robin because of their current far-too-obvious tango, and that was good. Robin would definitely bring along her cute friend Min. Those two were hardly seen apart at school.
Stacey’s mind was on Min as he set out plastic cups and emptied bags of corn chips into Buck’s mothers’ serving bowls. The poem had been what had first stuck to him. The girl was pretty, of course she was, but he didn’t want to be that kind of guy, even though he knew he was. He was just like everyone else who would be at the party tonight, but Min — there was something about her. Something else. She was so quiet, and yet so close to Robin, as if the two of them were bound by blood instead of friendship. Sometimes Stacey couldn’t really understand it, the girls just seemed like such opposites.
Stacey!
Buck was calling from where he still slouched in his chair.
Stacey shrugged and gave up. He scuffed through the dirt and over to the crude fire pit they had dug earlier that day. As he started tossing in chunks of wood from the pile and scrunched up newspaper pages, Buck similarly started his inevitable interrogation.
“So, this Asian bird.”
“Don’t say Asian bird, Bucky. She’s Chinese and her name is Min.”
“Oh my god, Safety Stacey, why are you being so precious about this?”
“I’m no being precious, you dick. I just like her. And you should know her name, she’s Robbie’s best friend.”
Buck hauled himself out of the chair to grab another beer from the table. “I only need to know Robbie’s name, she’s the one I’m banging and she’s the one I want to continue banging. Speaking of, please tell me you’re gonna bang Mindy tonight?”
Stacey was on the edge of angry, but he bit his tongue on what he really wanted to say. “It’s Min, not Mindy, and no, we’ve barely even spoken.”
Buck cracked open the beer and it fizzed up out of the can. “Woah!” he said, shaking his hand over the dirt. “Anyways, what was I saying?”
“Something about being an impolite, racist oaf?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Buck crossed his eyes idiotically. “No, what I’m saying is that is perfect. If you don’t know her that well, you can bang her and not have to worry about anything else. You made it nice with that Latino chick for like weeks without having to bother with the back and forth bullshit that I get from Robbie.”
“Jesus Bucky, don’t say Latina chick. Her name was Cindy and she was Portuguese. We dated, casually, and it just didn’t work out. I wasn’t using her.”
Buck picked up the matches from the table and came over to the fire pit next to Stacey. “Cindy,” he repeated, “sounds very fucking close to Mindy, doesn’t it old boy?”
Stacey didn’t bother with a response this time. He crouched down and started rifling through the pile of wood for the larger pieces.
Buck seemed to feel the tension. “Look buddy, I’m sorry. I’m only having a go because you seem to really like her, yeah?”
Stacey shrugged. “I guess I probably do. I don’t know…” Stacey paused, remembering that day in english class. “Did we have eleventh grade English together?”
Buck scoffed. “The fuck would I remember?”
“Nothing, I just…”
“Go on, spit it out Safety Stacey. I know you’re tryin’ to tell me something right now. May as well go ahead.”
Stacey worried he was about to blush, but he stood up and willed himself to be the Stacey that most people knew him as. “There was that day that we had to read out our poems. You didn’t even write one, remember? Anyways, that was the first day that I really noticed her, Min. She read out her poem and it was called ‘From The Trees’ and it was not at all what I was expecting.”
Buck was poised with his beer just an inch from his face, his eyes narrowed; the cogs were turning; he was remembering. “Wait — wait wait wait. I do fucking remember that day.”
Stacey was almost taken aback. “You remember her poem?”
“No, not the poem, the day. It was free ice cream day at the caf.”
“What?” Stacey was pretending he didn’t remember that fact, but of course he did.
The devilish expression on Buck’s face was not a good sign. “Oh. My. God.” He took a step back, feigning shock. “You salty dog! Here I am, thinking Safety Stacey is a reformed man. Thinking that he likes girls because of poems and rainbows and unicorns.”
Stacey shot Buck the bird but at the same time he was gritting his teeth, bracing for what he knew was about to come.
Buck paused again, savoured the moment before he took the kill shot. “I know you know what I’m talking about. Free ice cream day?”
Stacey said nothing.
“At the caf?”
Stacey stayed silent.
“We sat outside on the green, and it was like a million degrees out, and we were on that bench opposite Robbie and her little Asian chick friend, and the ice cream was melting down onto their hands and they were licking it up, and I said, damn I wish Robbie was licking my —”
“Don’t even fucking say it.” Stacey was standing up and his tone was mush angrier than he had meant it to be.
Buck held up his hands in forfeit. “Dude, I was only gonna say that you were thinking the same thing. I know you would never say it out loud, like me, but there’s nothing wrong with thinking it.”
Stacey looked off into the trees. He wasn’t really angry, he was more embarrassed. Of course the ice cream thing had stuck in his mind. He had watched Min as she carefully — delicately — licked melted pink ice cream from her fingers and wrist. He had been almost hard just at that. But that wasn’t it.
It had been the poem. He hardly paid attention in English class, let alone for stuff like poetry, but something about Min’s quiet voice and measured pace had pulled him in. He couldn’t remember the words. He remembered the poem — it was aggressive, violent in a way, and she used swear words, which Mrs Heller had said was okay but shouldn’t stand as an opening for everyone else to include cussing in their work.
Stacey remembered the ice cream as well, and he wondered what her tongue felt like. Was it sweet like melted ice cream? Was it wet? Was it warm?
He knew he wanted Min, but he knew they were from different places. Not that she was Chinese. It was that he was a big idiot and she was intellectual and withdrawn. He was a jock in most ways — he had a reputation that she had no doubt heard about — but he hoped he was more than that. He wanted to be more than what most people thought about him. He wanted to write poetry as good as Min’s. He wanted Min.
Buck’s face was serious when Stacey finally looked up. “Safety Stacey. I'm sorry I was a dick. It’s been a while since you liked a girl — actually I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you like a girl before — so let’s leave this baby to burn a little,” he said, looking at the growing fire, “and go check out my awesome excavation site where we are gonna find some stuff that’s gonna make us so uber rich.”
Stacey gave in. “Fine. Just please promise me that there won’t be any goddamn snakes out there. I hate snakes.”
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Black Mamba
“Where is this party again, exactly?” Min’s mum was interrogating them for the millionth time.
Robin smiled the most polite smile she could manage and hustled Min over to the the front door. “It’s in Coster Park Mrs Wu, and it’s totally safe, I promise.”
The two girls were out the door and in the cool air of the early evening before Mrs Wu could stop them. Still, the old Chinese woman hurried out after and called to them as Robin shoved Min into the passenger seat and darted around to get in and start the engine. Mrs Wu was shouting in broken English about not drinking and not smoking and not taking any drugs and not letting boys talk them into doing things and so on. Robin grinned at Min who rolled her eyes as she heard her mum continuing to shout advice from the front step of their house.
“She’s right you know,” Robin confirmed as she jammed her old VW Beetle into first gear. “If a boy is trying to talk you into sucking him off, he is exactly the type of boy who doesn’t deserve to be sucked off. Lesson number 72 complete.” Robin said, nodded to herself and squealing out of the Wu residence driveway.
Min rolled her eyes again, hoping that none of the airborne driveway rocks hit her mum (who was probably still on the step, shouting, now probably in Chinese). “I’m not going to do that anyways,” Min affirmed. She felt silly in the outfit she had chosen — black jeans and a red, v-neck ruffled top she had borrowed from Robin that showed too much cleavage — and she was already regretting her agreement to go to the stupid party altogether.
Robin burned down the street away from Min’s house and took a too-sharp right onto the main town road. “Oh my God. Can you please relax?” she said, screeching to a halt a the red light outside the pharmacy. “I’m not saying you’re going to suck a dick tonight, I’m just informing you of the whats and what-nots.”
“That phrase doesn’t even make sense.”
“Of course it does!” Robin said, letting go of the wheel and throwing her hands up dramatically. “Look, Mini,” her face turned serious. “Stacey is going to be there tonight and all I want is for you to have a good time.”
Min felt herself blush and looked out the window to avoid Robin’s eyes. “Oh my god, what do I even care if Stacey is there?!”
“Well, I just thought maybe you’d care because you’ve been eye-stalking him for the past forever.”
Min turned back with her cranky face up to full volume. “Eye-stalking? Now I can be sure that you’re not making any sense. Eye-stalking.” Min shook her head. “I have not been doing anything of the sort.”
A huge smile peeled Robin’s perfectly painted party face almost totally in half. “Of course you have Mini. When you’re watching him I’m watching you. I see your eyes slide around like a wet slug in a cup. It’s fucking brilliant!”
Min couldn’t help but think that it was precisely the opposite of brilliant. She knew she had been ‘eye-stalking’ Stacey for a while now, she just thought that no one had actually noticed, and now, knowing he would be at the party she shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat and tugged at the red v-neck blouse, willing it to cover more of her chest than it could ever possibly manage. Robin always gawped on and on about how jealous she was of Min’s breasts, but Min couldn’t help but feel they were nothing but a burden — a huge pair of luminous beacons that she couldn’t hide if she tried.
They were moving again down the main street towards the bend in the town, closer and closer to Coster Park. To the party.
“Relax, please?” Robin tried again. “It’s going to be fun. You can have a beer and eat some corn chips and I’ll be there with you. You can hit on Stacey. I bet you’d be a pro if you gave it a go. Oh my god that rhymes!”
Min rolled her eyes. The dim street lights flew by like fireflies in the night. Min figured she wouldn’t mind a beer at this point, just to take the edge off. Maybe the party would be good. She would never know if she didn’t go. Oh, she realised her inner voice was starting to sound a lot like Robin. Fancy that.
They sped through the bend and down towards the part of town without street lamps. Coster Park sat detached from the main street and was where more of the wealthier people in town lived. Acreage and farms and sprawling ranch houses. It was also quieter than where Min and Robin lived but it was where the best parties happened. They saw the smoke plumes and the golden glow of the fire long before they made it to Buck Mason’s house.
Robin had been there a million times — apparently — but this was a first for Min. Actually, the whole party situation was a first for her. She tugged up at the low-cut red top again without luck, and started to panic as they rolled through the open gates of the property and along the fence line until they found a parking spot next to a rusted baby blue utility.
Robin turned off the ignition and took one of Min’s hands in her own. “Listen cutie, I know you don’t want to be here and I fully understand that. Please stop pulling at the shirt — it looks fucking good on you okay — and I know you’re nervous, which is fine, but if you could see yourself like I do…” Robin’s brows furrowed like Min had never seen before. She trailed off.
The deep base-beat of party music rumbled the world outside the tiny car. Min looked at Robin and Robin smiled her life-filled smile back at Min. “You are gorgeous and smart,” she said, “and worthy of so much more than you think you are Mini. I just want you to take one chance with me and try to have a fun night. We leave at midnight no matter what — we keep your mum happy and we don’t get wasted — I promise.”
Min felt Robin’s hand in her own, warm and solid despite the delicate fingers and the sparkly nail polish and all the shiny rings. Min was way out beyond her depth. “You really think the shirt looks good?”
“You know I fucking do. If anyone can pick a top for you, it’s me, bitch.”
They both laughed and Robin pulled Min in close and kissed her cheek. “C’mon my Chinese bombshell, let’s go make some dreams happen.”
Min was smiling as she scrambled out of the car and followed Robin past the enormous house and the multiple sheds to where the party was happening; to where everything was happening.
There was a large bonfire surrounded by intoxicated teens, and a stable of horses to the left, and a couple of eagle cages next to that, filled with fluttering wings. Min was nervous — she wanted a drink.
The two girls approached the party of people; Robin took Min by the hand and they entered the glow of the firelight with a certain camaraderie. A million eyes swiveled around to focus on them and Min felt Robin’s fingers tighten in her hand. She wondered if this would be the moment when her life actually started.
That was when Buck appeared out of nowhere. “What the fuck is my favourite girl doing without a drink in her hand?” he demanded with a smile.
Min saw Robin beam and lean up to kiss Buck’s almost-shaggy beard. For a moment she was afraid she would lose her friend to beers and beards and sex, as she always did, but their hands remained intertwined as Robin whispered something in Buck’s ear and he paused only for a moment before he winked at Min and took off again around the other side of the fire.
Robin pulled gently on Min’s hand and they kicked up dust as they walked around outside the circle of people by the fire. Robin had always been lively but she wasn’t one for big groups or ‘being on show’ as she called it. She liked to entertain but preferably in a one-on-one setting. Min had presumed that meant Robin was kind of slutty, but the more they hung out the more that seemed to be untrue. Robin liked sex — she had said that exact thing over and over to Min — but only sex with someone who gave half a shit about her, or so she said. Min figured Robin said a whole lot of things. It was hard to tell which ones she meant and which ones she didn’t.
Min decided to break the silence. “So, you and Buck then?”
Robin shrugged. “Get me a drink first, then I might talk. But just in case you’re wondering, his dick is absolutely magnificent.”
Min was beyond embarrassed and hoping that no one else had heard their little conversation, when Robin’s eyes widened at something behind Min, and she abruptly walked away. Min was about to call after her when she felt a heavy warm hand on her shoulder — it made her jump.
“Hey.” It was Stacey behind her. Min turned to see his smooth brown face illuminated in the firelight/light of the fire.
“Hi.” The word came out too quiet and soft. Min blushed.
Stacey removed his hand from her shoulder and smiled. “You are apparently getting a drink for Robbie so that you can hear all about Bucky’s dick. Maybe we could get some drinks too, if that’s okay with you?”
Min felt all words evade her, so she nodded and followed Stacey over to the sprawling tables of snacks and drinks and candles. He poured a vodka cranberry for Robin (Robbie, as he called her) and a plastic cup of beer from the keg for himself and then turned. “How do you feel about a gin and tonic? You probably won’t like it too much at first, but I bet that will stop you from getting drunk.”
Min pondered this a moment and then nodded. She’d never had gin before — or tonic (whatever that was) — and there was something so dulcet and easy about Stacey that she decided that all she wanted right then was for him to make her a gin and tonic.
Three ice cubes clinked against each other in her cup as Min followed Stacey back past the bonfire surrounded by people and through the dark to a small bowl-shaped brazier where Robin sat on Buck’s knee, the two of them barely noticeable in the dim light. Stacey pulled up a spare chair for Min and took one right next to her. He was as easy as Sunday morning. He was calm and confident and smooth as golden honey. Min felt her insides turn to soft butter.
Robin sipped her vodka cranberry. “So boys, nice night you got going here. Took all I had to get my girl to come along. We had to make promises about curfew, we had to sell our souls to the devil, and, we had to make a personal sacrifice upon the sacred ground. I hope you two are willing to go as far as we did.”
Min saw Robin wink at her from Buck’s lap.
Stacey smiled. “Bucky my boy, I’m afraid we don’t have any souls left, but maybe we could sacrifice Terrance to the gods above?”
Buck was drunk. “Stacey,” he said with flat, glassy eyes. “What kind of gods would want Terrance?”
The two of them burst into boyish laughter and when Robin joined in Min sipped her gin and couldn’t help but feel even smaller than before; even further from fitting in. The drink was bitter — no, sharp — and it burned down her throat, but she took a few more sips nonetheless, and swallowed hard.
She was glad they were over here in their own little party — the big one would have been too much for her. The party noise still travelled over, but it felt as if they were in their own universe. Like the world outside them couldn’t touch or be touched. Min drank a little more of her gin and tonic and started to feel warm despite the night. Stacey scooted his chair closer to hers and continued in conversation with Buck and Robin. Maybe he was as nervous as she was.
As she sipped the sharp gin and tonic, Min felt herself sink down into the night. She remained acutely aware of Stacey’s every movement — the way he sat with his knees wide and casual; the way he constantly ran his fingers over his smooth shaven chin, as if grooming an invisible beard; the way his eyes flicked now and then to her, to Min, now and then to her crossed legs, now and then to her thick dark hair that was caught by the wind, now and then to where the red blouse came down to a v in the front.
Eventually Buck’s beer ran out and Robin pecked him on the cheek before grabbing Min’s hand and dragging her back to the main party area.
“But I don’t need another drink,” Min protested.
Robin brushed the curls out of her face and stared up at the sky as they walked slowly. “I know, fool. But the boys needs to talk about us and we need to talk about them.”
Min panicked. “What are they talking about!?”
Robin screwed up her nose. “I just told you. Us. “
“I know, I know. But what about us?”
“Probably your tits.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
Min felt a hot frustration rising up inside her. “I wish they weren’t the reason he’s paying attention to me.”
Robin stopped walking. “What, Stacey? Of course that’s not the reason. He likes you because you’re awesome, and honest, and you don’t take any shit even though you’re quiet. He likes you because you try hard and you get excellent grades and you’re not like me. And, he likes you because of that poem you wrote for Advanced English at the end of last year.”
Min pulled up short and shot Robin a look. “He — he remembers my poem?”
“That’s what he told me,” Robin said, looking a little tipsy in the moonlight. “C’mon, I want another vodka. Buck’s horny and I really can’t deal with that again tonight. If one or both of us get drunk it will mean I get the night off.” She winked and fumbled about on the table of refreshments that were near the house.
Min didn’t protest. She had poetry and the firelight and Stacey on her mind. She still knew most of that poem, not by heart, but it had won her the senior poetry prize despite the fact that she hadn’t been a senior last year. Her mum had been so proud, and Min had been so proud as well, until some of the other girls in their grade had started making fun of her in the halls. They recited lines to her in a generic Asian accent as they passed by. She didn’t ever bite — she would never risk her scholarship like that — but after a while she was taking the long way, avoiding the halls, leaving through emergency doors, entering through them. Robin had been the one who had saved her, but that was a story for another day.
These days, no one bothered Min, not with her sparkly friend around.
As she watched Robin pour another vodka and then a beer for Buck, Min wondered if she would have survived high school without her bright, sparkling friend. “Rob,” she started, “what if I want to kiss Stacey tonight?”
Robin turned with a dramatic look of shock and awe pasted across her party painted face. Her glittery eyeshadow sparkled as she blinked. “This had better not be a joke, young lady.”
Min shrugged and felt the blush rising again to her cheeks. “You know I like him. Everyone knows I like him.” Min was hunting for advice but she didn’t actually want to ask for it, for fear of dying right there on the spot.
Robin lifted the plastic cup to her lips and pondered with narrow eyes. “I like this new Mini. Maybe it’s the gin and tonic, but she’s definitely wooing me tonight.” Robin turned back to the table and poured another vodka cranberry and another beer, both of which she handed to Min.
“You’re nervous, my little Chinese kitten, but this is the easy part. The boy wants you and so all you need to do is smile and be there.” Robin’s eyes went all wide and crazy. “Let’s go!” She kicked Min’s butt gently with her foot and the two of them left the main party behind again, a drink in each of their hands.
When they got back the boys were huddled close in their chairs, whispering to each other. They looked up as they heard the girls approaching and their secret conversation stopped abruptly.
“Only good things, I hope,” Robin said as she handed Buck his beer and pulled him up off his seat. “How about we leave these two to their own devices?”
Min handed Stacey his beer with a shaking hand and wished Robin would be a little more subtle about the whole thing. Stacey took the plastic cup in one hand and pressed the other, very lightly, into the small of Min’s back. She felt a jolt of needful electricity shoot up her spine and warm the entirety her skin. Her ears were suddenly hot and she took a gulp of the vodka drink Robin had poured for her.
Stacey didn’t stand, but pushed a little on Min’s back until she was close enough that her thigh touched his knee where he sat. “We just need a moment Bucky, if you don’t mind. How about you and Robbie go and check out that hole you’ve been digging out behind the damn — oh, I’m sorry, the ‘excavation site’.”
Buck stood up and spilled some of his beer onto his jeans. “There’s something down there Stace, and when I find it I’m going to get mega rich and you’ll be sorry you ever made fun of me.”
Min saw Stacey smile but it was warm friendly. “I know, Bucky. I wasn’t making fun. Poking the bear, as it were.”
Buck swayed, looking confused for a moment, but then Robin tugged on his shirt and they disappeared, away to this purported excavation site. Min was about to ask what exactly Buck was excavating when Stacey suddenly pulled her down to sit on his warm lap. Her heart beat faster than she had ever known it to do, and she wished the light of their small fire was casting anywhere but upon her face.
Stacey wrapped a solid arm around her waist and smoothed his invisible beard once again. “Can I kiss you right now?” he asked.
Min took a quick sip of her drink and swallowed her fear. She nodded. “Mmhmmm.”
It wasn’t like how she had imagined at all — and she had imagined quiet a lot. Stacey bent and placed his plastic cup of beer on the dusty ground next to his chair. Min didn’t know if she should do the same, but there wasn’t time either way, because his face was close to hers then, and she could feel his chest giving off warmth into her side. She was vibrating with excitement and anticipation. This would be her first kiss. This would be more than her first kiss. This would be everything.
Before she could think any longer, Stacey’s warm hand came up to her face and he leaned in and it was too fast and it was slow motion and it was just the right speed. It was everything. Their lips touched and Min was surprised when his were so soft — much softer than she had expected — and the moment lasted a lifetime.
The red v-neck blouse was suddenly perfect, and the gin in her blood felt sweet and syrupy, and the small fire crackled like the electricity up her spine where his hand had dipped under the red blouse and was holding her in close to him.
Stacey.
Bucky’s call pierced the night and the perfect moment.
Min didn’t care, she was under so many layers of Stacey-honey that some part of her worried she might never be able to get back out.
“Stacey!” Buck called again.
Stacey took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You know how he is.”
Min ran her fingers across her freshly-kissed lips. “It’s okay. Robin is my best friend, remember?”
Stacey smiled and the two of them stood up and started off towards Buck’s excavation site.
The hole was about ten foot in diameter and Min was impressed at Buck’s efforts. “Did you dig this yourself?” she asked.
Buck smiled wide and finished his beer. “There’s something down here, I know there is.”
Robin sat on the far edge of the hole with crossed legs looking quite unimpressed. “Please don’t encourage him. This whole hole thing has been going on for like a week now. Can we just drop it. Mr Mason is going to castrate Bucky if he finds out there’s a fucking pool-sized hole in the back yard.”
Min figured it was likely that Mr Mason might not ever find out — they had walked a good half mile down from their small fire to the excavation site. Buck had set up a few spotlights around the hole and Min looked down to where he stood in the dust and dirt and rocks with a shovel. She felt Stacey’s hand holding onto the back of her jeans but somehow it felt like more of a soccer mum hold than an I wanna do bad things to you hold. No big deal, she thought, but secretly she was looking forward to the latter.
Stacey seemed tired of the hole thing and Min saw him share a look with Robin. “Look, Bucky. I know this is important to you, but don’t you think that this is just a distraction? School is coming to a close and you haven’t done well, I get it. I get it. Let’s just knuckle down and get through this last month and then we will be free, yeah?”
But Buck wasn’t listening, he had his shovel and he was going to town on the hole, smashing away at dirt and rock, searching for something that none of the rest of them could imagine. Min saw Stacey give Robin an imploring look and, in the spotlights, they heard Buck’s shove hit something. Whatever it was, it rang out into the night air. It sounded hard and metallic.
All of them were still.
“Buck?” Robin called down into the hole.
There was silence, and then, “I fucking told you guys!”
Stacey looked at Min. The two of them stood side by side across from Robin and peered down into Buck’s excavation hole.
Min saw it immediately — a large square-shaped indentation in the ground beneath Buck’s feet — she looked up and knew that Stacey had seen it as well. Stacey put his arm around Min again and pulled her back from the edge of the hole. “Bucky,” he called, “I think maybe you should get out of the hole, yeah?”
“What do you think it is?” she asked him quietly.
They watched Robin stand up and leave her drink behind her, abandoned in the dirt. “Buck, baby. Can we just call your folks in the morning and get a professional out here to have a look. Maybe it’s unsafe or something?”
Buck didn’t reply from down in his hole. The three of them heard him digging and digging, smashing the shovel into the metal thing that was down there. Min felt her heartbeat hasten and a strong urge rise up inside her. She wanted to be anywhere but near Buck’s excavation site. There was something she didn’t like about it but she couldn’t quite put her finger where it needed to be. She figured he was probably just doing as Stacey had said — distracting himself from the reality that he had done poorly on his final exams — but at the same time she felt the adrenaline pumping through her blood.
Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was her proximity to Stacey. Maybe it was the quickly cooling night. Maybe it was Min questioning herself, doubting herself, hating herself. — Worrying that perhaps she hadn’t done that well herself on the final exams either. Maybe it was the dark movements of the trees around the hole Buck had dug at the back of his family’s property.
Min turned to Stacey. “I really want to go back to the party,” she said, and it felt like she was begging. A blush started to rise in her as she felt Stacey take a hold her shoulder and turn to give her his whole attention.
“I’m sorry, he’s drunk and in a bad place. But Bucky’s my best friend, and I know that you know how that feels.”
Min felt the warmth of his body close to hers and the seriousness of his tone. “I know. I do know,” she said, and it was more of an admission than anything else. She was new to the best friend thing, but she understood how important it was.
Below them they heard Buck fall and the shovel clatter loudly onto the metal thing. Buck groaned — he’d hurt himself.
Stacey gave her a slightly pained smile and brushed the hair out of her face with gentle fingers. “If you want to go back I won’t hold it against you. Once I get him out of this ridiculous hole I’ll come and find you, okay?”
Min felt relief — she was free. She turned to see Robin crouching on her knees in the dirt, looking down at Buck. Her sparkly friend was still trying trying to convince her not-boyfriend to give up on becoming a raving idiot right before graduation.
Min called across the hole. “Robin!?”
Robin looked up and gave her a desperate look. “I’m so sorry Mini, I didn’t think he was that drunk. You okay?”
Min nodded and gave her brightest pretend smile. “It’s all good, I’m just cold.Going to head back to the party, is that cool?”
Robin closed her eyes and smiled in slow consent and then looked back down into the hole.
Min looked up at Stacey. “Promise you’ll come find me later?”
Stacey’s face was bright and glowing as he looked down at her. Like a Christmas star, Min thought to herself. He was the lovely thing she had been searching for. The thing she had wanted for so long. Too long.
“Of course I will,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “Will you be able to get back without a light?”
“I think so. I’ll be fine,” she shrugged. “Just — just get him out of there, please?”
Stacey stuck out his tongue and the tension eased. Min turned and knew immediately that she needed a light in the darkness of the trees, though she didn’t dare backtrack. There was something about Buck’s hole and the big flat metal square down at the bottom that made her stomach tighten with fear.
She had only walked a dozen feet or so when there was a strong wind that pulled at the tops of the trees above her and whisked up dust into her face. It was so strong that she had to cover her eyes and turn her face away and bend her knees. The wind was freezing and it cut through her.
That was when she heard it — a laugh like she’d never heard before. It was piercing and staccato and brought her stomach up into her throat. It was a laugh that no one could ever forget.
In the darkness she turned, still close enough to Robin and Stacey standing around the hole that, between them, she saw a thicket of dark smoke start to rise. It was black and amber and the red of dark blood.
Just as Min began to panic and move back to the site, that same awful laugh sounded around her in the trees and more pointedly, from the hole. Min crept a few steps back towards where Stacey and Robin stood. She wanted to stay quiet but it was hard with the dirt and the rocks crumbling under her feet. As she got closer she saw that Robin had her arms raised out and high into the air on the other side of the hole. Robin?, she whispered to herself.
The laugh erupted again, and it was from her mouth; it was Robin who was laughing. “It is you who have given your blood, young one,” Robin said in a voice not her own as she looked down at Buck, “and it is you who will pay, now, as I have paid in the past.”
There was a cracking sound and Min heard Buck cry out in pain. She crept a few steps closer to the excavation site in the dark and saw the black-amber-red smoke thickening from where it rose from the hole. “Stacey?” she hissed, trying to catch his attention, but Stacey was watching Robin through the smoke. He didn’t seem to see or hear anything else.
Robin spoke again in the awful voice that wasn’t hers. “And who is it that will be my vessel?”
Feeling a strong impulse to run away, Min wondered if this was some kind of drunken practical joke. She hoped it was. From the trees, she watched as the smoke started to clear a little and her sparkly friend, Robin, lifted up off the ground and drifted over the hole towards Stacey with her arms still raised high, opened up to the sky, as if she were in some kind of yoga pose.
It was impossible — Min knew it was impossible — but she watched it happen all the same. She watched as her lithe friend landed gently on her feet on the other side of Buck’s excavation hole and looked at Stacey with eyes that were bright green and pierced with a vertical slit. Snake eyes.
Min inched a few steps closer. She didn’t know what to do — there was a strong urge to run away and a similarly strong one to stay and approach — but who was she to make that decision? She felt small and young and helpless.
She watched as Stacey stood dead still and not-Robin approached him with a careful step. Robins feet were bare; her boots were gone. Min’s heart was a racing drumbeat inside her chest. She listened as closely as she could.
“Do you not fear me, boy?” asked not-Robin.
Min watched Stacey as he remained solid on the spot in the dust. “I don’t know you, so how can I fear you?” His voice trembled a little but he didn’t move. Min wanted to run to him.
Not-Robin pondered Stacey’s answer a moment. “People usually fear things they do not know, and things they cannot understand. If you were wise, you would fear me.”
Min inched closer again and she was just at the edge of the trees hoping she wouldn’t be seen. She saw Stacey move on the spot slightly; he was, perhaps, starting to lose his baring on reality. Min knew that she was surely starting to lose it.
“Without understanding of what you are, and what you can do, why would I be afraid? Ignorance is bliss, right?” Stacey asked.
Inappropriately, Min felt something inside her heart flutter at his calmness under pressure; his wit; his put-togetherness — all the things that had made her first start to eyestalk him.
Not-Robin smiled like it was what she was born to do, and Min felt a terrible chill creep through her, raising her skin into gooseflesh..
That was when her adrenaline really kicked in and Min ran directly towards Stacey from the trees where she had been hidden. She burst out into the spotlights and the smoke, and not-Robin turned to see her just as she stumbled in front of Stacey.
He started to say something to Min. He started to grab hold of her arm and pull her back, to try and move in front of her, to try and stand between her the Robin who was no longer Robin.
Min turned away from him and saw Robin with the yellow snake eyes. Robin was right in front her of — close enough that Min could feel her sparkly friend’s hot breath on her face.
After that she knew nothing but darkness.
Robin smiled the most polite smile she could manage and hustled Min over to the the front door. “It’s in Coster Park Mrs Wu, and it’s totally safe, I promise.”
The two girls were out the door and in the cool air of the early evening before Mrs Wu could stop them. Still, the old Chinese woman hurried out after and called to them as Robin shoved Min into the passenger seat and darted around to get in and start the engine. Mrs Wu was shouting in broken English about not drinking and not smoking and not taking any drugs and not letting boys talk them into doing things and so on. Robin grinned at Min who rolled her eyes as she heard her mum continuing to shout advice from the front step of their house.
“She’s right you know,” Robin confirmed as she jammed her old VW Beetle into first gear. “If a boy is trying to talk you into sucking him off, he is exactly the type of boy who doesn’t deserve to be sucked off. Lesson number 72 complete.” Robin said, nodded to herself and squealing out of the Wu residence driveway.
Min rolled her eyes again, hoping that none of the airborne driveway rocks hit her mum (who was probably still on the step, shouting, now probably in Chinese). “I’m not going to do that anyways,” Min affirmed. She felt silly in the outfit she had chosen — black jeans and a red, v-neck ruffled top she had borrowed from Robin that showed too much cleavage — and she was already regretting her agreement to go to the stupid party altogether.
Robin burned down the street away from Min’s house and took a too-sharp right onto the main town road. “Oh my God. Can you please relax?” she said, screeching to a halt a the red light outside the pharmacy. “I’m not saying you’re going to suck a dick tonight, I’m just informing you of the whats and what-nots.”
“That phrase doesn’t even make sense.”
“Of course it does!” Robin said, letting go of the wheel and throwing her hands up dramatically. “Look, Mini,” her face turned serious. “Stacey is going to be there tonight and all I want is for you to have a good time.”
Min felt herself blush and looked out the window to avoid Robin’s eyes. “Oh my god, what do I even care if Stacey is there?!”
“Well, I just thought maybe you’d care because you’ve been eye-stalking him for the past forever.”
Min turned back with her cranky face up to full volume. “Eye-stalking? Now I can be sure that you’re not making any sense. Eye-stalking.” Min shook her head. “I have not been doing anything of the sort.”
A huge smile peeled Robin’s perfectly painted party face almost totally in half. “Of course you have Mini. When you’re watching him I’m watching you. I see your eyes slide around like a wet slug in a cup. It’s fucking brilliant!”
Min couldn’t help but think that it was precisely the opposite of brilliant. She knew she had been ‘eye-stalking’ Stacey for a while now, she just thought that no one had actually noticed, and now, knowing he would be at the party she shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat and tugged at the red v-neck blouse, willing it to cover more of her chest than it could ever possibly manage. Robin always gawped on and on about how jealous she was of Min’s breasts, but Min couldn’t help but feel they were nothing but a burden — a huge pair of luminous beacons that she couldn’t hide if she tried.
They were moving again down the main street towards the bend in the town, closer and closer to Coster Park. To the party.
“Relax, please?” Robin tried again. “It’s going to be fun. You can have a beer and eat some corn chips and I’ll be there with you. You can hit on Stacey. I bet you’d be a pro if you gave it a go. Oh my god that rhymes!”
Min rolled her eyes. The dim street lights flew by like fireflies in the night. Min figured she wouldn’t mind a beer at this point, just to take the edge off. Maybe the party would be good. She would never know if she didn’t go. Oh, she realised her inner voice was starting to sound a lot like Robin. Fancy that.
They sped through the bend and down towards the part of town without street lamps. Coster Park sat detached from the main street and was where more of the wealthier people in town lived. Acreage and farms and sprawling ranch houses. It was also quieter than where Min and Robin lived but it was where the best parties happened. They saw the smoke plumes and the golden glow of the fire long before they made it to Buck Mason’s house.
Robin had been there a million times — apparently — but this was a first for Min. Actually, the whole party situation was a first for her. She tugged up at the low-cut red top again without luck, and started to panic as they rolled through the open gates of the property and along the fence line until they found a parking spot next to a rusted baby blue utility.
Robin turned off the ignition and took one of Min’s hands in her own. “Listen cutie, I know you don’t want to be here and I fully understand that. Please stop pulling at the shirt — it looks fucking good on you okay — and I know you’re nervous, which is fine, but if you could see yourself like I do…” Robin’s brows furrowed like Min had never seen before. She trailed off.
The deep base-beat of party music rumbled the world outside the tiny car. Min looked at Robin and Robin smiled her life-filled smile back at Min. “You are gorgeous and smart,” she said, “and worthy of so much more than you think you are Mini. I just want you to take one chance with me and try to have a fun night. We leave at midnight no matter what — we keep your mum happy and we don’t get wasted — I promise.”
Min felt Robin’s hand in her own, warm and solid despite the delicate fingers and the sparkly nail polish and all the shiny rings. Min was way out beyond her depth. “You really think the shirt looks good?”
“You know I fucking do. If anyone can pick a top for you, it’s me, bitch.”
They both laughed and Robin pulled Min in close and kissed her cheek. “C’mon my Chinese bombshell, let’s go make some dreams happen.”
Min was smiling as she scrambled out of the car and followed Robin past the enormous house and the multiple sheds to where the party was happening; to where everything was happening.
There was a large bonfire surrounded by intoxicated teens, and a stable of horses to the left, and a couple of eagle cages next to that, filled with fluttering wings. Min was nervous — she wanted a drink.
The two girls approached the party of people; Robin took Min by the hand and they entered the glow of the firelight with a certain camaraderie. A million eyes swiveled around to focus on them and Min felt Robin’s fingers tighten in her hand. She wondered if this would be the moment when her life actually started.
That was when Buck appeared out of nowhere. “What the fuck is my favourite girl doing without a drink in her hand?” he demanded with a smile.
Min saw Robin beam and lean up to kiss Buck’s almost-shaggy beard. For a moment she was afraid she would lose her friend to beers and beards and sex, as she always did, but their hands remained intertwined as Robin whispered something in Buck’s ear and he paused only for a moment before he winked at Min and took off again around the other side of the fire.
Robin pulled gently on Min’s hand and they kicked up dust as they walked around outside the circle of people by the fire. Robin had always been lively but she wasn’t one for big groups or ‘being on show’ as she called it. She liked to entertain but preferably in a one-on-one setting. Min had presumed that meant Robin was kind of slutty, but the more they hung out the more that seemed to be untrue. Robin liked sex — she had said that exact thing over and over to Min — but only sex with someone who gave half a shit about her, or so she said. Min figured Robin said a whole lot of things. It was hard to tell which ones she meant and which ones she didn’t.
Min decided to break the silence. “So, you and Buck then?”
Robin shrugged. “Get me a drink first, then I might talk. But just in case you’re wondering, his dick is absolutely magnificent.”
Min was beyond embarrassed and hoping that no one else had heard their little conversation, when Robin’s eyes widened at something behind Min, and she abruptly walked away. Min was about to call after her when she felt a heavy warm hand on her shoulder — it made her jump.
“Hey.” It was Stacey behind her. Min turned to see his smooth brown face illuminated in the firelight/light of the fire.
“Hi.” The word came out too quiet and soft. Min blushed.
Stacey removed his hand from her shoulder and smiled. “You are apparently getting a drink for Robbie so that you can hear all about Bucky’s dick. Maybe we could get some drinks too, if that’s okay with you?”
Min felt all words evade her, so she nodded and followed Stacey over to the sprawling tables of snacks and drinks and candles. He poured a vodka cranberry for Robin (Robbie, as he called her) and a plastic cup of beer from the keg for himself and then turned. “How do you feel about a gin and tonic? You probably won’t like it too much at first, but I bet that will stop you from getting drunk.”
Min pondered this a moment and then nodded. She’d never had gin before — or tonic (whatever that was) — and there was something so dulcet and easy about Stacey that she decided that all she wanted right then was for him to make her a gin and tonic.
Three ice cubes clinked against each other in her cup as Min followed Stacey back past the bonfire surrounded by people and through the dark to a small bowl-shaped brazier where Robin sat on Buck’s knee, the two of them barely noticeable in the dim light. Stacey pulled up a spare chair for Min and took one right next to her. He was as easy as Sunday morning. He was calm and confident and smooth as golden honey. Min felt her insides turn to soft butter.
Robin sipped her vodka cranberry. “So boys, nice night you got going here. Took all I had to get my girl to come along. We had to make promises about curfew, we had to sell our souls to the devil, and, we had to make a personal sacrifice upon the sacred ground. I hope you two are willing to go as far as we did.”
Min saw Robin wink at her from Buck’s lap.
Stacey smiled. “Bucky my boy, I’m afraid we don’t have any souls left, but maybe we could sacrifice Terrance to the gods above?”
Buck was drunk. “Stacey,” he said with flat, glassy eyes. “What kind of gods would want Terrance?”
The two of them burst into boyish laughter and when Robin joined in Min sipped her gin and couldn’t help but feel even smaller than before; even further from fitting in. The drink was bitter — no, sharp — and it burned down her throat, but she took a few more sips nonetheless, and swallowed hard.
She was glad they were over here in their own little party — the big one would have been too much for her. The party noise still travelled over, but it felt as if they were in their own universe. Like the world outside them couldn’t touch or be touched. Min drank a little more of her gin and tonic and started to feel warm despite the night. Stacey scooted his chair closer to hers and continued in conversation with Buck and Robin. Maybe he was as nervous as she was.
As she sipped the sharp gin and tonic, Min felt herself sink down into the night. She remained acutely aware of Stacey’s every movement — the way he sat with his knees wide and casual; the way he constantly ran his fingers over his smooth shaven chin, as if grooming an invisible beard; the way his eyes flicked now and then to her, to Min, now and then to her crossed legs, now and then to her thick dark hair that was caught by the wind, now and then to where the red blouse came down to a v in the front.
Eventually Buck’s beer ran out and Robin pecked him on the cheek before grabbing Min’s hand and dragging her back to the main party area.
“But I don’t need another drink,” Min protested.
Robin brushed the curls out of her face and stared up at the sky as they walked slowly. “I know, fool. But the boys needs to talk about us and we need to talk about them.”
Min panicked. “What are they talking about!?”
Robin screwed up her nose. “I just told you. Us. “
“I know, I know. But what about us?”
“Probably your tits.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
Min felt a hot frustration rising up inside her. “I wish they weren’t the reason he’s paying attention to me.”
Robin stopped walking. “What, Stacey? Of course that’s not the reason. He likes you because you’re awesome, and honest, and you don’t take any shit even though you’re quiet. He likes you because you try hard and you get excellent grades and you’re not like me. And, he likes you because of that poem you wrote for Advanced English at the end of last year.”
Min pulled up short and shot Robin a look. “He — he remembers my poem?”
“That’s what he told me,” Robin said, looking a little tipsy in the moonlight. “C’mon, I want another vodka. Buck’s horny and I really can’t deal with that again tonight. If one or both of us get drunk it will mean I get the night off.” She winked and fumbled about on the table of refreshments that were near the house.
Min didn’t protest. She had poetry and the firelight and Stacey on her mind. She still knew most of that poem, not by heart, but it had won her the senior poetry prize despite the fact that she hadn’t been a senior last year. Her mum had been so proud, and Min had been so proud as well, until some of the other girls in their grade had started making fun of her in the halls. They recited lines to her in a generic Asian accent as they passed by. She didn’t ever bite — she would never risk her scholarship like that — but after a while she was taking the long way, avoiding the halls, leaving through emergency doors, entering through them. Robin had been the one who had saved her, but that was a story for another day.
These days, no one bothered Min, not with her sparkly friend around.
As she watched Robin pour another vodka and then a beer for Buck, Min wondered if she would have survived high school without her bright, sparkling friend. “Rob,” she started, “what if I want to kiss Stacey tonight?”
Robin turned with a dramatic look of shock and awe pasted across her party painted face. Her glittery eyeshadow sparkled as she blinked. “This had better not be a joke, young lady.”
Min shrugged and felt the blush rising again to her cheeks. “You know I like him. Everyone knows I like him.” Min was hunting for advice but she didn’t actually want to ask for it, for fear of dying right there on the spot.
Robin lifted the plastic cup to her lips and pondered with narrow eyes. “I like this new Mini. Maybe it’s the gin and tonic, but she’s definitely wooing me tonight.” Robin turned back to the table and poured another vodka cranberry and another beer, both of which she handed to Min.
“You’re nervous, my little Chinese kitten, but this is the easy part. The boy wants you and so all you need to do is smile and be there.” Robin’s eyes went all wide and crazy. “Let’s go!” She kicked Min’s butt gently with her foot and the two of them left the main party behind again, a drink in each of their hands.
When they got back the boys were huddled close in their chairs, whispering to each other. They looked up as they heard the girls approaching and their secret conversation stopped abruptly.
“Only good things, I hope,” Robin said as she handed Buck his beer and pulled him up off his seat. “How about we leave these two to their own devices?”
Min handed Stacey his beer with a shaking hand and wished Robin would be a little more subtle about the whole thing. Stacey took the plastic cup in one hand and pressed the other, very lightly, into the small of Min’s back. She felt a jolt of needful electricity shoot up her spine and warm the entirety her skin. Her ears were suddenly hot and she took a gulp of the vodka drink Robin had poured for her.
Stacey didn’t stand, but pushed a little on Min’s back until she was close enough that her thigh touched his knee where he sat. “We just need a moment Bucky, if you don’t mind. How about you and Robbie go and check out that hole you’ve been digging out behind the damn — oh, I’m sorry, the ‘excavation site’.”
Buck stood up and spilled some of his beer onto his jeans. “There’s something down there Stace, and when I find it I’m going to get mega rich and you’ll be sorry you ever made fun of me.”
Min saw Stacey smile but it was warm friendly. “I know, Bucky. I wasn’t making fun. Poking the bear, as it were.”
Buck swayed, looking confused for a moment, but then Robin tugged on his shirt and they disappeared, away to this purported excavation site. Min was about to ask what exactly Buck was excavating when Stacey suddenly pulled her down to sit on his warm lap. Her heart beat faster than she had ever known it to do, and she wished the light of their small fire was casting anywhere but upon her face.
Stacey wrapped a solid arm around her waist and smoothed his invisible beard once again. “Can I kiss you right now?” he asked.
Min took a quick sip of her drink and swallowed her fear. She nodded. “Mmhmmm.”
It wasn’t like how she had imagined at all — and she had imagined quiet a lot. Stacey bent and placed his plastic cup of beer on the dusty ground next to his chair. Min didn’t know if she should do the same, but there wasn’t time either way, because his face was close to hers then, and she could feel his chest giving off warmth into her side. She was vibrating with excitement and anticipation. This would be her first kiss. This would be more than her first kiss. This would be everything.
Before she could think any longer, Stacey’s warm hand came up to her face and he leaned in and it was too fast and it was slow motion and it was just the right speed. It was everything. Their lips touched and Min was surprised when his were so soft — much softer than she had expected — and the moment lasted a lifetime.
The red v-neck blouse was suddenly perfect, and the gin in her blood felt sweet and syrupy, and the small fire crackled like the electricity up her spine where his hand had dipped under the red blouse and was holding her in close to him.
Stacey.
Bucky’s call pierced the night and the perfect moment.
Min didn’t care, she was under so many layers of Stacey-honey that some part of her worried she might never be able to get back out.
“Stacey!” Buck called again.
Stacey took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You know how he is.”
Min ran her fingers across her freshly-kissed lips. “It’s okay. Robin is my best friend, remember?”
Stacey smiled and the two of them stood up and started off towards Buck’s excavation site.
The hole was about ten foot in diameter and Min was impressed at Buck’s efforts. “Did you dig this yourself?” she asked.
Buck smiled wide and finished his beer. “There’s something down here, I know there is.”
Robin sat on the far edge of the hole with crossed legs looking quite unimpressed. “Please don’t encourage him. This whole hole thing has been going on for like a week now. Can we just drop it. Mr Mason is going to castrate Bucky if he finds out there’s a fucking pool-sized hole in the back yard.”
Min figured it was likely that Mr Mason might not ever find out — they had walked a good half mile down from their small fire to the excavation site. Buck had set up a few spotlights around the hole and Min looked down to where he stood in the dust and dirt and rocks with a shovel. She felt Stacey’s hand holding onto the back of her jeans but somehow it felt like more of a soccer mum hold than an I wanna do bad things to you hold. No big deal, she thought, but secretly she was looking forward to the latter.
Stacey seemed tired of the hole thing and Min saw him share a look with Robin. “Look, Bucky. I know this is important to you, but don’t you think that this is just a distraction? School is coming to a close and you haven’t done well, I get it. I get it. Let’s just knuckle down and get through this last month and then we will be free, yeah?”
But Buck wasn’t listening, he had his shovel and he was going to town on the hole, smashing away at dirt and rock, searching for something that none of the rest of them could imagine. Min saw Stacey give Robin an imploring look and, in the spotlights, they heard Buck’s shove hit something. Whatever it was, it rang out into the night air. It sounded hard and metallic.
All of them were still.
“Buck?” Robin called down into the hole.
There was silence, and then, “I fucking told you guys!”
Stacey looked at Min. The two of them stood side by side across from Robin and peered down into Buck’s excavation hole.
Min saw it immediately — a large square-shaped indentation in the ground beneath Buck’s feet — she looked up and knew that Stacey had seen it as well. Stacey put his arm around Min again and pulled her back from the edge of the hole. “Bucky,” he called, “I think maybe you should get out of the hole, yeah?”
“What do you think it is?” she asked him quietly.
They watched Robin stand up and leave her drink behind her, abandoned in the dirt. “Buck, baby. Can we just call your folks in the morning and get a professional out here to have a look. Maybe it’s unsafe or something?”
Buck didn’t reply from down in his hole. The three of them heard him digging and digging, smashing the shovel into the metal thing that was down there. Min felt her heartbeat hasten and a strong urge rise up inside her. She wanted to be anywhere but near Buck’s excavation site. There was something she didn’t like about it but she couldn’t quite put her finger where it needed to be. She figured he was probably just doing as Stacey had said — distracting himself from the reality that he had done poorly on his final exams — but at the same time she felt the adrenaline pumping through her blood.
Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was her proximity to Stacey. Maybe it was the quickly cooling night. Maybe it was Min questioning herself, doubting herself, hating herself. — Worrying that perhaps she hadn’t done that well herself on the final exams either. Maybe it was the dark movements of the trees around the hole Buck had dug at the back of his family’s property.
Min turned to Stacey. “I really want to go back to the party,” she said, and it felt like she was begging. A blush started to rise in her as she felt Stacey take a hold her shoulder and turn to give her his whole attention.
“I’m sorry, he’s drunk and in a bad place. But Bucky’s my best friend, and I know that you know how that feels.”
Min felt the warmth of his body close to hers and the seriousness of his tone. “I know. I do know,” she said, and it was more of an admission than anything else. She was new to the best friend thing, but she understood how important it was.
Below them they heard Buck fall and the shovel clatter loudly onto the metal thing. Buck groaned — he’d hurt himself.
Stacey gave her a slightly pained smile and brushed the hair out of her face with gentle fingers. “If you want to go back I won’t hold it against you. Once I get him out of this ridiculous hole I’ll come and find you, okay?”
Min felt relief — she was free. She turned to see Robin crouching on her knees in the dirt, looking down at Buck. Her sparkly friend was still trying trying to convince her not-boyfriend to give up on becoming a raving idiot right before graduation.
Min called across the hole. “Robin!?”
Robin looked up and gave her a desperate look. “I’m so sorry Mini, I didn’t think he was that drunk. You okay?”
Min nodded and gave her brightest pretend smile. “It’s all good, I’m just cold.Going to head back to the party, is that cool?”
Robin closed her eyes and smiled in slow consent and then looked back down into the hole.
Min looked up at Stacey. “Promise you’ll come find me later?”
Stacey’s face was bright and glowing as he looked down at her. Like a Christmas star, Min thought to herself. He was the lovely thing she had been searching for. The thing she had wanted for so long. Too long.
“Of course I will,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “Will you be able to get back without a light?”
“I think so. I’ll be fine,” she shrugged. “Just — just get him out of there, please?”
Stacey stuck out his tongue and the tension eased. Min turned and knew immediately that she needed a light in the darkness of the trees, though she didn’t dare backtrack. There was something about Buck’s hole and the big flat metal square down at the bottom that made her stomach tighten with fear.
She had only walked a dozen feet or so when there was a strong wind that pulled at the tops of the trees above her and whisked up dust into her face. It was so strong that she had to cover her eyes and turn her face away and bend her knees. The wind was freezing and it cut through her.
That was when she heard it — a laugh like she’d never heard before. It was piercing and staccato and brought her stomach up into her throat. It was a laugh that no one could ever forget.
In the darkness she turned, still close enough to Robin and Stacey standing around the hole that, between them, she saw a thicket of dark smoke start to rise. It was black and amber and the red of dark blood.
Just as Min began to panic and move back to the site, that same awful laugh sounded around her in the trees and more pointedly, from the hole. Min crept a few steps back towards where Stacey and Robin stood. She wanted to stay quiet but it was hard with the dirt and the rocks crumbling under her feet. As she got closer she saw that Robin had her arms raised out and high into the air on the other side of the hole. Robin?, she whispered to herself.
The laugh erupted again, and it was from her mouth; it was Robin who was laughing. “It is you who have given your blood, young one,” Robin said in a voice not her own as she looked down at Buck, “and it is you who will pay, now, as I have paid in the past.”
There was a cracking sound and Min heard Buck cry out in pain. She crept a few steps closer to the excavation site in the dark and saw the black-amber-red smoke thickening from where it rose from the hole. “Stacey?” she hissed, trying to catch his attention, but Stacey was watching Robin through the smoke. He didn’t seem to see or hear anything else.
Robin spoke again in the awful voice that wasn’t hers. “And who is it that will be my vessel?”
Feeling a strong impulse to run away, Min wondered if this was some kind of drunken practical joke. She hoped it was. From the trees, she watched as the smoke started to clear a little and her sparkly friend, Robin, lifted up off the ground and drifted over the hole towards Stacey with her arms still raised high, opened up to the sky, as if she were in some kind of yoga pose.
It was impossible — Min knew it was impossible — but she watched it happen all the same. She watched as her lithe friend landed gently on her feet on the other side of Buck’s excavation hole and looked at Stacey with eyes that were bright green and pierced with a vertical slit. Snake eyes.
Min inched a few steps closer. She didn’t know what to do — there was a strong urge to run away and a similarly strong one to stay and approach — but who was she to make that decision? She felt small and young and helpless.
She watched as Stacey stood dead still and not-Robin approached him with a careful step. Robins feet were bare; her boots were gone. Min’s heart was a racing drumbeat inside her chest. She listened as closely as she could.
“Do you not fear me, boy?” asked not-Robin.
Min watched Stacey as he remained solid on the spot in the dust. “I don’t know you, so how can I fear you?” His voice trembled a little but he didn’t move. Min wanted to run to him.
Not-Robin pondered Stacey’s answer a moment. “People usually fear things they do not know, and things they cannot understand. If you were wise, you would fear me.”
Min inched closer again and she was just at the edge of the trees hoping she wouldn’t be seen. She saw Stacey move on the spot slightly; he was, perhaps, starting to lose his baring on reality. Min knew that she was surely starting to lose it.
“Without understanding of what you are, and what you can do, why would I be afraid? Ignorance is bliss, right?” Stacey asked.
Inappropriately, Min felt something inside her heart flutter at his calmness under pressure; his wit; his put-togetherness — all the things that had made her first start to eyestalk him.
Not-Robin smiled like it was what she was born to do, and Min felt a terrible chill creep through her, raising her skin into gooseflesh..
That was when her adrenaline really kicked in and Min ran directly towards Stacey from the trees where she had been hidden. She burst out into the spotlights and the smoke, and not-Robin turned to see her just as she stumbled in front of Stacey.
He started to say something to Min. He started to grab hold of her arm and pull her back, to try and move in front of her, to try and stand between her the Robin who was no longer Robin.
Min turned away from him and saw Robin with the yellow snake eyes. Robin was right in front her of — close enough that Min could feel her sparkly friend’s hot breath on her face.
After that she knew nothing but darkness.
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