Then Lina had begun to change. It had been subtle at first, the transformations. A few more holes in her ears, tears in her Levi’s, dark mascara smudged around her beautiful blue eyes.
As usual, Madelaine had barely noticed. Then, one day, she looked up at her daughter and saw him. She’d realized then what she should have seen since childhood. Lina was the spitting image of her father, a wild teenager who lived life at a full run, taking no prisoners, asking for nothing. Like her father, too, Lina saw through Madelaine’s brittle exterior, saw the weak woman inside. A woman who couldn’t make rules, couldn’t enforce even the simplest conditions. A woman who was so desperate for love that she let people walk all over her.
Lina Hillyard took a long, stinging drag off her cigarette and exhaled. The smoke collected against the windshield and hung suspended, mingling with the massive cloud that was already there. She held back a hacking cough by sheer force of will.
Shifting uncomfortably on the narrow seat, she cast a surreptitious glance at the boy beside her. Jett was driving fast, as usual, his foot slammed onto the gas. Pedal, his free hand curled around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he’d stolen from his parents. On the other side of her, Brittany Levin was sucking on a lime—the last stage of her tequila slammer. Everyone was laughing and talking and singing along with the radio. It was blasting a song by the Butthole Surfers.
The song ended and something softer began. Jett cursed loudly and switched the radio off, then swerved onto the side of the road and hit the brakes so hard that all of them were hurled forward. Lina’s hand shot out instinctively, slammed against the windshield. Her cigarette hit the dashboard and rolled toward the vent.
The little Datsun’s doors flipped open and everyone spilled out Lina reached for her cigarette. By the time she’d retrieved it, the gang was already outside, milling beneath a huge cedar tree in the center of the clearing.
It was their Saturday night party spot. Yellowed cigarette butts already littered the ground, alongside empty liquor bottles and roach clips and crumpled smoke packs. Someone had brought a boom box, and loud music vibrated through the air.
Lina dropped her cigarette and ground it out beneath her heel, then headed toward the group. Jett was standing alongside the tree, guzzling Jack Daniel’s as if it were water. The golden alcohol trickled down his stubbly chin and dripped onto his T-shirt.
She wished she knew what to say to him now—just the right thing that would make him look at her, see her. She’d had a crush on him for as long as she could remember; he was so cool. And they had something in common. Jett had grown up without a father around. Lina was certain it meant something—some destiny thing—that their lives were so alike. But he never seemed to notice her, none of them did. She was like a ghost, hovering on the perimeter of their friendship, trying to find the words that would admit her.
“Hey, Hillyard,” Jett called out, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “You got any money? We need more smokes.”
Lina grinned and tucked a stray lock of black hair around her ear. It wasn’t much, she knew, but it meant that he wanted something from her, needed something. She always had more money than the rest of the kids. (It was the one cool thing her evil mother did.) “Yeah, I got enough for a couple of packs,” she answered, digging into her jeans pocket.
Brittany gave her a stinging look. Then she flipped open her purse and pulled out the pint of tequila. “Here, Lina, have a drink.”
Lina grabbed the bottle’s warm neck and took a burning drink. The tequila ignited along her throat and exploded in her stomach.
Brittany ran a hand through her short-cropped hair and sidled up to Jett. Staring triumphantly at Lina, she reached up and planted a long, wet kiss on his mouth. Jett’s hand slid around Brittany’s waist and pulled
her close. “You taste like tequila,” he murmured. Then he looked around. “Who’s got the pot?”
Within seconds, the night air was thick with the sweet scent of marijuana. The kids drew together in a circle, passing the joint from one to another, laughing and dancing.
Lina felt the effects of the stuff in her bloodstream. The world seemed to slow down. Her body turned to heavy syrup and she sank slowly, slowly downward.
She closed her eyes and swayed. God, it felt good to be zoned out. When she was like this, there were so many things she didn’t care about. Suddenly it didn’t matter that her perfect mother was meeting with the school counselor today. Nothing hurt her when she was high.
Even the questions that had haunted her all day now felt as insubstantial as the smoke rising from her cigarette.
Brittany plopped down beside her. “I saw your dipshit mom going into Miss Owen’s office today.”
Jett laughed. “Ooh, you’re in trouble now, Hillyard.”
“Yeah, I saw her, too,” someone cut in. “She may be a bitch, but your mom is hot.”
“She could be a model,” Brittany said, then leaned close. “You sure don’t look like her. Who do you look like in your family?”
Lina flinched and reached for her smokes. Sometimes she hated Brittany more than she could stand. “My dad, I guess.”
Brittany gave her a cold, assessing look. “Course, that’s just a guess.” She took another huge gulp of tequila, laughing as she swallowed. Then she surged to her feet. “Hey, I got an idea.” She raced over to Jett and whispered something in his ear, and they both started laughing.
Jett dropped the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and made his stumbling, lurching way to the car. He opened the trunk and rummaged through the stuff in the back, grabbed a few things, then ran back to the clearing. A big, alcohol-soaked grin exploded on his face. “Hillyard, we’re going to figure out who your dad is.”
Lina didn’t answer. They didn’t understand—none of them understood—how much they could hurt her with their careless words. “What do you mean?” she asked softly.
He squatted until he was eye level with her. “We’re going to see who you look like. It’ll be cool. You’ll see.” Before she could think of what to say, he’d slapped an old baseball cap on her head and whipped out a pair of scissors. “I’ll cut around the outline of the hat—it’ll be awesome.” He hiccuped drunkenly and laughed.
Alarm flared in her. “Wait a second—”
“My old lady’s a hairdresser. I know what I’m doing,” Jett said.