"I'm sorry about this, Reed," she said. "I suppose etiquette and testosterone cancel each other out."
I took a sip of my punch and set the glass down on the table. 'You don't have to apologize for them, Noelle," I said. "It's good, actually. Ariana's right. I need to face this head-on. I need to stare right into the face of the guy who said he loved me and then lied to me and was then brutally murdered. In fact, I think it'll make the whole mourning-process thing that much easier."
"Reed--"
I was ranting. Billings Girls didn't rant.
"I'm going to the bathroom now," I told Ariana. "Or does that make me a weakling too?"
She opened her mouth to speak.
"Actually, forget it. I don't care," I said, cutting her off. "I'm going now, and when I get back, I'm going to dance."
"I'll be ready!" Kiran said, raising her glass.
My eyes were dry as sand as I wove my way back through the room. Reality was finally setting in on me. Thomas was gone. And even when he had been here, I had been just a blip to him, a nothing.
A nothing who seriously had to move on.
131
PLEASANT DEVELOPMENT
"Are you all right? You look like you're evaporating," Josh said, handing me a glass of iced punch.
I was taking a break from my cathartic dance ritual and my skin was beaded with sweat, but it felt good. It felt like I was getting something out of my system. I just hoped whatever it was didn't smell.
I took a sip of the fruity punch and watched Noelle, Kiran, and Taylor, who apparently still had stuff to work out. They were all out there, hogging the center of the dance floor. I saw a few non- Billings girls shooting them snide looks behind their backs, but whenever one of my friends turned their eyes on the same girls, they were all smiles. Such power.
"I'm fine," I said casually. "What do you think of the decorations?"
Josh looked around. "I'm gonna go with cool but eerie."
I smirked. "Where's that one from?" I asked, lifting my hand toward the shot of him and Thomas all dressed up. I tried to look
132
at Josh instead of Thomas. Pretend Thomas wasn't there. Pretend I was just a-okay, hunky-dory, peachy-keen. All phrases my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Cornerstone, had used on a daily basis.
"That was Penny Halston's wedding the week before school started," Josh replied. "The guy she married has some stake in the Anheuser-Busch Companies, so they had bottled beer at the reception. Thomas snagged, like, a whole dolly full of cases and stayed up all night drinking, just to see how far he could get."
I shook my head and looked at the floor. Were there any Thomas stories that didn't include him being wasted?
"When we found him at dawn, he was lying on the eighteenth green, singing 'Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer' and flinging the empties into a sand trap," Gage said with a laugh, joining us.
"Almost killed one of the landscaping crew," Jos
h added.
"Whatever. Like twenty stitches is such a big freaking deal." Gage took a slug of his drink. "Kid did know how to party, though. But you knew that, didn't you, Brennan?" he asked lasciviously.
He reached out as if to run his finger down my arm. Josh shoved Gage's shoulder about two seconds before I would have grabbed Gage's finger and twisted. "You have serious problems, you know that?" Josh spat.
"Look who's talking, Hollis," Gage shot back.
Josh glanced at me as if snagged. Huh?
"Back off, asshole," he said to Gage.