On the Night She Died: A Quarry Street Story Read online

  “What the hell?” Jenni mumbled, but Dillon pulled her away before she could get a positive glimpse.

  Dillon held her up as she tripped. He kissed her again. His big hands settled on her hips, pinching.

  “What’ve you got for me?” He nuzzled her neck.

  “No marks,” she told him. Dillon was trying to give her a hickey, like he was sixteen instead of however the hell old he really was.

  “Someone else doesn’t seem to have the same rules.” He touched the faint purple marks on her neck.

  She knocked his hand away. “That’s none of your goddamned business.”

  “Hey, hey, listen, it’s not like I care if you’re getting some on the side. Or hell, it’s not like I care if I’m the some on the side. But if you don’t want marks, you’d better tell whoever the other guy is.”

  “There’s no other guy.” The denial was automatic out of habit.

  Dillon didn’t seem to care. He wheedled, “C’mon, baby, I need a little something.”

  Of course he did. Dillon had been buying from Barry since before Jenni got recruited to expand the market. He was her best customer.

  Jenni inched out of his embrace. She wasn’t sober, and she didn’t want to be, but she was losing at least the edge of her drunkenness. She patted her hip and let out a laugh.

  “Oops. Forgot. No pockets.” She spread the hem of her dress, almost losing her balance again.

  “Damn it!”

  “Relax,” she told him with a scowl. “I have some at home. I just have to walk over and get them.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  They walked across the street, which had been lined with cars for the past hour or so. Inside her house, she told Dillon to wait in the kitchen while she ran upstairs to grab the small mint tin in which she kept the supply of painkillers she sold. She was almost out. She’d have to get some more from Barry. He’d want his cash soon, too, and she double checked to make sure that was safe in its hiding place too. It would suck if Allie or worse, her mom, found it.

  Before going back downstairs to trade the pills to Dillon for some money, Jenni checked her pager. Nothing. She tucked the pager away in her underwear drawer. Disappointment reminded her of the taste of vomit. In her bathroom she brushed her teeth. Spat. Brushed, rinsed, spat again.

  Steve had told her he’d be on the road for a few days, maybe a week. He’d told her he wasn’t coming to a high school party anyway, even if he was home. If Dillon was way too old to be there, Steve was literally old enough to be the father to most if not all of the kids are the party. Including Jenni.

  Steve wasn’t her father, though. He was something else that had no name. He was another of her secrets, and she held it tight to herself.

  Chapter 5

  Rebecca

  Then

  The music was so loud that Rebecca couldn’t hear anything Madison was saying, but it probably didn’t matter. The other girl was already so drunk that she could hardly stand up. It was gross. Rebecca had barely managed to finish one plastic cup of warm, fizzy beer. Her stomach was already upset. So much for partying hard.

  “Tristan,” Madison finally said into Rebecca’s ear.

  “Huh?”

  Madison nudged Rebecca’s shoulder, then pointed toward the corner where a group of guys were gathered around a beer pong setup. “Tristan Weatherfield!”

  Rebecca looked again. She knew Tristan, of course. Quarry High was so small that everyone knew everyone else, because most of them had been in class together since kindergarten. She knew Tristan, but they’d never hung out. Tristan wore black leather jackets and spiked his dark hair. He had a James Dean kind of retro vibe mixed up with a punk/rockabilly Stray Cats style, and guys like him didn’t pay girls like Rebecca the time of day. She was the Steff to his Andie in their school’s version of Pretty in Pink. Different worlds. Different universes, as a matter of fact.

  “He’s cute!” Madison breathed beer-scented breath into Rebecca’s face. “He keeps looking at you.”

  Rebecca attempted another sip from the red plastic cup, trying to hide the shudder of disgust at the beer’s sour flavor. “Maybe he’s looking at you.”

  “You think so?” Madison waved a hand, jangling her armful of bracelets. “Should I go ask him to dance or something?”

  “I don’t think this is the sort of party where you do that.”

  “Right, right.” Madison looked serious. “You should do it, then.”

  Rebecca laughed, her attention caught away from the cute rebel boy in the corner to Jennilynn Harrison, who was being led away by the stranger none of them knew. The guy was old. At least thirty. Good-looking, but in a shady way.

  “Go.” Madison shoved her.

  Rebecca took a couple of stumbling steps toward the group of boys. Tristan wasn’t looking at her, so he didn’t see how clumsy she was. On the other hand, he wasn’t looking at her, which meant that Madison was just too drunk to know what the hell she was talking about.

  The beer in Rebecca’s cup sloshed. So much for her getting drunk and wild tonight. She should have gone out with Richie. She could have let him take her back to his house, where they’d have tussled on the couch in the basement rumpus room. He’d have tried to get her shirt off like that was some big deal, to see her boobs. She’d have let him after a struggle, not because she really thought it was a big deal, but because good girls held out.

  “Tired of being a good girl,” she said.

  Madison blinked. “Huh? What?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” Rebecca steeled herself, then tossed back the contents of her cup. She grimaced at the nasty taste, but welcomed the warmth spreading through her. She handed the empty to Madison.

  She had to weave her way through a group of kids dirty dancing on top of a bunch of potato chips being crushed into the carpet, but she kept going. By the time she got to where Tristan was standing, she expected to lose her nerve. To her own surprise though, Rebecca put herself squarely in front of him.

  “Hi, Tristan.”

  Tristan turned and gave her a long, obvious look, up and down. “Hey.”

  “Rebecca,” she said. “Segal. We had Bio II together last year.”

  “I guess so.” His eyes were red. His stance and his grin were both a little wobbly. He focused on her, but barely, as he took a long swig. “Where’s your drink?”

  “I guess I need a new one. Want to get one with me?” Her own boldness shocked her. Maybe the beer she’d managed to chug was affecting her.

  Tristan drained his cup by tipping back his head. Rebecca watched, fascinated, at how the muscles of his throat worked. When he finished, giving her another of those wobbly grins, her stomach tightened and a hot flush crept up her throat into her cheeks.

  Drinks had been set out in the kitchen. Empty bottles lined the counter. The trashcan was already overflowing with discarded red plastic cups. The floor, sticky from spilled red fruit punch. Ilya and Niko’s mother was going to be super pissed when she got home. Rebecca couldn’t imagine ever throwing a party like this at her house.

  Tristan pulled two cups from the top of the trash and ran them under the kitchen faucet before turning to her. “Punch!”

  “Sure.” She wasn’t going to be grossed out by the fact he took them from the trash, Rebecca told herself. She was carefree, loose as a goose, she was totally chill.

  Tristan poured them both cups of punch. He held up his cup to knock against hers. “Cheers.”

  Drinking the punch was like taking a punch, right to the guts. It was so much worse than the beer. Rebecca shuddered with disgust at the vodka’s strong taste, barely cut at all by the equally disgusting red punch. Tristan saw her grimace and laughed.

  “The more you drink, the better it tastes,” he said.

  She was already noticing that. She sipped again. The music wasn’t as loud in here, but while that would make conversation easier, she was having a hard time figuring out what to say.

  “You sat in the back,”