Teardrop

20 NEVER-EVER

The Trejeans lived on a restored plantation in the wealthy district south of town. Cotton fields flanked the small historic neighborhood. Houses were columned, two-storied, snug in blankets of pink azaleas, and shaded by antebellum oaks. The bayou bent around the Trejeans’ backyard like an elbow, providing a double waterfront view.

The entire senior class and the well-connected underclassmen had been invited to the Maze Daze. It was customary to catch a boat ride and pull up bayou-side to the party. The year before, Eureka and Cat had made the journey in the rickety motorboat with a creaking tiller that Brooks’s older brother, Seth, left behind when he went to LSU. The freezing half-hour ride up the bayou from New Iberia had been almost as fun as the party.

Tonight, since Brooks was not an option, Cat had put out feelers for other rides. As she was getting dressed, Eureka couldn’t help imagining Maya Cayce sitting next to Brooks on the boat, plugging her metal-heavy iPod into the portable speakers, caressing Brooks’s bicep. She imagined Maya’s hair streaming behind her like the tentacles of a black octopus as the boat skimmed across the water.

In the end, Cat scored a ride from Julien Marsh, whose friend Tim had a mint-green 1960s party barge with empty seats. At eight o’clock, when Julien’s truck pulled up outside Eureka’s house, Dad was standing at the window, drinking cold leftover coffee from the maroon mug that used to say I love Mom, before the dishwasher sanded down the paint.

Eureka zipped her raincoat to cover the low sequined neckline of a dress Cat had just spent five minutes on Face-time convincing her was not trampy. She’d borrowed the satin shift from Cat’s closet that afternoon, even though she looked terrible in brown. Cat was debuting a similar dress in orange. They were going as fall leaves. Cat said she liked the vivid, sensual colors; Eureka didn’t voice her perverse enjoyment at dressing as an object with a second life when it was dead.

Dad raised one of the blinds to look at Julien’s Ford. “Who’s the truck?”

“You know Cat, what she likes.”

He sighed, exhausted, just off his shift at the restaurant. He smelled like crawfish. As Eureka slid through the doorway, he said, “You know you want better than those kinds of boys, right?”

“That truck doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s a ride to a party, that’s all.”

“If someone does have something to do with you,” Dad said, “you’ll bring him inside? I’ll meet him?” His eyes turned down, a look the twins got when they were about to cry, like a swollen cloud rolling in from the Gulf. She’d never realized they inherited that meteorological event from him. “Your mom only ever wanted the best for you.”

“I know, Dad.” The coldness with which Eureka grabbed her purse made her glimpse the depths of the anger and confusion rooted inside her. “I’ve got to go.”

“Back by midnight,” Dad said as she walked out the door.

The party barge was nearly full when Eureka, Cat, and Julien arrived at Tim’s family’s dock. Tim was blond and skinny, with an eyebrow ring, big hands, and a smile as constant as the Eternal Flame. Eureka had never had a class with him, but they were friends from back when Eureka went to parties. His costume was an LSU football jersey. He held out a hand to steady her as she stepped onto the party barge.

“Good to see you out, Boudreaux. Saved y’all three seats.”

They wedged in next to some cheerleaders, some theater kids, and a boy from the cross-country team named Martin. The rest of them had taken the party barge last weekend, Eureka realized from the jokes they cracked. This was the first time all year she’d been out with anyone besides Cat or Brooks.

She found the back corner of a bench where she’d be the least claustrophobic. She remembered what Ander had said under the tree about enjoying being cocooned. She couldn’t relate. The entire world was too tight a space for Eureka.

She reached down to touch the bayou, taking comfort in its fragile timelessness. There was little chance a wave bigger than a boat’s wake would come coursing through. Still, her hand shook against the surface of the water, which felt colder than she knew it was.

Cat sat next to her, on Julien’s lap. As she penciled a few leaves on Eureka’s face with gold eyeliner, she made up a Maze Daze song to the tune of “Love Stinks,” accompanied by shimmying against Julien’s chest.

“Maze Daze, yeah, yeah!”

A six-pack appeared while Tim filled the tank. Tops popped around the boat like fireworks. The air smelled like gasoline and dead water beetles and the mushrooms rising from the soil along the bank. A slick-furred nutria cut a tiny wake as it swam past them on the bayou.

As the party barge slowly left the dock, a bitter breeze slapped Eureka’s face and she hugged her arms to her chest. Kids around her huddled together and laughed, not because anything funny had happened, but because they were together and eager about the night ahead.

By the time they got to the party, they were either buzzed or pretending they were. Eureka accepted Tim’s help off the barge. His hand around hers was dry and big. It gave her a twinge of longing, because it was nothing like Ander’s hand. Nausea spread through her stomach as she remembered sugarcane and skin as white as sea foam and ghastly green light in Ander’s panicked eyes the night before.

“Come along, my brittle little leaf.” Cat swung an arm around Eureka. “Let us tumble through this fete bringing all glad men to grief.”

They entered the party. Laura Trejean had classed up her brother’s tradition. Tiki torches lit the pebbled allée from the dock to the iron gate that led to the backyard. Tin lanterns twinkled in the giant weeping willows. Up on the balcony, overlooking the moonlit pool, everyone’s favorite local band, the Faith Healers, tuned their instruments. Laura’s clique mingled across the lawn, passing tin trays of Cajun hors d’oeuvres.

“Amazing what a lady’s touch will do,” Eureka said to Cat, who snatched a mini fried oyster po’boy from a passing platter.

“That’s what he said,” Cat mumbled through a mouthful of bread and lettuce.

You didn’t have to tell Catholic school kids twice to dress up for a party. Everyone came decked out in costume. Maze Daze was explicitly not a Halloween party; it was a harvest celebration. Among the many LSU jerseys, Eureka spotted some more inventive attempts. There were several scarecrows and a smattering of tipsy jack-o’-lanterns. One junior boy had duct-taped sugarcane stalks to his T-shirt in honor of the harvest later that month.

Cat and Eureka passed a tribe of Pilgrim-costumed freshmen gathered around a fire pit in the center of the lawn, their faces lit orange and yellow by the flames. When they passed the Maze and heard laughter inside, Eureka tried not to think of Brooks.

Cat steered her up the stairs to the back patio, past a big black cauldron of crawfish surrounded by kids snapping off the tails and sucking fat from the heads. Shucking crawfish was one of a bayou child’s earliest rites of passage, so its savagery felt natural everywhere, even in costume, even drunk in front of your crush.

When they got in line for punch, Eureka heard a loud male voice in the distance call out, “Make like a tree and leave.”

“I think we’re the hottest leaves here,” Cat said as the band began to play from the patio above. She pushed Eureka through underclassmen to the front of the drinks line. “Now we can relax and enjoy ourselves.”

The idea of a relaxed Cat made Eureka smirk. She looked out at the party. The Faith Healers were playing “Four Walls” and they sounded good, giving the party a soul. She’d been waiting for this moment, to experience joy without a wave of guilt immediately following. Eureka knew Diana wouldn’t want her moping in her room. Diana would want her to be at the Maze Daze in a short brown dress, drinking punch with her best friend, having fun. Diana would picture Brooks there, too. Losing his friendship would be like mourning another death, but Eureka didn’t want to think about that now.

Cat slipped a plastic cup of punch into Eureka’s hand. It was not the lethal purple poison of the Trejean colada of years past. It was an appetizing shade of red. It actually smelled fruity. Eureka was about to take a sip when she heard a familiar voice behind her say, “It’s bad luck to drink without a toast.”

Without turning around, Eureka took a gulp of punch. “Hey, Brooks.”

He stepped before her. She couldn’t make sense of his costume—a thin gray long-sleeved shirt with a hint of silver shimmer, paired with what looked like matching pajama pants. His hair was wild from the boat ride she’d imagined he took with Maya. His blank eyes held none of their usual mischief. He was alone.

Cat pointed at his outfit and hooted. “Tin Man?”

Brooks turned on her icily. “It’s a precise replica of ancient harvesting attire. Precise and practical.”

“Where?” Cat said. “On Mars?”

Brooks studied the low cut of Eureka’s dress. “I thought we were better friends than this. I asked you not to come.”

Eureka leaned in to Cat. “Could you give us a minute?”

“You two have a blast.” Cat backed away, finding Julien on the edge of the balcony. He was wearing a horned Viking cap, which Cat lifted off his head and placed on hers. An instant later they were cracking up, arms entwined.

Eureka compared Brook’s odd costume with last year’s elaborate Spanish moss suit. She’d helped him staple a hundred shreds of it to a vest he’d cut from a paper bag.

“I asked you not to come for your own safety,” he said.

“I’m doing fine making my own rules.”

His hands rose like he was going to grab her shoulders, but he grabbed air. “Do you think you’re the only one affected by Diana’s death? Do you think you can swallow a bottle of pills and not gut the people who love you? That’s why I look out for you, because you quit looking out for yourself.”

Eureka swallowed, speechless a moment too long.

“There you are.” Maya Cayce’s deep voice made Eureka’s skin crawl. She wore black roller skates, a tiny black dress showing nine of her ten tattoos, and shoulder-grazing raven feather earrings. She skated toward Brooks from across the porch. “I lost you.”

“For my safety?” Eureka muttered quickly. “Did you think I’d die of shock seeing you here with her?”

Maya rolled into Brooks, scooping his arm to drape it around her neck. She was half a foot taller than him in her roller skates. She looked amazing. Brooks’s hand dangled where Maya had placed it near her chest. It drove Eureka crazier than she would ever admit. He had kissed her less than a week ago.

If Cat were in Eureka’s shoes, she’d compete with Maya Cayce’s oppressive sensuality. She’d contort her body into a pose that made male circuitry go haywire. She’d have her body entwined with Brooks’s before Maya could bat her fake lashes. Eureka didn’t know how to play games like those, especially not with her best friend. All she had was honesty.

“Brooks.” She looked straight at him. “Would you mind if I talked to you alone?”

The official Olympics timekeepers couldn’t have clocked how quickly Brooks’s arm was off Maya. An instant later, he and Eureka were trotting down the patio stairs, toward the shelter of a chinaberry tree, almost like the friends they were. They left Maya making crazy eights on the porch.

Eureka leaned against the tree. She wasn’t sure where to begin. The air was sweet and the ground was soft with mulching leaves. The party noise was distant, an elegant sound track for a private conversation. Tin lanterns in the branches cast a shimmer on Brooks’s face. He’d relaxed.

“I’m sorry I was so crazy,” he said. Wind blew some of the small yellow drupes from the tree’s branches. The fruits brushed Eureka’s bare shoulders on their way to the earth. “I’ve been worried about you since you met that guy.”

“Let’s not talk about him,” Eureka said, because an embarrassing gush of emotion might pour out of her if they spoke about Ander. Brooks seemed to take her dismissal of the subject another way. It seemed to make him happy.

He touched her cheek. “I never want bad things to happen to you.”

Eureka tilted her cheek into his hand. “Maybe the worst is over.”

He smiled, the old Brooks. He left his hand against her face. After a moment he looked over his shoulder at the party. The mark on his forehead from last week’s wound was now a very light pink scar. “Maybe the best is yet to come.”

“You didn’t happen to bring any sheets?” Eureka nodded at the Maze.

The mischief returned to his eyes. Mischief made Brooks look like Brooks. “I think we’ll be too busy for that tonight.”

She thought about his lips on hers, how the heat of his body and the strength of his arms had overwhelmed her when they kissed. A kiss so sweet should not have been tainted by an aftermath so bitter. Did Brooks want to try it again? Did she?

When they’d made up the other day, Eureka hadn’t felt capable of clarifying where on the friends/more-than-friends continuum they stood. Now every exchange had the potential to confuse. Was he flirting? Or was she reading into something innocent?

She blushed. He noticed.

“I mean Never-Ever. We’re seniors, remember?”

Eureka hadn’t considered playing that stupid game, regardless of her status as senior and its status as tradition. Haunting the Maze sounded like more fun. “My secrets are none of the whole school’s business.”

“You only share what you want to share, and I’ll be right there next to you. Besides”—Brooks’s sly grin told Eureka he had something up his sleeve—“you might learn something interesting.”

The rules of Never-Ever were simple: You sat in a circle and the game moved clockwise. When it was your turn, you began with “Never have I ever …,” and you confessed something you’d never done before, the more salacious the better.

N

EVER HAVE

I

EVER

…

•

lied at Confession

,

•

made out with my friend’s sister

,

•

blackmailed a teacher

,

•

smoked a joint

,

•

lost my virginity

.

They way they played it at Evangeline, people who had done what you had not done had to tell their story and pass you their drink to gulp. The purer your past, the faster you got drunk. It was a corruption of the innocent, a confession in reverse. No one knew how the tradition got started. People said Evangeline seniors had played it for the past thirty years, though nobody’s parents would admit it.

At ten o’clock, Eureka and Brooks joined the line of seniors holding plastic cups filled with punch. They followed the garbage-bag path taped to the carpet, filing into one of the guest bedrooms. It was cold and vast—a king-sized bed with a massive carved headboard at one end, severe black velour curtains lining the wall of windows on the other.

Eureka entered the circle on the floor and sat cross-legged next to Brooks. She watched the room fill up with sexy pumpkins, Goth scarecrows, Black Crows band members, gay kids dressed as farmers, and half the LSU football hall of fame. People sprawled on the bed, on the love seat near the dresser. Cat and Julien came in carrying folding chairs from the garage.

Forty-two seniors out of a class of fifty-four had shown up to play the game. Eureka envied whoever was sick, grounded, teetotaling, or otherwise absent. They’d be left out for the rest of the year. Being left out was a kind of freedom, Eureka had learned.

The room was crammed with dumb costumes and exposed flesh. Her least favorite Faith Healers song meandered endlessly outside. She nodded toward the velour curtains to her right and murmured to Brooks, “Any urge to jump through that window with me? Maybe we’ll land in the pool.”

He laughed under his breath. “You promised.”

Julien had finished taking a head count and was about to close the door when Maya Cayce skated in. A boy dressed like a crowbar and his friend, a bad attempt at gladiator Russell Crowe, separated to let her pass. Maya rolled up to Eureka and Brooks and tried to wedge her way between them. But Brooks moved closer to Eureka, creating a tiny space on his other side. Eureka couldn’t help admiring the way Maya took what she could get, snuggling next to Brooks as she removed her roller skates.

When the door was shut and the room buzzed with nervous laughter, Julien walked to the center of the circle. Eureka glanced at Cat, who was trying to mask her pride that her secret date for the night was the secret leader of this most secret class event.

“We all know the rules,” Julien said. “We all have our punch.” Some kids whooped and raised their glasses. “Let the Never-Ever game of 2013 begin. And may its legend never, ever end—or leave this room.”

More cheers, more toasting, more whole- and halfhearted laughter. When Julien spun and pointed randomly at a shy Puerto Rican girl named Naomi, you could have heard an alligator blink.

“Me?” Naomi’s voice wavered. Eureka wished Julien had chosen someone more extroverted to start the game. Everyone stared at Naomi, waiting. “Okay,” she said. “Never have I ever … played Never-Ever.”

Over embarrassed snickers, Julien admitted his mistake. “Okay, let’s try this again. Justin?”

Justin Babineaux, hair spiked skyward as if he were in mid-fall, could be described in three words: rich soccer player. He grinned. “Never have I ever had a job.”

“You jerk.” Justin’s best friend, Freddy Abair, laughed, and passed Justin his cup to swig. “That’s the last time you’re getting free burgers during my shift at Hardee’s.” Most of the rest of the class rolled their eyes as they passed their cups around the circle toward a chugging Justin.

Next it was a cheerleader’s turn. Then the boy who was first-chair saxophone in the band. There were popular plays—“Never have I ever kissed three boys in the same night”—and unpopular plays—“Never have I ever popped a zit.” There were plays intended to single out another senior—“Never have I ever made out with Mr. Richman after eighth-period science in the supply closet”—and plays intended purely for showing off—“Never have I ever been turned down for a date.” Eureka sipped her punch independent of her classmates’ divulgences, which she found painfully mundane. This was not the game she’d imagined it being all these years.

Never, she thought, had reality ever compared with what might have been if any of her classmates dared to dream beyond their ordinary worlds.

The only bearable aspect of the game was Brooks’s muttered commentary about each classmate taking a turn: “Never has she ever considered wearing pants that didn’t show her thong.… Never has he ever not judged others for doing things he does daily.… Never has she ever left the house without a pound of makeup.”

By the time the game got around to Julien and Cat, most peoples’ punch cups had been taken, drained, returned, and refilled a few times. Eureka didn’t expect much out of Julien—he was so jocky, so cocky. But when it was his turn, he said to Cat, “Never have I ever kissed a girl I actually like—but I’m hoping to change that tonight.”

The boys booed and the girls whooped and Cat fanned herself dramatically, loving it. Eureka was impressed. Someone had finally figured out that ultimately this game wasn’t about divulging shameful secrets. They were supposed to use Never-Ever to get to know each other better.

Cat raised her cup, took a breath, and looked at Julien. “Never have I ever told a cute guy that”—she hesitated—“I got a 2390 on my SATs.”

The room was riveted. No one could make her drink for that. Julien grabbed her and kissed her. The game got better after that.

Soon it was Maya Cayce’s turn. She waited until the room was quiet, until all eyes were moving over her. “Never have I ever”—her black-lacquered fingernail traced the border of her cup—“been in a car accident.”

Three nearby seniors shrugged and handed Maya their drinks, bringing up tales of run red lights and drunken off-roading. Eureka’s grip tightened on her cup. Her body stiffened as Maya looked at her. “Eureka, you’re supposed to pass me your drink.”

Her face was hot. She glanced around the room, noticing everyone’s eyes on her. They were waiting for her. She imagined throwing her drink in Maya Cayce’s face, the red punch dripping in bloodlike rivulets along her pale neck, down her cleavage.

“Did I do something to offend you, Maya?” she asked.

“All the time,” Maya said. “Right now, for example, you’re cheating.”

Eureka thrust out her cup, hoping Maya choked.

Brooks laid a hand on her knee and murmured, “Don’t let her get to you, Reka. Let it go.” The old Brooks. His touch was medicinal. She tried to let it take effect. It was his turn.

“Never have I ever …” Brooks watched Eureka. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin and something shifted. New Brooks. Dark, unpredictable Brooks. Suddenly Eureka braced herself. “Attempted suicide.”

The entire room gasped, because everyone knew.

“You bastard,” she said.

“Play the game, Eureka,” he said.

“No.”

Brooks grabbed her drink and chugged the rest, wiping his mouth with his hand like a redneck. “It’s your turn.”

She refused to have a nervous breakdown in front of the majority of the senior class. But when she inhaled, her chest was electric with something it wanted to release, a scream or an inappropriate laugh or … tears.

That was it.

“Never have I ever broken down and sobbed.”

For a moment no one said anything. Her classmates didn’t know whether to believe her, to judge her, or to take it as a joke. No one moved to pass Eureka their drink, though over twelve years of school together she realized she’d seen most of them cry. The pressure built in her chest until she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Screw all of y’all.” Eureka stood up. No one followed her as she left the dumbstruck game and ran toward the nearest bathroom.

Later, on the frozen boat ride home, Cat leaned close to Eureka. “Is what you said true? You’ve never cried?”

It was just Julien, Tim, Cat, and Eureka cruising up the bayou. After the game Cat had rescued Eureka from the bathroom where she’d been staring numbly into a toilet. Cat insisted the boys take them home immediately. Eureka hadn’t seen Brooks on the way out. She never wanted to see him again.

The bayou hummed with locusts. It was ten minutes to midnight, nudging dangerously against her curfew, and so unworthy of the trouble she’d be in if she was one minute late. The wind was biting. Cat rubbed Eureka’s hands.

“I said I haven’t sobbed.” Eureka shrugged, thinking all the clothes in the world couldn’t counter the sensation of utter nakedness pulsing through her. “You know I’ve teared up before.”

“Right. Of course.” Cat looked at the shore as it glided by, as if she was trying to recall bygone tears on her friend’s cheeks.

Eureka had chosen the word “sobbed” because shedding that single tear in front of Ander had felt like a betrayal of her promise to Diana years ago. Her mother had slapped her when she was weeping uncontrollably. That was what she’d never done again, the vow she would never break, not even on a night like tonight.