“Food fight,” screams a voice from the kitchen, and I hear clattering and shrieking, objects smashing on the floors and the walls. I imagine all the food in the cabinets in a house like this, how it could probably feed Mom and me for a month. No time for that now, though.
Outside, the porch is completely dismantled except the stone patio and steps. The supports and roofing lay scattered over the bushes and one side of the yard. DeShaun is trenching the lawn in his jacked-up truck while Gloria, Cotton, and some of their football friends cheer him on and offer direction.
“My house,” Lindsey mumbles, sounding shell-shocked and far away.
“It’s just a house,” I say, though I know that means something different to people with houses like this. Still, I don’t know what to say to a girl like Lindsey, a girl with something to lose.
“My car’s in the garage,” she says, stepping toward the edge of the house.
I catch her arm. “The road’s blocked.”
“I’ll sit in it,” she says. “They won’t find me.”
“If they haven’t made it to the garage, they will,” I say. “You need to go somewhere else. Do you know anyone in the neighborhood, somewhere close enough to walk?”
“Y-yeah,” she says, gulping. “Chase lives down the street.”
Of course he does. His dad owns every car dealership in town. He’s rich as fuck.
“Then go there,” I say.
She grabs my hand, clinging on, her eyes huge and terrified. “I can’t go alone,” she wails. “Come with me.”
I glance at the house, but there’s nothing for me there. I did my little act of vandalism, smashing a few pictures, but the extreme shit, like tearing down the porch, is a little outside my wheelhouse. When I look back at Lindsey, so lost and small, I sigh. “Fine,” I say. “But I’m just dropping you off. I don’t want anyone seeing me with you.”
She nods, sniffling and wiping her nose again. We start off in the direction she indicates, though we make sure to cut through the back yard and along the back of people’s fences instead of walking on the road. Half a block later, I think we’re safe, and I pull Lindsey out to the road, so we’re not stumbling through the dark. When we reach the sidewalk at last, I realize Lindsey’s barefoot. Fuck. I grabbed her a coat, but I didn’t get her any shoes. She didn’t even say anything when we walked across the broken pottery. Maybe she’s in shock.
“You’re bleeding,” I say.
“Oh god,” she says, swaying and grabbing onto me like she might faint.
“You probably just cut yourself a little,” I say. “Are they hurting?”
“I… I don’t know,” she whispers.
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute and check that you don’t have any glass shards in there?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t. You do it.”
“Hell, no. I’ll carry you before I go poking through your blood.”
“Can you?” she asks, swallowing hard, her big blue eyes filling up with tears.
I sigh, deciding it’ll be easier and faster to carry her than deal with her pitiful ass right now. “Fine,” I say, crouching so she can climb onto my back. She can’t weight a hundred pounds soaking wet, but it’s still tiring. I’m strong, but I’m not much bigger than her.
Again, the richness around me makes me feel like I’ve stepped into another dimension. I stagger down the block, wondering why the fuck rich people have to have such big neighborhoods with trees and shit between their houses. I’m literally carrying a rich girl on my back because she can’t stand the sight of her own blood. Ain’t that some shit. I feel like there’s a metaphor there, or at least some cruel irony, but I’m too busy carrying her ass to point it out.
“This one,” she says, leaning sideways toward a paved driveway that winds up a gentle hill.
“Not carrying you up the hill,” I say. “But you can use my phone to call him.”
She takes my phone and walks away in the grass. I gaze longingly back at her house, wanting to be there for whatever’s going down, even if I’m not really a part of it. Lindsey sobs into the phone for a few minutes while I try not to eavesdrop. Sure, the chick’s pathetic as fuck, but considering what just happened to her, I’m probably being too hard on her. I’m not sure there’s anything in the world that could break me bad enough to make me stop fighting, to give up and just sit there and cry.
After a bit, she comes back and hands me my phone. I hang out until I see headlights at the top of the driveway, and then I make myself scarce. Lindsey showed no sign of recognition, probably thinking I’m just some Willow Heights bitch, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get lucky again. I had classes with Chase, and he’s not going to be so shaken up that he doesn’t notice a familiar face. So I duck behind a magnolia, grateful for the full foliage of our version of an evergreen this time of year.
When the car has come, gotten Lindsey, and gone, I jog back to the Darling house. From the outside, it looks like the shell of a home, like a bomb went off inside. Every single one of the huge windows is gone. Jagged pieces of the wood trim stick up where they’ve been torn away. The dismantled porch, broken furniture, and personal affects litter the yard, including family pictures, clothes, and books. I spot a broken trophy in a sad tangle of trampled shrubbery. Inside the house, the party rages. Someone has set up colorful strobe lights that flash out the gaping windows, and music spills across shredded lawn where DeShaun’s truck sits, the bed full of girls dancing with beer bottles held high.
I stand there watching for a minute, my poor girl heart breaking at all that waste. I bet I could have sold that furniture and half the other stuff out here being trampled. I know zero about art, but I bet the paintings and vases and pottery could keep our bills paid for years. All destroyed. The excess, the waste, the gluttony of destruction—it sits funny in my belly.