Song of the Fireflies(42)
Author: J.A. Redmerski

“Andrew, I need to pee,” Camryn said.

He took her cup from her hand and set it on the sand. “I need to take a piss too,” he said.

Tate pointed behind them with another cigarette between his fingers and said, “Go around that way. There’s no glass and shit to step on over there.”

Andrew set his cup next to Camryn’s and helped her up. Once they slipped into the darkness, Elias thought it was a good idea, too, and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few,” he said. He looked down at me. “You need to use the bathroom?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I said.

He smiled and walked in the opposite direction of Andrew and Camryn, past the vehicles, to relieve himself.

Grace left Caleb’s lap and came over to me, laying her head on my shoulder.

“Have you been watching Johanna?” she whispered.

I looked over at Johanna trailing her fingers down Caleb’s bicep muscle, a vacant look on her face. She always appeared high or just not all there in general. I wondered what went on inside her head, other than thoughts of Caleb, and now this new guy, Andrew. Eventually, I had to believe that nothing else went on inside there.

“You mean her drooling over Andrew? Yeah, kind of hard not to notice. Doesn’t Caleb care?”

Grace chuckled and raised her head from my shoulder. “Not really,” she said. “He pulled me behind the Jeep earlier and told me he wanted her gone.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

She shook her head, glanced over at Johanna and Caleb again, and then added, “There’s something seriously wrong with that girl.”

“That’s an understatement. How long have you known her?”

“Just a few months. She moved into my apartment building.”

Caleb got up and started digging around in his pockets. It may have been just to get away from Johanna for a moment.

“Why doesn’t he just tell her that he’s not into her anymore?”

“Because she lives in Virginia,” Grace said quietly. “He may be an ass sometimes, but he won’t leave her stranded so far away from home. I told him when we were at the Jeep he should just get her a bus ticket back to Norfolk.”

“What did he say to that?”

Grace brushed her long, dark hair away from her shoulders. She drew her knees up, leaned back, and propped herself up on her elbows.

“He said that’s probably what he’ll do.”

“Hey,” I said, “why are you with him, anyway? I mean, he doesn’t exactly seem like boyfriend material.”

Grace smiled and let her bare knees sway side to side. “I’m not lookin’ for a boyfriend,” she said. “I just want to have fun. Got out of a bad relationship not long ago, and I ain’t in any hurry to jump into another one.”

I could understand where she was coming from. Not that I felt the same way, though.

“So, what did Elias say about your wrists?” Grace asked, lowering her voice.

I crossed my legs and hid my hands in between them, my fingers moving over the bracelets absently. I didn’t want to talk about this, but I really liked Grace and I wanted her to know that.

“He was upset, naturally,” I said. “But we’re OK. Elias understands me.”

Grace smiled slimly, glanced at my wrists, and then let her body slouch farther in between her shoulders.

“I never told anyone this before,” she said, looking out ahead of her, “but I had an older brother. Jacob. He was in the military. Two years in Iraq.” She glanced at me once and said, “He put a bullet in his head six weeks after he got home,” and then she looked away. Her gaze was fixated on the darkness, but I knew she was seeing her brother’s face.

My heart fell. I twisted around on the sand to face her. “That’s… so f**ked up, Grace. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded and smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s the best way to describe it. Fucked up. He was in a bad place for a really long time. No one knew.” She gestured one hand in a backtracking fashion. “Well, we knew something was wrong. He was different when he came home. Isolated. And he had real bad anger issues. But we didn’t know he was capable of suicide.” Then her face fell, shadowed by the memory and her own guilt, which I knew she’d probably carry around forever. “We didn’t know until it was too late. The second chancers are lucky.” She pointed at me then, and her smile grew. “You’re lucky. Don’t ever forget it.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. I wanted to agree with her, but knowing that her brother wasn’t so lucky, I felt awful and thought it best to say nothing at all.

Grace changed the mood quickly as she raised up and dusted the sand from the palms of her hands. Then she reached around and pulled her bikini bottoms from her butt crack.

“Damn, I have too much ass to be wearing Jen’s bathing suits,” she grumbled as the bikini elastic snapped around her butt cheek.

“I think I do, too,” I said and laughed with her.

Tate and Jen were making out over on the blanket, Jen’s small body looking like a permanent fixture on top of his. Johanna looked bored sitting over there by herself, twirling her hair around her index finger. Caleb walked from cup to cup, dropping something into each one as he passed by.

“What’s that?” I asked when he made it over to us.

One side of Caleb’s mouth lifted into a grin. He dropped whatever it was into my cup. And then one in Elias’s.

“Just a little something to shake this party up,” he said. “Completely harmless, I swear.”

I wasn’t used to seeing Caleb so mischievous. He hardly ever smiled.

Grace raised her cup that had been sitting beside her in the sand. “Don’t forget about me,” she said.

“Hell no, baby,” he said and dropped something into hers last.

I wasn’t sold at first, and Caleb noticed.

“I swear!” he repeated with a breathy laugh.

Grace leaned in toward me then and said, “If anything, this stuff will make you and Elias want to do sexual shit you’ve never tried before.” She grinned, reaching out her hand to Caleb, and he helped her to her feet.

I was so sidetracked by her comment and my already intense high that without really thinking about it, I took a heavy drink from my cup.

Elias emerged from the darkness after his bathroom break just before Camryn and Andrew did.

I never said anything about what Caleb had done. It wasn’t that I was intentionally hiding it. I just didn’t think about it anymore. At the time, I was already on my way to being drunk. I had shared three joints over the course of the night and was pretty fried. My judgment was severely impaired. I didn’t think of what Caleb did as being wrong, because the high side of me believed him when he said it was perfectly harmless. After all, he and Grace were doing it. He had even put some in his own brother’s cup. I know what I did was wrong and stupid and thoughtless and reckless and a thousand other things. I know. But everybody makes mistakes. This just happened to be one of my most regrettable.