I don't own South of Nowhere. Read and review and all that shit, and don't get offended or sue me.
They were talking about the Trip again. Crawling across Europe, rich and high and tools of an otherwise fleeting sense of liberty. The thought itself was intoxicating, so when they talked about the Trip their was a daze about their words, clouds in their eyes.
"And before I leave, I'll shoot that asshole, David," Ashley said, leaning back in her lawn chair, which quietly sunk into the dewy grass. In the backyard during the September party, they were now oblivious to both the stars and the noise of teenagers.
"We can meet the Dalai Lama," Aiden suggested, because he figured through some fashion or another they'd end up even farther east.
"Epic," Ashley breathed.
"And become socialists. Like Staples and his crew," he said. "And we could shoot a person, you know?--if we want."
"Oh?"
"Yes. So we'll buy lots of guns, too."
Ashley closed her eyes, letting a drunken smile spread easily across her face. She forgot about Aiden and she forgot about dreaming, because she could only dream so often, and remembered the sounds of things breaking, and sirens bellowing in the distance.
She waited a few long seconds before roosting herself from her calm, shifting a little to indicate the change.
"What time is it?"
"About three."
"We should clear out that damn house."
Aiden put a joint out on the metal armrest and stood, stretching.
"Why don't you give me a minute?" he asked. "Look at that piece of ass over there. Blonde like I like it, fucking tight as a bitch, I bet. See, just give me a minute. You can get everyone else out if you want and we'll stay upstairs."
The piece of ass had acknowledged his attention and was approaching. Ashley rolled her eyes,
generally uninterested. Her sex drive had been satisfied and eventually extinguished with time, and she needed to pass out before school started in the morning–the first day of school, in fact.
"Take your fucking minute, you dick," she offered. "Just come down and help when you're done, and don't knock her up."
He seemed to agree with this, and went on to court the girl arrogantly and without shame.
Ashley walked up the slope and onto the porch, through bodies and up stairs, proclaiming all the way that cops grew near. The air became urgent and the people present clearly knew how to book it, because the big, pretty house was emptied pretty thoroughly in about ten minutes.
She grabbed what remained of the Jack Daniels, which was clearly her drink, and slid down against the doorway to the living room. The place was an abyss to her: sloppily shotgunned beer cans and cigarette butts littering the floor, a bra hanging off the couch, and a haze akin to that of a pool hall frequented by bikers. The cops weren't coming, but they should have.
She didn't often throw reckless, spontaneous parties in her own home, but Aiden had insisted on the counts that her mother was out of town until Monday night and it was the final day of summer, and every day had to be more fucked up than the last, apparently.
Ashley and Aiden were best friends by eighth grade, slept together freshman year, and in due time became reacquainted with one another and began mobbing parties together regularly. They were like partners in crime, and had absolutely no respect for each other, or really anyone.
The following morning would kick off their senior year, and when Ashley turned eighteen in February they'd get ready to up and leave in the summer, take the Trip and maybe stay on it, or so they figured. She'd receive the inheritance from her father that birthday, a sum so impressive that the companions maintained little doubt about the financial security of their coming endeavor.
She looked up from her slouched position on the floor, tired and very unwilling to address the mess before her when Aiden descended the staircase an hour later. He looked all at once exhausted and thoroughly pleased with himself, and somewhat naked, too.
"Go put on some clothes, you faggot," Ashley said. "And where's that girl? If she didn't notice your tiny dick when she was drunk she will when she's sober."
Aiden covered his boxers defensively.
"Tiny?! Pff. No, no, nothing of the sort. In fact, humongous–gargantuan proportions. She's passed out in your bedroom from the power."
"Wash those sheets," Ashley said. "And I mean, really now, why don't you wear pants? What's the appeal?"
"I just have nice legs, and I want you to see and admire them. It's all about making you hot, Ash."
"That's a very noble cause. Did you see the honey I screwed tonight? Oh, she did me in, I'm serious."
"It was kind of like being at a candy store," Aiden pondered. "Like, I would have fucked every chick here tonight."
"And there was lots of beer," Ashley said appreciatively. "It was a good thing."
Aiden plugged the stereo in by them, slipped in a CD and fiddled with the tracks curiously. The beats were hard, ceaseless rock, and the voice smoked too many cigarettes and yelled too loud. It was very beautiful, and classic. Content with a selection, Aiden placed himself beside Ashley.
"Raife Davies: the bastard son of fucking rock n' roll," he declared.
"You use me."
"I love to listen, Ashley, I do," he said. "And this is the way to kill a night, and you know it, and you love it and doesn't it make you a little happy, or nostalgic?"
"It makes me fucking nauseous."
"You love it."
"He could have showed up a little more."
Aiden patted her on the head and laid down, every action implying how wasted he was.
"He loved you, right? Don't worry about it. Go to sleep, we'll call some maids, fucking voila—hungover without responsibility." he said. "And we can mob the Beemer and catch some cheap cappuccino on the way."
They both liked this idea, and they thought of it fondly while they passed out against the wall of the living room. Later Ashley thought of her dad, and walking to the bus stop with him, and Aiden thought of having sex with girls with blonde hair and pretty eyes and young breasts.
It was a happy evening and they would remember what mattered and probably who they kissed, then they'd wake up on time in the morning and remember to call the maids and grab their keys and for God's sake, their bookbags, and school would give them mad props.
Instead, Ashley found herself kicking her friend awake at ten with her mom twelve hours away and closing the gap and no maids in sight.
Ashley was an angry driver and not a fan of the sun post-party nights. They did, in fact, mob the Beemer, but it was a resentful mob, and Ashley almost crashed into a lot of things. There was no cheap cappuccino. Such a thing never existed, save for the occasional ghetto LA gas station--which wasn't on the way.
Arriving at school there were, predictably enough, absolutely no parking spaces, and they had to walk about half a mile up to the entrance. The place looked institutional, towering above them with thick brick walls and masses of children moving across the ugly urban campus, but Aiden and Ashley, in the least, were not scared–King High, if anywhere, was completely unthreatening.
Ashley, personally, was not a fan of the educational system. She was localized as a whore and a lesbian, and even without the segregation this brought she felt little sympathy for the undereducated people she would have to talk to had the situation allowed it. She, of course, in the middle of L.A., was not the only out-of-the-closet homosexual, but she was certainly the loudest. She liked to fight, too, and the students noticed that, and enjoyed it.
She climbed three staircases and came in late for her science class, planted herself in the back row of an almost full classroom. She was next to the only other empty seat.
The teacher gave her the look, and Ashley was very ready to say something smart-alecky and uncalled for. She'd been considering it all morning.
"Ms. Davies, is this an excused absence?"
"Not in the least."
"You'll be talking to the principal today, then, I suppose, but I'm sure you know that. It's the first day of school, you should think to give yourself some leeway."
"You should teach a real class. What is this, anatomy? That's not even the problem, though, really, because then I couldn't take weight training. You're in a room full of teenagers with nothing better to do at eight in the morning and all you can do is stand up there and yell at me. Hop to it, now, show me some bones and shit."
"It's eleven, Ashley, and don't swear at me."
"Oh, come on, go ahead."
The teacher rolled her eyes, for the most part unfazed, and glanced down at her seating chart momentarily.
"Your seat's to the left, Ashley, the transfer student sits there."
"And where is she?"
"Late, and probably with an actual reason. These displays are ridiculous–go pass out the books, and don't goof off about it. See me after class."
Ashley was very compliant and quiet, at this point busying herself with checking out the condition of her female classmates, some of whom were moderately attractive. She didn't think she could bed all of them, but she figured she could try.
She did, in fact, see the teacher after class, and she was chastised and given detention, which she would maybe attend, if she wasn't still hung over. She got a pass to the next class and still got another detention, because she'd finally woken up and had plenty left to say.
Aiden, at the other end of the hall, started off his day popular and friendly, skipping the first class altogether and smoking cigarettes and pot with some of the kids from the basketball team in the locker room. He started off most days like that, and didn't get around to fraternizing with Ashley until school had ended.
Aiden was tall and handsome, and girls flirted with him and felt his well-manicured hair at lunchtime. He fucked a lot of them, and he played a lot of basketball, which was like fucking for him, anyways: poetic and brutal and far away.
Ashley was intimidating and rude. They enjoyed each other's company, and both decided to show up at detention that afternoon, so they could enjoy each other's company there. For about an hour and a half they discussed hot girls and buying a thirty and an ounce, until they were shushed and eventually dismissed.
They mobbed the BMW, at last, and picked up Sean the dealer and Ashley's little sister Kyla near the art department, and the four drove to the house, passing around a fat firm blunt. Sean sold Ashley her ounce and Aiden bought a quarter and drove him to his car. The two sisters sat about the house, not anticipating any schedule in particular, besides the return of Aiden and eventually Christine, Ashley's mother.
Kyla was from distant lands, having moved when Raife Davies, her father, had died. Ashley's mother wasn't hers, but she was quick to escape her own when the opportunity came. It was pretty for her to think about freedom, even though now she had it and she mourned structure.
She adored LA because she adored everything, but she was no native and she often moped around and talked to her ex-boyfriends when she should have been going out. She went to her bedroom to do that around dinner time, but promptly returned, enraged.
"Ashley, there is a girl in my bed! A half-naked girl! In my bed!" Kyla said, dramatically upset, as she tended to be. "Do I need to call the police? What did you do last night? Did you throw a party? Oh, man, I knew I shouldn't have slept at Chelsea's. You threw a party, and someone slept with that girl and forgot her. Probably you. You probably slept with all my friends, afterwards."
"I did throw a party."
Kyla gasped, very offended.
"And I slept with one of your friends. Over the course of the last week, about three. But that was a girl Aiden picked up, and he said she passed out in my room, not yours, so it's definitely not my fault. It's definitely his fault."
"That is not your room! That is my room!"
"Did you wake her up?" Ashley didn't really care much. The house seemed pretty clean when she walked in, thankfully enough, and people do tend to pass out places, sometimes here. It was a fact of life, and their own fault for being careless.
"No! It's a girl passed out in my bedroom, Ashley, and your disgusting pretty boy messed with her and probably got fucking cooties on my sheets, and blanket, and maybe even my alarm clock so I will get a disease every time I sleep or wake up!"
"You're right, that's exactly what will happen," Ashley said. She ate a Kit Kat and lit up a square.
"Well! Go get rid of her," Kyla shouted. Most of the time she was shouting; she was a very excited person.
Ashley stood up and brushed off her hands, puffing the cigarette as she walked up to Kyla's bedroom and opened the door. Sure enough, there was a girl in the bed, somewhat clothed and hidden behind the disheveled sheets. She was awake, however, and was holding her head in her hands, looking almost frightened.
She turned to Ashley with big, blue eyes, and frowned.
"What time is it?"
"About five p.m."
"On...Monday?"
"Yeah. Are you in school? Because most of the public schools started today, and," Ashley added a dramatic pause. "You know, the day's kind of over."
"That's not good," the girl asserted, her voice a little panicky, but mostly thoughtful.
Ashley nodded in agreement and tossed a pair of jeans that were draped over a chair at the guest.
"Get up and get out," she suggested, feeling a little less personable. She was hoping that the girl would have become frightened and run off.
Instead, for whatever reason, she was smiling now, tilting her head to the side a little.
"Thanks. I'll have my brother come pick me up, if that's okay," she said. "Did you have a good time last night?"
Ashley eyed her suspiciously, wondering whether she should have bitched her out more seriously, as the reaction didn't sound very urgent or terrified.
"It was my fucking party, you bet I fucking did. And I bet that little boy toy friend of mine rocked your world, and you just loved all that loving."
The girl was frowning again, clothing herself, and Ashley became incredibly sour at her and Kyla and Aiden and everyone for having to look at her. She didn't even feel like hitting on her, even though there were quite a few openings and she was rather pretty. She slammed the door and returned to her spot in the living room in a very bad mood.
"Cunt is getting picked up."
"Cunt? Her name is Cunt? You slept with a girl named Cunt in my bedroom, Ashley? What does that say, Ashley? Cunt!" Kyla was exasperated. She turned on the tunes and began to pack a bowl with Ashley's weed, as was forthcoming for the situation.
"No, Kyla, Aiden slept with Cunt. I would never sleep with Cunt."
"Then don't."
"I won't. Her name is Cunt."
Cunt entered the room, looking a little nervous and upset. Kyla gave her a very dirty look, and so did Ashley, but the door was right there and she figured it out.
Ten minutes later Ashley felt obligated to bring out some of the trash bags that the maids had accumulated from the previous night, and she walked outside and past the girl, who was sitting expectantly on the stoop.
"My name is Spencer," Cunt said, smiling again, just a little. "Not what you were calling me inside. And I had a good time, too, with or without Aiden. Usually I don't go to those things, but my brother made me, because I'd be starting a new school this year, and I actually enjoyed it this time, in spite of all the chaos. It was kind of wonderful."
Her voice was high and sweet, somehow innocent independent of the sex. Ashley wanted to spit on her, she despised it so.
"You're not invited to anymore of my parties," Ashley said. "I don't like stupid wasted people who don't leave in the morning and let themselves be booty calls."
Ashley had her back turned to Spencer. She should have been turning the knob, opening the door and leaving her to the summer night chill, but she wanted to see her respond to that. Not, specifically, to say any particular thing, so much as to respond at all.
"You're right," Spencer said. "I don't really like drinking too much, being a booty call, or staying places I don't know. But I liked the other things, and meeting people. I'll be careful, though, and, you know, I'm fine."
"Fuck off."
A pick-up truck pulled up.
"Goodbye."
Ashley was still facing the door. The truck door opened and the driver sped off. She stared at the wood, slightly chipped and weathered, and drew her thumb across the metal of the doorknob thoughtfully. When she could no longer hear the clanging grunt of the car's motor, she went back into her house and thought about the Trip, which she usually did when she was wanting to think. Aiden came back and she watched Kyla yell at him, then the three smoked themselves to sleep.