I do not own South of Nowhere or any of its characters. I am not in any way affiliated with the creators.


Chapter 3

After a few weeks, Aiden began dragging Spencer around everywhere he went. He gave her lots of alcohol, pot, and cigarettes, and made a lot of attempts to sneakily corrupt her. Most of the time, she just looked kind of exhausted, but sometimes he would come up with a crazy, impossible scheme and she'd go along with it by accident.

"Let's take a bunch of ecstasy and mushrooms and go to an amusement park," Aiden said. "Then we can break some shit."

"Fine." Spencer yawned, apparently not listening. It was two in the morning on a Tuesday, because he had insisted the "gang," which was a very new term, had to get together and, per se, party. Instead of partying, however, they were sitting around smoking lots of marijuana in Ashley's bedroom and being rude to one another.

Ashley had made a habit of always looking pissed, and was giving everyone mean looks. Right now she was giving Kyla a mean look, because Kyla loved Spencer and was being rather friendly. Ashley decidedly disliked her and wanted everyone to be unfriendly to her.

"Stop trying to, I don't know, defile her, Aiden," Kyla said. "It makes you look girlier."

"Shut up, Kyla," Ashley said. "Aiden knows he's girly, and that slut is a slut." She furrowed her brow aggressively.

Sean was selling drugs to Glen in the back of the house. Glen often showed up to buy drugs from Sean. Suddenly, his sister was the hook-up, and she didn't even care.

Around that time, Glen had also begun fucking the same girl twice. He was very obvious about it, and he brought her to his two a.m. Tuesday drug deals. This was because she had humongous breasts, and he hated Aiden and wanted to rub it in his face.

When he walked out with her, he stood a little behind her so he could make signals at her chest and flip Aiden off. He did it every single time. Everyone rolled their eyes simultaneously.

By some strange workings, they actually did go to an amusement park, stretches of land away from the city. The place, predictably, was closed, and the Ferris wheel kind of rocked under the warm California winds. Although they planned to do something interesting roughly every night, they rarely did anything besides go to parties and throw them and smoke too much weed. Spencer thought the silence was beautiful, shared a rare appreciation for the moon.

No one was on ecstasy or shrooms or both. They did bring a keg, though.

Glen and his girlfriend, a vicious Hispanic named Madison, immediately retreated to the other side of the park to have sex. Aiden and Sean wanted to break things, so they drank some and got to doing so excitedly, as if violence were second nature. It might have been.

Kyla, Ashley, and Spencer lined up beside a booth, at first pacing, eventually planting themselves against the wall. The boyish yelps faded into the distance and the setting was calm and easy for the quiet contemplation of which they were typically deprived—among the L.A. traffic, there were no lonely moments.

Kyla thought about Raife Davies, whom she had never consciously met. She recalled Baltimore, and going to theme parks with her stepfather. He had hugged her and loved her and talked to her when she had trivial issues with friends and men. She didn't like him much, she thought.

Spencer remembered that first night with Aiden, and crossing the backyard into the house with him while the people drained around them. They held hands. She had been apprehensive, forgotten about the cute flings she had once worried over. It bothered her a lot, because most of all she hadn't really felt anything. Lust was dry, painless—she had done it, and slept, and felt a little bit sick, and she hadn't thought much of anything at all.

Ashley was considering the Trip. She usually did. There were a lot of details to it. She thought maybe she just wouldn't take Aiden, because he was being such a pussy and all.

After a few minutes they spread themselves across the pavement, ignored the feeling of cold concrete against skin. It was pretty to look up right then. They were surrounded by nothing.

"Do you think we should take a bus through the United States and to Mexico, or go to Europe first? I mean, we'll do both. But I don't know which one would be more efficient to start with," Ashley said. It wasn't an interruption, really. They could still hear the wind.

"What is the Trip?" Spencer asked. Kyla wasn't listening any longer.

"The day we kill you—we're going to run you over and abandon the car in the fucking ocean and just laugh the hours away. Hours," Ashley said, almost impulsively.

Spencer didn't say anything.

"When I get my half of the inheritance on my birthday, we're going to leave Los Angeles. For a long time. We're going to go everywhere, and we're going to learn about freedom," Ashley said. "It's a little bit complex, though. It has to be pretty thorough, but we'll have a few rounds."

"Who's 'we?'" Spencer asked.

There was a pause, a considerable one, maybe three minutes of emptiness.

"I don't know."

"Aiden and you are going to get married and Ashley is going to go on her adventure and meet some French girls and have a very successful polygamous union and I'm going to live with Christine, or something. Oh my God," said Kyla in a characteristically loud outburst. "We're seniors! Our lives are over."

"Your life is over. I mean, especially if you stay with Christine. I mean, what?" Ashley said. "But my life isn't over. My life hasn't even started. I'm waiting. I can't start yet."

Spencer was concentrating.

"The summer before my junior year, I used to think about going away, perhaps to med school, something like that," she said. "And I thought maybe this move was a little bit like going away, because up until it actually happened I was still thinking about it. But, I mean, I went away. I miss Deb, and Paulie, and walking down a suburban sidewalk with my dog. I'd love to do that now. But it's all the same if I think about leaving here, so most of the time I think about it more as going somewhere else and staying there."

Ashley was staring at Spencer in the dark. Her expression was, for once, not representing thousands of things. She was just curious.

A lot of shit was broken at the park before they went home. It was a soundless, sleepy return. No one went to school the next day. On Friday, Aiden made sneaky plans to bring Spencer to a rave, and the "gang" showed up, because it was a rave, and they were teenagers in Los Angeles.

He waited with Ashley beside a box of glow sticks, in a spacious warehouse that was gradually filling.

"Why don't you talk anymore?" he asked, kind of sarcastic, kind of genuinely interested.

"I'm drunk," Ashley said. "I forgot English." She wasn't drunk at all and it was obvious, and she hadn't forgotten English because she was speaking it. The main issue was that she didn't know why she wasn't talking. For the most part, she had just been thinking a lot, and she couldn't think and hold useless conversations at the same time. Consequently, she had been avoiding them, and not very practically.

"I have news," he offered.

"I bet it'll piss me off."

"Oh, no, definitely," Aiden said. "Just, guess. Come on, guess."

"This is pissing me off," she said. She prepared to walk to the other corner, to think and such.

"Man, you need to get laid."

"What's your news?"

"I'm asking Spencer out, and she's going to say yes, and the team's gonna be like, 'Yeah!' and I'm going to punch her dick brother in the face," he said, very serious. "She's so cute, Ashley, you just don't get it. She's like, the peaceful stranger with a heart."

Ashley was struggling with his analogy and pissed off in general at his news. She went to the other corner, to think and such. Aiden shrugged it all off, bought five Blue Doves laced with acid from Sean. He was very ready to get fucked up.

A small crowd developed and Spencer crept through the door, Clay and Kyla in tow. Clay was her ride, because Glen wanted to go to the club and see Madison dance like a whore, and Kyla and she had begun a very functional relationship in which they were both constantly distraught about people who made them hang out with them. They spent lots of time together.

Clay was glum that night. He didn't want to be there—really, he didn't.

Aiden raced over to Spencer. He stood like a shy giant, his hands tucked into his pockets awkwardly and his wife beater hanging loosely over his body.

Clay approached Sean. They wanted to talk about politics, as both were very active members of the Los Angeles black community. Clay had been accepted into first-tier schools, and Sean was a relatively large-scale entrepreneur of sorts.

Kyla left them alone, but she did it very deliberately. It was because Aiden disgusted her.

"Have you been having fun?" Aiden asked. Then he grimaced, like he'd just been shot in the crotch. He wanted to say something really cool and sexy, but he hadn't really thought of anything cool and sexy. It frustrated him.

"Here?" Spencer asked.

"No, no, I mean, just like, chilling. You know. All that."

"All the...chilling?"

"Yeah, yeah, the chilling. Good stuff."

"Oh, yeah. Chilling. Definitely," Spencer said, nodding furiously. She generally preferred normal discussions to awkward ones, so she felt a bit uncomfortable.

"Listen, listen, Homecoming's coming up, right?" Aiden asked, as if he'd forgotten.

"Oh, yeah. Homecoming. I wonder where you're taking this," she said. Realistically, she knew where he was taking it.

"Are you, say, going with anyone yet?" Aiden asked. He started a pivot where he stood, rocking back and forth on his heels, brimming with nervous energy.

"No, no. Do you want to go with me?"

"Yes!"

"All right, all right. What are you on?" Spencer asked.

"Ecstasy!" Aiden said—then he winked, like he was in an advertisement. "But I mean, that's got nothing to do with it. It hasn't even kicked in yet, you know? It's just, I know we've fucked before, but, Spencer, damn it, I like hanging out with you. Being with you, all that shit. We don't even need to fuck again if you want to take it slow, or whatever, but, go out with me." Pause. "Please, go out with me."

Spencer searched the room carefully, saw Kyla hitting on the DJ, Clay yelling something circular to Sean. In the shadows of the farthest corner, she could see Ashley messing with a girl. They were ravenous about it.

"Sure."

Aiden hadn't technically considered what would happen if she did want to "take it slow," but he was glad she hadn't mentioned it. He wiped sweat from his brow, eased slowly away from the scene. Ultimately, the entire thing had left him feeling similar to a character from a B-rated 80's film. No one ever wanted the rave to turn out like a B-rated 80's film, as they often tended to do.

"Do you want one of these?" he asked, holding out his palm in mid-step. "They'll make you feel good."

"No, don't worry about it."

"What do you want to drink?"

Nothing, Spencer thought. But what she said was Bud Light.

He disappeared into a body of people, and Spencer remembered cigarettes, and what she'd learned about them since she got to King High. She sought Kyla and bummed one, headed for the back doors to smoke it and stare into space.

Ashley followed her a minute later, in a swearing mess. She saw Spencer and swore at her, pushed the door open farther to reveal the girl she had been necking passed out in her arms.

"It's fucking seven o'clock in the fucking evening. What fucking bitch passes out at seven o'clock? Is this your fault, you fucking bitch? I bet you were about to pass out," Ashley said. She glared pointedly.

"I'm going out with Aiden," Spencer said. She kept Ashley updated on most things, and usually enjoyed her responses, which were all rather irrelevant.

"You're a slut," Ashley said, but she meant it this time; it was very relevant.

"I know," Spencer replied. She sat down on the stoop with her cigarette, staring at the gravel.

"Give me that, you slut, right now," Ashley said. "You don't even know what you're doing. You smoke like a gay man."

"Maybe you just smoke like a lesbian."

"I am not a lesbian. I'm just a woman who has sex with women."

"I'm glad we could finally clarify."

"Your fucking problem is that you spend too much damn time around that wuss, and then you go to your first rave and people are passing out at seven. That's what your problem is. Oh, and you never get any ass whatsoever, even though you're a slut."

"Oh? How'd you know this was my first rave?"

"Everyone in the whole fucking world knows it's your first rave. What if I didn't know it was your first rave?" Ashley proposed. "That'd be fucking strange, if I couldn't figure that out."

"I don't want to go out with Aiden," Spencer said. "I don't think."

Ashley sat down next to her, put on her nonchalant face.

"He's very handsome, right? And that used to matter to me. I used to want to be dating all the time, but I stopped caring somewhere. I don't know when."

"Handsome, seriously?"

"Seriously."

"He's pissing me off," Ashley said. "It used to be everyone pissed me off and he pissed me off a little less, but now he just pisses me off as much as everyone else. Maybe even more than Kyla."

"Do you think I should go out with him?"

"Torture yourself," she said.

Spencer grinned.

"No, I think I will. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't," she said. "If I get drunk, do you think I'll end up having sex with him again?"

"Yes," Ashley said. "Unprotected, nasty sex."

"I don't want to do that."

"Come here," Ashley said, in the least sexually inviting way she could manage. The result was monotone and otherworldly, and eventually awkward because then she had to do something with the unconscious girl. At some point she led Spencer to where Sean and Clay were debating, and bought her two rolls.

"Go rave," she told her. Spencer swallowed them and became submerged in what had at last become a mass of people.