Here is the fourth chapter, after a while. Read and review. I don't own SON.
Spencer was staring at the floor, her pupils wide and her mind far from the music that boomed beyond her. She was very awake, and very happy, but very scared.
Ashley was also rolling, but she wasn't nearly as calm. Instead, she was complaining. First she was complaining about not having been able to finish with the girl, then she was complaining about Aiden, and having to be around him, and mostly she was complaining about having to take care of Spencer, who at some point or another had decided she feared both solitude and large crowds and had attached herself to Ashley's arm.
Spencer ran her fingers across her hand as they sat in the back with a few beers--she was so happy.
"Stop that," Ashley asserted. "Stop touching me."
"Wait, so do you think I'll still have to have sex with Aiden?"
"I'd say you're screwed once you've done it once. Stop touching me."
"I guess I wouldn't mind, really. But it just feels so empty."
"I don't like to be touched," Ashley said. That wasn't true; she had plenty of intercourse, which tended to involve touching, and she liked that.
"Then why do you have so much sex?" Spencer asked appropriately. She held Ashley's hand up in front of her eyes, examined it as if it were Jesus Christ's hand, vivid and calloused and divine under the strobe lights and the noise.
"Because it feels nice," Ashley said, pausing for a moment. "And because I can."
"Do you think I could have sex all the time?" Spencer asked. "Maybe I will."
"No, no, no," Ashley said. "It takes me away, I suppose."
"Do you think you'll have sex with lots of people when you leave?"
"Lots of sex," Ashley said.
"That doesn't make sense to me. If you go somewhere else to escape and then do something to escape from being there, then you're never going to be satisfied. And it'd just remind you of when you tried to get away from here while you were here."
"You had sex with Aiden, you slut."
"Sex didn't take me away. Neither does smoking, or drinking. I guess this does, but in the end everything just makes me think more about where I am," Spencer said, suddenly very serious. "But I do love you guys. I love you."
She stood up, releasing Ashley's hand, letting vertigo take hold of her body as she paced a few steps.
"I despise you," Ashley said. It was a very un-ecstasy-like thing to say.
"No, you love me too. You're sitting here with me when you could be dancing, aren't you? Come here, come dance with me."
Spencer pulled her from her seat below, dragging her into a reluctant embrace and out towards the wriggling, breathing floor. It was the closest the two girls had ever been; they had never hugged.
After a few seconds Ashley found her hands on Spencer's waist and felt her body against hers. She glanced around suspiciously, trying to find someone she knew, and when she didn't she decided against resistance. She wrapped herself around the other girl and danced with soul, for hours, smiled a tiny smile against Spencer's skin. They blended together for a bit, among the other people and the persistent sounds.
Aiden had been passed out for a while when they finished dancing, and when he got up and found Spencer he acted as if he had been with her the entire time, saying things a boyfriend would say. He even found Clay and asked humble permission to take her home, and Clay was tired and completely wrote it off.
"Did you have a good time?" Aiden would ask. Then he would offer her some water, kiss her nose kind of tenderly. She sat shotgun and ignored him the entire time. She didn't say a word and stared out into the road, and the nighttime.
Kyla and Ashley retreated to the third floor while everyone else slept below them. They sparked a bowl and Ashley listened as her sister reminisced about her night, but she said little. While Kyla droned on she snorted a line of coke, felt solace in the familiar rush.
"So who were you dancing with tonight?" Kyla asked loudly, once she had exhausted her conversation with herself. "You guys were pretty into it, dancing and stuff. And chilling out, and dancing."
"I don't want to talk about it," she said. She locked eyes with the air and the wall, felt good for a minute or two.
"You were dancing with Spencer, you dirty liar. You want to fuck Spencer."
"I don't want Aiden's sloppy seconds," Ashley said, somewhat robbed of a passionate response.
"Why are you so mean to her if you want to fuck her so bad? It doesn't make sense to me."
"I don't want to fuck her. I don't even want to be near her," she said. "And she's not really pretty, you know? She's like, twelve, or something."
Kyla bounced a little on a bed and rolled her eyes. She snorted a line, too, and laid down beside Ashley. The two stared at the ceiling, now, and where Kyla remembered being young and pleased, Ashley remembered being at the amusement park earlier that week.
"Sometimes she'll say these things," Ashley started, but that was all she said. She didn't want to be prompted, but she kind of left herself open to it.
"Yeah?"
"And I'll just be like, 'Who says that? No one says that.'"
"And..."
"And it's different."
"Yes?'
"And so she'll just say certain things that no one says. And Aiden's always drooling over her, but why? It's not because of anything much. He just wants a consistent piece of ass. I mean, he knows she's different too, but he doesn't get it. He has it all wrong."
"Oh?"
"And she's too innocent. She does all these things with us, but they don't even touch her. She just sits there and grins like an idiot while she's surrounded by chaos, as if she's the little fucking light of God. It's just not right."
"The light of God?"
"Yes. The light of God. She's Catholic."
"Really? I didn't notice that."
"No, she is Catholic. Sometimes I'm talking to her, and I forget that I'm not Catholic."
"I don't think she grins very much," Kyla said, now giggling a high-pitched coke giggle.
"Well, she does, and you just don't notice, because she doesn't talk to you. She only talks to me. She's always talking to me instead of you. So there."
"So there what?"
"I don't know."
"Oh my God! You do want to fuck her!"
"No, that's not it at all. I'm going to sleep," Ashley said. She got up and walked to the other side of the room, as if it would solve things.
"No you're not."
"Okay, well, I am going over here. So leave me alone."
Kyla didn't leave her alone at all. She never did, and this was no exception. Instead, she badgered her and mooched off her pot, and ended up talking about herself again.
On Monday, Ashley and Aiden skipped school, very secretively and unintentionally. They woke up hung over and made a mutual decision to go buy some beer and a fifth of vodka instead of going to class. They went to the beach and sat in the back of Aiden's truck, very drunk. Ashley looked skimpy and Aiden looked like a model--a gay model, in fact.
"So, Ashley, my dear friend, I noticed you haven't been getting very much, eh, ass, lately, eh?" Aiden said. Neither had he, technically, but he had what he thought to be a very charming excuse.
"I have been getting ass. That is a lie, that I have been devoid of ass. There is ass," Ashley said. "So much ass."
"You didn't get ass last night, or the night before. And your ass bailed on you the night before that. She was like, 'Ugh,' and she passed out, in the middle of your ass-getting."
"The picking has been slim," Ashley said, then added a Southern twang to her words. "Damn slim."
They both giggled for a bit. As the day progressed and people came and went, several girls sat along the shoreline and Aiden directed his friend's attention to their presence.
"I will take one of their asses," said Ashley.
"Who, them? They're not gay."
"How do you know?"
"Because I want them all. And girls are never gay."
"Oh, we'll see about that, Aiden Dennison," she said. "I will gayify them."
The two companions sauntered over to the scene at which the girls were laid out beneath the sunlight, and both flirted horrendously until somehow they all ended up back at Ashley's house. Aiden was on top of one of them, soon, kissing down her body eagerly.
Ashley had two girls, and it reminded her of the summer and fucking every night. She felt different, for some reason, less fascinated. She wanted to feel them more thoroughly and kiss them harder and forget about anything besides lips and eyes and bare skin, but instead she was thinking about Aiden cheating on Spencer, and she mentioned it.
"That's not your girlfriend," Ashley said, half-heartedly, even though she was trying to say something solid and worthy.
"You have a girlfriend?"
"Um."
"Does he have a girlfriend?"
"Yes. He loves her," Ashley said, and laughed for a second. The thought was strange.
The girl let out an indignant grunt and slapped Aiden across the face before storming confusedly out of the house. Ashley would remember it for years, giggle over it fondly whenever it came up.
When one of the girls she was busy with began to glance over at the dejected boy smoking a cigarette idly in the corner, she waved her off carelessly, not mourning her absence in the equation. Later that afternoon, when it returned to being Aiden and her sitting drunk together, she thought about straight girls.
"They were straight," she told Aiden, trying unsuccessfully to articulate what was going through her head.
"I guess that doesn't matter to you, you bitch, you," he said.
"And you cheated on her."
"Spencer?"
"Yes. Her."
"Well," he said. He was rather tired and wasted at this point, and didn't have much to say to that.
"Kyla's bringing her back here tonight, and you have to look at her, and worship her and things like you always do. And you cheated on her."
"Shh," he said. "I will be very good. But don't tell her."
Ashley realized that regardless of her opinion, she wasn't going to tell her. She had never told; she never would. They went downstairs and fell asleep, became limp bodies in Ashley's bed.
Spencer did go to school that day, and hit the strip with Kyla afterwards. She talked about cheerleading in Ohio, and going to Nationals once. They giggled about boys they saw walking down the sidewalks, and Spencer didn't say anything about Aiden. The subject tended to upset her, because he made her tired, and they were hanging out that night..
Once they had spent a sufficient amount of money on clothes, Spencer invited Kyla back to her house for dinner, and Arthur picked them up, chatting happily with his daughter and her friend. He was very curious about what they'd been doing all the time, albeit thoroughly pleased that Spencer had already developed relationships with people from her school. He didn't ask about Aiden, either, even though he had been hearing the name often from multiple sources. He was waiting for her to say something, maybe bring him home one day.
At home Glen was with Madison, because bringing her to dinner made it easier for their sex schedule. They had one, and Glen kept winking about it. Clay, sitting across from them, rolled his eyes, annoyed, and gazed rather absently at the food being laid out on the table.
Paula was a very domineering person. She was tall and pretty and a little bit stressed-looking, but her voice made it sound like she was on top of absolutely everything, and perhaps a few men, too. Incidentally, when she was with her family, she exercised this attitude to its fullest. She loved the appearance of power, loved owning the place, especially she loved the idea of Spencer going to med school and doing whatever the hell Paula was doing at work. It just fit in.
"Oh, this is cute, Kyla," Paula said. "Gosh, you really are showing her how to dress. You'll have to bat them off with the stick."
"Them" meant boys--ones that went to Church, with fat wallets.
"Oh, we already have to do that without the clothes," Kyla said. It sounded like an appropriate thing to say, and very serious too. They were both a little high, but it flew right over Paula's head.
"Well, that's excellent. You know, Spencer, sweetie, Glen was telling me about a boy from the basketball team. That you two were dating."
"Oh, yeah," Spencer said. "Lots of dating."
"And what's his name?"
"Aiden."
"Is he handsome?"
"Mmhmm. He's very handsome," Spencer said. "And he's very religious." Aiden had a lot of faith in alcoholism. He'd said it once, and shared a good laugh with himself.
"Is he going to college?"
"Yes, lots of college."
"Oh," Paula said. She couldn't think of a way to follow up a response like that.
The doorbell rang, interrupting the quiet that had followed. About three people got up to get it, but in the end Arthur went with his wife to answer it.
Here Paula met Ashley, and they did not like each other.