Chapter 14 – Edge of Seventeen I
Nelly didn't remember to return Harry's hoodie until well after they dropped her off and she was getting ready for bed. She went to sleep wearing it that night, thinking of the boy it belonged to. Nel spent Saturday with Tara at the CPR re-certification and Sunday at Donna's house. She returned Harry's shirt to him on Monday at lunch, freshly washed and neatly folded.
"What? You're doing Harry's laundry for him now?" Jax teased, and got swiftly rewarded by his best friend with a look that could kill.
"Don't you be getting any ideas, Teller," laughed Tara, "I'm not the domestic kind. But you know, maybe I could be persuaded if you'd do me a favour."
She gave him her trademark winning smile, the one she used on Nelly before the fair, and Jax smelled a rat, "Oh, no, I won't..."
"Come on, just hear me out." The smile was gone as Tara's eyebrows knotted in frustration.
"I am not taking you to this goddamned dance." Jax said with finality, his lips in a tight line.
The Homecoming-slash-Halloween dance was happening on the coming weekend and Tara's been working Jax relentlessly, but without success.
"Seriously, all you have to do is show up."
"Yeah, and then you'll make me dance, and fetch you punch, and take pictures..." Jax looked so miserable just talking about it, that Nel had to suppress a giggle. She exchanged a look with Harry, who was not as discrete and openly laughing at his friend.
"Harry's going, " Tara said boldly, and kicked him under the table. "You're taking Nelly, right?"
"No." Harry and Nelly replied in unison, a little too quickly.
"There!" Jax smiled, convinced he won this round. "If they're not going, neither am I."
Tara gave Nel a hard look, the one that said, back me up here. Nel sighed and said half-heartedly, "I'm thinking of going with Tara."
"You can, I'm not gonna stop you, but there's no way Harry and I are going to be there."
"Fine, I'll just ask someone else." Tara said coldly, as she got up to go.
"Oh yeah? Who?" Jax asked, defiance and a hint of anxiety in his voice.
"None of your business, Teller. If your macho biker ass won't take me, then I'm sure I'll find someone who will."
"Fine." Jax huffed and also got up. Then the two of them stomped off in opposite directions, leaving Harry and Nel still sitting at the table.
"Here we go again," Harry rolled his eyes and got up to follow Jax. Then, as if on second thought he sat down again, wanting to say something. Nelly waited. "Listen, Nelly... If you want to go to that dance, then... You know, I could..." He wouldn't finish, his face turning pink.
"Oh, no worries, Harry." Nel finally got the drift. She didn't want him to make that sacrifice, although it tickled her that he offered, "I'll probably be Tara's date, if I'll end up going at all." And she really didn't want to. He nodded with a relieved smile, and left.
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Tara was in a nasty, cranky mood for the rest of the day. She kept mumbling about fucking Teller ruining her life.
"How goes finding a date for the dance?" Nelly couldn't help poking at her in their math class.
"It doesn't. It's too late, only complete rejects remain."
"You could always ask Cliff. I don't think he's got a date yet." She gave Tara a crooked smile.
"Cliff. Goth nerd Cliff. Who likes boys." Her friend gave her a levelled look.
Well, that surprised Nelly. Although, now that she thought about it and the way he never paid attention to any girls, maybe it wasn't so surprising. "OK, maybe not."
"You know, I still have one more option. I could drag you along."
Yeah, Nelly kind of expected that. "Please don't make me."
"Hey, you did say you were thinking about it."
"I was being supportive. I'm not ditching Donna for another weekend."
"Then bring her along." Tara shrugged, like this was the most obvious solution. "I'll finally get to meet her."
After school, Nelly and Tara took a road trip to Donna's house, where they've managed to persuade Sue Parker to let her daughter attend the dance. For some reason, Sue was more willing to agree once she found out the boys weren't part of the picture. Tara promised to pick up Donna along with Nelly and then drop her off at home after the dance. Then the girls spent an unreasonable amount of time going through Donna's closet and deciding what they were going to wear.
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An awkward vacuum was created between the boys and the girls while Tara ignored Jax for the remainder of the week and, by extension, Nelly and Harry weren't able to hang out together. As the the weekend neared, Nelly thought that maybe Jax would cave in and do what Tara wanted, but he was as stubborn as a mule. So, when came Saturday, the three girls piled into Impala in their fancy dresses: Tara in a short, sleeveless black velvet number; Nelly in a long and flowing, blue-green vintage dress; and Donna in her pink knee-length meringue-like confection. They were buzzing with excitement. "We are going to have so much fun, just us girls," Tara prophesied as she weaved through the traffic, but her eyes were sullen, "Who needs boys anyway?"
By the time they got to the dance at Kennedy High gym, the place was packed and vibrating with music. Fake spiderwebs covered every surface and a gigantic paper spider loomed over the dance floor as though trying to herd everyone into its lair. The girls hit the dance floor right away and Nelly had to admit that she didn't expect to enjoy herself as much as she did. There was something so exhilarating in dancing with her girlfriends, letting go of the craptastic series of unlucky breaks that were her life. As long as the bass boomed and the lights kept flashing, she felt novacained and removed from it all, and it felt good.
Spent and out of breath, the girls took a break on the sidelines of the dance floor, while Tara got them a couple of plastic cups filled with soft drinks. One smelled of alcohol, so Tara shrugged and took it, "Relax, it's just a bit of booze. It won't kill ya." The other cup seemed fine, but Donna didn't like the taste, so Nel drunk most of it before they went back to dancing. Within minutes, the strobe lights blinded Nel and she felt like she was floating. She staggered and grasped Tara's arm for balance, hoping that her head would stop spinning, but it only got worse as black holes twirled in front of her eyes even when she closed them.
Tara quickly realized something was not right. "Shit, I think there was more in those drinks than just booze."
Donna stood by helplessly, her eyes widened in a panicked expression, while both Nelly and Tara started showing signs of intoxication, "Let's get out of here." She pleaded, "I'll call my mom, she'll know what to do."
"We'd be in deep shit if your mom would see us right now." Tara replied coldly.
"It wasn't our fault."
"It doesn't matter, Donna." Nelly weighed in feebly. They promised Sue it would be all right, and now it wasn't.
As if they weren't in enough trouble, Nelly watched in horror as the Rednecks advanced on them, purposefully pushing in their direction through the crowd. A group of half a dozen of them, including Alex and Brett, had the girls surrounded in a matter of moments.
"Enjoyed your drinks, bitches?" Alex asked dangerously, groping Tara.
"Get out of my face," she pushed him away, but he hardly moved. Then she realized what he meant. "You spiked our drinks? SAMCRO will go medieval on your ass."
"Not before I go medieval on yours." The tall guy licked Tara's cheek as he pressed himself to her.
"We owe you for last time, red," sneered Brett at Nelly, reminding her of the time she came to Cliff's defence, and Harry to hers. "Where's your boyfriend now, huh?"
Someone pulled on Brett's shoulder roughly, made him turn around.
"Do you mean me?" Asked Harry before he shoved the Redneck away. As if in some time loop – or maybe the guy had an incredible, innate sense of timing - Harry came to her rescue again. "I told you to stay away from her."
Brett gave a caveman-like yell and lunged at Harry, shoulders first. Harry sidestepped, but couldn't avoid the collision entirely, and the two of them fell to the floor, disbursing alarmed dancers. People around them started chanting "fight, fight, fight" as the two guys went at each other on the floor. Harry soon gained an upper hand by rolling on top of Brett, but in a split second, two more Rednecks were on top of Harry, pulling him off, while the others ganged up on Jax. As soon as they attacked, Tara went at them with her fists, shrieking like she was possessed.
"Get out of here, Nelly," shouted Harry, as he threw punches left and right, blood dripping from his nose. While Donna was pulling her away frantically, Nelly was torn between staying – an insane thought of helping Harry occurred to her – and following her best friend. She saw the chaperone teachers, lead by Mr. Atkins, moving quickly towards the chaos of their little cluster. She felt Donna's pull on her arm again as the world teetered dangerously to and fro, and the still-working, rational part of her brain had convinced Nel that leaving right now was a very good idea indeed.
Nelly lead Donna to a payphone by the principal's office, while committing all of her energy to not falling asleep on her feet. She so wished she could lie down. Anywhere. Right now. But she couldn't abandon Donna who was completely freaked out by the scene she had just witnessed. Her best friend was so sheltered, so wrapped up in a protective cocoon of normal life, that she was never exposed to any violence, and this completely unhinged her. She cried on the phone as she explained what happened and asked Sue to pick her up as soon as possible. It was beyond Nelly's limited abilities to intervene.