Wicked Games

Noticing Carter’s mood, and wanting to bring him into the group, Jeff asked, “What role would Carter play?”

Carter smiled out of the side of his mouth. He ran his hand through his sandy hair and pulled his attention back to his friends. “I’d be the one who scientifically explained to you all the possible ways the alligator could kill you. Just so you’d know.”

“They couldn’t kill me,” said Andy, grabbing his belly with two hands and shaking the rolls he trapped there. “It takes a whole lot more than the razor-sharp teeth of an alligator to get through all this.”

Everyone laughed, and then one of those natural pauses in the conversation fell over them. They listened to the thwacks of pool noodles on bare skin and watched the bikini-clad girls in the pool, doing battle with one another from the shoulders of Rollo and his wrestling buddies.

Reed was looking around, taking everything in as usual, his head bobbing on his thin neck like it did. Gradually, his attention settled somewhere up high above them. His wide eyes widened even further. Touching Carter’s elbow, he whispered, “Don’t look now, but you might want to check out what’s happening up there.”

When he looked up, Carter couldn’t believe what he saw. There was Lilah, scrambling clumsily on her hands and knees over the curved terra-cotta shingles of the steeply angled roof, her white sundress streaked in places with thick, black grease. She appeared to be trying to raise herself up to stand from a sitting position, but Carter could see that she was too drunk to do this with any confidence.

“Jesus,” he said. He stood up and studied the stucco walls of the house, searching for a climbing path to the roof.

“Jeff, you seeing this?” asked Reed. “You might have a liability issue on your hands.”

Jeff and Andy both saw it now. They all stood up. They all craned their necks to stare at Lilah, three stories up on the roof.

“How’d she even get up there?” asked Carter. He had both hands on the top of his head, holding his hair back as he tried to figure out what to do.

“There’s a ladder built into the wall around the side,” said Jeff.

Lilah had now managed to get herself into a standing position. Her sandals swung from one hooked finger, sometimes slapping into her thigh. She gazed out over the deck, swaying drunkenly as she surveyed the scene down there: the chicken fights in the pool; the clusters of people in the corners of the deck; the wet, tattooed guys in their knee-length, tropical-print swimsuits ducking in and out of the pool house. And of course, Carter and his friends, staring up at her as though they really cared. As though Carter really cared, she thought.

Her body tilted to the right until she lost her balance and lurched. She caught herself before she fell, but just barely.

Carter shouted up to her. “Lilah! Sit down.”

“No,” she shouted back.

“You have to, Lilah,” he said. “You’re going to fall.”

“I’m not gonna fall,” she said defiantly. “You don’t know. You don’t know anything.”

She stumbled again and took two stagger steps toward the edge of the roof before catching herself.

People were noticing. The kids in the pool had stopped their game. The girls had slid down from the shoulders of the guys and they were all staring up at her now.

“I’m gonna find a way up there, Lilah,” said Carter. “Just … sit. Okay? I’ll come help you down.” He turned to Jeff and whispered, “She’s totally bombed. Where’s that ladder?”

Jeff pointed to the alley between the pool house and the main house. “Around that corner.”

“I like it up here,” said Lilah. “I don’t want to come down.” She tried to do a little twirl to prove her point, but she stumbled again, two more feet closer to the edge.

The people inside had started streaming out the sliding glass doors and congregating below her on the deck. She could sense that she’d become the center of attention. She didn’t care.

“Please, Lilah. Sit down. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“I don’t have to do anything!” she shouted. “You don’t own me, Carter!”

He pushed his way through the throng of sweaty people gathered on the deck. They made a path for him. He was part of the show now.

“Just wait right there,” he called.

“Quit telling me what to do!” Lilah screamed.

Then, as though to make her point more dramatically, she reeled the sandals over her head and whipped them as hard as she could at him. They flew together toward the edge of the roof, one losing momentum almost immediately and plopping down to the rain gutter, the other soaring out toward the mass of people gathered below her on the deck before falling with a splash into the pool. The sound made her smile.

She peered over the edge.

“You have to scoot up away from the edge, Lilah.” Carter was pleading with her now.

“I said, stop telling me what to do!” she screeched.

And then she reared up and leaped off the edge of the roof. Arms flailing at her sides, legs pinwheeling below her, her skirt billowing out around her, she flew through the air and landed in the pool with a splash that cascaded onto the deck and drenched the three rows of people standing there.

People gasped. People clapped.

For a second people gawked at her floating there, waiting to see if she was okay.

She raised her head and shook her hair out. She looked at the clear black sky and laughed, and then she started sidestroking toward the shallow end of the pool.

When she reached the ladder, Carter was right there to help pull her out.

“Come on, Lilah,” he said, reaching out a hand for her to pull herself up with. “Let’s get you home.”

She scowled at him. “Just leave me alone.”

When he tried to take her hand, she slapped him away, so he stepped back and let her pull herself up out of the pool. Not knowing what else to do, he fished her sandal, which had migrated toward the diving board, out of the water.

She grabbed it from him and staggered away through the crowd.

He took a step after her, ready to do what it took to calm her down and get her into the car and home, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

It was Kaily, Lilah’s old friend from the swim team.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’ll just make it worse. Me and Teresa were about to take off, anyway. We’ll get her home.”

“You sure?” he said.

“Yeah. You hang out. Have fun.”

Before he could protest, she was on her way, following after Lilah around the side of the house.

Whether or not he wanted to admit it to himself, it was the first time he breathed all night.

4 (#ulink_a7f6e7c8-6c18-5703-876a-931fdf9cc6bd)

Reeling from everything that had just happened, Carter needed some space to think.