Burn for Burn

IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT. EVERYONE AND THEIR MOM IS OFF island for the first away game, and I’m down at the ferry dock, waiting for my brother’s drug dealer to come in on the eight o’clock. It’s so perfect, it’s almost cliché. If only someone was here to take a picture for the yearbook. Kat DeBrassio: Most Likely to Drug the QB.

My back is up against a dock post. I’m smoking a cigarette as the ferry comes in on black waves of water. Right on time.

I feel for the wad of money stuffed into my front pocket. Sixty dollars in fives and singles, enough for two hits of ecstasy. I didn’t bother asking Mary for money, because after that story she told us, it wouldn’t feel right to ask her to pay. But I did ask Lillia. We met up in the girls’ bathroom this morning. She unzipped her little pink purse and took out an even littler pink purse and unzipped that too. All she had in there was her ChapStick; a golden Chanel lip gloss called Glimmer, Rennie’s signature color; Lillia’s driver’s license; a red Jolly Rancher; and two credit cards.

I told her drug dealers don’t accept plastic.

Lillia felt bad, I could tell, and she promised to pay me back. I told her she could buy me a carton of cigarettes or maybe something for my boat, but then she started whining that her mother goes over her charges each month, so I said forget it. I got it out of what I saved from my summer job. Whatever. It’s not like sixty bucks will make or break my college fund.

When Lillia went into a stall to pee, I opened up her purse and took out Rennie’s precious lip gloss. What a wannabe. She probably spent half a night’s pay on it. Whistling to myself, I dumped it into the trash can.

Cars parked on the freight deck click on their headlights and drive off the ferry. I watch other passengers, men in suits, cleaning ladies, people in supermarket uniforms, file down the plank. It’s lit by tiny white Christmas lights.

I get pissed when I don’t see Kevin, but he’s the last one off. He’s wearing the same beat-up jean jacket he always does. I think he’s had it since he was my age. He strolls down, stops halfway to light his cigarette, and then keeps going.

I straighten up and walk toward him. He looks at my boobs first, then my face. Classic Kevin.

“Kat?” he says, squinting through the dark. “Is that you?”

“Hey,” I say, and shove my hands into my back pockets. “Pat sent me down to pick up his stuff.”

“Oh, did he now?” Kevin grits his cigarette between his teeth and gives me a dry laugh.

“Yeah,” I say breezily, trying to hide the fact that I’m lying my ass off. While Pat was in the shower, I used his phone to text Kevin for the drugs. Pat’s friends, my friends too, use Kevin. Mostly for weed. He makes the trip to the island every Friday to make deliveries to his customers. Even though Pat lets me smoke up with him sometimes, he’d freaking murder me if he found out I’d called Kevin on my own for harder stuff. “Pat’s up at the garage, working on his bike. He cheaped out and bought a rebuilt starter, and now he can’t get the thing to turn over. I told him to just return the piece of crap and get a new one, but you know how he is. Anyway, he sent me down here.” The way I say it, I make it sound complain-y. “Asshole.”

“Pat doesn’t really strike me as an ecstasy kind of guy.”

I’m not sure if Kevin’s on to me or just trying to chat me up. Either way, I have to think fast, because Kevin’s right. Pat is a stoner, through and through. “He’s finally hooking up with some girl,” I say. “Only, she’s not cute. So . . . maybe he needs help.”

Kevin laughs hard at his, so hard he coughs. Then he lifts his arms up in a deep stretch. “Well, I couldn’t get regular E from my supplier. So I got the liquid stuff instead. I’d better call that SOB and make sure he’s cool with that.”

Liquid ecstasy? I didn’t know that existed. That’ll be even easier for Lillia to slip into Reeve’s drink. “It works just the same as regular E?”

“Actually, it’s stronger.” Kevin reaches for his cell.

“Nice. I know Pat’ll be cool with that.” I quick take out the money from my pocket and hand it over to Kevin, before he has a chance to dial.

He shoots me daggers. “Not here,” Kevin barks, and looks over both of his shoulders. “Walk with me.”

So I put the money back into my pocket and follow him into town, feeling pretty stupid. We go over to the restaurant where Rennie works, Bow Tie, and head for the back door, where the kitchen is. You can hear all kinds of restaurant noise inside—dishes getting washed, pots and pans clanking around, guys shouting out orders. I’m figuring Kevin wants to do the deal here, because it’s pretty shadowy. I reach for my money again, but he waves me off and asks, “What’s your poison, Kitty Kat?”

Gross. “They aren’t going to serve me here.”

“I do business with some of the bartenders. We’ll be okay. So . . . let me guess.” He looks me up and down. “You’re a Sex on the Beach kind of girl.”

I roll my eyes. “Whiskey,” I say.

His face lights up. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Wait. Can we do the deal here? I should get back to Pat. I don’t want him to freak out.”

“Come on my rounds with me tonight, and I won’t tell your brother you’re buying E off me and trying to use him for cover.” He sighs and looks around. “This island is so damn boring. I don’t know how people live here. Come on. Keep me company. You’re my friend’s baby sister, so I ain’t gonna try nothing. Hey, I’ll even knock five bucks off what I’m charging you. Come on, Kitty Kat. What else are you doing tonight?”

I’m not doing anything, but that’s beside the point. I just want my ecstasy and to go the hell home, not keep Kevin company on his drug runs. But I’ll take one for the team. For Mary. “All right, deal.”

I wait while Kevin struts into the kitchen. He comes out a few minutes later with two drinks from the bar. A beer for him and a whiskey for me. The glass is small, but the brown liquid is poured to the very top. I doubt it’s top shelf. Probably well booze, the cheap stuff.

“I like it with ice,” I say, just to be a snot. As I take the glass, some of the whiskey drips over the edge and onto my fingers. I lick them clean.

Kevin grins out the side of his mouth. “You are a sassy little Kitty Kat, aren’t you?”

Flirting with Kevin makes me want to barf, but I know that’s what I have to do to get what I want. And whatever. I’m good at it. I hiss and pretend to swipe at his face with my claw.

I expect Kevin to sit down with his beer. Instead he starts walking away from the restaurant. He tucks his beer up the sleeve of his jean jacket. “Next stop, the Jar Island Retirement Home.” I guess I make a face, because he says, “I’ve got a bunch of glaucoma patients in there who need the weed.”

I guess that’s sort of a mitzvah or whatever. Helping sick people smoke up. Noble, almost.

“All right,” I say. I take a sip of my whiskey and pick up the pace. “We don’t want to keep the grammys and grampys waiting.”

I spend two hours with Kevin and then walk him back to the ferry. The island’s dead, and I don’t have anything to do, so I decide to drive over to Middlebury and stop by Mary’s house. She keeps creeping into my mind, after that story she told us. Poor thing. It’s honestly a miracle that she doesn’t have PTSD or some shit.

I park outside her house and walk up the front steps. There’s a soft light on in the living room and the flashing light of a television. I press the doorbell and wait.

The volume goes down, but nobody comes to the door. I press it again, then lean over the railing and peek in the windows.

The house doesn’t look lived in, more like it got hastily closed up at the end of summer. There’s a telescope collapsed and lying on the floor. A chair with a sheet draped over it. Stacks of unopened mail sorted into teetering piles, some newspapers and catalogs. And about ten big black trash bags bulging with God knows what.

And then Mary’s aunt darts past the window, like she’s trying to hide. I get a prickly feeling in the small of my back as I shrink away from the glass. I lean over the railing and look up at Mary’s bedroom. A light is on, but it immediately clicks off.

I practically sprint down the stairs and back to my car.