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"Who's planning what?" says a cool voice from the doorway. Ashleigh turns and her breath catches -- or wait, no. It's just Rebecca. For an instant, she thought it was mystery ninja man, which wow, really makes no sense. Probably the weirdness of having someone randomly jump out and kiss her… And Rebecca is wearing something tight, black and spandexy. Looks like Bex is on the prowl tonight.
"Hey, where've you been?" Ashleigh asks.
"Oh, I decided to forego the senior madness," Rebecca says lightly, "Hang out with some people who aren't leaving forever in two days."
Ashleigh feels her mouth open but no words come out. Wow, that… that fucking hurt.
"Whoa, Rebecca," Evan says.
And okay, after a second Ashleigh gets it, how much it must suck for Rebecca that they're all graduating. Rebecca is someone whose maturity and ambition put her on the same level as them. She makes friends (or maybe "allies" is a better word) within her own pledge class, but her real relationships, for better or worse, have always been with seniors -- Casey, Cappie, Evan, Frannie (if you count Frannie as a real person, but whatever) and Ashleigh herself.
"Actually, Cappie and I are staying around here. Um, Evan might too," Casey says. She shoots a glance sideways at Ashleigh, and Ashleigh pastes a smile on her face.
"Yeah, I heard." There's no inflection one way or another in Rebecca's voice. Ashleigh honestly can't tell whether she knows about the whole love triangle thing they have going on or not. Or if she cares.
"Look," Rebecca says into the suddenly awkward silence. "Are there any bananas left?"
*
"I triple dog dare you to," Cappie pauses dramatically to pull a box out from under his bed -- and in a just world Ashleigh would not know it's his sex box -- "handcuff yourself to Rebecca for an hour." He proffers the pink fur-covered cuffs.
"I would, but I don't want to think about what else you've done with those handcuffs," Ashleigh says. Really, being handcuffed to Rebecca wouldn't be so bad. But there's something whitish-looking in the fake fur, and eww, just eww.
"Ashleigh, come on, that's like the fifth dare you've rejected," Casey complains.
"Well, the first three were Evan and Cappie trying to get me to eat something gross!"
"Yeah, that pizza was really nasty," Casey says thoughtfully. "Was that the one you wouldn't let me throw out two days ago, Cappie?"
"I have an idea," Rebecca says. She's sitting on the bed, painting Evan's nails a lovely shade of turquoise that Ashleigh picked out for him (the polish is Cappie's). "Since you seem to want me and Ash together so badly, make us spend seven minutes alone in a closet." She doesn't even glance in Ashleigh's direction.
Casey groans. "Seven minutes in heaven? That's like the lamest junior high game ever."
"And truth or dare isn't?"
"Yeah, well… how will we know you're actually doing something?"
"What is it exactly that you want us to do?" Rebecca purrs and Casey blushes. Ashleigh giggles.
"Nothing," Casey says, "I'm just trying to help you come up with a good dare."
The other two girls stare at each other in a weirdly intense way, while Ashleigh looks back and forth between them, and then Evan snaps his fingers (Rebecca looks despairingly at her handiwork)… "I've got it!"
And that's how Ashleigh winds up up in a tree with Rebecca.
"Ev's, I'm not gonna lie, when I first heard your dare, I thought it was straight-up batshit," Cappie is saying somewhere in the dark far below them. Rebecca's bare feet are dangling next to her face and she can just make out her face in the dark -- she's grinning down at her.
"Isn't this fun?" Rebecca says in that way where she almost sounds sarcastic, except Ashleigh can tell she really is excited and happy. She hauls herself up onto the branch next to Rebecca and looks out. She can see most of campus from here lit up by streetlamps, the library clocktower, and somewhere down the street the noise from a party is still going strong. The air is cool -- it's almost four in the morning.
"Ashleigh and Rebecca in a tree… K-I-S-S-I-N-GEEE!"
She grins. There's no way Casey or the boys can see them up here.
"We should just stay up here until they get bored and go away," Rebecca says, echoing her thoughts.
Ashleigh shivers. "I think I'll get too cold before then."
"Here," Rebecca says, "Scoot closer to me."
She does and they huddle into each other, for warmth. Yeah, that's all it is. Rebecca smells like nail polish and smoke -- and something subtler underneath.
"Do you want to kiss me again?" She asks.
"What?" Rebecca sits up and almost hits her head on a branch. "What do you mean, 'again'?"
"Someone kissed me tonight at the party. Someone in disguise."
"It wasn't me."
She sounds so much like she's telling the truth, Ashleigh almost believe her. But she remembers her smell.
"I didn't see you at the party at all, and--"
"I told you, it wasn't me. I-- I'm not gay."
Ashleigh bursts out laughing. "Rebecca."
"What?"
After a moment, she laughs too.
*
If she had just gone to bed early, Ashleigh thinks. If she hadn't drunk more, hadn't played truth or dare, hadn't climbed a tree with a crazy girl and gotten scratched all over, hadn't made out with said crazy girl and almost knocked both of them out of the tree and gotten more scratches on the way down and been hooted at by annoying fraternity boys (plus her best friend) -- she would be waking up in her own bed, without the hangover of doom and she wouldn't be feeling her heart break at the mere thought of graduating this afternoon.
And she would have missed out so bad.
