Hangman was pretty hilarious. He was seriously the most enthuthiastic little spaz who ever lived. Terry held a case of beer under each arm and another in each hand, while Hangman struggled with just one case. Terry walked with long strides and took the steps up to the house two at a time, maybe showing off a little as Hangman rushed to keep up. Karine smirked knowingly as she stopped Terry and grabbed a few beers from one of his cases. She walked off to join Erica and Chrissy, who were sitting on the lawn and smoking.
The Glue Sniffers were also on the lawn, hanging with Porta-potty chick. Terry hoped they wouldn’t come inside. Cerise didn’t need to be dealing with her psycho stalker.
They walked through the packed house and into the kitchen where Terry dumped the beer on the kitchen table.
Hangman jumped around like a kid. “Oh man you guys, it was so cool! Terry didn’t even get carded! I thought for sure I was gonna blow your cover just by like, being there!”
“Yeah, it a major undercover operation,” chuckled Terry.
“Shh, don’t spoil my James Bond experience,” chastised Hangman.
Terry started opening the cases and they began an assembly line, with Hangman taking the beers from Terry and then handing them to that stupid loser hair guy, who stacked them in the fridge. The ones that wouldn’t fit were left on the table and everyone took one, except Sarah’s boyfriend and Cerise of course.
With his superiour skills of beer detection, Andrew came barrelling into the room and chugged a bottle in record time. Hangman started to guzzle his own beer but only managed to get down half the bottle without choking. Andrew screamed a bit about how they were finally done with school and then asked Hangman where the hell the music was.
“Oh shit, music!” said Hangman in a panic.
“Where’s your stereo?” asked Andrew.
“Uh, follow me.”
They skipped off to the next room, where they loudly discussed the music selections available.
Andrew flipped through a stack of CDs. “Dude, you’re old school. Ozzy Osbourne? He’s so 2002.”
Hangman apologized and said that all the CDs were old, and all the mp3s were lame, since they’d been downloaded by his little sisters.
“Yeah right,” snickered the skinny Karl Weber guy and the fat nerd and Jason stupid Harris and his stupid hair that wasn’t really that bad anymore since he’d gotten it cut but just give it time, it was sure to get stupid again laughed along with him.
“So Sarah, your speech was really good,” said Cerise.
“I know, totally!” agreed Mel and Steph.
“Thanks you guys,” giggled Sarah. “You don’t think it was too depressing?”
“That’s what made it so good,” said skinny Karl, self-consciously putting his arm around her. “And it could not have been more awesome when you quoted Star Trek!”
“I know!” agreed Cerise. “A Picard quote! Best speech ever, Sarah!”
Really? She’d quoted Star Trek? Terry couldn’t think of anything in the speech that had been particularly geeky.
“Yeah, it was pretty hilarious,” nodded Jason Harris and his stupid, curly hair that was already starting to grow out and become stupid and curly again. “It was such a downer, all the old people were freaking out. It’s like when Zephram Cochran actually said the boldly go speech grammatically correct and the whole world was thrown into chaos. Except it was the gym that was in chaos and it wasn’t so much chaos as befuddlement and disapproval.”
God, he was such a retard. Cerise laughed though.
“But it was like really inspirational too,” said Steph.
“Totally,” agreed Mel.
Sarah and Cerise smirked at one another. Why did they even hang out with the Greens if they knew they were so dumb?
“I can’t believe you guys won like all the awards!” said Steph.
“I know, you won like a million!” nodded Mel.
“You only got more than me because of all those stupid joiner awards. I mean, special acknowledgment for civic duty or whatever? Gimme a break!” said Karl with a roll of his eyes.
“Don’t be jealous,” teased Sarah.
“Special merit for giving a crap about your community!” Karl went on. “Medal of honour in being a brown-noser!”
Sarah laughed good naturedly at the ribbing and called Karl a sore loser. He kissed her on the forehead and the fat dude and Jason stupid Harris looked grossed out. Clearly they were just jealous that one of their own finally hooked up with a chick and they didn’t. Dumb asses.
Karl told Sarah she was sure to get tons of scholarships and crap to Universities and the Green Girls were shocked that they were already thinking about University, since they hadn’t even started cegep yet.
Mel asked where everyone was going next year and they all responded that they’d be going to John Abbott College West Island
“It’s so cool, we’ll all be able to hang!” enthused Steph.
“Depending on our schedules,” said Sarah. “Do you guys know what programs you’re going into?”
“Oh my god, totally not at all!” whined Mel.
“I know, oh my god, we totally have to figure it out!” fretted Steph.
“Well I’m doing sciences obviously,” said Karl.
“Me too probably,” nodded Sarah.
“What do you mean, probably? What else is there?” Karl snotted.
“Well I’m also kind of interested in doing something fun like theatre or something,” she shrugged.
“That’s retard… ridiculous!” spazzed Karl. “What a waste of your intelligence! What kind of plebe would do something lame like theatre?”
“Um, me,” said Cerise dryly.
“Yeah well…” shrugged Karl. “Uncomfortable silence.”
They all laughed and Terry had to admit that these nerds could be fairly entertaining if given the chance. He hoped Cerise noticed the effort he was making to get along with her friends.
“We missed you at prom you know,” said Wendy, blowing smoke in Shauna’s face.
The Glue Sniffers sat on the front porch, Ben and Mike’s arms still locked with Shauna’s, preventing her escape. Her impractical and uncomfortable graduation shoes had long since fallen off as she was dragged around by the boys and her bare feet felt cold against the concrete of the porch. She wished she were at least wearing a hoodie, so she could bury her face in it, but she was wearing a horrifying dress her mother had forced on her. Thankfully it was long enough to cover her scratched up legs but Shauna still felt naked.
“Yeah, I was really insulted when you turned me down,” sulked Mike.
“Seriously, what’s wrong with you?” asked Wendy.
“You got something against me?” wondered Mike.
“Yeah, what’s your problem, bitch?” sneered Ben.
Shauna tried once again to free herself from their grip but they pulled her down, angrily asking her what she thought she was doing.
“Fuck off!” she screamed.
“Ooh, such harsh language,” laughed Wendy.
Andrew Lester came out of the house and yelled out to his cuntnugget chicks to get their ipods. Erica Mackey gave Christina Penna her carkeys and sent her off on the errand. When she came back, all three cuntnuggets traipsed into the house, loudly complaining of the toilet smell on the front porch.
The Glue Sniffers laughed but then Erica made some joke about them being stoners and they didn’t think it was so funny anymore. They were so annoyed that Mike and Ben actually let go of Shauna and when a couple of kids walked out of the house she used the distraction to sneak into the house. She heard Mike announce his displeasure as she snuck away and turned back to see him pushing one of the kids down the slope of the front lawn. Better him than her.
Terry could hear Erica’s bitchy voice emenating from the next room and they all peered over to see her ordering Hangman about, insulting his musical choices. Karine walked in and grabbed another beer and Mel asked her where she’d be going next year. The answer was JAC, like the rest of them, and Steph declared this to be the best thing ever.
When obnoxious dance music thumped out of the other room, Sarah and the Green Girls dragged Cerise away to go dance. Karine remained behind, nursing her beer.
“Is this on your playlist?” Karl asked Hangman as he drifted into the kitchen. “Did your sister download this?”
“No, it’s Erica Mackey’s ipod. As if I can download anything with an olden days connection.”
“You still don’t have high speed? Jesus, how do you live!? Your ‘rents are so evil!”
“I know. They’re afraid more internet would corrupt me. They already think I’m too much of a shut-in. They’re all like, exercise, fresh air!” Hangman explained.
“Are you still banned from gaming?” asked Karl.
“Uh…” Hangman looked up at Terry and then his eyes shiftily swept through the room, silently telling Karl to shut the fuck up. “I think we need snacks, don’t we? We have chips in the basement!” he declared, running off.
After a beat, the rest of the nerds joined him and Terry and Karine were left alone.
“So are you ok?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she smiled unconvincingly. “So have you spoken to Cherry yet?”
“No, I don’t know what to say.”
“Well what happened with you guys anyway?”
“Fuck, I dunno,” he shrugged. “I got drunk and I was pissed at her for you know, breaking up with me or whatever and I kinda yelled at her and stuff.”
“Well good. She probably needed to be put in her place,” Karine snarked.
“Put in her place? What place? Her place is anywhere she wants it to be. I’m the retard. I freaked out at her for no reason.”
“Well there was a reason if she broke up with you because she thought she was like, better than you or whatever.”
“Where are you getting this?” he asked in confusion.
“From you! Remember that night when you came to my place all drunk and you were all like, Cerise thinks she’s better than me?”
“I was out of it, I was pissed. It doesn’t mean all that bullshit was true! I was just venting or whatever. She never even did anything wrong.”
“So she’s blameless? Everything is your fault? No way! There’s something wrong with that girl!” said Karine with unwarranted vehemence.
“No there isn’t,” Terry insisted.
“Yeah, there obviously is. I mean, why did this happen to you?! It’s not fair! It’s not right!”
Terry stared at Karine in annoyance. Was she seriously going to go down this road again? As he looked at her pained face, it dawned on Terry that she wasn’t talking about him and Cerise. Something else was going on.
“Karine, what are you talking about? ‘Cause this isn’t about me and Cerise, is it?”
She shrugged and shook her head almost imperceptibly.
“Is it about me and you?” he asked delicately.
“Not everything is about you, Terry,” she sighed with a hint of anger.
“So then what is it?”
“God, nothing! How come I’m being attacked now?”
“I’m not attacking you,” he protested, trying not to get too defensive. “I just wanna know what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on. I just… I don’t know…”
This whole time she’d been avoiding eye contact with him and when he now tried to take her chin in his hand, she shook him away.
Erica’s shrill cackle burst into the room, followed a moment later by the bitch herself. She and Andrew were discussing a plan to go backpacking around Europe for the summer. Andrew admitted that his parents had no intention of footing the bill, so he might have to get odd jobs along the way and Erica didn’t think he’d be up to the task, being a lazy shithead and all.
“Fuck you, bitch, there’s plenty of shit I could do,” Andrew insisted.
“Whatever,” Erica said dismissively. “Where we gonna go?”
“If we go to Italy
“Awesome!” enthused Andrew.
“I wanna go to Scotland
“All they have in Scotland London and Paris and Berlin and Amsterdam
“They have cities in Scotland Glasgow or Edinburg
“I dunno man, we gotta do some googling to figure out where the slutty chicks hang out,” chuckled Andrew.
Terry noticed that Karine’s grip on her beer bottle was rather tight. Her entire body was stiff and she stared down at the counter as though deep in contemplation. Chrissy also seemed to notice because she gently asked Karine where she might like to go in Europe .
Karine looked up slowly. “I can’t go,” she said as though the words required much effort. “I need to work this summer.”
“But we’ve been talking about this for ages! You said you were in!” said Erica in annoyance.
“Well I can’t come, ok?” said Karine, her head snapping up. Her eyes darted around at the others and her hand turned white from holding her beer bottle so tightly.
“If you need money, you can just find jobs over there, like me,” said Andrew. “I bet we can do it.”
Karine almost looked queasy. “I have to stay here,” she mumbled and walked out of the room.
“What the fuck is that bitch’s problem?” asked Erica, deeply annoyed.
“She prob’ly just doesn’t wanna hang out with me all summer,” said Steven sadly.
Erica scoffed. “Like she’d give a shit about that. Like anyone gives a shit about you, Stevie,” she snickered.
It was a bitchy thing to say, but basically true. Terry didn’t believe that was the reason for Karine’s insistence on staying home either. Something was seriously up with her.
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