"Jesus Lexi, where's the bug spray around here?" Brynn complains, swatting at her arm.
"Yeah, I'm being eaten alive over here." The huge bonfire we're surrounding does little to ward off the hoard of mosquitoes.
"It's on the porch, just chill. I'm getting it." She pushes up from Devon's lap, a place very familiar for both of them. I'm sitting beside Marcus on one of the wooden benches surrounding the pit. His left arm is subtly around me, his hand resting at the small of my back to make the embrace less obvious.
"When are you going to ask Lexi out?" Isaiah asks, shoving a toasted marshmallow into his mouth, white goo smearing all over his lips. "You guys are always all over each other."
Devon shrugs his reply. "I don't know, probably never. I mean, we're just fucking around. She knows it, I know it, it's a mutual decision we don't date."
"Oh my God, Lexi didn't tell me she had any sort of 'friends with benefits' thing going on," Vanessa says quickly. "I mean, I always thought you guys had a thing but..."
"We aren't friends with benefits." he says. "Even if we were, that's none of your fucking business. Lexi doesn't have to tell you everything."
"Here's your fucking bug spray" Lexi comes from the house and throws three bottles of OFF onto the ground.
"Don't put it so close to the fire!" Jayda yells, yanking the cans away from the flames. "Don't you know these are flammable?"
"Fuck off Jayda, it's not like I threw them into the fire," Lexi argues back, plopping herself back across Devon's lap.
"So what's for breakfast tomorrow?" CJ asks.
"How are you already thinking about breakfast? It's not even 10:00 yet."
"Wait, they're sleeping over too? I thought it was just the girls," Mindy says.
"Nope, we're all sleeping in the basement tonight" Lexi answers, clearly annoyed with the poor girl.
"I can't stay here, then. My parents would kill me if they found out I was sleeping over with a room full of guys. She barely allowed me to come here at all when she found out boys were coming" she responds, getting more and more anxious.
"Really Mindy? You're not twelve anymore" Brooke sneers.
"Hello my parents are the most conservative Mormons you will ever meet. I can't risk them finding out about this. They grounded me for a month when they found out about my first kiss, imagine how they would react to this. Nope, I'm going home." She abruptly stands from the bench and leaves through the house.
"Jesus Christ, it's like they're still living back in the 1800s or something" Emily complains. "That girl needs to do something crazy for once in her life."
"You guys need to lay off" CJ snaps.
"Aw, look at CJ growing up" Skylar teases. "Just yesterday he was slutting it up with a girl from Norwalk." CJ glares at her with hard eyes, but can't seem to contradict her.
"I don't care what she does, all I want to do it go inside. I'm still getting eaten alive, and I can't stand another second of it." Peyton whines, slapping her thigh.
The mosquitoes being everyone's grievence, half the people go inside because of it, and then half of us stayed outside and gathered in the jacuzzi that is almost the size of a regular swimming pool.
"Hey." I jump a little at the sudden feeling of Marcus right up behind me with his arms around my waist.
"Hi," I say. I lean my head back onto his shoulder, relaxing into his arms. Usually I'd say it's too hot to cuddle against someone, but I feel like I would always make exceptions to be next to him.
"Where's Holden?" he asks and I sigh , shaking my head.
"He was grounded. He's on house arrest for the next 24 hours," I tell him, leaving out the details. I don't want anyone to overhear us and start giving him shit about it. He already gets enough of that.
"Will you tell me later?" he asks. All I do is nod my head, but it's enough validation for him.
He releases me from his embrace as we sit in the padded seats of the hot tub, but puts his arm around my shoulder to keep me close and I rest my head on his shoulder.
"You two are disgusting," Brynn comments, snacking on the dry celery from the veggie platter sitting on the side of the jacuzzi.
I hold my tongue and ignore her, but I feel myself scootch away from him a little so I wasn't squished up against him anymore. I don't get far though, when he keeps my legs still with the hand not around my shoulder.
"Like you and Ryan never made out in front of everyone" Aaron says in defense for his best friend.
"We did not!" Her face starts to glow as her cheeks and nose become red from embarrassment.
"No, you guys thought you were being discrete, but really we could all still see the two of you up against any wall we were near." We all laugh at Brynn expense, but I can't bother to feel bad for her. She put it upon herself by being bitter over an arm over the shoulder.
"I love how this was supposed to be a "team bonding" time, but we still managed to keep separate" Lauren says pointing to the porch where everyone we were supposed to be associating with are socializing away from us.
"Who cares? The season's over in two months. I don't need to know any of them" Brooke says. "Besides, I think they should come to us, we shouldn't have to go to them."
"That's fucked up, Brooke." She shrugs at the comment and goes back to smoking that God-awful blunt of hers and proceeds to blow the nasty smelling smoke directly in my face. I wrinkle my nose and fan my hand in front of my face.
"What the fuck? You know I hate the smell!" I cough from the dirty air, maybe a little more dramatically than needed, but I don't care. She might want to ruin her lungs, but I don't need to suffer second hand smoke.
"Shouldn't you be used to it? I mean from what I've heard, Holden lives off weed," she says and I tense, instantly becoming defensive of my little brother.
"Shut your mouth. You know nothing about him" I snap, and I feel Marcus pull me closer to him in an attempt to make me feel better. People always think Holden causes so muh trouble, when in reality he's just a good kid who just happens to make some bad decisions sometimes. Some really stupid decisions. But what the hell, he's sixteen, that's when me and all my friends had begun to experiment too.
"Is that why he isn't here tonight? I haven't heard from him all day" Kevin says.
"None of your business. Just change the subject before I'm too pissed to sit with you." A moment of silence falls over the group when they hear the severity in my voice. Last year when Holden was just starting doing things, it was lighthearted teasing from a few people, but now they all think he's a full on drug addict. This is the first time I've been this harsh in defending him.
"Whose place are we going to after homecoming?" Nolan thankfully asks. That silence was getting really uncomfortable, especially since I was the reason for that awkward moment.
"I think my house" Nick says. "My parent's anniversary is the day of homecoming, and they always stay the night away."
"So your parents still get it on?" C.J asks, wiggling his eyebrows. I almost gag. Only C.J would annouce that type of thing for everyone to hear.
"Dude that's disgusting! I don't want that visual in my head." I understand the disgust. It's weird to think about my parents doing... that. And I know they still do because when Holden went looking through their drawers for his phone, he found, well, he found a box of condoms beneath my dad's underwear.
"I mean, good for them. I hope when I'm fifty my wife still wants to fuck me."
"Okay, conversation over! New topic!"
******************
"So what's up with him?" Marcus asks. We're lying together in an oversized beanbag chair, finally alone from everyone.
"My dad does weekly searches of his room, and he found some... things stuffed in a pair of his shoes." I explain, looking down at my hand on his chest.
"Things?" he asks.
I sigh. I didn't really want to tell him, but I know Holden really looks up to Marcus. Maybe telling him this he could help Holden get back on the right track.
"He had pods, weed, and pills stuffed away. He says he was going to sell it, but I'm sure he was going to keep everything but the pills." I look down for the first time in shame over my brother. Hearing he and my dad argue is hard, but confessing it aloud is even harder. He's the only other person I've talked to about Holden other than Sofia.
"Jesus. I thought he just did stuff occassionally at parties."
"No, it's become more frequent in the past few months. My parents, they don't know what to do. They're trying their best." I don't know why, but I felt the need to defend my parents as well. Again, they all assume my parents just let him get away with all this shit.
"Do you know why?" His voice is so soft, and his fingers have begun to stroke my hair and cheek so tenderly that I don't know if I could hold anything back from him. Have I always been this weak?
"I just assume he wants to run with the crowd" I answer honestly. When he came to high school I saw the people he started to hang around. Kids older than him, kids that I knew.
"Do you think he'll grow out of it?"
I shrug. "I think so. Even though he's making stupid decisions, he's not stupid. He still makes excellent grades and doesn't give teachers any trouble in school."
He doesn't say anything for a while, so I decide to finally ask him.
"Do you think you could try and talk him out of some of the things he's doing?" I ask. He slowly pulls back, tilting his head down so he could look straight at me.
"Are you sure you'd want me to do that? I don't want to step on your parent's toes."
"Yeah. He looks up to you. If it makes you uncomfortable you don't have to, but if you could, you might be able to change his perspective." I cross my fingers he'll say yes. I've tried everything I could think of to get Holden to wake up, my sister has tried, and my parents are running out of options to get him back on the right track.
"Okay."