There is a long list of things that a person can do to get themselves a one-way ticket to hell.
Or, if you aren't religious, a one-way ticket to county jail.
Lighting other people's houses on fire, for example, happens to show up on that list of things. So does punching puppies. And while I wasn't committing arson or animal cruelty, I still felt like God and every member of the Holden police department had a good reason to hate me.
Why? Because I was sitting in the back seat of my aunt's car (a car that, technically, I'd just stolen) with a sleeping baby.
"Would you stop doing that?"
Blake's voice made me jump nearly a foot into the air.
He had offered to take the wheel because I didn't know where Ethan's house was. Not to mention, I didn't think he felt comfortable having me behind the wheel; I was shaking with terror, and kept glancing out of the car through the rear window. I was expecting a police car to be trailing behind us, ready to pull us over and demand to see our paperwork (and inquire as to where we'd gotten the infant).
"Doing what?" I asked, one hand gripping the seatbelt across my chest so tightly that my knuckles were turning a faint shade of purple. The other hand wrapped around Isabel's tiny pajama-clad foot.
"Shaking your leg," Blake snapped.
I looked down to see that, indeed, my left leg was trembling ever so slightly. It was one of those nervous habit things, I guess. I took a deep breath and pressed my foot down against the carpeted interior of Rachel's neon Volkswagen.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled.
Blake sighed as he pulled the car onto a street lined with large white houses.
"We're not going to get in trouble," he stated matter-of-factly.
"Sure," I snorted.
I could already picture our mug shots taped up on an announcement board in the lobby of the Holden police station. Great. Blake and I would forever join the league of arsonists, murderers, thieves, and puppy-punchers.
"Look," Blake continued, giving me a sideways glance before returning his gaze to the dark road ahead, "this will take ten minutes, tops. All we need to do is find Alissa, get her in the car, and drive her home. Then we'll go back, put Rachel's car keys on the kitchen counter right where we found them, and you can go back to babysitting in peace."
"But what if—"
"Chloe and my dad aren't coming home for at least another two hours," Blake interrupted before I could finish protesting, "and Rachel stays down in Marlin Bay until like eleven o'clock doing that mural thing. She'll never even know we borrowed her car."
My leg started shaking again.
"But—" I started.
"Waverly," Blake said, "you'll be fine. And if something happens..." he trailed off for a moment before sighing and saying, "I'll tell Rachel the truth."
"The truth?" I repeated, looking over at Blake's profile. The hard angle of his jaw was intensified by the faint bluish glow of the lights on the dashboard. I watched as he frowned for a moment, his dark eyebrows pulling together, before nodding.
"I'll tell her I made you come with me."
He'd take the blame for me?
I mean, he totally deserved it. But still.
I hadn't expected him to agree to take the blame.
"Thanks," I mumbled.
I wasn't sure if Blake heard me, and he didn't give any indication that he had. I decided to drop the subject and focus on keeping my left leg still as Blake weaved through the streets of Holden. We pulled up to a stop sign, and suddenly I could feel the road shaking. For a second, I thought that there was an earthquake. Then I realized that the rhythmic thump of the ground was perfectly in time to the bass of a Katy Perry song.
Figures. Ethan would play Katy Perry at his parties.
The douchebag.
It was another minute or so before Blake pulled the car onto a very crowded street. I blinked in surprise at the abnormal number of cars parked along the sidewalks. Then, after a moment, I spotted what I could only guess was Ethan's house.
At the end of the street sat a large, white, two-story, Victorian-style mansion with a rose garden in the front. Not that the rose garden was gorgeous, or anything. I just noticed it because there seemed to be an unusual number of kids hovering in the yard, most of whom were wearing board shorts and bikinis despite being several blocks inland from the beach.
I watched them as Blake pulled Rachel's car into what appeared to be the only empty parking space on the street. He quickly pulled the keys out of the ignition and hopped out of the car, slamming his door closed behind him.
Isabel's eyes fluttered open.
I rolled down my window and stuck my head out.
"This is Ethan's house?" I asked, praying that by some miracle we had arrived at the wrong destination, and there was someone else in Holden throwing a giant party.
"Yup," Blake replied, clicking his tongue.
"So we'll just wait here," I said, jabbing my thumb at Isabel (who seemed totally chill with waking up somewhere other than where she'd fallen asleep) and reaching out the window to smack the outside of Rachel's car, which I could now see was illegally parked against a red curb.
Great. Add that to the list of laws I had broken tonight.
"No," Blake said, his dark eyebrows pulling together and his lips curling down in a small scowl, "I need your help finding Alissa."
"I can't bring a baby into a party," I pointed out.
Blake rolled his eyes.
"She'll be fine. Chloe has dinner parties all the time. Isabel loves crowds."
"But what if..." I trailed off, searching for a scenario in which me staying in the car would be useful. "What if a robber comes and breaks into the car?"
"Then I'd rather the two of you were inside. You know, so the robber doesn't kill you or anything."
Damn. He had a point.
"But, what if some of those kids," I pointed at the teens loitering in the rose garden, "come over here and... um... throw up on the car?"
"I'll wash it."
"What if they key it?"
"I'll say I did it and pay for the touch-ups."
"What if they set it on fire?"
The corner of Blake's mouth pulled upward in a small smile.
"I have faith in our dear friends down at the Holden fire department," he said.
"How are they even going to get the fire truck in here when you're parked in the freaking red zone?" I demanded furiously, pointing at the red curb Blake had parked Rachel's car up against.
"They'll park in the middle of the street," Blake replied, seemingly oblivious to my growing insanity. "I've seen them do it a million times before. Besides, this'll be convenient for them."
"Convenient?" I repeated incredulously.
"Yeah, we parked next to a fire hydrant. I figure that'll be easier for them, in case anyone sets the car on fire."
He was mocking me now.
I could tell.
"But..." I spluttered out, getting increasingly desperate, "What if—oh! I know! What if these guys come and bust the party? You know, like some secret government agents or something? What if they come bust the party and they're looking for you? Don't you want me to be here," I gestured towards Rachel's car, "so I can start the car and be your getaway driver?"
Blake stared at me for a moment.
Then he blinked.
Then he spun around and started walking towards Ethan's house.
I let out a feeble moan and turned to Isabel.
"Your brother sucks," I muttered as I unbuckled her from her carseat.
"Wave-ree!" she exclaimed, delighted at the attention.
"Yeah, that's me," I huffed. "C'mon, kid."
I balanced Isabel on my hip and kicked the car door closed behind us, then followed after her idiot stepbrother.
As we grew closer to Ethan's Victorian-style mansion, I found it increasingly hard to ignore the fact that his house was lit up like an over-decorated Christmas tree. Every light inside had been turned on. I almost felt like Blake and I were walking down a long tunnel, and Ethan's house was a white light at the end.
The house was blinding, especially in contrast with the night sky above and all the other houses on the block, which appeared to be inhabited by a series of people with great talent for falling asleep to loud, overplayed pop music.
By the time the three of us made it up to the front door of Ethan's house, the song had switched to one of Justin Bieber's newer anthems.
"Okay," Blake shouted over the music. He turned back to face me, his hand resting on the front doorknob. "Here's the plan. We need to go find Jesse and Lena, then split up and try to find Alissa. Do you have your phone with you?"
"Phone!" Isabel cried, extending one chubby thumb and pinky finger in demonstration.
Oh, dear God.
"I don't have a phone," I admitted.
"You what?" Blake demanded, looking at me like I'd told him I only showered once a year.
"I left it in Alaska," I explained.
I decided not to tell him the reasons why I had left it, which were that I had very few friends back in Alaska, assumed I would never make any friends in Holden, and did not want to have to settle arguments between my parents over three-way calls. Thus, I decided I did not need, nor want, to have my phone with me.
"Fine," Blake huffed, "then we'll do this like they did in the Middle Ages."
"I'm pretty sure no one had to go on missions into wild teenage parties to rescue their drunk ex-girlfriends back then," I pointed out, even though I knew he was just making fun of me for not having a phone.
Blake narrowed his eyes at me.
"Watch it, Alaska," he warned.
"Oh, no!" I said in mock-terror. "An unoriginal nickname! I'm shaking."
Isabel giggled, and I decided that I wanted her to be my new honorary baby sister.
Blake scowled at me for another second.
"Come on," he grumbled, turning around and pushing open the front door.
I smirked to myself and hurried in after him.
Whatever confidence I had just gained from my small victory over Blake, however, quickly vanished when we stepped into Ethan's living room.
The area itself was nice, a huge room with a high ceiling and a colossal crystal chandelier hanging overhead, but it was packed with sweaty, bikini-clad, board-short-wearing bodies that were all jumping in rhythm to the Justin Bieber song being blasted through Ethan's surround-sound stereo system.
Over the music, I heard someone belch loudly from somewhere to my left, adding to the thick, heavy stench of alcohol that plagued the room. And it wasn't just loud, smelly and cramped in there. It felt like I had just stepped into a furnace.
This was hell.
"Nope!" I shouted over the music. "Nope, we're leaving."
I turned back towards the door. Isabel let out a little cry of protest.
"Party!" she exclaimed. "Part-tee!"
Before I could, once again, try convincing him to let me be his getaway driver and wait out in the quiet, spacious, air-conditioned car, Blake wrapped his fingers around my wrist and gave my arm a gentle tug. I was too stunned by the sudden skin-on-skin contact to protest, and instead began blushing like an idiot as we started to push our way through the mob of dancing teenagers, some of which had started bouncing up and down on the cushions of a sleek leather couch that looked more expensive than anything I had ever owned.
Several people stopped to watch us.
And my social anxiety had only a moment to take flight before I realized why.
"A baby!" someone gasped in delight.
"Oh my god, she's so cute."
"Look. At. Her. Cheeks."
By the time we made it to the kitchen, Blake still tugging me along with him, Isabel was positively basking in the attention, shooting gap-toothed grins at anyone who noticed her. The kitchen was blessedly emptier, but I barely had time to appreciate the fresh air before a pair of thin, freckled arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me into a bone-crunching bear hug.
"Lena!" I croaked in relief.
"What are you doing here?" Lena asked, releasing me from her arms and grabbing both of my shoulders so she could look at me. "And why do you have a baby?"
"We're partying, obviously," I deadpanned.
"Par-tee," Isabel intoned.
Lena let out a surprised laugh.
"Did Blake drag you both along?" she asked.
"Yup."
There was no point in lying, really.
"I swear, I'll cut off that kid's balls someday," Lena huffed. Then she cringed. "Sorry, Isabel."
On that note, Blake appeared at my side with Jesse at his heels. Blake smiled politely at Lena, but I knew he must have heard her chop-his-balls-off comment because he made sure Jesse was standing between them, like a human shield.
"Hey, Waverly!" Jesse greeted, his hazel eyes brightening and his freckles crinkling as he beamed at me. "And guest."
Isabel beamed at him.
"Hi Jesse," I replied, grinning back and trying hard not to think about Seventeen Magazine's prank number fifty-one, which I was sure Lena was still hoping we could execute. I, on the other hand, still didn't feel like donning a beret and lugging around a baguette just to pull some pathetic prank that a pair of second graders could've thought up, if said second graders were unusually knowledgeable about French culture.
We needed to do something more unexpected.
Like the Spanish Inquisition!
No one expects that.
I needed to talk to Lena.
"Have either of you seen Alissa?" Blake asked Jesse and Lena, interrupting my internal scheming.
The twins exchanged glances.
For a moment, I thought they were communicating telepathically, and I was super jealous that I didn't have a twin to do the same with. But then, they both opened their mouths to speak.
"Nope," Lena chirped at the same time that Jesse said, "She was with Ethan."
So much for twin telepathy.
Lena shot Jesse a vicious death-glare and jutted her elbow out so it connected with his ribcage. Jesse let out a high-pitched squeal of pain and clutched his side.
"What was that for?" he hissed.
"She's with Ethan?" Blake repeated.
The three of us turned to look over at Blake, our eyes all as wide as jumbo-sized pancakes. He was standing with his hands balled into fists by his sides, and he was clenching his jaw so tightly that a muscle on his cheek was ticking.
"But maybe she—" Lena started to attempt damage control, but it was too late. Blake had already grabbed the front of Jesse's white T-shirt, spun around, and marched off into the mob of people dancing in the living room.
Lena and I watched until Blake and Jesse had disappeared into the crowd.
"That went well," I shrugged.
"The list of people who are going to get their balls chopped off today just keeps growing," Lena mumbled, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at the spot where her brother had squeezed into the crowd.
"I'm still a bit confused," I admitted. "What's wrong with Alissa?"
Lena sighed and played with the footie of Isabel's pajamas.
"Aside from the usual? She came here to let Ethan know that she's done with their relationship," she explained.
"But then why—" I began to ask.
"Is she with Ethan right now?" Lena finished for me. "Because she's drunk. Alissa can't turn down a drink, and Ethan got some asswipe to offer her a beer. I swear to God, I turned my back on her for one second, and next thing I knew, she's giggling like a maniac and bouncing on that Louis Vuitton couch in the living room."
"Louis Vuitton couch?" I repeated.
So that's why it looked so expensive.
"Ethan's dad owns a chain of seafood restaurants," Lena explained.
"Wow," I said, wondering who else in Holden was filthy rich.
"Anyway, why did Blake drag you here?" Lena asked, frowning at Isabel and leaning back against the kitchen's marble countertops, which had become the foundations for a mountainous heap of crushed soda cans, half-empty potato chip bags, and uneaten chunks of pizza crust.
There was an architecturally impressive stack of plastic red cups constructed like a modernistic sculpture next to the sink.
"He needed a car," I told Lena, "so we had to take Rachel's."
Her jaw dropped. "You took your aunt's car?"
"I know," I groaned, pressing my forehead to Isabel's tiny shoulder. "I'm so dead."
"Wave-ree dead!" she repeated, with not a trace of concern in her voice.
"Yeah, kiddo," I sighed.
"So, you're going to drive Alissa home in Rachel's car? What if she, you know, pukes or something?" Lena asked, grimacing as she probably visualized the interior of Rachel's car splattered with Alissa's vomit.
"Then I'll send Blake the bill from the upholstery cleaners," I mumbled into my hands.
Lena laughed.
"Come on," she told me, still chuckling as she grabbed my arm, "let's go see if we can find Alissa before the boys do."
Together, Lena and I weaved through the kitchen and darted down a hallway filled with several couples engaged in heated make-out sessions (I shielded Isabel's eyes with my hand). When we reached the end of the hall, we found ourselves standing in a giant game room. The emerald green walls were lined with vintage-looking pinball machines, and in the center of the room were three large, mahogany pool tables.
The whole room screamed this family has too much money.
"How big is this house?" I asked, mostly to myself since I knew Lena wouldn't be able to hear me over the music, which Isabel was kicking her legs along to the beat of.
Lena stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck, trying to see if Alissa was anywhere across the room. When she sat back on her heels again, she was frowning.
"Let's try upstairs," she said.
I grabbed hold of her arm and steered us towards another hallway, this one much shorter than the last, that led back into the living room. The crowd parted for Isabel like the Red Sea for Moses.
Except Isabel didn't have a beard, and she was parting a mob of drunken teenagers instead of a large body of water.
"The baby's back! See, I told you there was a baby!" someone shouted.
We climbed the grand staircase and made our way to the second floor, which seemed just as crowded as the rest of the house. Lena and I stopped at the top of the stairs and found ourselves facing a dilemma; the hallway in front of us branched out, one winding to the left and one curling to the right.
"You two go that way," Lena told me, pointing down the left hallway, "and I'll take the other hall. Meet me back here in three minutes unless one of us finds Alissa. If you find her, stay with her and I'll come find the both of you."
"Got it," I agreed.
With that, we turned towards the two hallways.
Lena went down the right, and I went left.
"Alissa?" I called.
The hallway was long and the walls were painted pale cream. Hung along the walls, at four-foot intervals, were professional-looking family photos. Some of them were small portraits, but most were large group shots of ten or eleven people. If I hadn't been on a mission to find Alissa, I would have stopped and tried to pick out which of the boys in the photos was Ethan.
But I had more important things to worry about.
The hall, aside from being ridiculously long, was also lined with an enormous number of doors, most of which were bedrooms occupied by couples making out. I did pass one bathroom, though, and had to stop and make sure none of the brunettes standing there and waiting in line for their turn to grab the porcelain toilet seat and heave were Alissa.
Nope, not there.
I groaned and kept walking.
"Come on, Alissa!" I called, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
"Come out, come out!" Isabel added helpfully.
One of the doors further down the hallway popped open and a tall, olive-skinned guy wearing a trucker hat backwards stuck his head out to frown at me. No doubt, I had interrupted his hookup. I smiled sheepishly and ignored his quizzical look at Isabel.
"Alissa!" I groaned, "Come on!"
"Come out, come out!" Isabel repeated.
"Olly, olly, oxen free!" I tried.
Isabel giggled.
Another door, this one much closer to me, swung open and a short, tan girl with long, bright red hair stuck her head out. She stared at me for a moment, taking in my pale skin, oversized shorts, and the toddler in my arms.
"Did you bring a baby to a house party?" she demanded.
It seemed like a rhetorical question, given that it wasn't like Isabel would've come on her own.
"Have you seen Alissa Hastings?" I asked instead.
"Lissa?" The ginger raised an eyebrow at me, again looking down at Rachel's shorts that I had tied around my waist with a piece of ribbon saved from one of last year's Christmas presents. "Are you her friend?"
"More like acquaintance," I muttered.
"She just went downstairs, like, two minutes ago," the ginger told me. "So, seriously, is the baby like a political statement, or something?"
I had my lead. That's all I needed.
I spun around and hurried back to the top of the grand staircase.
I looked down at the mob in the living room for a second, scanning the crowd for any sign of Alissa, before I heard thunderous footsteps coming from the hallway I had just been down. I turned just in time to see several large, shirtless guys bounding through the hallway, laughing and throwing toilet paper rolls at everyone who threatened to step in their way. I threw myself flat against the wall just in time to dodge them, shielding Isabel's tiny body with my own, but didn't manage to escape the snowstorm of toilet paper.
"Assholes!" I shouted, plucking a sheet of toilet paper off of my head as I watched them continue down the hallway.
"Ass-oles," Isabel repeated solemnly.
"No, no," I blurted. "Don't say—oh, this is just getting worse."
I let my head drop. I had a piece stuck to the bottom of my flip-flop. I leaned against the wall, balancing Isabel in one arm, and reached down to peel it off.
When I stood upright again, I saw Lena coming back down the hallway to the right.
I gasped.
Like me, she was covered in toilet paper. But Lena had a little bit more trouble with anger management than I did, which was probably why she had grabbed one of the shirtless toilet paper throwers by his ear and was dragging him along beside her.
"Ow! Ow!" the shirtless guy yelled, stumbling along beside Lena and bending down so his ear was at her height. "Please, I'm sorry! Just let me—ow!" The guy started swatting at Lena's hand, but she had an iron grip on his ear.
"Lena!" I shouted.
She spotted me and, with a wild look in her hazel eyes, nodded towards the guy she had reduced to a blubbering baby.
"I caught this fucker down the hallway," she informed me, twisting at his ear.
"Ow! You're insane!" the guy whimpered.
"Lena, let him go," I said. "And don't swear in front of the kid. She picks up everything. Look, I just ran into this girl who told me she saw Alissa head downstairs a couple minutes ago."
"Awesome!" Lena cried.
"Yeah! Now let's go!" I told her.
"Come out, come out!" Isabel supplied.
Lena released her grip on the shirtless guy.
The poor fellow clapped his hand over his ear, which had turned bright red, and whimpered in pain. Lena took a large step towards him and he flinched, but was unable to make a run for it because there was a wall behind him. Lena stood up on her tiptoes and narrowed her eyes at the buff, brawny shirtless guy who was now cowering before her like a frightened five-year-old girl.
"I'm not done with you," Lena whispered menacingly.
With that, she turned and started down the crowded staircase.
The shirtless guy stared after her for a second, still clutching his ear and keeping his back pressed flat against the wall, then looked over at me with his eyes wide.
"Why do you have a baby?" he asked, as if this was the weirdest part of his night.
"I don't have time for this," I mumbled. "Our condolences on the loss of your balls."
Then I spun around and hurried down the stairs after Lena, the testicle-chopper.
By the time I managed to reach Lena, we were at the bottom of the stairs. The living room seemed to have become even more crowded in the short time Lena and I had been upstairs; now the crowd was so dense that I decided to hover on the edge to keep Isabel safe.
"Lena!" I shouted.
Judging by the look on her face, I could tell she wanted to get out of there, too. As we started a loop around the crowd towards the kitchen, the song changed. For a moment, we were serenaded by the cute, sugary sweet, country-pop voice of Taylor Swift. Then, suddenly, the bass started thumping like a jackhammer.
Leave it to Ethan to play a techno remix of a Taylor Swift song.
"Do you see Alissa?" I asked over the abomination of music.
"No," Lena called back over her shoulder.
I rode up onto my tiptoes and tried to look out over the crowd. I was taller than just about every girl in the room, but the crowd was so thick and there were so many stupid tall, tan, gorgeous guys that I couldn't see very far.
Speaking of tall, tan, gorgeous guys... where was Blake?
"Where are Blake and Jesse?" I asked.
Lena turned to frown at me over her shoulder and pointed to her ear. She couldn't hear me. I took a deep breath, preparing myself to shout.
But then the music stopped.
I sighed in relief. My ears rang a little from the thundering bass of the Taylor Swift techno remix, but at least the torture had ended. I looked over to see that Lena, too, was grinning. I opened my mouth, ready to ask her for the third time where Blake and Jesse had gone, but was interrupted as a tall, bulky boy in Spongebob print swim trunks climbed up onto the Louis Vuitton couch.
He was well over six and a half feet tall, and probably weighed twice as much as I did at bare minimum. Everyone turned to watch him as he held up a meaty hand and pointed to the small circle that was forming on the other side of the living room.
"Fight!" he bellowed.
And then, all hell broke loose.
The kids that were standing around me, no longer upset over the sudden disappearance of the music, quickly rushed forward towards the scene of the fight.
"Kick his ass, Ethan!" one guy cheered.
"That's unfair! Home court advantage!" another protested.
"Anyone got some popcorn?"
I hugged Isabel tight to my chest and turned to locate Lena in the hysteria. I saw her, now several feet away, hurrying towards me with wide, frantic eyes. We reached a silent, mutual agreement almost instantly, and together we turned and sought out high ground on the stairs.
I already knew who was fighting, even before Lena and I were high enough to see the two grunting, grappling boys in the middle of the circle over the crowd. Because, really, who did I know who had a history of starting fights with Ethan? And who, therefore, would be the most likely person to start a brawl at Ethan's party?
Ethan's nemesis, of course.
And, as fate would have it, my ride home.
Talk about déjà vu.