Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,53

of guilt washes over me when I think about the fact that we were lurking around in her yard not too long ago. She’s smiling especially wide at Asher until her eyes meet mine, and then travel down to our hands. I free my hand of Asher’s, having forgotten it was still there. I suppose being dragged from room to room will do that to you. Like Stockholm syndrome for your hands.

I wave my previously captive hand at the group in front of us, trying to prove that I am not, in fact, a hermit.

“This is Sidney,” Asher says as he pulls a chair out for me. I look at him, shocked by the gesture, and he winks at me. “Pancakes,” he whispers, before turning back to the table. “This is Trevor, Hannah, and you know Lindsay.”

“Hi.” I sit down in the chair Asher still has a hand on, and he sits down next to me.

Asher looks past me to Lindsay. “I thought you were up at school for the summer.”

Lindsay sets a handful of cards on the table in front of her. “I am, but I’m home most weekends. Not many freshmen stay for the summer, so it’s pretty dead.”

I take another sip of my drink and remind myself that being at a table full of strangers and Lindsay is still better than wandering around in the house or sitting alone at the bonfire until Kara gets here. I take another big gulp of my punch.

In front of us, the table isn’t covered in the cards or other cliché drinking games I was expecting. It’s a giant game board. An intricate map with mountains and lakes and rivers. Little dotted lines to show borders. There are silver, gold, black, and bronze pieces scattered around the board, but I don’t know what any of them are. I have no idea what game they’re playing, but anyone could tell what kind of game this is. It’s a war game. I look at Asher and smile. Game on.

Asher

“Is it cool if we play as a team, since she’s new?” I ask, knowing no one is going to argue. Everyone at the table has played before, and also everyone is drinking, so it’s not the best time to introduce a virgin to the mix.

Sidney’s elbow pokes me in the side. Her voice is soft. “We’re going to start in the middle of the game? It looks like they already started.”

“Last weekend,” Trevor says, beating me to it. “We probably could have finished if this one”—he jabs a finger at me—“hadn’t decided to get trashed.”

“One time.” I shake my head at him. “I said I was sorry.”

He smiles. Trevor loves giving me crap. “I know, I know, you were having a rough night. You were having g—” I cough and pull Trevor out of his drunken ramble. He looks at Sidney and then me and finishes clumsily with, “We forgive you.”

I met Trevor two summers ago at a party, and that’s mostly where we hang out. Once in a while his folks take us out on the big lake in their boat, so we can wakeboard. He knows just enough about me to be awkward around someone like Sidney, who would kill for incriminating information about me.

Sidney sets down the little figurine she was examining in front of her and looks at me curiously. “Why were you having a rough night?” It’s such a normal question, but it sounds utterly foreign coming out of her mouth. It makes me glance down at her cup to see how far gone she is. It’s still half full.

“I don’t think I actually said that.”

“Oh, you did,” Trevor says, taking another sip from his cup.

I take the gold piece from in front of Sidney and put it back in its spot. “You can’t move these, everything is in play right now.” I pick up her hands from the table and set them in her lap, suddenly aware of the fact that I just touched her thigh. “No touching,” I say, pretending to scold her, but also reminding myself.

She gets quiet, and maybe we’re done talking about my drunken night. “This isn’t what I imagined you doing at parties,” Sidney says. She starts to pick up her hands, then sets them back down, as if she suddenly remembered she wasn’t allowed to move them. I want to laugh but I don’t, because if Sidney thinks she can “out nice” me, she’s so wrong. Instead, I look at the small