That Night Read Free Page B

Ryan by his truck and having a smoke, when a car pulled up so close it almost hit me. Shauna, in her white Sprint.
    “Hey, bitch,” she said as she got out. Cathy and Kim climbed out of the backseat, Rachel from the front. They all circled me.
    “What’s your problem?” I said.
    “You’re my problem,” Shauna said. The girls laughed. I glanced over at them. Rachel had a mean scowl on her face, and Cathy had one of her big stupid smiles. Great. Nothing like being a chew toy for some catty bitches.
    “I haven’t done anything to you,” I said. “Not my fault Ryan doesn’t like skanks.”
    She got right in my face, so close I could smell her perfume, something fruity, like tangerine.
    “You better watch your mouth.”
    “Or you’ll what?” I said.
    She reached out and gave me a shove. I stumbled into the truck.
    I dropped my smoke and pushed her back, hard. Then we were going at it, fists flying, pulling hair. I could hear kids yelling as they ran over, cheering us on. The girls were screaming, “Kick her ass, Shauna!” Shauna was bigger than me and had the upper hand, but I managed to get free and was about to punch her in the face. Then an arm was around my waist, lifting me up.
    “Cut it out,” Ryan’s voice said in my ear.
    I was still spitting mad, wiping hair out of my face as he sat me down on my feet. Another guy was pulling Shauna away. Her friends were shouting insults at me. Ryan hustled me into his truck, threw my packsack in the back.
    He started up the truck and tried to reverse out. Shauna was still standing by her car.
    “Why don’t you let Toni finish her own fights?” she yelled.
    He yelled out the window, “Shut up, Shauna.”
    She gave him the finger.
    *   *   *
    We went back to Ryan’s place. His mom was working another night shift and his dad, Gary, as he told me to call him, was sitting bleary-eyed in front of the TV.
    He glanced up as we came in. “Hand me another beer, Ry.”
    Ryan gave him one and said, “We’re going to my room.”
    His dad winked. “Have a good time.”
    That made me cringe, but it was nice not to be hassled, not that his dad didn’t give Ryan a hard time about other shit. Most of Gary’s arrests had been bar brawls or stealing stuff when he was drunk. Ryan said his dad didn’t have sticky fingers, he had whiskey fingers. When he was really drunk, he’d get rough with Ryan. They’d come to blows a few times this last year—now that Ryan was bigger and tougher, his dad seemed to want to take him down even more, prove he was still the man. Gary had a job as a logger, which was seasonal, but Ryan did all the chores around the house and helped his mom out. I don’t know why she didn’t leave Ryan’s dad. Her name was Beth; she seemed like a nice woman, worked a lot but was still caring, always smoothing Ryan’s hair back, asking him if he’d had enough dinner, needed money for school. And you could tell she really liked her son by the way she laughed at his jokes and looked at him proudly.
    We went to Ryan’s room and I threw myself onto his bed while he turned on his ghetto blaster.
    “You can’t let Shauna get to you like that,” he said.
    “She started it.” I’d told Ryan the basics of the fight on the way to his house.
    “So what? Ignore her.”
    “Right, like you ignore someone who’s giving you a hard time?”
    “It’s different with guys, usually when someone beats the crap out of someone, the other one backs off, but Shauna gets off on making you mad, so you’re just giving her what she wants. If you ignore her, you’ll piss her off.”
    I thought about what he’d said, staring up at the ceiling. It was true that the more I reacted, the more Shauna seemed to enjoy it.
    “Maybe you’re right. Maybe she’ll run out of steam eventually.”
    He dropped down beside me, turned his baseball cap around backward with a cheeky smile, and started nuzzling my neck. He slid his body over mine and reached under my shirt, his