stillinstyle

[stillinstyle]

Nano Day 6.2

Outside the storm had quieted to a mere downpour. Gentry bounced (and Nate trudged) upon the massive patch of field into which Gentry had somehow carved a long, clean line, swollen with mud and rainwater. Gentry grinned proudly as he gestured toward his handiwork. A line of people had formed at the head, all waiting their turn to dash into the mud and slide all the way down. Boys were whooping and laughing, and the girls stood to the side, mostly, clustered around a gold-studded umbrella that must have belonged to Gloriana while they twittered and egged the guys on. “Come on,” Gentry said, as Michael Starrise skidded down the trench, sending a spray of water behind him. “This is pretty impressive.” “Very,” Nate said drily. “I can’t wait to write about this in your college recommendation letters. ‘Gentry Villiere may be roughly the height of one of Santa’s elves, but he is as impressive of ten men twice his stature.” Gentry punched him in the shoulder, maybe a little harder than he needed to. “You’re just mad about your sweater still.” “Not ‘just’. You interrupted a very hot date I was about to enjoy with Abigail Adams.” “I’ll send my apologies to her memorial,” Gentry said. “Now, you have exactly twenty seconds to pout, at the end of which either you will join the fray of your own volition or I will push you into it.” “I truly hate you.” “You love me.” “I love you, but in the most hateful way possible.” “Time’s up,” Gentry announced, and Nate took off and let Gentry chase him around the scene three times before he finally jumped into the mud. Nate was laughing by the end of it, Gentry noticed, and pride swelled in him. No one was a better at friends than him.

***

It didn’t take long for the mud slide to expand out in either direction, until the entire field was a sodden, soggy, muddy mess. Tart, who joined them after practice, produced a ball, and the game had evolved from slipping and sliding into a full-blown, shirts versus skins game of “get the ball and try to avoid being tackled for as long as you can” the rules of which Gentry loudly and enthusiastically created as the game went on. “That’s three points!” he shouted decisively over the groans of the shirts team. He was the skins captain, because like most straight boys, Nate had noticed, he had absolutely no qualms with being shirtless, or pantless, or anything-less. This was another straight boy quality Nate had never understood and never been able to emulate in spirit. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, come on. We’re men of honor. We acknowledge that leapfrogging over two grown men is worth three points at least, right?” Nate was doubled over and grinning, hands on his knees while he tried to catch his breath. Even with all his pouting and protestations, he loved this - being outside, running and tackling and catching and panting, the burn in his legs and his lungs. He had always had a competitive streak, and in the last two years, since coming to the Academy it only grown more fierce. When it came to sports, he might not have been a soccer star like Tart, or a gymnast like Gentry, but something about it still resonated in him. There was something primal about it, a deep, pounding instinct to step onto the field of battle and win. If he thought about it a little, Nate would have to admit that he was addicted to victory. If he thought about it a little more, he would have to admit there was more to it than scoring more points than his opponents. Sports was something he was supposed to reject twice over - once as the studious bookworm his friends gave him no end of grief over being, and again as a certified, card-carrying closeted gay boy. He wasn’t sure how much of the reason he liked sports was because he just liked sports, and how much was because he was trying to prove something. That he was just as manly as anyone else. That he was just as normal. “All right, all right,” Michael Starrise said, snapping Nate out of his thoughts. “We’re like forty points behind here. How do we catch up?” Gentry looked out over the field and studied it with an intensity he had never applied to a textbook. Or any book, for that matter. “Oh geez,” Tart muttered, wiping the rain from his face. Nate followed his gaze until he saw what Tart had. Lark had joined the girls, standing under an umbrella of her own, arms crossed, her hair pulled into a curly ponytail. She was smirking at them. When she noticed Tart’s gaze, she made a show of cheering for the other team. “Got it,” Gentry said. All we have to do is get possession of the ball, tackle their flank guards, take it back to our territory, and then carry it to their goal zone. That’ll be like ten points at least. Maybe more, depending on how much panache we can manage.” He looked at Tart. “You’re gonna have to run interception, Tart, and then get the ball to me. Can you do it?” “Definitely,” Tart nodded with new determination. Gentry assigned roles to everyone else on the team - Nate was on Flank Tackling duty with Michael Starrise - and they broke with a loud grunt and moved to assume their positions. Across the field, Michael’s older brother Rafe spun the ball on his finger smugly, a crown of water spraying out around it. Lark gave another cheer for the shirts team, and Nate could all but hear Tart growl. Gloriana - the designated Master of Ceremonies - blew the whistle, and everyone took off. Nate imagined that the scene must have looked very much like a recently kicked pile of ants. Bodies blew around with no direction in a stampede of pandemonium. Rain pounded on Nate’s face as he ran through the field. He had to put every ounce of concentration into keeping his balance, and even then managed to slip and fall three times. His eyes were trained on his target, a bony sophomore named Tristan Lott, so he didn’t know the source of the screams of delight and horror until after it was too late. Gentry had managed to punch the ball out of Rafe’s hand and launched it across the field to where Tart was waiting, wide open. Just before it fell into Tart outstretched hands, though, a figure darted in front and snatched it. The rain made everything too blurry to see in real time, but once Nate had had a chance to shake the water out of his eyes, he saw Tart standing there, empty handed and mouth agape, as the ball streaked across the field, cradled in Lark’s arms. She zipped left and right, ducked and jumped and didn’t slip even one time as she darted from one side of the field to the other and back, her wet ponytail bouncing back and forth the whole time. The shirts team exploded in cheers, the skins in groans, and even Gloriana clapped and hollared - gracefully, of course - in delight. As their team regrouped, Lark swaggered up to them, the ball propped under her arm. He knew Lark had just humiliated their team, but in that moment, as she stomped across the field with ten Gentrys worth of confidence, he worshiped her. “So close, Big Man,” she said, checking the ball at Tart, who caught it at the exact moment it pounded into his stomach. “If you’d caught it, I might have gone out with you. Too bad. I don’t date losers.” Before Tart could think of a response, she turned around sharply, spraying them all with water from her ponytail, walked off the field, picked up her umbrella, and left. “Wow,” Gentry said, eyes trailing her as she left. “She is a nightmare.”   “She’s wonderful,” Tart breathed. Nate looked at the ball, sitting sad and forgotten in the mud, and sighed. He hated losing.

*Bleachers*

“You have no manners,” Nate said, annoyed. Gentry snorted through a mouth full of nachos he had just stolen from Nate, the pilfering of which had sparked Nate’s accusation. “Manners? Nate, my buddy, my brother, my sweet, naive, purveyor of Austen novels and all and sundry Regency era culture, I know more about manners than Fitzwilliam Darcy could ever have hoped to know. I don’t blame you for now knowing, because you have not had the horrifying, very much adulterated pleasure of knowing Aurora Villiere, but trust me, I know about manners.” Even the word manners was enough to make Gentry cringe. He knew manners, the kind of manners that needed to be cataloged in hardcover books with broken spines and studied under the bony weight of a spindly finger and warm, dry breath pressed against your neck. He knew manners, and he rejected them. “It’s my expertise in the rules of manners that equips me so boldly to break them.” Nate sniffed and ate another nacho. Nate pulled his phone out and checked his e-mail again, then, finding nothing new since the e-mail he’d received three hours ago promising to increase the size of his member, clicked it off and put it back into his pocket. Tart nudged him with his shoulder. “You’ll get it,” he said with cemented certainty. “Stop driving yourself crazy and watch the game.” “What, like you’re watching the game?” “I am very much watching the game,” Tart said. Gentry waited three seconds, counting down until Tart spoke again, right on cue. “I mean, it’s just crazy that football is the National Pastime when It is literally just thirty seconds of action, followed by like five minutes men in tights huddling around each other, rinse, repeat. At least soccer is fast-paced.” “I think baseball is the national pastime, actually,” Nate offered. “Whatever,” Tart said. “They’re both about as exciting as a routine dorm inspection.” “Do I need to remind you that you are the only reason we came?” Gentry piped up. “You. Thomas Amos Robert Todd Juniper the Third.” He shook his finger at Tart angrily. “I had big plans for tonight. We were supposed to break into the chapel and climb up to the bell tower to hang my poster, remember?” “We’ll still do it,” Tart insisted. “After the game. I promise.” Gentry was not satisfied. “I spent the entire week painting that bed sheet. It took me three whole days to perfect the zits on Duncan’s grotesque, bulbous nose. I missed Zombies Alive for that.” “That’s your fault,” Nate offered. The traitor. “You exaggerated the zits.” “Well the nose is true to life,” Gentry said. Nate nodded. “Instead, someone heard that a certain demonic siren of a girl was coming to the homecoming game, and just like that, all my plans got thrown out with the trash.” “We will still do the banner,” Tart said. “You know, I think your anti-football animosity is actually just thinly disguised anti-Rafe Starrise animosity,” Gentry went on, reaching for another nacho. Nate slapped his hand away, and Gentry shot him a feigned look of betrayal. “Probably unfounded, though. If Lark doesn’t like you, she definitely doesn’t like that guy. Yesterday he asked Theo Banks how ink comes out of pens. Plus, he smells hardcore like Axe spray. Like, the extra-douchey scent.” “And yet,” Nate said, looking down at the bottom of the bleachers, where Lark was leaning over the railing, ponytail blowing in the October breeze and cheering as Rafe Starrise posed. “And yet,” Tart echoed. “That doesn’t mean anything,” Gentry insisted. “He’s the quarterback. Everyone cheers for the quarterback. Plus, he’s not even that good.” “He’s scored like eight times,” Nate pointed out. “But it’s the Homecoming game. That doesn’t count. Everyone knows you pick the worst team to play against in the Homecoming game. You have to set up a guaranteed win, or else all the big budget school donors start bitching, and then the school doesn’t get that jumbotron Headmaster Brakes has been talking about for the last three years.” “I would ask how you know so much about fundraising,” Tart said, “but I guess I already know the answer.” Gentry groaned. He had spent the whole summer standing next to his father, nodding like a puppet and talking to rich old white ghouls. ‘Oh, yes, of course I think the alligator sausage crisis in Louisiana deserves immediate attention, and I know my father does too. He’ll be the very best governor that’s ever existed.’ And then just grinning like an idiot while they write out a twenty-five thousand dollar check. “The bastard’s gonna win, too.” “Unfortunate,” Nate said. “So unfortunate. The Baudelaires know nothing of misfortune compared the minorities of Louisiana once they realize they have a literal plantation owner running the state.” The crowd exploded in cheers as Rafe completed a ninth touchdown-winning throw. Tart’s shoulders slumped. Gentry shot a dirty look at Lark. He was getting a lot of Dirty Look practice tonight. He bounced from one foot to the other and blew into his hands. There was something so unendurably dull about watching football games in the bleachers. It was so still. “I’m gonna go get my own nachos,” he announced suddenly, more for an excuse to move than anything. “And I will be bringing back nothing for you, Nate, because you are acting very selfish tonight.” “Hot chocolate, please,” Nate said back, not taking his eyes off the game. Gentry glared at the profile of his face, and the way his messy brown hair fell in his stupid, nacho-hoarder eyes. “Fine,” he said. “But you owe me at least three episodes of Zombies Alive.” He pushed his way to the steps before Nate could turn down his terms. The next episodes, he knew from people’s posts on Facebook, were going to be particularly bloody. Nate was gonna hate them. It took a long time for Gentry to make his way down to the bottom of the bleachers, what with all the obligatory fist pounding he had to engage in on the way down. It was a hard life, Gentry thought, but someone had to bear the burden of the people’s love, and it wasn’t like Nate was gonna do it. His thoughts turned to the Lost Boys, the other two of which, Gentry thought mournfully, were a mess. After two years of starry-eyed crushing, Tart had reached new levels of obsession with Lark Clarentine, an obsession that Gentry found it fully impossible to understand. She drove Gentry crazy with the smug, superior way she trotted around the school, and Tart drove him doubly crazy with the dopey, moon-eyed way he let her jerk him around. The worst thing about it all was that Gentry knew that Tart’s determination wasn’t going to let up until he either won Lark over or died trying. Gentry knew which one he was putting money on. And then there was Nate, and Nate’s big revelation. That, Gentry told himself, was too big to think about. He ordered nachos and three hot chocolates, then slipped into the shadows on the far side of the bleachers before pulling the flask out of the pocket of Tart’s letterman jacket. He’d grabbed the jacket on the way out - he liked the way it smelled, like Tart’s soap and deodorant, the way Tart smelled when he hugged him - but the flask had been premeditated. It was the only way he was going to get through three hours of mind-numbing Lark talk. He made sure to put extra in one cup, and pressed his thumb into the cap so he’d remember which one it was and give it to Nate. When he turned around, he ran full-on into Duncan Blank. One of the cups - the one with the extra alcohol, Gentry noticed, because of course - fell to the ground and exploded, spraying warm chocolate milk and Bailey’s all over the ground and narrowly missing Gentry’s pants. “Dude, what the fuck?” He demanded, glaring up at Duncan, who had grown taller over the summer, Gentry noted sourly. Duncan was glaring back at him with narrowed eyes. “Jesus, Blank, do you always have to be where you’re not wanted? Actually, come to think of it, I guess that’s everywhere.” Gentry wanted to pat himself on the back for that one. “Sorry,” Duncan sneered. Gentry did not think he was sorry at all. “It’s hard to see things below eye level. You might consider high heels next time.” “Probably your huge potato of a nose blocks you view,” Gentry retorted. “You know, I know your family’s dirt poor, but I’m sure you can find some kind of charity that’ll bankroll a nose job. There’s gotta be dozens of nonprofits that specialize in helping the deformed.” “Very clever,” Duncan snapped. “It must have taken you a long time to come up with that one. How much of your free time do you spend obsessing over me and my nose?” “A proportional amount.” Duncan narrowed his eyes and sniffed. “What are you doing down here, anyway, Villiere? Is that alcohol I smell? On school grounds? That’s grounds for expulsion, if I remember the handbook correctly.” “Found someone to teach you how to read?” Gentry asked. “Color me impressed.” “Awfully bold to someone who could have you kicked out of school.” Gentry laughed. “Kicked out of school? Blank, I am not you, okay? My mother did not have to come here and give Headmaster Brakes a blow job to try to get me in here.” Duncan clenched a fist and growled, and Gentry smirked. He loved winning. “You probably jerked off in a building named after my grandfather. If you even can jerk off. Have they dropped yet?” The more Duncan’s hands shook, the more powerful Gentry felt. “Huh. Well, just wait a couple of years, buddy. You’ll get there someday, maybe.” “What about your little buddy?” Duncan demanded. “All I have to do is find something on him. Do you think Brakes will have to think long about kicking him out?” Gentry felt his ears start to turn hot. Duncan was talking out of his ass, Gentry knew it, and anyway Nate was as clean as they came. Duncan could hire Olivia Pope to find dirt on Nate and she’d come up empty-handed. Except… Couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t leave Duncan unchecked to go snooping into Nate’s secrets. Besides, with nasty little beta males like Duncan Blank, intimidation was the most effective. Gentry popped the lid off one of the cups of spiked hot chocolate and dumped it over Duncan’s head. “Go find a teacher now, Duncan,” Gentry said, stepping back and surveying his work. Duncan was spluttering, and pawing at his eyes. His hair separated into matted clumps as the hot chocolate soaked into them. “My advice, though, would be to head home and take a shower. I know it’s not your habit, but you should make another exception for this one.” Duncan’s eyes blazed with pure loathing, and he started shivering as the chocolate soaked into his ratty old t-shirt in the chilly October night. “You asshole,” he spat quietly through chattering teeth. “I hate you.” “I consider that one of my best qualities,” Gentry said as he strutted past him, then turned around, to dig one last knife into Duncan. “You tend to drag people down when you like them. Ask Lark.” He walked away, leaving Duncan Blank shivering beneath the bleachers, then took a deep, satisfying sip from the remaining cup of hot chocolate. “What’s got you looking so happy all of a sudden?” Tart asked when Gentry returned to the bleachers. Gentry shrugged. “I guess football is more fun than I thought.”

[stillinstyle]

Nano Day 3

With my buddies out of the picture and no drink in my hand, I felt more out of place then ever, so I decided to do what any good, faithful friend would have done in that situation - wait an appropriate amount of time, then sneak on over to where Tart and Lark were talking, close enough to eavesdrop but not close enough to look like a creepy stalker who collected his roommate’s shed body hair in the shower. Yeah, I complained all the time about Tart’s constant fixation on Lark Clarentine, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t invested in his attempts to win the girl. Plus, I told myself, if he ever got her to agree to go out with him, we might get a three day hiatus from the mooning. It did not take me very long to realize that it was not going well. “I don’t even know why you’re wasting your time,” Lark was saying. Her tone was so bored there was no way it wasn’t affected. No one, in any situation, sounds that bored without trying. I know this for certain because I made Gentry sit through a twenty-five minute practice run through of my science fair project last year, and even he didn’t manage to sound as utterly disinterested as Lark did. “I feel like I’ve made it pretty clear, even to someone as thick-headed and, frankly, slow as you, that I am one girl you will not be adding to your little collection.” “Collection?” Tart spluttered. “Lark, it’s not like that, okay? I don’t have any kind of collection. I’ve barely dated anyone. I’m not this playboy or whatever.” Lark looked pointedly at the kisses on his cheeks. They started to turn pink. “What, this? This isn’t…we’re just playing a game. It was Gentry’s idea. You know, see which one of can get the most girls to kiss him by the end of the party.” “Fun,” Lark said dryly. “And not at all misogynistic.” “No, no, it’s not…I mean, if it’s misogynistic I didn’t realize…it was just a stupid game, it’s not like these are like, real or anything.” Tart took a deep breath. I noticed his cup trembling a little in my hand, and was struck by how nervous he was. “Can I start over, actually? I’m gonna start over.” “By all means,” Lark crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. “Thrill me.” “I’m glad you’re here tonight,” Tart said. “I watched every episode of Madam President this summer - that’s your favorite show, right? I heard you talking about it last semester and - I mean, I did other stuff this summer too, not, like, just lamely sat there and watched a show about a woman President…not that that would be lame. Or even if it is, you can think I’m lame. I don’t mind being lame if it’ll get you to talk to me or…whatever.” Tart was rambling again, which was his go-to move when he was wracked with nerves, but from the outside I noticed something Tart probably didn’t. As he went on making a fool out of himself, Lark’s brow had softened, and her arms had relaxed. She wasn’t smiling - definitely wasn’t smiling - but she wasn’t glaring anymore, either. When it came to Lark and Tart, that was a huge improvement. “You watched Madam President?” she asked. Tart nodded. “Uh, yeah, I mean…yeah, I watched it. A few times, actually. I could probably put up a pretty good show in a round of Madam President trivia.” Lark’s eyebrow cocked up. “There are twelve seasons of that show.” “Well…yeah.” “You watched twelve seasons of a show I liked for…what reason, exactly?” Tart shrugged, but his cheeks turned so red Hannah Bledsoe’s kiss faded away like a chameleon. “I was hoping to have something to talk to you about.” Lark stared. “That’s kind of pathetic.” Tart laughed. “Yeah. I’m kind of pathetic.” And then, miracle of miracles, Lark Clarentine laughed - actually laughed. At Tart. Well, not at Tart - she’d done that plenty of times - but with Tart. I pumped my fist. “All right,” Lark said. “What did you think of Madam President.” A voice honked out from the crowd behind her. “Lark, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.” I knew that voice. I heard that voice in my nightmares. We all did. It belonged to Duncan Blank. Tart’s face darkened immediately. “Hey Duncan,” Lark said, spinning around so fast her hair whipped Tart in the face. Lark’s voice had risen an octave or two, and her ears were turning red. She looked like she’d just got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I didn’t think you were coming.” Duncan scowled at her, and shot Tart a look so venomous it should have made him wither right on the spot. “Well I wasn’t going to,” Duncan said, “for obvious reasons. But I didn’t want to leave my best friend to just rot in this swamp of idiots. Stupidity is catching, you know.” Tart’s free hand was clenched in a fist, and a thin sheen of sweat was slicking across his forehead. “Guess that would make you patient zero,” he spat. “Oh, look,” Duncan said. “The king of the apes. Where are the rest of your little trained monkeys, Tart?” “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘friends’ actually,” Tart said. His voice had taken on the cold and cutting tone that only Duncan Blank could draw out of him. It fit poorly on my ordinarily kind friend. “And don’t bother pointing at Lark. I said friends, not charitable providers.” “Enough,” Lark said, and I couldn’t help but think how unfair it was that she was pointing the arrow of her anger at Tart, when Duncan had clearly started it. Duncan wasn’t going to be the one to finish it, though. I knew that for sure. Tart may have been willing to make himself look like an idiot for Lark, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else do it for him, least of all Duncan. I sighed and settled in to watch the whole scene play out, like a song I didn’t really enjoy but knew all the words to anyway. “Yeah, Tart,” Duncan said, waving his hand like he was shooing away a bug. “Go play with your little buddies. Maybe if you ask really nicely, one of them will give you a blow job.” I winced, and so did Duncan. He had made a fatal error, and he knew it. “Funny you should mention that,” Tart said, pulling out his phone. “Because I recall a certain picture making its way around the school…when was it? Oh yeah, right before the summer vacation. Let’s see if I can find it.” “Tart,” Lark warned, then turned to Duncan. “Duncan, come on, let’s go. We don’t have to talk to this idiot. Come dance with me.” But Duncan was frozen in place, his face frozen into a gray and seething mask of loathing so utterly perfect it would have made Thomas Jefferson look like Hamilton’s fairy godmother. “Oh, here it is!” Tart said, flipping his phone around and shoving it in Duncan’s face. I didn’t have to see what was on the screen. I already knew. We all did. It had been Gentry’s idea - these kind of things were always Gentry’s idea, and the more antsy, anxious, and pent up he was, the more extreme his schemes became, and the end of the year always represented the boiling point for him. Gentry’s mischief always pushed the line, but if there was ever a time he went too far, it was last year. Duncan was notoriously…awkward, and midway through last year someone noticed that they never saw him shower. Not after gym, not in the morning before class, and not in the evening before lights out, either. Most people went the obvious route when it came to weaponizing this information by making up nicknames that had to do with Body Odor, but Gentry took it a step further. Look, I don’t know why Gentry has it out so bad for Duncan. He’s a little strange, sure, and definitely not the friendliest guy, but Gentry - our Gentry, the same guy who spent a full three months last year rehabilitating a baby duckling he found sick and abandoned in the woods, who named it Goof and literally fed it from a baby bottle - just can’t leave him alone. Duncan antagonizes us his own fair share, but at this point, I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, and I’m not sure I wanted to. The week leading up to the Academic Awards at the end of last year was a pretty big one, and tensions were running high. I was struggling to scrape up the last one or two tenths of a point I needed to secure my scholarship renewal for the next year (spoiler alert - I did it) and Gentry was in a neck and neck race for the top of the class in math against, you guessed it, Duncan Blanks. Gentry’s dad is pretty tough on him, especially when it comes to school stuff, but even knowing that I was surprised at how badly Gentry wanted to win this one. I’m sure it had more than a little to do with his competition. So when Mr. Oteri announced that the award would be going to Duncan, Gentry took it…not so great. Duncan didn’t help matters at all. If he was insufferable before he found out he’d be getting the award, he was downright horrible afterward. He took every opportunity to rub it in Gentry’s face, and the war went from cold to nuclear pretty fast. Gentry set up a full Carrie situation on the stage, so that right at the moment when Duncan was receiving his trophy, we tripped the wire and a full, five gallon bucket of chicken shit poured out from the rafters, all over Duncan. I still felt a little sick when I remembered Duncan’s shocked, frozen face. The rest of the school started howling instantly, but Duncan just stood there, trembling and shaking, filthy and stinking. His face was too dirty to tell if he’d started crying. He walked off the stage and disappeared out the back door, and no one saw him again for the rest of the night. That was too far, but it was only phase one of Gentry’s plan. Gentry slipped out after him and followed him to the gym, hiding in the shadows, slipping from hiding spot to hiding spot, until Duncan reached his destination. The locker room. Gentry waited outside until he heard the shower turn on, then he burst in, phone out, and snapped a dozen pictures of Duncan in the shower before he darted out, grabbing Duncan’s clothes on his way. The next day at breakfast, everyone’s phones started going off. A text from an unknown number sent a high-def photo of Duncan Blanks to every student in school, and it was both way more than anyone ever needed to see of him, and way, way less. His body looked like something a mad scientist had sewn together - bony shoulder and legs, a concave chest, and a flabby, ugly gut hanging like extra skin. But everyone’s eyes went to one body part, and it was very, very, very small. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that was the picture Tart was brandishing at him. “Oh, Tart,” I muttered, shaking my head. Duncan was a cockroach for sure, but I wished Tart didn’t always let Duncan turn him into the worst version of himself.   “So you wanna talk about blow jobs now, Duncan? Cause from the looks of it, it’ll be a good long while before you find a girl - or a guy, or anyone, really - who’s willing to suck you off through a straw.” A crack rang out over the party then, timed exactly right, between two songs, so that everyone heard it, and a hundred heads whipped in our direction at once. Lark was standing in front of Tart, fists balled at her sides. The lipstick on Tart’s cheek had smeared, and a bright, angry hand mark bloomed over it. “You’re disgusting,” Lark spat, and from the look on Tart’s face, the words hurt him a lot more than the slap did. “You and your little friends can all go fuck yourselves.” Lark took Duncan’s hand and stomped out of the kitchen, Duncan stumbling behind her. Just before they walked through the door, Duncan looked back at Tart, and gave him the most hateful, victorious little smirk I’d ever seen. Tart coughed to clear his throat and pull himself together. “Well, you’re welcome,” he said, putting on that million-watt Colgate smile of his. “Don’t worry Gloriana, you had a nasty little cockroach in your party, but I got rid of him for you. I’ll just bill you for my pest control services later.” Gloriana laughed and shook her head. “Tart, you are so terrible,” she smiled, eyes shining. “Now come on, isn’t anyone going to start the music again?”