Read Online Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt - Free Book Online Page B

shy smile and she smiled back. God, he was a cute one! Didn’t sound like he was from the South. Some trace of the cocaine reignited within her; she felt her heart pick up.
    “Here we go,” he said a moment later, handing her a beer. The boy took the trashcan cocktail from her and dumped it into an already dead potted plant. “I’m Joseph, but the guys call me Joey D.”
    “Jerilyn, you can call me Jeri.”
    Just then a shirtless young man walked down the hall—a pledge, she figured, given the wet and matted hair, though he had put on a pair of jeans. Joey D and all the guys erupted into “Baaaaaa baaaaaa!” as he walked by. He angrily gave them the finger and everybody laughed.
    Then there was a crash in the next room, some raised male voices, a door slamming, another crash …
    Joey D muttered something under his breath and bounded upstairs, away from the action in the kitchen.
    Jerilyn stuck her head around the corner: some guy had another guy—Justin, right?—pinned to the wall, while he sputtered, “Look, man, she just ran off—I couldn’t help it!”
    Then the new guy hit Justin squarely in the face, then once in the stomach, which bent him over double. Another young man in a red windbreaker kicked Justin once he was down on the ground. Lot of screaming. What woman were they fighting over? Two Zippermen came to Justin’s aid … and soon had smashed noses, too. Then one of the Sigma Kappa sisters ran in to do the screaming-stop thing …
    “I saw your sheep! It was out by the pool, I just saw it!”
    The three interlopers stopped using Justin as a punching bag and backed toward the door. By the time Corey and Kevin got to the kitchen, a gathering mob of Zeta Pis was ready to avenge Justin’s pummeling. The man in the red windbreaker and his friend then took the full trashcan of alcohol and tipped it. To deafening shrieks, the fifty gallons of hard liquor and fruit juice flooded the kitchen, flowed into the carpet of the hallway, out the door, soaking people’s shoes.
    “You’re gonna die for that!” yelled one Zipperman.
    But now the guy in the red windbreaker held an old-fashioned cigarette lighter, which he opened and sparked the flame. Jerilyn hopped up on a chair. “Stay right there or we’ll see if this all is flammable,” he said calmly.
    Everyone stood where he was.
    The young man and his friends escaped out the back door.
    The fumes of the spilled alcohol, the weed smoke, and her little bit of athletic activity made Jerilyn feel sick. She decided she would go out the front door, avoiding the mess, and get some fresh air … maybe just wander back to McIver, although Corinne said there were rooms back at Sigmahouse set aside for crashing and composing oneself. She wanted to dispose of the rest of her beer; she looked for another garbage pail only to see the stack of paper cups reeking of the trashcan cocktail, plates and saucers piled high with cigarettes ground into congealed dollops of chip-dip … and her nausea renewed itself.
    She made it outside to the front curb where the Zeta Pi sidewalk met the street and sat down a yard away from another party refugee.
    “I may hurl in the next minute,” Jerilyn said in the stranger’s direction. “I’m apologizing in advance.”
    “Whatever,” he said, barely audible.
    “You all right?”
    He turned toward her. It was the boy everyone was making baaaa noises at. “I guess. Not sure if they’re gonna vote me in.”
    “I wonder if the Sigma Kappa Nus are having second thoughts about me, too. I can’t really hang with the professional partiers.”
    “You wanna lie down?”
    He held out his hand and she wobbled to her feet, and then they were walking back into the Zipperhaus, past the foyer, toward the stairs … Jerilyn thought of the woman in the cool green formal wear, the man in the formal suit with his hand at her lower back walking toward Thetahouse, the way she looked up at him, the way he smiled back at her …
    “Watch