Read Online Losers by Matthue Roth - Free Book Online Page A

you know?”
    â€œUh…yeah,” I said uncertainly. “I know.”
    And then everybody laughed, and everyone raised their beer mugs high, and everyone but me swilled a giant, football-team-size gulp.
    The truth was, I wouldn’t depend on any of these guys to leap to my side in a fight. I barely trusted them to remember me by Monday morning. If Bates did lay into me, and any of Reg’s friends came upon it, I doubted very much that anyone but me would sustain the worst of the damage. But I appreciated the sentiment, and I was enjoying being the center of the crowd and having people actually listen to me. At some point over the course of the evening, I remember catching Devin’s eye—she was mostly engaged in flirting with the lead singer of a local punk band, which, in my newly social state, I didn’t mind at all—and she just nodded approvingly at me, as if to say, You finally got it, Jupiter.
    I have to say, this whole not-having-an-accent thing was definitely agreeing with me.
    Later that night, a gang of guys in North Yardley High jacketsshowed up, prematurely ending the party when they tried to forcibly abduct the keg and roll it out to their pickup truck. Someone began screaming that someone had a gun. The screaming got everyone scattering, and the frenzied snatches of conversation—“A gun?” “A gang broke in!” “Where’d our ride go??”—spread the panic like an airborne disease. At first I tried to ignore it, since people were talking to me and I was actually having a good time. But the crowd got smaller and smaller as the non-Yards folks edged away from the newcomers and made excuses to leave. The fighting over the keg rose in tone and volume. One of Devin’s guy friends was trying to make them stop; they pushed him around like a rag doll. Finally, one of the guys just decided to tip it over. The keg hit the floor with a bang, and someone yelled out “Guns!” and then I found myself suddenly using my amazing new accent to talk to no one but the air.
    I decided that maybe it was time for me to make my exit.
    I began to head casually to the door where everyone else was stampeding. I knew from the Yards that gangs never went after the people who weren’t panicking; if you didn’t think you were in trouble, they, more often than not, weren’t about to give it to you. For a second, I felt like my old self, and the idea that my Yards-ness was something I could turn off and on, like a mute button or email encryption, both enthralled and terrified me.
    About halfway to the door, something made me stop and turn around.
    The Yardley gang was in full effect now, moving the keg out the door, getting down to the music that lingered on the turn-tables, a bizarrely hip-sounding remix of a They Might Be Giants song. It seemed not to match the actual scene unfolding: theroom almost empty, all movement either slowed down or completely stopped, the Yardley guys looking fiercely triumphant. Three of them were bent over the keg, wheeling it in some way. Two more followed around Devin, who was whispering to her friends, presumably trying to convince them not to leave. A few others were clustered around, draining the remains of the bar and having a good time. One Yardley guy was necking hard-core with a girl against the bar, clawing his dirty hands under her leather jacket and all over her white tank top. He backed off, fumbling for a half-full glass on the bar, and the girl pushed her peroxide-blond hair out of her face.
    I grinned wryly, almost knowing who I’d see. Her eyes, almost at once upon pulling away from the guy, focused on me.
    It wasn’t such a surprise. I mean, I was almost alone, one of the last remaining North Shore kids at the party. I didn’t have an hour’s ride back home, I didn’t have to hustle a ride to my neighborhood, and, of course, I didn’t know any good after-parties. My shadow cast across