I Spun the Bottle

I Spun the Bottle: Chapter Eight

Song for this chapter: “No Surprsie" by Daughtry

Starting from the pit of my stomach, a wave of nausea washed over me. My hands were sweating profusely as I watched him. His eyes hazel eyes taunted me, clearly taking in my expression with pleasure. I bit my lip, finally pulling my wide gaze away from the arrogant curl of his mouth. Those were the lips that were supposed to take my first kiss, and those were the lips I absolutely, positively hated.

Those lips belonged to one person. That person was David Stokes.

Penny nudged me with her elbow, making me turn my eyes to her. Her eyes glinted with something I couldn’t understand. Was it sympathy or was it something else? Amused?

“You have to kiss him.”

I gave a cursory glance at David, only long enough so I could still see his arrogant smirk still lying across those lips. I turned my gaze back over to Penny and shook my head to the side vehemently. “No, I can’t kiss him.”

“You have to, Lyn. The bottle landed on him.” She urged me, a frown clearly appearing on her face.

“No, I mean I really cannot kiss him! He’s Taylor’s boyfriend. Could you imagine what would happen if she found out I kissed him? She’d kill me.” I gulped on my last sentence, images flashing through my head of various deaths Taylor could make possible.

Penny gave me a stern look. “You’re over-exaggerating. Look—“ she paused to gesture to Taylor’s limp body, “she’s out like a light. She won’t even know. Besides, now is a really bad time to become a chicken, Lyn.”

I nodded my head, but the feeling in my gut didn’t waver. I knew I shouldn’t be doing this. Somehow Taylor would find out, and then it’ll be over for me. I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs! I finally let loose and this has to happen to me. Why couldn’t the bottle land on Jace? Why couldn’t the bottle land on someone else, anybody else besides David? There was a one in twelve chance of the bottle landing on Taylor’s boyfriend, and I had to be that one!

“You’re holding the game up. Could you just kiss him already?” A girl with loose brown curls spoke up from the circle.

“Yeah, seriously, we don’t have all night.” Another voice joined in, this time a guy's.

I shifted my eyes over to Jace, who was watching me with a hard, unreadable expression. I wondered what he was thinking. The look in his eyes were spine tingling. Was he mad? Before I knew what was happening chanting started across the circle.

“Kiss him! Kiss him! Kiss him!”

Even Penny began repeating that one line, adding to the already noisy raquet. I looked back a David; his arrogant expression was now replaced by a different one. It was like he was scrutinizing me, waiting for my choice. Cursing myself, I chose the decision that I knew I’d regret sooner or later. I scooted towards the center of the circle, gesturing David to come closer with a tentative hand.

He obeyed.

I could feel everything in my whole body telling me that what I was doing was not good. My instincts told me to turn around and leave, but somehow I just couldn’t do that. This was my choice, and now I had to deal with the consequences.

As I leaned in closer, I could feel David’s warm breath on my face. His breath was laced with a hint of alcohol, and the feeling of nausea within me intensified. Swallowing the lump in my throat once more, I leaned closer to his lips, waiting for the feel of his on mine.

His egotistical, hazel eyes were no longer watching me anymore, and I felt a little bit relieved when I closed my eyes, and his face disappeared from my view.

Just when I thought I could feel the faint brush of his lips against mine, a yell rose over the cackling of the bonfire. I instantly jerked my head back, opening my eyes with the same movement.

“Shit! Guys! Hey! We gotta get out of here! The cops—the damn cops are here!”

I turned my head to the left, trying to find the person that just said that. It was a guy with wavy, blonde hair; his arms were extended above him, waving frantically at us, trying to get all of our attention. It worked.

For a moment, everyone around me watched the guy curiously, and then his words registered into their minds. Everything seemed to move in a flurry then. Teenage bodies were scrambling up from our circle, grabbing their important belongings, before they made a hasty escape up the stone staircase. I stood up and turned, trying to find anybody I knew. I stumbled a few steps forward, when I thought I had saw Cam’s redhead through the havoc, but then I felt something hard, probably a person, crash into me from behind. A painful groan left my mouth as my cheek grinded into the sand below me.

My skin now burned, and tears prickled at the corner of my eyes from the stinging. I pulled myself up from the sand to find myself face to face with David. His once aloof eyes were now alert, and calculating.

“Here’s Taylor’s keys.” He shoved something into my hands, but I couldn’t grasp a hold of it in time, so it plummeted into the sand with a quiet thud.

I fell to my knees, picking the keys up off the floor clumsily.

“I’ll take her to the car, and then you guys need to get the hell out of here, understand?” David commanded, giving me a hard look before picking Taylor off the chair, holding her bridal style.

“O-okay,” I muttered, nodding my head, still not sure what the heck was going on.

I followed behind David as we began running up the stairs, even with the extra weight of Taylor in his hands, he managed to be still be more than several feet in front of me.

“Hurry up!” He called back to me.

I nodded, trying to pick up the pace to catch up to him, but to no avail. His legs were longer and leaner than mine, so one of his steps swallowed three of the stone stairs, while the most I could take was one under each step. I glanced back the bonfire, where it was once crowded with drunken teenagers, now stood deserted, the flames had been put out, and smoke left the burning embers.

When I reached the top of the large stone staircase, my breath was ragged and shallow. Sweat trickled down my face, touching the burn that I had received from the sand. I let out a mangled hiss when I touched the scratch on my face. No doubt I'd feel that tomorrow morning.

“C’mon Lyn, hurry up! Do you want to get caught or something?” David’s voice echoed up to me.

He was now on the way down from the rocky terrain. I didn’t reply to him; instead, I focused on trying to get down safely. I had almost fallen trying to get up here, and I didn’t want to repeat that experience anytime soon.

Two times my foot slipped off a rock, but somehow I managed to regain my balance, each time this happened my heart squeezed, threatening to leap out of my chest. I let out a sigh of relief when I had almost made it down to the bottom.

I only had one more rock before I could touch the flat surface again, but that was one rock too many.

For the third time, my foot slipped off the top of the rock, and my eyes widened as I realized I was going to fall. My balanced teetered as I tried to regain it, but it didn’t work this time.

I fell.

I somehow managed to angle my body so that I wasn’t going to do a face-plant to the floor. My right foot touched the ground first, before the rest of my body weight, landing on its side. Then gravity did the rest of the work. A sickening crack filled my ears, as somebody screamed, a high-pitched noise. I wondered briefly for a moment who screamed, and then I realized it was me. I was the person that let out that that loud, painful shrill.

Regaining my senses, I grabbed my ankle instinctively, trying to see what damage had been done. I tried to move my foot side to side, but I couldn’t tell if it was working or not. My foot felt numb like dead weight, or at least it did in the beginning.

I scrunched my face up in an unbearable grimace. The sensation was like needles shooting through my ankle, similar to the feeling of your foot falling asleep, except laced with throbbing pain. To put it bluntly, it hurt like hell.

I was on the floor, grabbing my ankle, tears glided down my face, stinging when they passed my cut on my cheek, but that felt like nothing compared to what my ankle felt. I was almost a hundred percent sure I broke it. The pain was excruciating, I grinding my teeth together, trying to keep myself from screaming again.

I was going to be caught by the cops at this rate. Fear rose within me, making me numb for a second. I was going to jail when they caught me. Suddenly, I felt strong, secure arms wrap around me. I would’ve looked up if I wasn’t pre-occupied on my current condition.

“God, you’re such a klutz, and you choose the worse timing to do this too.” The person holding me said, his chest rumbling as he spoke. “Hang on, I’ll get you to the hospital.”

I finally looked up to catch a glimpse of David looking straight ahead, most likely searching for his car. I opened my mouth to protest for him to put me down, but quickly shut it. If he put me down, I wouldn’t be able to walk back to the car in time.

“Where’s Taylor? She needs a ride home.” I asked through clenched teeth, noting she wasn’t anywhere in sight.

“Cam’s taking her home. He lives the closest to her,” he replied, finally reaching his car. He opened the passenger door and gingerly set me down. “Put on your seat belt.” He added right before the door shut closed.

I followed his instructions and pulled the seat belt over my body, avoiding any excessive movement of my lower body. It didn’t take longer than five seconds before the driver’s door opened and David’s body plopped down in the seat. David jammed his key into the ignition and twisted it clockwise, his car roaring in response. Before I knew it, he shifted his car in drive and we were off like the wind. David didn't care about the speed limit, he just wanted to get out of this parking ot before backup arrived.

Just as we exited the parking lot, red and blue lights blocked the entrance to the parking lot. We had made it, somehow. I glanced back at the beach, noticing that there were still a couple of the teenage cars back in the parking lot, unable to escape the Police. I hoped that Jace, Cam, Penny, and even Taylor had made it out okay.

I shifted back into a more comfortable position, trying to focus on my ankle now that we had gotten out of the hard part of our escape. My ankle had already begun swelling, almost two times the size than normal. Ialso felt guilty. I, me, Carolyn had just ran from the law! That was something I never thought I’d do in my whole life, and I just did it without a second thought! Sure, I was maybe caught up in the moment, but that still didn’t excuse me for what I did.

Guilt nipped at me from every angle, and I tried to fight it back. It was either get caught by the cops and end up in jail, where I’d have to call my parents to get me out, not to mention what kind of trouble I’d get in from them, or escape and hopefully never mention any of this to my parents. I had already chosen the latter, and so far it was working out fine with me (sort of).

There were still a few negatives to my decision, the main one being the person sitting next to me, driving me to the hospital. It made no sense to me why he was the person that was driving me to the hospital instead of Cam or even Jace. David’s priority should be with Taylor, and not me. He should be driving Taylor home, not me.

“How’s your ankle?” David inquired, glancing at me from his peripheral vision.

“It hurts, but…” I trailed off, wiggling my foot a little, “I don’t think I broke it. Maybe just a bad sprain?”

“Maybe, but you should still get it examined by a doctor.”

“I think I’d rather go home, actually.” I suggested, a wave of exhaustion settling in comfortably over me.

A frown was given to me by him now. “No, I think you should go to the hospital. You still could have broken it.”

“My foot is moving, see?” I winced as I brought my foot up, tilting it to one side and then the other, to show David that I could move it just fine. “If it moves then it isn’t broken.”

“I still think you should get it checked out.” He muttered.

“I don’t want to get it checked out. If I go there and end up getting a cast, what do you think my parents are going to say? They’d eventually figure out I was here tonight. Then I’d never be able to see broad daylight ever again. So, can you please just let me go home?” I pleaded, feeling my eyelids getting heavier by the second.

I glanced at the clock to see what time it was as David babbled about how going to the hospital now is better than waiting for tomorrow. I tuned out most of his words, and watched as the time ticked away two minutes of my life. It was two-thirty two in the morning, and I was just flat out tired.

“David I swear, if you take me to the hospital, I’m not getting out of the car. I just want to go home and sleep, why can’t you understand that?” I said, a cranky voice coming from my throat.

A huff left David’s throat. He clearly disagreed with me, but it seemed like he knew now that he wasn’t going to be able to budge my decision anytime soon. Silence settled in the car, awkwardly. I was pretty sure he was going to take me home now, so I began drowsing off.

However, I managed to keep myself somewhat awake, just barely. I wondered why it was so important for me to go to the hospital. I wondered why David was concerned over me, when he hardly knew me at all. I was the lonely nerd and he was the most popular guy at our school. It just didn’t click.

“Do you think Jace and Cam got out okay?” I asked, shifting in my seat so that I wasn’t slouching.

He shrugged. “Most likely.”

“Why couldn’t Jace or Cam take to the hospital? You’re girlfriend should’ve been your priority, right?”

“I dunno.” David answered vaguely, his eyes never leaving the road in front of him.

I rolled my eyes at his response. His answer answered absolutely nothing.