Cesare, Adam - Clown in a Cornfield by Cesare Adam

Author:Cesare, Adam [Cesare, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

The heat in the middle of the dance floor was pleasant at first, but after three songs, it became oppressive. Even with both barn doors open wide, the body heat of so many kids added up.

“You’re a good dancer,” Cole shouted, bringing her back to the moment.

“Thanks!” she replied, even though she was thinking that this wasn’t really dancing. It was really more just grinding and fist pumping. The party’s soundtrack had been unexpected. Underground hits that wouldn’t have been out of place after-hours in Center City mixed with souped-up honky-tonk, that Kenny Chestnut shit that would have been booed out of any house party in Philly proper. Quinn was no music snob, but at one point, the kids of KSH had started line dancing. Seriously, shuffling out into three rows—twist, turn, tap your boots. Which was weird, but if she was being honest also, yeah, kinda fun. And much harder than it looked.

Quinn scrutinized the sweaty mass of kids surrounding her and Cole. She’d misjudged them back at the school: the young people of Kettle Springs weren’t boring or lily white or your oh-so-basic red state clichés.

Girls danced with girls, guys with guys, and nobody looked scandalized. A couple of black guys chilled at the pong tables, getting along just fine with cheesy-looking white boys. Everyone could hang. More than anything else had in the last strange, confusing few days, the dance floor—and maybe the drink—put Quinn at ease.

Which wasn’t to say there weren’t . . . moments. The kids of KSH were completely obsessed with Cole.

Everyone was eyeing her date. Quinn and Cole were at the center of it all. Guppies in a fishbowl. It was a position not entirely unfamiliar to Quinn, who’d spent most of the last year trying hard to disappear.

Her therapist said she was trying to hide, that withdrawing wasn’t a valid coping mechanism. But Dr. Mennin wasn’t the one who had to go to school, put up with the whispers. The more people googled the specifics, the more they found out about what had happened to Samantha Maybrook. That Mom was a dope fiend, hooked on opioids, who’d graduated to heroin. How, basically, her mom’s brain had stopped telling her lungs to breathe. The thought of which made Quinn want to disappear, and when Dr. Mennin called her on it, she called bullshit. But she knew, in her heart, the woman had a point.

She’d started seeing Dr. Mennin just before the overdose—the last overdose, when Mom had promised to get clean. If Quinn wanted to float away before then, afterward she felt flattened. Her dad was the thing that kept her in the world. He pulled her out of bed. He made sure to be home when she got home from school. He took her to the movies, made her eat, lay on the floor next to her bed until she fell asleep. But eventually it did start to get better. It did. And then Dad finally fell apart. Grief doesn’t depend on dates—that’s what Dr.

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