Twelve by Nick McDonell Read Free Book Online

want. Ha, ha . She slips her tongue into Chris’s mouth. He reciprocates, and with perfect timing, she pulls away.
    â€œDon’t you want to have a big party?”
    â€œSure.” His dick is getting stiff and visible through his Jordan shorts.
    â€œThe biggest party ever,” she says. “It’ll be amazing.” She knows the right party on New Year’s Eve will lock her in as the girl who makes things happen. Which everyone knows she is already, but this would still be great. Great. Great for her.
    â€œJust not too many people.”
    â€œBut it has to be huge. Besides, people will need to keep themselves occupied in case we start to have some extra fun, by ourselves, somewhere else.” Sara glances meaningfully at the bed.
    â€œI thought you had a boyfriend.”
    â€œI have lots of boyfriends,” she says, smiling at him.“That’s the way it works. I’m not a slut—”
    â€œOf course you’re not.”
    â€œBut different guys are interesting for different reasons. There are just so many of you. You’re interesting for a very specific reason.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œYou’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”
    Sara’s grandmother went to a coming-out party once that was supposed to be the most famous party of her generation. It was out on Long Island. Not in the Hamptons, but on the North Shore where they used to have huge estates with incredible gardens on the Sound. This party was so wild, kids really were swinging from chandeliers, and the place got totally trashed. Cops came from two counties, and eight or nine boys from Yale and Columbia were arrested. The story was on the cover of Life magazine. Sara’s mother was born nine months later .

Chapter Twenty-Three
    WHITE MIKE IS walking down Lexington toward Ninety-first Street to meet Jessica. He is with Lionel, because when he got the call, he knew he would need this new Twelve stuff. The girl had described the drug perfectly when she was asking for it, even though she had asked for “The Number Twelve.” He knew what it was. It was practically like she was still on it.
    The whole deal is starting to make White Mike uneasy. This new drug is bad news. Plus, he is having to deal with Lionel all the time because of it, and Lionel is a creepy dude. Lionel with his brown and yellow bloodshot eyes. White Mike knows that Lionel carries a gun. The gun is the scariest thing that goes along with making more money. White Mike never saw a gun in the beginning, but pretty soon the money got more serious. Once a thousand dollars is changing hands, the dealers always have some kind of protection. It is just too much money to fuck around with. The kids, of course, have no idea.
    Intellectually, White Mike knows everything. He knows that Lionel comes from a place where there actually wascrack, even if there’s not so much anymore. He knows that Lionel’s neighborhood can get really fucked up, manifest the specter of the inner city he and all his friends heard about in history class but only White Mike ever came close to seeing. White Mike is cognizant of, even involved in, this other New York City. All of which makes it weird and not weird at the same time that he knows, say, that Lionel has children. And get this: Lionel told him how in the third grade his son, Jeremy, had been disciplined by a teacher for writing on his desk, and the kid had said, My dad’s gonna shoot you . The teacher backed off, then quit later that year. Lionel was proud of that: Sure, I’d have shot the bitch. Shoot any bitch-ass nigger fucks with me. Teacher, cop, punk kid, doesn’t matter to me. All the same anyway . The words stuck in White Mike’s head. White Mike and Lionel don’t talk as they walk.
    As they get to Ninety-first, they see Jessica waiting on the corner, walking around a phone booth. She keeps looking around but doesn’t notice the two drug