Blood Ties by S. J. Rozan

Jocks are the only ones who’re cool?”
    Doing what she did with the milk and the sugar, Stacie nodded, said, “Totally.”
    â€œWho’s not cool?”
    â€œEveryone else. Some of us are less uncool than others, I guess. Freaks and stoners are the uncoolest. Then brainiacs and geeks, then the artsy crowd and tree-huggers—they’re sort of the same—then cowboys, then jocks.”
    â€œBrainiacs are kids who get good grades?”
    â€œAnd do Student Council and all that stuff. If they’re like, Chess Club, they’re geeks.”
    â€œArtsy, that would be you?”
    She nodded. “And the drama kids, and the band, people like that.”
    â€œCowboys?”
    â€œThey, like, drink and do dope and fight, and push everybody around. It’s like being a jock, but without being on a team. So cowboys actually get detention or suspended or whatever, when they get caught.”
    â€œJocks do all that, too?”
    â€œJocks do whatever they want.”
    â€œAnd don’t get in trouble?”
    She gave me the wide-eyed look. “Who would play on Friday night?”
    â€œUh-huh.” I drank some coffee. “Are there girl jocks?”
    â€œNot exactly. I mean, we have varsity teams and stuff—I play softball, I catch—but it doesn’t make you cool. Nobody sort of notices.” She shrugged.
    â€œAnd freaks?” I asked. “Who are freaks?”
    Stacie pursed her lips. “Kids who aren’t anyone else. They hang out together but it doesn’t mean they like each other. You just have to have someone to hang out with, I guess.”
    â€œSullivan said half the kids in Warrenstown were probably at Tory Wesley’s party,” I said to Stacie. “Were you there?”
    She shook her head, looked into her coffee.
    â€œYou knew about it, though, didn’t you?”
    She shrugged. “I knew her folks were going away.”
    â€œYou mean, you didn’t just hear about it afterwards, you knew before? That she was going to have a, what did Sullivan call it, a P double-A P?”
    â€œI told you, she wanted to be cool. She didn’t get invited to the jock parties. I’m sure she totally thought this would make her cool.”
    â€œIf you knew it was going to happen, why didn’t you tell someone?”
    She looked at me. “Tell who? Tell them what? That some sophomore I don’t even know is having a party Saturday night? So what?”
    â€œAccording to Sullivan, those parties pretty much always end up like that. Shouldn’t the police at least have been warned?”
    â€œIf they wanted to know,” she said, “they’d know.”
    The waiter came to take away my plate and pour us more coffee. This time he brought a full sugar packet holder, which he traded for the decimated one on the table. I sat with Stacie Phillips for a while longer. She confirmed again what Sullivan had said: Chances were all the cool kids in Warrenstown had been at Tory Wesley’s house Saturday night. She gave me some of their names, though I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to make use of them, having been thrown out of town.
    â€œIf Gary Russell wasn’t there,” she said as the waiter put down the check, “it cut his chances of being cool way, way down. They’d have figured he was chicken. Especially,” she added, “it was the night before the seniors went to Hamlin’s. Randy would’ve been extra pumped, and it would’ve been a chance for him to show his protégé how it’s done.”
    How it’s done. I thought about that as I drove over to the high school. How much of your life you spend, especially when you’re new, trying to figure out how it’s done.
    Stacie and I had walked to the parking lot together—she’d insisted on paying for her own coffee, to keep her journalistic integrity intact—and I’d watched her drive off in