by Jen Klein
Lucky Leo.
“I’m still up for a game,” Evan says. He catches my eye, and I shake my head. I am not playing Kiss, Date, Punch with him. Not again. Not when I miss Ardy so much it hurts.
“I’ll play something,” Katie says. “After everyone takes a shot.”
“Did you bring shot glasses?” Carrie asks. “Because if anyone has some in their purse, they win everything.”
There’s an immediate dive for purses. I have nothing, but Tilly offers up a contact lens holder. She is met resoundingly with disgust until Katie triumphantly pulls something out. “I win!” It’s a single-use Keurig cup.
“Why do you have that?” I ask her.
“I stole it from a hotel.” She rips the foil off the top of the cup and opens our side door, nearly knocking both of us out in the process. She dumps the coffee grounds on the curb and then closes the door. “Bottoms up.”
Ten minutes later everyone has had at least one coffee-flavored shot of rum, and I’m feeling warm and fuzzy. Although I sometimes go to parties with Katie, I rarely drink alcohol. It doesn’t seem worth it: getting in trouble, the lack of control and potential for making bad decisions. However, my life lately has been one giant bad decision. No amount of alcohol could make that any worse.
Katie, smashed against me in our one seat, squeezes my arm and whispers in my ear: “Screw that guy.” Then she pulls away, announcing to everyone else, “I have a game.”
“I’m not kissing my brother,” Tilly says automatically.
“No one wants you to,” Omar says.
“The game is called Love Golf.” Katie raises both hands to touch the car roof like she’s trying to channel something. “Maybe it’s called Golf Love. I don’t remember.”
“I rock at golf,” Evan says.
At the same time I say, “I hate golf.”
“Listen,” Katie says. “You pick two people who we all know, and then you try to get from one to the other in the least amount of strokes.”
“Strokes,” Tyler and Evan say together.
“Shut up,” Katie and I say together.
Tyler takes a swig from the rum bottle and passes it to me. It tastes worse when it’s not enhanced by coffee, but I no longer care. Katie points to Tyler, in the seat across from us. “Like Tyler and…” She swings her arm in a wide arc until she’s pointing at Evan, in the front. “Evan. You have to get from one to the other—through LOVE—as quickly as you can.”
We all stare at her. I’m finally the one who asks the question. “What do you mean, through love?”
“Sex.” Katie rolls her eyes. “Or kissing or whatever. Like, if you and Tyler kissed, and then you and Evan kissed, you would win in two strokes. Tyler to you, you to Evan. WHAT?”
Because I’m laughing so hard I almost can’t breathe.
“We did kiss,” Tyler says. “In tenth grade.”
“Us too,” Evan says. “Ninth.”
And now both boys are laughing with me.
“Oh, that’s right!” Katie exclaims. “I forgot about that. You win, one stroke.” She high-fives me. “God, high school.”
“Tell me about it,” I say. “You and Tyler. Go.”
I remember just as Katie bursts into laughter, too. “One stroke, last year.”
“See, you win,” I tell her, and then we high-five again while the boys roll their eyes.
The game doesn’t last very long because there’s so much giggling, I think; plus, those bottles keep getting passed around. It’s all getting blurry and woozy, so I’m not exactly sure why Katie and Tyler went for a “walk” outside or when everyone else went after them.
Or how I ended up in the front seat with Evan.
All I know is that now it’s murky dark and we’re alone and I keep wondering if there’s an earthquake because it feels like his car is lurching, but then I remember the rum and remember that’s the reason everything is off-balance.
Evan is looking over the console controls at me in the dimness. “Why did we break up?” he asks.
“You and me? We were never dating,” I tell him. “We were only kissing a lot, and then I found out I had mono, so you said we had to stop.” I lean closer to him, giggling because it’s suddenly so funny. “Wanna know something?”
“Sure.” The streetlight glints off Evan’s teeth when he smiles at me.
I say it in a stage whisper. “I didn’t have mono.”
Evan cocks his head. “So why’d you say you did?”
“To trick you into breaking up with me,” I tell him. “I make evvvvveryone break up with me. It’s my superpower.”
“Huh.” Evan leans back in his seat, staring at the car parked in front of us. “I don’t remember that.”
I think I’m too drunk to be offended.
“Why did you break up with Hope?” I ask him. There’s a long silence. “You don’t have to tell me.” I say it too late.
“It wasn’t about sex.” Evan keeps his eyes straight ahead. “I don’t know what she told you, but it wasn’t that. It was…she was perfect and I wasn’t, and…”
He pauses and I wait for the rest of his answer, hoping it’ll make some sort of sense in my spinning head, something I can use for my own screwed-up life. There was a time when I was prepared to hate Evan on behalf of Hope, back a thousand years ago, when Hope and I were friends, but now it doesn’t matter anymore. And anyway, Evan breaking up with her isn’t that bad. It’s not as bad as me. Not as bad as the person who fell in love with a perfect boy and ruined things, hurting her best friend in the process. That person is pretty crappy. That person doesn’t deserve to have someone good, someone nice.
Just as that concept breaks the surface of my brain, I realize Evan has grabbed my hand. I look down at where his fingers are gripping mine and then back to his face. But he’s still looking out the window…
At Ardy and Hope, stopped under a streetlight by the side of Wheelz. They’re talking, and as we watch, Ardy leans closer to her….
I can’t look anymore, which is why I turn my head to face Evan. That’s why, as my heart cracks and breaks inside me, I reach for him.
That’s why it happens.
We’ve all seen it before in movies and on TV. The heroine awakens to find herself flung atop her twisted bedcovers like last night’s trash. Her clothing is rumpled, and caked mascara glues her eyelashes together. Her tongue is a shriveled corn husk, you could physically shave her teeth, and a miniature freight train with spiked wheels and a shrieking horn grinds along inside her skull.
Check.
I remember Evan’s mouth. And then his hands, sliding over my body…
I rub my eyes, succeeding in impaling my left cornea with what I assume is a particularly sharp flake of dried mascara. The pain makes me sway to a sitting position, and the resulting nausea from that makes me stagger off my bed and out my door to the bathroom.
I’m there for several minutes, during which I throw up my body weight. When I emerge, Leo is standing outside. He hands me an open bottle of purple Gatorade.
“I can’t,” I tell him.
“Trust me,” he says.
“What do you know about hangovers?”
“Only what I read online. Here.” I accept his offering, taking a wary sip. It doesn’t make me want to die, so I take another, bigger this time.
“Thank you,” I tell Leo. He trails me back to my room, where I collapse in my bed. “How mad are they?” I ask from where my head is burrowed in my pillow.
“Less mad than you’d think,” he says. “At least, not at you.”
“Fantastic.” Because that means they’re fighting, probably about me. I raise my head to look at him and instantly regret it because the sun coming through my window might be trying to kill me. “Leo, I’m sorry.”
“It’s actually a win for me,” he says. “You’
ve made my high school life awesome.” I manage to crack my eyelids open. Leo is grinning. “I could murder someone and I’ll still look like the good one.”
“You’re not helping.” Normally I would put him in a headlock, but that’s clearly not going to happen right now. I flap a hand at him. “Go away.”
When I wake again, my father is entering my room. He opens the curtains and sits on the edge of my bed. I squint against the light. “It’s so bright.”
“Some parents would ground you for being drunk,” he says. “Or I guess I should say reground you.”
“But you believe God is punishing me enough?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” I use my fingers to open my eyes for a second so I can see him shaking his head. “In the plus column for ‘punishment enough,’ you do look like hell.”
“I feel worse than I look,” I tell him.
“Also in the plus column, we shouldn’t have made you go in the first place. You did tell us you didn’t want to.” I stay silent, and I hear my father give a heavy sigh. “And I do appreciate you taking people outside to drink, although it would have been better if it hadn’t happened at all.”
“It was happening before I showed up,” I tell him. “It was either move them outside or narc them out.”
“Your mother called everyone’s parents,” he says. “Maybe we should have told the school, too, but since no one tried to drive after drinking, and you seem to be the worst offender, we decided to leave it at that. Here.” I raise my head to see what he’s setting on my nightstand: a piece of dry toast on a paper towel, a cup of coffee, and two Tylenol tablets.
“I don’t know if I can get that down.”
“You’ll be happier if you do.” The bed lurches as Dad stands up, and I valiantly refrain from barfing again. “I have to go back to work. Please don’t asphyxiate on your own vomit.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good.” I feel his hand land lightly on the top of my head. He strokes my hair for a moment. “Hang in there, Larks. Things get better.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone in my misery.
Later I’m in my bathroom, rinsing out my mouth after puking (again), when there’s a knock on the door. My mother doesn’t wait for me to answer; she barges right in. I look past my watery, red-rimmed reflection in the mirror to the image of her standing behind me. “You don’t have to ground me more right now,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m actually here to unground you.”
“What?” I spin to look at her, immediately regretting the quick movement.
“Your father and I think you’ve had enough punishment.” Mom tilts her head to the side, assessing me. “And for the record, it was never our goal to make you miserable.”
“You’re not making me miserable.” I take several careful steps to the bathtub so I can teeter carefully on the edge. “I did that all myself.”
“I kind of got that.” She comes over and perches beside me. “But our job as your parents is not necessarily to increase that misery.” She pats my knee. “So consider yourself ungrounded. Also, consider yourself warned not to ever drink like that again.”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “This is miserable.”
“I know.” She stands and heads out.
“Mom.” She stops in the doorway to look back at me. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask if she’s going to fix her life, too…but I can’t. And maybe it’s not my job to ask that question of her, anyway.
* * *
I feel almost human again by late afternoon. I say almost because although my head doesn’t hurt and I’m no longer nauseated and the world finally stopped spinning…all the physical pain has tightened and coalesced and focused into a heavy spot around my heart. After I eat something—and fend off questions from Leo about what punishment I’ve received—I escape him and my parents and my house. I get into my car, and I drive to Griffith Park.
The picnic table is warmer than the last time I was here with Cooper, and I have no mango smoothie along for the ride. It’s just me, my thoughts, and the California sun. I sit on the table, feet on the bench, gazing out over the park. Many yards away a group of kids play soccer in the grass. I envy them their freedom. From where I’m sitting, all they have to care about right now is whether or not a ball gets into a net.
God, that sounds amazing.
I think back to what Cooper and I talked about when we were here, about the idea of losing one’s self on purpose, like while watching a movie. Because…isn’t that what love is?
All along I’ve tried to control everything. With Ardy, with everyone. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t do it. The thing about falling in love is that, no matter how you rail against it, a fall is involved. And you can’t control the world around you when you’re in free fall. You have to let the wind and the sky and the air take you where you’re going to go.
I watch the soccer players for a while, and then I go somewhere else. Downtown Burbank. To the theater.
Cooper—in his little red vest and button-up shirt—looks surprised to see me when I walk in and hand him my ticket. I don’t even know what movie I’m seeing. It was the one starting next after I marched up to the ticket counter.
Cooper rips my ticket and hands half of it back to me. “Meeting someone?”
I’m immediately grateful that he’s deigning to talk to me at all. “No.” I smile at him. “Flying solo.”
“Surprising.” Cooper doesn’t smile back, but…there’s something in his eyes. A hint of amusement or solidarity or something. “I hope you enjoy it.” He even sounds sincere.
The movie—a romantic comedy—is entertaining enough, but it’s not like it changes my life. That’s okay, though; it’s not why I’m here. I’m here to prove that I can go out and see a movie alone. That I can sit in a crowd of strangers and not be attached to one of them. That I can lose myself, even into something as superficial and meaningless as a fictional couple’s story on a big screen. That I can loosen my grip on the steering wheel.
When the movie’s over, I again pass by Cooper. I give him a half nod and keep walking, but he calls my name, so I stop.
“I hear you were one of the degenerates who got busted last night,” he says.
“Who told you that?”
“Katie.”
It reminds me I need to text her back. Earlier today she sent several messages in a row:
You okay?
Your parents called my mom. She was like, whatevs. So screw her.
Hope you’re not too busted.
And then several minutes later:
Did you hook up with Evan?
I’m not sure how I’m going to answer that last question.
“Okay,” I tell Cooper. I almost leave, but then I stop so I can say one last thing. “The movie was okay. Not as good as others, but watchable.”
“That’s the point,” Cooper says. And then he’s off to tear more tickets.
I leave the theater and make my way up San Fernando to the mall. I take the escalator to the second floor and head straight to where I need to go: a store proudly displaying a NOT STRAIGHT T-shirt in the front window.
Glen greets me with his customary hug. When he returns me to the floor, he looks around. “Where are your partners in crime?”
“Cooper and Katie?” My heart sinks, and—out of nowhere—tears glaze my eyes because one of my partners in crime can now barely look at me. I turn away from Glen, pretending to be occupied with a rack of striped vests. “Oh, they’re around.”
“Looking for something in particular?”
My self-respect.
My life.
The boy I love.
“Nope,” I tell Glen.
“Those are ten percent off.” He gestures to the vests. “But I can
give you fifteen.”
I take a pink-and-yellow vest off its hanger, slipping it over my T-shirt. “What do you think?” I ask Glen, trying to buy time.
“Huh.” He susses me out. “I don’t know that I would have picked it for you, but—”
“I’m not in chess club.” My interruption makes Glen stop. “I’m not in marching band, either. I never was. And I didn’t make the track team. I didn’t even try out. I don’t like to sweat.”
“Okay.” He looks confused, but he’s listening.
“I said all that stuff because I wanted you to think I wouldn’t have any time for you once we started high school. I wanted to make you break up with me.”
“You mean…at camp that summer?” Glen’s brows knit together. “Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Yes. You broke up with me on the bus. Because I lied to you.”
“Really?” Glen’s eyes go faraway, like he’s trying to remember. After a moment, he returns to the present, setting his large hands on my shoulders. I shrug them off. He peers into my eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I’m trying to set the record straight.”
“It’s been three years.” He doesn’t move from his position in front of me. “You know I’m with Allie, right?”
My mouth drops open. “Yes! This is not about trying to get back together with you!”
“Okay, cool.” He raises his hands in a don’t blame me gesture. “Then I guess I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“I’m getting at…” I pause. What am I getting at? “I’m trying to apologize. For lying.”
“No problem.” Glen shrugs his shoulders. “Apology accepted.”
It’s so anticlimactic that, five minutes later, I’m leaving the store with a bag of merchandise. Which Glen sold to me with, of course, a 15 percent discount.
Evan is waiting by the flagpoles when I step onto the school property. It’s infuriating, both that he would wait for me and also that he would wait for me here. I alter the trajectory of my path, but he immediately steps into it, so I sling my backpack to the front of my body, tucking my arms around it. Making it a barrier between us.