“Did you see that, babe? First strike!”
“That’s so great!” I tip up my head. He plants a sloppy kiss on my lips. I can taste the beer, sour and wet, dampening the stubble around his mouth. He twirls around and yells in triumph.
“Your turn, Care-bear,” he says.
Georgia passes me a ball, and I stagger clumsily under its weight. Everyone else makes them look so light. They could not have been this heavy when I was a kid.
“Oh, I forgot you’re hella weak.” She laughs, taking the ball from me with one hand and easily setting it back down beside the others. “Here’s an eight-pound option. See, it’s even pink. It’s like it’s made for you.”
I give her a look. Her jokes feel meaner than usual.
All that said, though, the new bowling ball is easier to carry. I stand in front of the alley and swing back my arm, mimicking Jake’s posture. He did the best, after all. I release it and the ball bounces in small stutters as it hits the ground. I don’t think it’s supposed to do that. But it eventually reaches a slow roll and gets to the end before it can careen into the alley, and I knock down two pins. Not great, but respectable.
Jake gives me a hug and teases me about how good a teacher he can be, but then he has to get ready to trash-talk the next guy, and I return to my seat while Georgia steps up to the plate, already crowing her future victory. She swings her arm back and releases the ball, which rolls speedily halfway down the lane before falling into the gutter.
“Toby!” Jake hollers, laughing. “I think we can all agree that the proper method of bowling is my patented backswing, which thrusts the ball forward as a man should, not Georgia’s weak-ass wrist flick. Can you back me up?”
Toby raises his beer. Georgia crosses her arms, but says nothing.
“Actions speak louder than words, my man,” Jake says, gesturing toward Toby, then the lane. “Your turn.”
Toby gets up, stretches, and jumps a little on his toes as if to warm himself up. Then he walks forward without a word, grabs a ball, and executes a straight, flawless strike. When he turns around to the cheers of the guys, some more tipsy than they’d probably admit, it’s like he’s taking the stage.
“It’s a balance, my friends,” he counsels. “You have to release it at the right time, but you also have to get some of that wrist action. Georgia knows what I’m talking about.” He winks and the guys shriek in laughter. Georgia screws up her face trying not to laugh, but fails. Serena glances up from her phone and returns to texting.
“So,” he says, turning to me. “Caroline, do you think you can walk the tightrope of bowling perfection?”
“I’ll do my best,” I say, finishing the last of my beer—only gagging a little bit—and strolling to the front of the lane. I knock down exactly zero pins and am told that under no circumstances did I get the swing right. Jake stands behind me and molds his body around mine, cradles my arm in his arm, and makes my motions for me, teaching me how to do it better.
Jake wins, in the end, yelling so loudly I have to throw myself at him and clap my hand over his mouth to keep from disturbing the dude behind the counter. I come in a shocking third after Toby, thanks to a few strikes near the end that I could not have predicted. It probably helps that with the exception of Jake and Toby, who are driving, everyone else has been drinking steadily since we got here. I count three more rounds of beer and I wasn’t even keeping close track.
Georgia is dead last, which surprises me. She walked in with such bravado, I figured she was going to be great. Turns out, she really sucks. I approach her, planning on a little light teasing, and then I get a closer look: blood rushing to her cheeks and the thin veins in her eyes, unsteady on her feet. She is drunk. Real drunk.
“Oh, Georgia,” I say under my breath. “It’s time to go home. Come on, girl.”
“I wanna play again,” she says, slurring her words.
“Nope. Time to go.”
Georgia starts crying.
“Jake,” I call. He is with Toby, still replaying the best moments of the round, mimicking the swing of his winning strike. He’d love to play again, I bet, but it’s eight and a weeknight, and Matt has admitted—to substantial teasing—that his parents expect him back home by nine. Jake turns at the sound of my voice.
“What is it, babe?”
“We gotta get Georgia home.”
“Does it have to be now?”
“Yes,” I say, panicking slightly, trying to figure out what to do. She won’t be able to drive if we take her back to her car at work. We could take her home, but there’d be no way to get past her parents, especially because they’d have to drive her to work in the morning. And I can’t even begin to imagine what her mother would say if she saw her like this.
Georgia falls into my arms, inexplicably weeping now. I turn the two of us in an awkward shuffle-dance, so I can look over her shoulder at Jake. He appears crestfallen. “Can you pull the car up to the front?” I ask.
“Yeah, okay,” he says. He lingers for a final few words of triumph to Toby and walks out to the parking lot.
“Okay, Georgia,” I say to her, pushing her away from my body. “We’re gonna have a sleepover tonight at my house. Sound good?”
“I love your house,” she sobs. “Your mom is so nice.”
“Sure. One second.”
I set her on a seat, where she curls up like a pill bug and continues to cry. I turn away from her and call home.
I fiddle with the hem of my shirt as the phone rings. My parents have been remarkably lenient about Georgia coming over this summer. No homework for her to interrupt, I guess. But Mom won’t like the idea of having her stay on a work night.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad. How’re you?”
“I’m good,” he says. “What’s up? You coming home soon?”
“I’m hanging out with Georgia, and…” I look over at her. She is morosely staring into space, tears still running down her cheeks. “She’s having a rough night. I think she…had a fight with her boss or something, and she’s really upset. Would it be okay if she stayed at our house tonight?”
“Well, I don’t know, sweet pea, it is a work night.”
“We work at the same place, Dad. And it’s not like we’re going to stay up talking all night. I think we’re just gonna go straight to sleep.”
“Right after the holiday, Caroline? She was here Thursday and Friday already. You two need to get back into the swing of things. We’ve been happy to have her over in the afternoons, but sleepovers are different.”
“Dad, please, honestly, this is not a fun thing for me. She’s just really unhappy and I want to help.”
He sighs. “Did she get permission from her parents?”
“Yes,” I lie.
“I’ll ask your mother. If she’s okay with it, I am too.” I hear him cover the phone with his hand and call my mom’s name. Caroline wants Georgia to stay the night tonight, he says as if from far away. Mom’s muffled response, and his reply. She says she’s having a hard night. A fight with her boss. She says they’re just gonna go to bed. More of Mom’s voice, annoyed but indistinct. That’s what I said. But yeah, Caroline says her parents say it’s okay. Silence. A few words from Mom. I know it’s a weeknight, but she’s been responsible all summer. If a little absent. I know. I know.
I chew my lip while their conversation continues. Finally, there’s a rattling and Dad gets back on the phone.
“She can come over. But this is a one-time thing.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Will you be home soon?”
“In like an hour, Dad. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.”
“Well, I just hope she’s doing okay. Your mom and I like her quite a bit.”
“Thanks, Dad. I love you. I gotta go.”
“Love you too, swe
et pea.”
I hang up and hurry back to Georgia, kneeling next to her. Her phone is sticking out of her jeans like a broken bone poking from the skin. I pull it out of the pocket and press it into her hands.
“Georgia. Call your parents. Tell them you need to stay at my place tonight. Tell them, I don’t know, say I’m having a panic attack or something.” I sort of am. I’ve never seen Georgia like this. I glance toward the door. Jake’s car is idling. It’s still light out, for fuck’s sake. Technically this is evening, but I think it qualifies as day-drinking.
“Fine,” Georgia mutters. She sounds so out of it, and I know, in that moment, there is no way this is going to work. My heart starts to race. We’re going to get caught, and I’m going to be grounded for the rest of the summer, and my last couple of months here are going to be miserable. Georgia absently taps her screen a couple times and holds the phone up to her ear.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s Georgia.”
My mouth falls open slightly. Her voice is perfectly clear and precise. I can tell she’s focusing intently, her eyes trained on some point in the middle distance, bottom lip held under her teeth in concentration.
“Yeah, everything’s fine, I was just wondering if it’s okay for me to stay at Caroline’s tonight. She had an awful day at work. Her boss is really mean to her. She just really wants me to stay and hang out.”
A long silence.
“I mean, I got a 1550 on my last practice test.” She coughs.
Silence.
“I was there this weekend anyway, one more night is no big deal.”
Silence.
She is starting to slur her words, just a little. If she keeps talking, her mom will be all worried, and we’ll have to figure out some way of getting her home, and shit, this is—
“Mom, please. You said if I kept the practice tests up.” She takes a deep breath, and her voice is stronger when she starts speaking again. “I promise we’ll go straight to bed. And I’ll study before. Like always.” A brief silence. “Yeah, if you can get off work early tomorrow, of course I’ll come home.” A longer silence. “Okay, thanks, Mom, seriously, thanks so much. Caroline says thanks too. You too. Yeah. Love you. See you tomorrow.” She hangs up.
I lean back against the wall in relief. “Georgia,” I say, “that wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but seriously, you gotta get just a little bit better at lying to your parents.”
Georgia smiles. It’s not a very happy smile. She hands her phone back to me, and I slip it back into her pocket, as if I’m her intermediary to the world. I stand and take her hand to pull her up.
“I always come back from your family’s place at exactly the same time every night. Y’all feed me vegetables, and they think my test scores are pretty high right now. They weren’t happy, but they’ll live. It’s whatever. Let’s go home.”
She walks toward the door, her pace steady but her path wavering. I follow her. When I put my hand on the small of her back, like a boat I’m guiding into shore, she doesn’t object.
She sits in the back and stares out the window while Jake and I talk in low tones. He tells me about his day. The rhythm of his voice, the cadence of his familiar problems—his boss, mean customers, a ludicrously high display of bran cereal—is soothing. This night had so much potential. Instead, it’s become awkward and painful, like when you stretch a muscle wrong and it hurts.
As Jake’s pulling into our neighborhood, he puts his hand on my leg.
“You look so sad, baby,” he says. “Are y’all gonna be okay tonight?”
“Yeah.” I chew on my lip. My parents shouldn’t bother us. We’ll make it upstairs without any comments. Probably. “I’m just…” I look back at Georgia. Surprisingly, she is not asleep. Her eyes are still open, blank, heavy-lidded, lips parted and chapped. “Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Whatever you want,” he says and pulls up beside my house. I open the door. The sun has set almost completely behind a sheet of yellowish clouds, and the air tastes spoiled, like it’s been left in the heat too long. I lean over to give him a quick peck, and he pulls me in for a longer, deeper kiss. It feels like something I need to get over with.
“See you tomorrow?” I say.
“Sounds good.”
“Thanks for driving us home. Sorry about Georgia.”
“It’s okay. I love you.” He so rarely says I love you first, and I start to wish I had taken a little more time with that kiss.
“I love you too.”
I open the back door. Georgia’s sagged against the seat, staring straight ahead. I pull her out, which takes some doing, but she willingly puts her arm around my shoulder and steps forward onto the curb. Jake makes a sympathetic face at me over her shoulder. I slam the door, and he drives away, leaving a cicada-filled silence in his wake.
Lightning bugs flicker around us as we walk up the sidewalk, Georgia dragging her feet. The damp underside of her shirtsleeve rubs against my shoulder. We reach the door.
“I’m really sorry, Caroline,” Georgia says before I can open it. Her voice is clear and quiet, and I wonder if she’s sobered up. But there’s no way to tell for sure, and besides, it doesn’t matter.
“It’s okay,” I reply. I feel, still, a hard annoyance scratching at the back of my head, waiting for me to release it at her. So I expected my words to come out as a lie. They didn’t, though. They too are vulnerable and soft, and she leans against me more heavily as she hears them.
I open the door and we go quickly down the hall and up the stairs. I hear Dad call my name from the den, but I get Georgia up to my room—she climbs in bed and scoots over to her side immediately—before I come say hello. As I close the door behind me, her breath is coming in evenly spaced gasps. Small, tight inhale, huge exhale. I think she’s asleep.
My parents are waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “Sorry,” I say before they can start. “I just wanted to get Georgia into bed.”
“Already? What’s wrong?” Dad asks, his brow furrowed. “Where were you?”
“We went out to hang out with people after work, and…” I realize I was so busy getting her home that I’m not even sure what made her so upset. Alcohol is a depressant, sure, but it couldn’t be that alone. “I honestly don’t know. She seemed fine. I was talking to Jake, and then the next thing I know, she’s freaking out crying.”
“And she didn’t want to go home?” My mother is equally concerned.
“I think she didn’t want to deal with her parents asking her stuff. Or maybe she just wanted to stay with us. I don’t know—she really likes you guys.”
“Well, we like her,” Mom murmurs. “I was worried about it being a work night, but if she’s already asleep…but this can’t be a pattern, Caroline.”
“I know.” I run my hand along the banister. “I’m sorry. I promise I’m just trying to be a good friend.”
“You are a good friend,” Dad says. He climbs up one stair to hug me.
“Do you want to watch TV with us?” Mom says. “We’re just having some fruit salad.”
“That would be great,” I say, surprising myself. “That’d be really, really great.”
I curl up in the easy chair, and my parents sit in their love seat, and we watch strong-but-vulnerable detectives solve murders and tough-but-fair lawyers prosecute the killers. My mom crochets. Dad idly glances over a ten-cent book of crosswords.
After a little while, I get a text from Georgia.
I threw up and I think I’m sober now. I’m so sorry. Where are you?
Downstairs, I respond. She doesn’t text back. A minute later, I hear the shower come on upstairs. My parents glance that way, but don’t do anything. I know her towel is still sitting out from this weekend for her to use. The water cuts off at the next commercial break, and by the time the show is back on, she appears wearing one of my oversized T-shirts and
a pair of pajama pants. She sits next to me in the big easy chair, our hips squished together in the middle and tilted up on the sides. Her hair is wet and smells like flowers. My parents look over and ask her how she is.
“Good,” she says. “Thank you for having me again. I’m really sorry for the short notice.”
“It’s okay,” Mom says. “Always happy to have you.”
And God bless them, they do not ask anything more, not even what her parents think about her being here instead of home.
We go upstairs when the episode is done and climb into our opposite sides of the bed. I text Jake for a while and listen to Georgia’s unsteady breath. She’s not asleep. I plug my phone into its charger, and the room is suddenly dark.
“Georgia?” I say, reaching out tentatively with my voice. She nestles deeper under the covers, but I can tell she’s heard me.
“Did anything happen?” I say.
She makes a muffled noise of displeasure, and there’s a rustle of fabric as she turns toward me. It’s so dark I can barely see her, but I can smell the alcohol on her breath underneath the toothpaste.
“It’s so stupid,” she says, her voice low. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say, even though I’m glad she did. I reach out to touch her shoulder, end up grazing her arm. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” she whispers. “It’s all fine. It’s just…” She lets out an enormous sigh and turns onto her back. The glow-in-the-dark stars above us are pale, barely lit at all. “I had to take my SAT practice test this weekend, like I do every weekend, right? And I told my parents I’d do it on Saturday because if I had my practice test done by the time they got back that night, we could hang out together all day Sunday. Which was all fine.
“But I sat down to do it after I got back from your house, and I don’t know if it was all the sugar, or the champagne, or just being tired, or what…” Her voice trails off for a minute, and I lie there, waiting, before she gives her head a little shake and continues. “Everything was off. None of the questions made sense. And when I reviewed it, I got a really bad score. Like, really bad. Way worse than the score I got in May, and that’s the one I’m supposed to beat with this next test. Even worse than I did when I took it in seventh grade, and that’s saying something. I mean, I was thirteen.”
The Goodbye Summer Page 14
