“Oh, yeah? So I see you’re privy to all the family business, huh?”
I was taken aback a bit, embarrassed by the seriousness of his tone, but then he was smiling again.
“Chill out, I’m just kidding.” He drizzled milk over one of the bowls then passed the jug and the second bowl to me.
“I wasn’t worried,” I said.
“So,” he said through a crunchy mouthful. “You’re one of Rudy’s friends? You a freshman at Ogden, too?”
“Yes.”
He nodded while he swallowed. “What’d you guys do last night? Big party?”
“Um, yeah, sort of. Why?” I ate some of my cereal.
“You smell like beer.”
I felt heat rise up and color my face and all of the sudden I was acutely aware of my long, bare legs against the cool seat of the stool, of my unkempt hair and the puffiness of my sleepy eyes. “Sorry. I haven’t showered yet.”
“Hey, no big deal. Just giving you a heads up; I wouldn’t kiss my mother with that breath.”
At this I knew my cheeks had blushed fully pink, but at the same time I felt flattered, privileged even to be receiving this sort of attention from him. Previously, at sleepovers with my old friends in grade school and in junior high, despite how much we had hassled my friends’ cute older brothers – following them around, spying on them with our ears pressed up to the cracks of their bedroom doors (what did they do in there?) – they had paid us zero attention whatsoever. We had been invisible to them, not even worthy of this sort of sisterly-brotherly chiding.
“You’re just jealous,” I said, emboldened by the peculiarity of the conversation. I crunched down on a spoonful of flakes, milk sloshing around in my mouth. “I bet your morning at the airport was riveting, huh?”
“Oh, absolutely. I bet I got more action than you, too. The guy next to me was curled up on my shoulder the whole flight. I’ve even got the drool stains to prove it.”
“Nice,” I responded quickly. I can play at this game, too, I thought. “Did you get his number afterward?”
“Nah, I’m not a relationship type of guy.” He looked into my face, considering me. His eyes were so green they practically sparkled, like emeralds under the spotlights in a jewelry store, and I felt a pleasant nervousness in the pit of my stomach. “One night stands are more my thing.”
We were still regarding each other from across the countertop, both of us half-smirking, when Rudy walked into the kitchen.
“Hey, jerks.” She rubbed one fist against her eye sleepily. “Thanks for waking me for this party.”
“Well, aren’t you cheery this morning, sleeping beauty?” Kent tipped the bottle of orange juice to his mouth and drank directly from the jug, his Adams apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed.
Rudy stuck her tongue out and made an angry face at her brother, but then she smiled as she pulled out a second stool and sat, perched with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her butt cheeks were nearly visible, peeking out from her shorts, but she didn’t seem to take notice. “What did you make me for breakfast?”
“We ate it all, no breakfast left. Sucks for you.”
Rudy reached for the Frosted Flakes and took a handful from the box, eating them dry out of her hand. I crunched down on another spoonful while Kent brought his bowl up to his face and drained the sugary milk that remained at the bottom.
“Well, I’m going to go carry in the rest of my shit,” he said, setting the empty bowl back down on the counter in front of him. “Enjoy your breakfast, ladies.”
“Let me know if you need any help,” Rudy said. “Not.”
“Thanks, sis.” He turned and glanced at me as he passed through the kitchen door and said “See you later, Jillian,” and though Rudy’s presence had ruptured the moment – broken the spell – when he met my gaze I could see in his eyes that something had transpired between us, and I could feel in the gentle pounding of my chest that this wasn’t the end of it.
Kent was the only secret I kept from Rudy, the single thing I felt I couldn’t share with her because he was her only brother. It might have been different if they had hated each other but they were close, a friendly rapport existed between them, and that seemed to make it physically impossible for me to tell her that I liked him.
On our first evening of Thanksgiving break there was a massive party planned, again at Skyler Warren’s house. After my immediate refusal on the grounds of mortification, Rudy launched a counterattack and after a week of assuring me the cocaine incident would be completely forgiven and forgotten, I reluctantly agreed to return to the Warren’s house. Mr. and Mrs. Warren were leaving for a quick trip to Seattle, and in the cafeteria at lunch I heard upperclassmen debating whether or not it would be the best party of the semester. It seemed to me that Skyler’s parents were always both absent, which struck me as extremely sad, even though my own parents weren’t consistently present. Not that it was absolutely necessary to have a parentless house for a party – it had become obvious to me over the last few months that many parents didn’t discourage their teenagers from drinking. In fact, several of my classmates’ parents would drive them to parties and return to chauffeur their drunken children home. Once Rudy and I even got a ride back to her house from the father of one of the girls on the cheerleading squad, and he had made me feel slightly uncomfortable with the way he would swivel around in the front seat and stare at us (but not at our faces). He had promised us (pinky sworn, as a tipsy Rudy had requested) that he wouldn’t say a word about it to either of our parents, who he saw regularly at Ogden Parent Association meetings.
The word around school was that this party would be even bigger, with three kegs this time, but the thought of another night drunk on beer made my stomach turn. The taste made me pucker my mouth and cringe, the sheer quantity of liquid made my stomach bloated and bubbly, and I always felt like I would surely throw up, though that had never actually happened.
“We’ll get Kent to buy us something else,” Rudy said in her bedroom after school. She was sitting on the carpeted floor, her legs spread so she could bend over to paint my toenails.
At the sound of his name, my heart had leapt. “Will he?”
Rudy nodded her head but her hand remained steady as she painted a line of pink polish down my big toenail. “I think so. He has a good fake ID. We should probably ask him early though; I don’t know if he has plans tonight.”
I considered this for a moment, what plans he might have; if they would include a woman, a girlfriend perhaps, or some gorgeous girl he had gone to high school with, both of them back home for the holidays, both of them lonely and looking for the sort of attention a person could seek from a one night stand with an old acquaintance – the familiarity that would make it easy to slide straight into kissing without introduction or the uneasiness of silently communicating what you wanted to the other person, yet the knowledge you would both be leaving, that this was only temporary in the best sort of way. In reality, of course, I had no idea what a one-night stand was like.
“What do you want to get?” I asked, my own knowledge of alcohol extremely limited.
“I don’t know, maybe vodka. Or rum?”
“Okay. Does that go with soda?” I asked.
“I think it can.” Rudy had finished one foot and set it aside to dry, propped up on one of her outstretched legs, as she moved on to my second foot.
“Houston will be there tonight, right?” I said. For the past month or so, ever since the Fall Ball, Rudy and Houston had been some sort of bizarre couple. They weren’t always together – they didn’t hold hands walking through the hallways, or sit together at lunch or anything – but he drove us to school occasionally and sometimes, on the weekends, Rudy would make plans with him to go see a movie or to hang out at his house, and I would be left alone with my mother to bake a batch of low-carb brownies or spend the evening rearranging all of the clothes in my closet. I wasn’t even sure they were exclusive (Houston was precisely the type of guy I could
imagine seeing multiple girls at once) because Rudy didn’t talk about him often, and because she didn’t bring it up, I had never thought to press for details.
“Yep. He said he could give us a ride there, too.”
I hated riding with Houston because I always had to sit in the backseat, alone with his piles of sour, sweaty smelling football practice clothes (football season was over, which made it all the more disgusting), but I nodded my agreement anyway.
When my nails were dry, shiny hot pink against the faded tan of my toes, we knocked on Kent’s closed bedroom door. Through the walls I could hear the loud bass sounds of rock music. Rudy banged hard against the door; finally it swung open and Kent’s head popped out.
“What?” He said.
“Will you take us to the liquor store?” Rudy flashed him her best shit-eating smile. “Please?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. Behind him, as I peeked through the doorway as covertly as I could, I saw dark blue, sparsely decorated walls. His bed was covered in a burgundy and blue plaid comforter and beside it sat an oak dresser, the top scattered with loose change and dollar bills, tiny glass bottles of cologne and a half-crushed, empty soda can. One of the drawers was open, revealing white pinstriped boxer shorts stacked one on top of the other. I looked away, directly into the strands of beige carpet beneath my own feet.
“Do you have cash?”
“Yes,” Rudy said.
“Give me a second.” Kent closed the door and within seconds reappeared, keys jangling in his hand and a Florida State sweatshirt covering his plain t-shirt. “Let’s go, kids.”
On the ride there I sat in the backseat of Mr. Golden’s car staring at the back of Kent’s head, his perfectly disheveled brown hair sticking up from his scalp in all the right places. No one spoke much, and I sat back and inhaled the strong smell of Kent’s cologne mixed with the clean scent of the car. In the parking lot of the liquor store, Rudy handed him two twenties from the pocket of her jeans and he disappeared inside the store. While he was gone, Rudy changed the radio station and turned up the volume and, free to give myself entirely to fantasy considering that the real object of my affection was hidden out of my sight, I imagined Kent holding my hand, taking me to dinner, kissing me softly on the lips. He came back minutes later, two plain plastic bags hanging from one hand.
“Set these back there, will you?” He passed the bags to me in the backseat and I cradled them like a precious gift. A newborn baby or fragile china. He climbed into the driver’s seat.
“What did you get?” Rudy asked.
“A handle of Congress and some vanilla rum. And some stuff for me.”
Rudy made a face at him, and he threw his hands in the air.
“Hey, you only gave me forty bucks. Did you expect Grey Goose?”
When our caravan arrived in front of Skyler’s house that night it was already past eleven. I was wearing a black skirt and high heels that showed off the length of my legs, and I’d spent extra time agonizing over smoothing the cowlick in my hair, but much to my disappointment Kent was already gone when we came downstairs, dressed and ready to leave for the evening. Though I was flattered by the compliments Houston’s friend, Jack, gave me on the ride across town, I could already feel my good mood slipping away.
Walking up the sidewalk my energy drained with each step. In front of me Houston had his arm wrapped carefully around Rudy’s waist, his fingers cupped against the side of her hip, and behind me Jack was glued to his cell phone, chanting one word answers over and over to whoever was on the other end of the line. In the middle I felt lonely and isolated and frumpy, clinging to my purse, which was heavy with the bottles of liquor hidden inside.
Inside the kitchen I filled a plastic cup halfway with Coke, then wrestled the seal from the top of the rum bottle. Were you supposed to do half and half? Was that enough rum? Beside me Rudy had already mixed her vodka drink and was timidly sipping from the cup. I should have watched her, I thought to myself.
“It tastes pretty good.” She shrugged.
As I lifted the bottle Houston swooped in behind Rudy, planting a kiss on her cheek, which she met with an enormous grin.
“Come be my beer pong partner?”
She looked at me, for my consent, and I nodded as casually as I could. Just because I was lonely and miserable didn’t give me a right to come between these lovebirds.
“I’ll find you as soon as the game’s over, okay?”
“Okay.”
When her back was turned, I tipped the bottle into my cup, watching the clear liquid gurgle from the neck of the bottle out into the dark soda until the cup was filled to the brim. When I brought it to my lips I nearly gagged. Either I’d done the math wrong or I hated hard alcohol. Regardless, there was nothing I could do about it now except suck it up and force it down. I took another bitter sip then swept both bottles into my arms and shoved them awkwardly into my purse, hugging it against my hip.
What was I supposed to do now, I wondered. I gazed around the kitchen, the tasteful granite countertops and stained wood cabinets, the silver pots and pans hanging from a contraption over the island centered in the middle of the room. Traffic flowed in and out of the kitchen doorways – girls parading in to make their drinks, complicated concoctions of liquor, juice and soda, empty-handed guys wandering inside to peer into the doors of the stainless steel refrigerator, eyes glancing over their shoulder as they reached for a beer that either they’d hidden or they were stealing, then hurrying from the room before they could be discovered. I watched with growing curiosity as one boy rifled through drawer after drawer in the kitchen, and when he pulled out a black handled knife, the blade sharp and glinting along the edge, my breath caught in my chest. But he pressed it into the side of his beer can, puncturing the aluminum as he clutched the can horizontally. He tossed the knife onto the counter then opened the top of the can and shoved his mouth over the jaggedly cut hole, enveloping the side of the can with his slobbery lips, beer rushing out and down his throat, past his bobbing Adam’s apple. When he was finished he left, a puddle of spilled liquid marking the place where he’d stood.
I leaned against the countertop as casually as I could, holding my glass halfway to my mouth so that if anyone happened to make eye contact with me, I could lift it to my lips as fast as possible to avoid conversation. Or if I grew bored. No one stayed in the kitchen long, and the movement, chaos and noise gave me camouflage.
It wasn’t long before, with nowhere else to divert my attention, I had finished my drink, and Rudy was still no where to be seen. I fidgeted with the strap of my purse, shifting my weight against the cabinets. I crossed one leg over the other but it was hard to keep my balance with just one high-heeled shoe against the slippery tile. I uncrossed my feet and hugged the purse to my stomach. Maybe I just needed to drink more.
I poured several glugs of rum into the cup and topped it off with soda. The knife boy returned, this time with two friends trailing behind him, and we made eye contact as he entered the kitchen. He smiled and my cheeks flushed. I had to get out of the kitchen before anyone else recognized me – the lonely kitchen lurker, the creepy girl who stares while you make your drinks.
I left my kitchen haven and wandered cautiously out into the dining room where four long, plastic folding tables sat in the place the dining table would have been. Three were occupied by couples teamed up to play beer pong against each other. The fourth held three kegs, its cheap plastic middle buckling under the weight of all the beer. I found Rudy at the far table, and I weaved through the crowd to stand at her side.
“You found us,” she said, raising the ball to shoot. She missed.
“Yeah. I got bored by myself,” I admitted quietly.
“We’re almost done.”
There were two cups left in front of Rudy and Houston while the other couple, who I recognized not because I’d ever spoken to either of them, but because they were popular juniors and I’d studied them with their friends in the hallway and at footb
all games, had just one.
“Did you finish your drink?” I asked. Rudy was drinking from one of the beer cups now, her soda and vodka nowhere I could see.
She nodded. “We won, so this is our second game. God, you go through so much alcohol playing.”
“Hey.” Houston nudged her with his elbow, his mouth stern and his eyes clouded with concentration. “Pay attention.”
She turned back to the table, and I stepped back to stand against the wall and wait for the end of the game. After Rudy missed again, Houston took the ball in his hand, spinning it around in his fingers before he raised his arm, poised over the table. He bent back his forearm and sent the ball sailing across the room, where it plopped with a splash into the final cup.
“Yeah!” He pumped his fist in the air and Rudy turned to me with an apologetic smile. Houston was already setting the table for another game and, not wanting to be a nuisance, I left them alone.
In the living room I found an empty seat at the end of one of the overstuffed leather couches, and I busied myself with finishing one drink after another until finally, Rudy materialized in front of me. Her head was spinning, but I thought maybe mine was spinning, too. Either way, I grasped her forearms to steady us both.
“Are you ready to go home?”
My head was pounding and I’d spent the last half hour avoiding
eye contact with the creepy freshman guy who kept smiling at me from across the room. I nodded with enthusiasm. I didn’t remember how we’d arrived at Skyler Warren’s until we were already outside, shivering on the porch in just our skirts and sweaters against the bitter-cold November air.
“Where’s Houston?” Outside, the music thumped with slightly less force, but I still had to yell to hear my own voice.
“Gone.” Rudy wiped at the corner of her eye, smudging a tiny trail of mascara onto the edge of her nose. “We got in a fight and he left.”
“How are we going to get to your house?” I hugged myself, rubbing the goosebumps that had sprung up on my biceps.
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