Innocence

by Lucy St. John

Chapter 15

 

  Later, I’m not sure how much later, we rallied for a late breakfast in the dining hall. Chelsea Daniels took the lead in gathering up the weary, hung-over members of The Five. Chelsea had had a few beers, herself, but she remained the perky, perfect small town girl for whom everything, her whole life, came up roses. It was hard not to smile at her. As usual, Chelsea had Lauren Marks in tow. The two had become fast friends. Heck, we all had. But between them, it was something special. They were opposite sides of the same coin. Together, they just worked.

  Chelsea rapped a knuckle on our door, then belted out a gentle yoo-hoo through the wood. Sonya, still a lump under the covers atop her loft, didn’t so much as stir. But I did. Now, in addition to my hangover, I had hunger pangs. The call to breakfast was just what the doctor ordered. I got up and shuffled to the door, unlocking it, then zombie-walking back to my bed. I plopped down on the squeaky springs.

  “Rise and shine,” Chelsea sang, leading the way into our room, as Lauren, then a rough-looking Amanda Livingston, followed.

  “What in the hell happened in here?” Lauren uttered, her ever-alert eyes darting around the room. She moved to inspect the unmoving mound atop Sonya’s bunk. Lauren lifted the covers and peeked underneath.

  “Wow, girl,” she said. “You should use that color in your next painting. I do believe you’re green.”

  Lauren chuckled at her own joke, and so did Chelsea.

  But Sonya could only groan. Then, she snatched down the covers and pulled them over her pounding head.

  This time Amanda gave it a go. The Brit weaned on warm beer had downed more than her share, as she toyed with the college guys like a clawed cat with a ball of string. She wowed them with her drinking prowess, but didn’t give the time of day to their sexual advances. Amanda possessed an iron constitution, like Winston Churchill or somebody. No matter how much she drank, she kept her wits about her.

  So her hangover advice rang with wisdom and gravitas.

  “Come now, Sonya,” Amanda said gently, raising a small bag of salt and vinegar potato chips to my roommate’s cover-shrouded head.

  “Here you go,” Amanda went on. “Have a salty crisp, then let’s get some good grease in you for breakfast. Do you good.”

  Amanda slowly lifted the covers, then held the chips at the opening. Slowly, a disembodied hand reached out and dipped into the bag. Sonya withdrew a couple of chips, then her hand retreated underneath the covers. We could hear her munching on the chips under the covers. After a few seconds, her hand reappeared for more.

  Amanda smiled.

  “There you go,” she said. “Nothing better for a hangover than salty crisps,” Amanda said in her wonderful accent. “Next, some orange juice, bacon, eggs and potatoes should fix you right up.”

  Sonya took another handful of chips. But when her hand reappeared, she didn’t go for the bag. Instead she held it there, then uttered a single command from under the covers.

  “Sunglasses,” she moaned, in a deep, raspy voice.

  I was running a brush through my hair and knew just what she meant. Sonya’s rounded, dark and oversized sunglasses were on her desk. I retrieved them and placed them into her waiting hand. She slid them on under the covers, then slowly emerged from her cocoon.

  “It’s alive,” Lauren joked as Sonya’s pale face, behind her dark, Jackie-O shades, came into view.

  Sonya didn’t take the bait. Instead, she called out again, as if we were all her foot servants.

  “Sweats and a T-shirt,” she uttered.

  I looked back at her. I could see that her eyes were closed behind her shades.

  “Which ones?” I asked.

  “Anything.”

  I brought her her clothes. She put them on underneath the sheet.

  “I’m going to need help getting down,” she said. “Motherfucker if this room isn’t still spinning.”

  I looked at Amanda, and she cocked her head in acknowledgement. She had obviously been there before. I hadn’t. And seeing Sonya, and even the pale, tender-voiced Amanda, convinced me to never want to go there. If only I had kept my vow.

  We all helped get Sonya down from her bunk and then stood sentry around her until she was steady on her feet. Her small frame and attractive figure looked lost in the all the fabric of her loose sweats and oversized T-shirt. Part of this was because Sonya didn’t want to mess around with a bra. She had gone to bed butt naked after her dalliance with Josh. And now she wanted to shuffle off to breakfast, then retreat back to her solitary perch for the rest of the day.

  We walked her toward the dining hall as one might walk a frail, elderly woman. We flanked her on both sides, Amanda and Lauren on opposite sides lending their forearms, as if the dark, bespectacled coed were blind.

  Sonya might as well have been. Because she sure as hell wasn’t ready to see who would show up in the nearly-deserted, about-to-close dining hall at the tail-end of breakfast service.

  Yes, it was Josh Elliot. And as if to bedevil me, Corey Stills was with him. I even thought I saw him wink at me. Then Corey reached down and grabbed his junk over his sweats, as if to remind me of his full-monty in the shower.

  Gross!

  But none of this compared to the play-by-play banter of it all. Banter about the events of last evening. Banter about Sonya sucking face (and who knew what else) with Josh. And banter about my sudden disappearance from the party and the mysterious man who accompanied me.

  Banter by the Five. Banter of friends on their way to becoming an inseparable team. On our way to becoming family.

  Even with hangovers throbbing and stomachs lurching the morning after our first college kegger, it was hard not to feel good being around The Five.

  Being one of them.

  Nothing, no one, would ever quite take their place in my life. This makes me smile. And it makes me sad, too.

  You can never go back. Writing this is as close as I will come. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it. Perhaps, it’s why I’m telling you everything. And we haven’t even come close to the full story. The whole wonderful, awful, unforgettable tale.

  And how it changed all of us from who we were in that dining hall on the day after unstoppable events had been set in motion.

  I can only shake my head – in awe, in regret and in wonder -- over all that would happen.

  All that was coming.