by Adi Alsaid
They stood at the edge, facing the island, the river’s waves lapping at their toes as if trying to coax them into the water. “Look at those stars,” Hudson said.
“Beautiful,” Leila said, looking up at the night sky. Then she turned back to him and smiled. “Are you a good swimmer?”
“I’m all right,” he said. “You?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” And with that, she dived in.
There was a very brief pause. A delay between Leila’s action and his reaction, that split second during which Hudson asked himself just who the hell this girl was and what she was doing in his life. By the time the thought had passed, he was already jumping in after her.
The cool water was a shock. She was a couple of body-lengths in front of him, her strokes fast, frantic, overjoyed, the sound of her laughter ringing out every time she came up for air. When he almost swallowed a lungful of Mississippi, he realized that he, too, was laughing in between strokes, that his heart rate was spiked by adrenaline, that he was completely intoxicated by the river, by the night, by Leila. He swam faster until he nearly caught up with her, her kicks coming down only a few inches from his face. Swimming around her kicks until he was at her side, he felt his muscles start to burn with effort. Funny, how it took a little bit of pain to remember that certain parts of yourself were alive.
They reached the island’s shore at about the same time and climbed onto the muddy grass and flopped onto their backs. Leila’s arm was resting across his chest. Without giving the move much thought, Hudson brought his right hand up and laid it gently atop Leila’s forearm. He’d expected her skin to be somehow warm, but it was cold from the water. He started to rub, wanting to bring her warmth.
“We are very wet,” she said, unsticking her shirt from her stomach with the hand not on Hudson’s chest.
“Yes, we are,” he said, chuckling.
She pulled her arm away to wring out her shirt. “Yeah, that did nothing.” Then she stood up, brushing away the grass that had stuck to the exposed parts of her legs.
As he stood, too, for a second, Hudson was dumbstruck. Although in truth it wasn’t just a second; it had been the whole day. Since Leila had stepped out of her car, he’d been dumbstruck by her presence, her beauty. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
“I’ll take the staring as a compliment,” she said with a laugh.
“Sorry,” Hudson said, looking down at the ground. Even when he was embarrassed, he couldn’t look completely away. He watched water dripping down her legs, wondering to himself how he’d gotten to be where he was standing.
And now she was stepping toward him and bringing her arms around his neck, pulling her body against his. “You’re shivering,” she said.
“I think I might stop shivering soon if you keep doing this thing that you’re doing.”
She laughed and pulled herself a little closer, so that he could really feel her body heat. Hudson brought up his hand to brush away a wet strand of hair behind Leila’s ear, but, not being great at this part of the process, he realized too late that he’d brought both his hands up to her face and suddenly didn’t know what to do with them.
She noticed and laughed at him, not unkindly. “I’ll just put those right here,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and trying to laugh off the moment.
She shook her head and then grabbed his right hand and moved it to her neck. “Right here.”
He looked down at her, at that fantastic face looking back at him, her lips parted first in a smile and then in preparation for what was to come. Her eyes looking into his, then down at his mouth. Hudson could hardly believe that he was here with her. They began to lean into each other when a sound broke through that insulating buzz of the river.
“Ho-ly shit! Is that Hudson with a girl?”
5
HUDSON’S FRIENDS HAD arrived, carrying a healthy arsenal of cheap beer. They began to clamor and whoop from the rowboat, and Hudson and Leila instinctively stepped away from each other. It was the usual trio—John, Richie, and Scott—each of them wearing a big stupid grin as they reached the island.
“Hudsy! What in the hell is going on here?” John said. He stepped off the boat and toward Hudson and ruffled his hair. “Has there always been a ladies’ man hiding behind that smart-kid exterior?”
“Hey, guys,” Hudson said. “Um, what are you doing here?”
“What the shit else do we have to do? The better question is, what are you doing here? And why are you wet? And who is this?” John said, looking from Hudson to Leila, then back at Hudson.
“And what the hell is she doing here with you?” Richie chimed in, making no effort to hide the fact that he was staring at Leila, her wet clothes clinging to her body. He ran a hand through his beard, which was red and bushy and had been his trademark since his facial hair started growing in ninth grade.
“I’m Leila,” she said simply, offering a wave, making a slight effort to cover herself up.
The three boys exchanged looks. Scott took a step toward Hudson and gave him a strong pat on the back. “Where’d you find her?”
Hudson shrugged, then looked at John and tried to convey with just his eyes that the boys were interrupting at the worst possible time and should immediately get back into the boat and leave him alone with Leila. If his eyes managed to say that, though, John wasn’t listening. And if John didn’t lead their pals away, there was no way the other two would take the initiative.
“Well, Leila, nice to meet you. Now, who wants to get drunk?” John pulled out a can of beer and opened it with a satisfying snap, immediately putting it to his lips to control the foam. Richie and Scott followed his lead and popped open their own cans.
“We weren’t gonna stay long,” Hudson said. “I’ve got that interview tomorrow.”
“Oh, shit, that’s right,” John said. After another long gulp he looked at Leila. “What about you? Do you have an interview tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” he said, grabbing another beer from the pack he’d set at his feet and offering it to her. “You guys in for a game, then?”
Scott and Richie cheered their approval and bashed their cans together in a toast that preceded another long swig. “I can’t, man,” Hudson said. “We should probably be heading back soon anyway. I just wanted to show her the island.”
“She won’t have really seen it if she doesn’t play Drunkball.” John took another quick sip. “One round and then you can go. She can stay.” He looked at Leila and winked, and Hudson felt that sensation that must have been what people meant when they said their hearts sank.
Leila looked over at Hudson, still so close to him that he could pull her in for a kiss, if only he could gather the will to lean all the way in. How he could see the greenness of her irises through the darkness he didn’t quite understand. “One game?” she asked.
Hudson took a deep breath, mostly to try to pull his heart back up into its rightful place. Every moment with her in it was a treasure, even if he had to share her. “Okay,” he said. “It is kind of pointless to come here and not play Drunkball.”
Leila accepted the beer from John, and the five of them started walking toward the thicket of trees. Thankfully the trees were spaced far enough apart that they could maneuver through them unharmed. It was as if the island had known in advance what it would be used for and wanted to offer just enough protection from the outside, adult world for the teenagers who’d someday claim it. Beyond the trees was a large clearing, although it was too dark to make out anything there.
Scott broke off from the group and headed toward the shed, then flicked on the generator, and the lights came on. The lights were about knee high, set up around the perimeter of the field and pointing inward so that the entire area, about the size of a basketball court, was lit up as brightly as a supermarket parking lot. There were random items scattered abo
ut everywhere, making the place look like something between a junkyard and a garage sale: twin leather recliners, a glass coffee table, an assortment of patio furniture in various states of disrepair. A large parasol was staked into the ground, a cabinet full of red plastic cups, a huge stuffed version of Rafiki from The Lion King. Toward one end of the field was a children’s prefab playset, its swings replaced by tires. What must have once been just a pleasant, secluded meadow had since been turned into an elaborate Drunkball playing field.
Richie and Scott, after ogling Leila’s body in the new light for a few seconds, raced out to lay claim to the leather recliners, Richie losing a couple of his beer cans on the way. They wrestled for the one recliner that actually reclined. When Scott won the battle, Richie went back to collect his fallen beers, then pulled an MP3 player and some speakers out of the backpack he was carrying and leaned down to plug them into an extension cord that ran from the shed.
“Wow, this is pretty nifty,” Leila said, her hands on her hips, a slight shiver to her bottom lip. Hudson felt like pulling her close to keep her warm. “I didn’t imagine there’d be lights.”
“There didn’t use to be,” John said. “It was Hudson who got the idea to bring a generator. He set everything up. Even built that shed.”
Leila raised her eyebrows at Hudson. “Did he now?”
“Smart guy, this one. It’s why we keep him around. Made it a lot easier to play Drunkball. We used to lose a lot of dice and Frisbees.”
“Dice and Frisbees? How the hell do you play this game?”
“Come on,” John said, leading them toward the middle of the field. “Did you ever read Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip?”
“Sure,” Leila said. She was a few steps ahead of Hudson now, closer to John.
“Well, Drunkball is kind of a drunken version of Calvinball,” John said as they approached the patio furniture next to the recliners. Hudson pulled a chair out for Leila and took a seat next to her as John continued. “The main rule of the game is that there are no rules. Or at least, no established rules. That way, we never play the same game twice, and we never get bored with it.”
“And we all get drunk,” Scott offered, already opening another beer.
“Exactly,” John said with a smile. “Now, we realized that, as much fun as that idea is, it usually doesn’t work that great. We couldn’t think of enough fun rules on the spot, and people start losing interest. So we brought in a few different elements to the game to give it some structure. Every round, there has to be a new rule for every element of the game.”
Hudson jumped in. “The elements are: Frisbees, dice, cards, and the obstacle course.” He pointed at the playset. “The opening round—”
“Wait, so there are no balls involved in Drunkball?”
“Not when it’s this group playing,” Richie said, barely able to contain his proud laughter.
“You understand that you’re incriminating yourself, too, right? If you’re saying we as a group have no balls,” Hudson said slowly, exaggerating his hand gestures as if he were trying to explain something to a child. “You’re a part of this group, and you’re admitting to having no balls.”
Richie passed a hand through his beard, his brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of what Hudson had said. “All those things you’re an expert on, I should have known balls was one of them.” Richie high-fived Scott, and they burst into laughter.
“It’s impossible to be condescending to these guys,” Hudson said to Leila. She laughed and took a sip from her beer, giving his shoulder a squeeze.
John went back to explaining. “Well, there’s always the option of balls,” he said, glancing at Scott and Richie to make sure they wouldn’t have another giggling fit, which they did. “There’s the option of anything, really. As long as it’s a fun rule that everyone agrees on, any player can introduce something new. The elements are just there to give us something to lean on.”
“How does someone win?”
“We’re seventeen-year-olds with our own island. We’re already winners,” John said.
Leila laughed again, and Hudson wondered if his friends felt the same way he did at hearing her laugh. If John, at being the one who’d made her laugh, felt the same rush of pride Hudson himself had felt, the same urge to be responsible for her laughter again and again.
“The game usually just kind of dies out when everyone’s drunk,” Hudson said, watching Leila drink from her beer can. It was true what he’d said about not being much of a drinker, but at that particular moment, having a beer with everyone did not sound like the worst thing in the world. He reached for one from the pack that John had set on the table.
“Whoa, what are you doing there?”
“Grabbing a beer.”
John reached across the table and snatched the beer out of his hand. “Of all the nights we play and you never want to drink, you choose the one night before your big interview to join in? Nuh-uh, man. You’re not showing up hungover. Leave the stupid decisions to those two.” He pointed at Scott and Richie, who, for some unfathomable reason, were thumb-wrestling.
“We heard that,” Scott said, not looking away from the battle in front of him.
“You can ref one more time. Tomorrow night, after you’ve kicked that interview’s ass, we can come back here and play another round. We’ll all camp out and crash here. But not tonight.”
“Fine,” Hudson grumbled. “I guess that makes sense.”
Drunkball started with an opening round meant to prepare the players for the game ahead. One player would chug a beer while the other players each rolled one die. They’d add up the rolls until the drinker slammed the beer can upside down on the table; then the next person in line would become the chugger, and they’d repeat. Whoever accumulated the lowest score before his beer was finished would get to choose an element first.
Aside from establishing an order of play and matching up a player with the element he/she would be in charge of making up rules for, the opening round also helped to create an establishing buzz. And it loosened muscles to avoid the risk of strains, sprains, or any other injury that might occur during physical challenges.
As ref, Hudson had the privilege of adding any rule at any time, and he had fun with it, making his friends speak in accents or only be allowed to move via cartwheels. He loved the manifestation of Leila’s enjoyment—how she reached out her hand and gripped his forearm, once pulling herself into his chest and laughing directly over his heart.
“New rule!” Leila shouted, about forty minutes into the game. They were standing near the playset, catching their breath from a physical challenge that involved juggling dice while going through the obstacle course. Her hair was now dry, although her clothes weren’t, her cheeks slightly flushed from the alcohol and the running. “Any time one of you three looks anywhere below my neck, you have to chug the rest of your beer.” She paused for dramatic effect, during which Scott lowered his sight to her breasts and drank happily. “And then Hudson gets to slap you.”
“Bullshit!” Scott said. “I didn’t hear the entire rule.”
John looked to Hudson. “Ref, ruling?”
Richie interjected, “Wait, why does he get to check you out?”
“Because, first of all, he hasn’t been ogling me as if I’m a thirty-second porn clip on the Internet.”
“Are you saying I’ve been doing that?” Richie asked, trying to sound indignant despite compromising his credibility instantly as he snuck a glance.
“Ah! You did it, too. Chug the beer and get slapped by Hudson!” She laughed, then came over to Hudson and grabbed his arm, pulling him toward Richie and Scott. “Secondly,” she added, lining the two of them up and lifting their beers for them so that they’d get to drinking, “I quite like your friend here. In case you hadn’t noticed, when you lot showed up, I was getting ready to show him just how much. So, for interruptin
g us, he gets to slap you.”
Leila went back to Hudson and took a sip of her beer, stumbling a little. Then she slipped her fingers in between his. “So, ref, what’s your ruling?”
Hudson looked at his friends. Scott and Richie were obediently chugging the rest of the beer in their cans, and John was smiling confidently at Hudson, nodding at him. Leila’s fingers interlaced with his, her thumb rubbing lightly against his. “I’ll allow it.”
Just when he was raising his arm to slap his friends, a noise broke through the trees. They all turned toward it and paused, trying to determine if it had been a figment of their imaginations or maybe just some small animal. Then they heard it again, this time distinct: a voice. John rushed to the shed and shut off the generator. The island fell into darkness again. The five of them held their breath, their eyes adjusting to the dark. Hudson felt Leila step closer to him, her side pressed against his.
Then the beam of a flashlight came shining in through the trees on the far side of the field, opposite from where they’d come in from. No one moved yet. “You think it’s cops?” Richie asked in a whisper.
No one said anything. They held still until another flashlight came on, then another.
“To the boat!” Scott said a little too loudly, and they took off running for the trees, laughing with the thrill of a chase.
Hudson and Leila fell behind during the run. They ran hand in hand, trying to lead each other away from rocks on the ground and low-hanging branches. Hudson wanted to call out to his friends that the boat was a bad idea. But they had gained ground, and he didn’t want to shout, so he tried to pick up the pace. Leila stifled her laughter behind him as she struggled to keep up. Just when he thought that they’d lost sight of the guys, they ran into John.
“We’ll distract them,” John said quietly. “It doesn’t matter if we get caught, but I’m not letting you risk your scholarship by getting arrested for trespassing. You lay low.” Then he ran back through the woods before Hudson could object.
