by Dylan Heart
“Something’s off,” she muses out loud. “Wasn’t college the reason you broke up with him?”
“I thought so.” But I’m not so sure anymore. The girl looking back at me has the same flowing brown hair as me. The same burnt green eyes, and she even dresses like me. But she doesn’t feel like me. I wonder if that girl on the other side of the mirror understands me better than I understand myself. If she does, then this would turn into a fantasy, so it’s best if my mirror self doesn’t start talking to me—though I’m sure it’d be an interesting conversation.
Summer approaches me from the back. She’s taller than I am so I can see the top of her head in the mirror as she draws in closer. Not many girls can pull off red hair quite like she can. She makes it look effortless and beautiful and somehow gives off the illusion that she actually has a soul. “I wish you would have given me more notice,” she tilts her head sideways and flips her hair, “cause I would’ve fucked him.”
“He’s not into gingers.”
“Everybody’s into gingers. It’s just not something you say out loud.”
I turn to her. “They might want to get in your pants, I’ll give you that.” I sit back down on her bed. “But that’s just about all boys want. And besides, you’re completely undatable. I mean, who would ever even want to try?”
Her shoulders brush against her chin. “Your dad.”
If anybody else said that to me, they’d probably end up face down in a pool of blood. At the very least, I’d block them on Facebook, but Summer and I have known each other since we were four. We’ve been ride-or-die ever since and we can say the bitchiest things to each other without a hint of resentment because we understand it’s all said in jest.
“Yeah, well, there’s no accounting for my dad’s bad taste.”
“He’s kind of hot.”
She’s had a thing for my dad since we were in high school. Since she also wants Dillon, I’d say she has a rabid taste for my leftovers. And just to be clear, Dillon is the leftovers, not my dad. “Can you at least wait until the divorce papers are dry?”
“Can’t wait,” she says, rolling her tongue between clenched lips. If she ever actually fucked my dad, I wouldn’t care. He’s been around town like a straight inmate on early release after five months of imprisonment. Calling him a father at this point is a joke anyway. He can be her daddy because I don’t need him anymore.
Summer resumes folding a pile of jeans that lay on the bed. “How was the Lakeside family reunion, otherwise known as the county fair?”
My body tenses and my fingers dig into the mattress.
“Charlie?”
“Summer?”
“Come on. How was it?”
“Hot.” I shrug. My performance isn’t convincing.
Her eyebrow cocks.
“It was fine,” I say exasperated. “It’s the same fair as every other year, with the same people, same rides, same food, and same stench.”
She tosses a stack of jeans in the cardboard box and grabs another pair to fold. “You’re being mysterious.”
“I’m not. I just—there’s nothing to say.” My hand glides through my hair, and she knows me well enough to know what that means.
She tosses the denim in her hands to the floor and springs to life, pushing me onto my back and straddling me again. She grabs my arms and throws them above my head, pinning me down. “I’ve known you my entire life, so I know when you’re full of shit. And right now, you’re full of it.”
“You’re not as light as you used to be. Can you get off me?”
“Not until you talk.”
I roll my eyes and contemplate telling her the truth, but a modified version of it. She’d get all the gruesome details, right down to the size of his dick, but I’d conveniently leave out his profession. We may love each other like sisters and never fight, but there’s still plenty of room for judging, like the time she got chlamydia from some—admittedly cute—guy at a college party. Judged her for days, not because she got chlamydia but because she was warned that the boys at Kappa were infested.
“I’ve got shit to pack, but I’m really not letting you go until you spill.”
“Fine,” I yell. “I met a boy.”
“My God. I want all the details. Height, weight, eye color, and dick size.”
“The fact that you think I know how big his dick is makes me question what you really think of me.”
“The world, Charlie. That’s what I think of you. The world.”
“He was gorgeous.”
“On a scale of one-to-Dillon, how gorgeous?”
“Well... He wasn’t wearing plaid.”
“Sounds like a downgrade,” she says. “I wouldn’t waste my time.”
Once again, I push her off me and sit up on the edge of the bed. “I’m not sure there’s anything to waste. It was a one-night-only kind of thing.”
She jumps onto her feet. “So you did fuck him!”
I give her a simple smile because I don’t need to say anything else.
“What’s his name?” she questions in her best detective voice, trying to discern whether or not she knows him.
“Blue.”
Her nose rumples and her smile fades into a grimace. “Like the color? That’s a thing?”
“It’s a thing.”
“Well, he’s obviously not from around here, is he?”
“I actually don’t know where he’s from, but apparently, he’s sticking around.”
“Oh, no,” she says perturbed. “He’s obsessed with you.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“You’re obsessed with him, too.” She nods her head accusingly.
“Shut up. I’m not obsessed with a carnie...”
It’s like my brain just ran out of brake fluid.
Her eyes widen and her smile fades into a frown. “You fucked a carnie!?”
I look around the room nervously as if anyone is going to hear us. “Would you be quiet?”
“Okay. Whew.” She runs her hand through her ginger hair, and then glides down onto her knees so that she’s kneeling in front of me. “Intervention time.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m intervening. You can’t go around fucking carnies. For one, they’re gross. For another? Eww.”
“First of all, I can do whatever the hell I want. It’s America. Secondly, it wasn’t exactly intentional. And besides, he’s different from the others.”
“I’m going to give your judgmental statement a pass—”
That’s ironic.
“–but nothing good will come from fucking a carnie. Do you remember Rebecca Ross?”
“I don’t.”
“That’s because she dropped out of school in the ninth grade after getting knocked up by Bigfoot the clown.”
I grab her by the arms and force her onto her feet. “She was in ninth grade and Bigfoot was obviously a pedophile.” My hand digs into the pocket of my jeans and I grab my phone. “Besides, did Bigfoot look like this?”
She takes a fleeting glance at the picture on my phone–the snapshot of Blue the night of the fair. “No, because Bigfoot was a clown. What part of that—” She rips the phone out of my hand. Her eyes light up and her jaw drops. “God spent a little more time and all that hocus-pocus on this man. Those beautiful eyes...”
Being a bit too possessive, I wrestle the phone from her hands. “Tell me about it.”
“Please tell me that he’s coming to my party Saturday.”
I just shrug because I couldn’t tell you what’s happening tomorrow, let alone what’s happening in six days.
Chapter Six
It’s the night of Summer’s party, and I still haven’t heard from Blue. It dawned on me Tuesday that he had lost his phone. My best guess is that he’s not in a rush to run out and get a new phone, as that would take a dent out of his mysteriousness, and we just couldn’t have that.
I stand in front of the mirror in my bathroom, running a brush throug
h my hair and considering a color change. Red’s out of the question, but I’ve had blonde on my mind for a while now. I’ll see how the night turns out and make a decision in the morning. We always make the best decisions when we’re drunk and the worst when we’re hungover.
The heat wave is now a thing of the past, so this is the first time in weeks I’m able to straighten my hair without the paralyzing fear of humidity. My faith in Jimmy Clay is slowly being restored. The jeans that I’m wearing, paired with a red plaid top, are counting on honesty. If a temperature spike occurs, then I’m going to roast.
I sit down on my bed and kick off a pair of heels I’ve been wearing around the house for the past hour. You never know what life is going to throw at you or when you’re going to need to strap on a pair of pumps. In small town Ohio, where girls don’t wear heels, this is how we practice. I slide into a pair of comfortable sneakers then make my way down the carpeted stairs.
If all goes well, I’ll spend the night on Summer’s couch. Or her bed if I’m feeling an abrupt need to jump start the rumor train one last time before she goes away to college. It was the same year Rebecca Ross went into hiding that the initial rumors began. Summer was having a slumber party and I wasn’t about to sleep on the cold floor in the middle of winter. When everyone awoke, Summer and I were tangled together like Rapunzel’s hair during an F4 tornado. I’d wager to say the Are they or are they not scissoring scandal was directly responsible for nobody noticing the disappearance of Rebecca Ross, myself included.
My mom said she would drive me to the party, so I began drinking early. She understands about this sort of thing, that I’m going to drink no matter what. She blames MTV, but I blame my drinking on the lack of family dinners. Both are bullshit excuses, most explicitly because nobody fucking watches MTV anymore. I’m young and I’m going to drink and anybody who doesn’t needs therapy.
Three shot glasses sit on the counter, two empty and one full. I grab the one full of Jameson—my favorite drink—and throw it back. The shot burns as it rushes down the back of my throat. It’s a wonderful explosion of sensation—taste, touch, and aroma. Reminds me of Ireland, somewhere I’ve never been, but hope to go someday.
I glance up to one of the hundred clocks in my mom’s house. This particular one sits above the kitchen sink. Reading this particular clock has always been a chore. It has two forks for hands that are exactly the same length. When I came down the steps, the clock on the wall said it was ten-fifteen, so I guess the fork poking at the six is the minute hand. Ten-thirty it is, then, and my mom still isn’t home from doing what the hell ever it was that she said she was doing. I’m not about to get in my car and drive as I’ve never driven drunk and have no intention to ever do so. I signed a pledge once. Sometimes I may be stoopid but I’m not stupid.
I could wait for her to get home, but I’m feeling a little antsy to get to the party because this could be the last time I see Summer for a while. Also, if I wait for Mom to return home before I go to the party, I’ll have this bottle finished, and it’s not a good look to show up to a party completely blitzed. It is, however, perfectly acceptable, and a display of good manners, to show up buzzed.
It’s about ten degrees cooler than Jimmy predicted. For him, that’s probably a record, but still, the difference between sixty and fifty degrees is no minor infraction. Especially in a state like Ohio. In the fall, and before the first snowfall, fifty degrees feels like thirty. In the spring, fifty feels like eighty.
I walk briskly along the cracked sidewalk but not fast enough to break a sweat. In the midst of taking shots while showering, I forgot to apply deodorant. If the situation gets too dire, I’ll stumble up to Summer’s bathroom and apply when necessary.
Dillon’s supposed to be there, so I’m a little worried about that after our run-in at the fair. Drunk Dillon is kind of like sober Dillon, except more intense and hornier. If you’re having a party, and he’s on the guest list, it’s best to have a shock collar on hand for when he inevitably starts humping anything remotely humpable. In a house like Summer’s, there’s a very real possibility that she could spend the following morning cleaning up his army of little dills as he likes to call them.
I come to a rest outside Summer’s home. Music blares from within but the porch is deserted, which is unusual as the wrap around porch that folds around their beautiful Victorian home always seems to be the hot spot.
I knock on the wooden door once and then open it, wondering why I even bothered since we were well past knocking years ago.
The door swings open and it’s an unusual sight. Just like the porch, the inside is mostly devoid of human life. Four teens dressed in cut-offs and basketball shorts play beer pong on the dining room table to the left—a formal dining room that has never seen formality. The carpet beneath the teens is soaked with spilled beer. Or urine.
“Summer,” I call out and the four players turn and look at me like I’m stupid.
“In the kitchen,” Summer calls from the back of the house.
I give the teens a smirk before making my way through the very basic living room. There’s a flat screen hanging on the wall and a vintage couch sitting in front of it. Once Summer’s gone, this place will be the perfect bachelor pad. The openness is perfect for throwing parties but not so good for hosting responsible adult company.
I make my way down a short hallway lined with pictures of Summer, her dad, and her mother who passed five years ago from breast cancer. At the end of the path comes the cherry-coated kitchen. Summer lunges at me, greeting me with a hug. Based on the strength of said hug, I’d say she’s five shots deep, because the drunker she gets, the stronger she becomes. I sit my half-empty bottle on the counter beside a tray of dark-colored Jell-O shots and a bottle of Jager.
“Where the hell is everyone?”
“They should be coming. And don’t even ask who those boys are out front because I have no idea. But I’ve been here alone, and I wasn’t going to confront them.” She wraps her mouth tight around her finger and sucks Jell-O off it.
“They’re cute.” I lean my head around the corner, peering down the hallway and into the living area where they’re still playing. “But they look kind of young. Are you sure your dad’s okay with this?”
She waves her hand. “Yeah, it’s cool. He said he might stop by to grab some clothes after work, though.”
Her dad used to scare me. Before I knew him as Mr. Daniels, I knew him as Officer Daniels, the mean ol’ bastard who pulled my mom over for going sixty in a thirty-five. It was a few months later that I ran into him again at Summer’s house. Gone was his uniform, and ever since then, he’s been like a second father to me, albeit a much better one than the first.
Summer reaches for one of the dark-colored Jell-O shots and asks if I want one. The answer should be obvious. I grab one of the plastic cups and we each tongue the Jell-O, loosening it up before swallowing. I gag as the blob slides down my throat. It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.
“What did you make these with?” I shake off my disgust, continuing to gag as the taste lingers.
“Jager.” She smiles. “Don’t like it?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Party’s here,” Dillon yells. I pivot to see him and Tyson standing in the doorway to the kitchen, each holding a cheap case of beer. “Room in the fridge?”
“You know there’s never room in the fridge.” Summer points to the kitchen sink, which is full of ice. “Put it in the cooler.”
“Nice.” Dillon grabs the beer out of Tyson’s hand and makes his way to the sink to begin unloading beer into the ice.
Tyson reaches past me and grabs the bottle of Jager. He smells like a potent combination of wood and musk—must be trying out some new cologne. He twists the cap off the bottle and throws his head back, chugging the thick black liquor.
Summer darts from the other side of the island and snatches the bottle out of his hand. She smacks the back of his head. “Go stand
in a corner.”
“Easy, babe,” he says coolly.
“Don’t call me babe.” She steps close to him, invading his personal space. “I’m not drunk enough yet.” She throws her head back and takes a long swig. Once finished, she savors the thick taste of black licorice with a wincing mouth.
When Dillon’s done filling the improvised cooler, he turns around and braces his palms against the sink. “Is this gonna be one of your lame parties where it’s just the four of us? Plus those four losers playing pong?”
“People are coming. And if they don’t, then the four of us will finish everything in this kitchen.”
Tyson, assuming he is out of the doghouse, wraps his arms around Summer and me. “You guys are gonna miss us.”
I’m not going anywhere.
“Probably not. Those city people are more my kind,” Summer says through a smile.
I roll my eyes. “Shut up. You’re the trashiest person in this kitchen. You were born for the sticks.”
Summer grabs Tyson’s arm and throws it off her. “Whatever. I’ll send you pics from the top of the world.”
“The top of the world?” asks Dillon.
“Yep. The dorm is right beside the stadium.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Dillon says, springing to life. “Your room overlooks the stadium?”
“That’s right. I’ll be cheering on the Buckeyes from my bedroom.”
“O-H,” Dillon yells.
“I-O!” The rest of us yell in unity. Say what you want about Ohio, but we’ve got the Buckeyes and you don’t. It’s the one thing that connects all of us Ohioans. We would steal, maim, and murder in the name of Brutus.
Dillon turns to me with a sly grin. “I’ll be your boyfriend again if you let me stay with you on Saturdays.”
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get out of that deal. And he still doesn’t know I’m not going and won’t be sharing a room with the thousand dollar view. “Sounds like a terrible plan to me.”
He glides across the hardwood floor, spins around, and grabs me by the waist. “Please.” He nuzzles his nose against my neck, breathing hot whiskey fire against my flesh.
