We’re standing around a bonfire: the Stray Cats, the Hit-Jacks, the Stranger-Jacks, the Massive Flap-Jacks, the Pretty Pennies, and their Gaggle of Doting Minions.
Maya’s massive flip, acting the odd man out. Zoë and I manage to keep our wits about us and are having a grand ole time. We socialize, we mingle. We’re super switch. We’re also far, far more sauced.
Maya shivers and whines. “Let’s jetset,” she says. And, “I’m freezing.”
I say, “All right, clash-Jacks, who stole my left shoe?”
Zoë and I pilfer brews from large, manly coolers. And I find her, Ms. Ancient History Sore Thumb Loser, and amble over, walking a crooked line. I gift her one of my schemed brews and Nate Gray’s by her side, giving me a warm-as-peach-pie smile. I smile, too, but only with my eyes.
He says, “Lucy Butler, that’s so switch of you to gift Eve your brew.” I shrug and with a shifty grin hide my other full brew in my zip-up hoodie pouch.
“Look, Mom, no tars,” I announce to Eve, holding up my empty mitts.
“Beatstreet.” She grins but then Nate is leaping aloft to snag an errant football lobbed over the fire, hard-bumping into Eve, who shrieks, her brew slipping from her hand and into the dirt. She moans, head back, and I lean over to scoop it up and then she’s close, by my side, her warm, boozy breath in my ear. “Gotta pee,” she says, so we heel it to the edge of the clearing, her warm hand yanking mine.
I crack open my brew and chug as I pee.
“Pesky Bug, can’t you wait until you’re done?” she scolds, steadying her sauced self on a tree trunk.
“It’s so flip,” I say. “It’s, like, in one end, out the other.”
“Crank!” she hoots as she’s zipping her fly, tipping over laughing like it’s the riotest thing she’s ever heard. I catch her, but fall, too—two loose screws and she’s grabbing my wrist and doesn’t let go and we’re ass-down in the twigs and leaves. Then there’s a snap-crack in the woods and we freeze, holding our breaths. We wait. “BTs!” she hisses.
“What?”
“BTs! Bathroom Trolls! We’re the BTs of Suicide Bridge!” she yells and we’re cracking up massive and I can smell her hair and it’s like oranges and ginger and clove. We’re still hysterical as we return to the fire too soon and I linger, swaying, as she resumes her position at Nate’s side and he pulls her in, wrapping ape-long arms around her from behind and she is His Betty. Nate’s Girl. If it’s possible, I’m liking him less.
Zoë comes by, tugging me by my sleeve, and I hold up peace sign digits and Eve laughs, rosy cheeks all aglow. “I know, I know,” she says. “Rinse and then do it again,” and I give her a wink and a nod and heel it away. Zo and I slink off in search of more coolers and are booze pirates once more, Yo ho!
Eve never does see my Ninja Turtles sleeping bag. She heels it in a dark moment through the trees and shrubs with Nate I’d-Never-Cheat-on-You-Baby Gray and Zoë and I squeeze into my sleeping bag in a tent with six other flap-Jacks and our group is like sardines in a can, stench included. Maya’s long gone many hours past. We’re not sure how or with whom.
Night is short, and in the morning as we break down the tent Eve’s flap-Jacks are all, “Next weekend. Same time, different place. Clay Beach, Green Lake,” and the Pennies draw a rough map with a crayon from the floor of their massive swank whip, bumpy red lines indicating a turn here, a tree there, a large circle for the lake and a smaller one for the brewkeg. The brunette pours it on thick as molasses seeing as I didn’t spill beans on her and Nate. Zoë and I smile and fool with them a bit before heeling it to suck down pancakes and bacon at the diner to jive stories of the sauced things we did the night before.
“They’re not such clash cogs after all,” Zoë says as she pulls into my drive. “They’re actually sorta hit.”
“I’m not quite final sale on that,” I say. “But they’re kill to toast with.”
“Word,” she says, looking at me. “So what’s the beat with Eve Brooks? Are you Jacks hit again?”
I shrug. “I suppose we sort of are.”
“Word. I was just wondering. Not that you need my permission, obviously. I just thought it seemed massive random. She certainly seemed happy to see your ugly mug last night.”
I laugh. “I guess I just like giving her a hard time. She’s beat, y’know? Different from the rest.”
“Well, I’m not quite final sale on that. But I’ll take your word on it.”
She cuts the engine and sighs and I think maybe she’s a wee bit steamed. I fidget in my seat, watch a wild cotton-tailed bunny dash across the neighbor’s front lawn next door.
“Y’know,” she lays in. “Nate Gray is massive cheating on her. Maya heard it a while back and then last night there were some flap-Jacks scatting it up. You should probably spill it to her. Now that you’re bestest apple-Jacks again.”
I let her snark slide, not wanting to get into it. Or worse, give myself away.
“Maybe.”
I open the door and Zoë’s rubbing her sleepy-eyed mug, giving me the once-over. “She’s getting massive skinny, too, don’t you think? I thought maybe she was yakking up her food but everyone says she just doesn’t eat.” I just nod, snagging my sleeping bag from the back and sliding out.
Halfway up the back stairs I remember to wave goodbye, but when I turn, Zoë’s whip is already gone.
I drag my bones up to the back porch and I see through the glass that Dad is hunched over a bagel and a cuppa joe at the kitchen island and there’s nowhere to go but in.
“Guten Morgen, mein Vater,” I say, pulling on a half grin and plopping my Ninja Turtles bag down onto the counter.
He scans me like an X-ray. “Lookin’ a little rough there, camper.”
I shrug. “What can I say, it was in-tents.”
“That’s my joke.” He smiles. I snag half a bagel off his plate and jam it in my mouth. “So, your Oma,” he says.
“I know. I talked to Auntie Kay. I was thinking I could heel it on over there later, bring her some ice-cold double chocolate crunch.” Though the thought of doing so makes me a bit queasy.
He nods. “We’ll see. She needs to rest right now. We all just need to rest.”
“Word,” I say and look at my dad, notice how disheveled he is—his threads wrinkled, tie on crooked, a small red stain on the cuff of his shirtsleeve. I shiver, wonder whose it is. “Lots of parties these days, kiddo,” he sighs. “Miles said he found some beer cans in the woods.”
“Little Trashrat,” I groan. “Those are for sure his, Dad. Don’t let him fool you.”
Dad rolls his eyes. “Just…” He trails off as a buzz on his speak comes in.
“Just?” I say.
“Just can it.”
“Haha. Can it?” But Dad is clicking away, lost to the void. I see my window and make a stealthy escape, relieved I’m not busted, and head upstairs, my soft cushy cloud bed beckoning. I heel it by Miles’s door and chuck my sleeping bag at his head and feel a wee twinge of regret when he wakes with a frightened squeal.
“Narc,” I say half-heartedly and schlep off down the hall to sleep for the next two billion years.