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Zoe
A high-pitched scream woke Zoe from a fitful sleep. She started to sit up, but her head got tangled in her sweatshirt, and this caused such panic that she lay back down to disentangle herself.
“What are you doing?” the screamer cried. “I thought you were dead!”
Footsteps. Lots of footsteps.
Zoe struggled to her feet.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. The new girl was passed out on the floor.”
Why did she have to be so loud?
“I thought she was dead.”
The laughter started then.
“Sorry,” Zoe mumbled. She bent over to get her backpack and became so dizzy so suddenly that she almost couldn’t stand up again. But she managed and then turned to leave the room.
Except that she couldn’t because the girls’ soccer team was stretched across the room in front of her. Most of them had already changed and wore cleats and shin guards, or she might have thought it was a phys ed class. But it wasn’t a phys ed class. It was the soccer team, which meant school was over, which meant that she had been there a long time.
As she stood there stupidly, the laughter grew louder.
How many bells had she slept through? Was she going to be okay? Had she gone too far this time? Did she have alcohol poisoning? Had she given herself brain damage? She didn’t know how much she’d drunk. She didn’t know what she’d drunk. Maybe someone had put something extra into her drink.
This made sense. She’d never been this sick before from drinking alone.
And besides, there was another partial memory floating around in her head. Again, it was more a collection of feelings and images than it was a memory, but no matter what order she put them in, none of them seemed realistic. That’s why she’d been trying not to think about that part of her evening.
She must have been tripping.
She had to get out of this stupid building.
“Excuse me.” She walked toward the crowd, knowing they would move, knowing they thought she was disgusting and wouldn’t want to get too close to her.
As expected, they parted, and she slunk through them, then out of the locker room, and then outside. Then she looked around, disoriented. Which way was Gramma’s house again?
She found a landmark and got herself pointed in the right direction. Then she started walking. It wasn’t far. She could do this. The walking would be good for her hangover.
Except that, the closer she got to Gramma’s building, the less she wanted to go there. She knew now that she’d still been drunk in the morning, when she had talked with Gramma, but now that she was mostly sober, how could she face her? What would she say? Her grandmother must be so angry, so disappointed, so ashamed of her. Why had she done that? It was one thing to go to the stupid party, but why had she allowed herself to get so drunk?
Gramma’s building came in sight, and she slowed. She couldn’t go there.
Her eyes floated to the church sign. Still vandalized. Someone should fix that. It looked horrible. Made the church look ghetto. A small part of her felt indignant about this, but most of her didn’t care. Most of her was completely absorbed with what she was going to do right now. How was she going to survive this moment? She couldn’t face her grandmother. She needed to apologize, even wanted to apologize, but she knew her messed up brain couldn’t come up with the right words right now.
One of the church’s basement windows was open. She stepped closer. No, not open. Broken. Had someone broken the church’s window? It looked old. Maybe it had been broken for a long time. The church had been abandoned, right? Maybe they hadn’t gotten around to fixing that particular blemish yet, like the wires dangling out of the ceiling. It didn’t matter. What mattered was whether she could fit through it. A weird old church on a Tuesday afternoon was the perfect place to hide out. Quiet, comfy, and unpopulated. She scanned her surroundings. A woman walked her dog while looking at her phone. Another woman sat on her front stoop smoking a cigarette while looking at her phone. Zoe was pretty sure, thanks to cell phones, that she could break into this church. Still, she made no sudden movements. First, she acted as if she was curious about the sign, and crept closer to it. Then, when still no one was looking at her, she backed up to the wall of the church and then sat down and spun on her butt toward the window. Her head was killing her, so she wasn’t going in headfirst. She kicked fragments of broken glass out of the way and then dropped her backpack through the window, listening closely to see how much of a drop there was. It made a terrific bang, but the drop was nonexistent, apparently.
After making sure her cell was secure in her back pocket, she slithered in through the hole, holding her breath as if that would make her smaller.
She needn’t have worried. Fitting through the window was the easy part. Doing an uncomfortable backbend, she felt around with her feet, trying to find the floor.
There it was. She put her weight on it and pulled the rest of herself through the hole—except it wasn’t the floor. Unless the floor was wobbly. All the way inside the church now, she quickly reached for her cell phone so she could light the place up and see what she was standing on, but that sudden motion caused whatever she was on to topple, and she lost her balance. Flailing her arms for something to grab, she fell, hitting something hard with her right hip and then finally landing on the cool, hard floor. She whimpered and turned on her light. She’d stepped onto the world’s smallest table. What had that held in its day, a miniature vase of tiny flowers? It only had one leg—it was a wonder she hadn’t fallen sooner. She swung the light to her left. On her way down, she’d hit a bunch of folding tables, which were leaned against the wall. They looked ancient. She felt her hip to make sure there was no scrape. She didn’t know if she needed a tetanus shot. How much noise had she made? Enough. Slowly, she stood up, taking inventory of her body parts. When all were present and accounted for, she picked up her bag and swung the flashlight around the room, looking for stairs.
Holy moly what a mess. This basement was wall-to-wall junk. How had a church collected this much junk?
There. Straight ahead. Stairs. She weaved her way through the piles and then trudged upstairs. Never had she been so excited to find herself a pew.
