The last few sips were lukewarm and tasted like spit. I swallowed them anyway and cracked another, leaning back on my elbows on the wooden picnic table. I’d picked the one closest to the dock, sitting out on the lake like a splinter lodged in a fingertip.
It had been over an hour since the art show was slated to start. At least an hour, probably longer. I hoped Donna had done something. Stopped it. But who knew what had happened? Probably it’d just gone on as planned. I stared out at the lake and let myself feel real maudlin. I thought about starting everything over again, curling back up in the womb and getting a do-over, a reprieve from every bad decision I’d made in my life.
Once I drained the last beer, I walked the length of the dock. Stumbling on one of the older planks, I slapped my face a few times to try to sober up. I thought of my mother, of my brother, of the things people would know about my family before the night was over. I thought about Lucinda and hoped she could forgive me. Maybe she and Donna would work out their differences. I could almost imagine it: Donna, who looked so much like me, starting all over again with Lucinda. Making it work. She could use her carpentry skills to build them a giant bed where they could cuddle up together and have a million gay babies. Lucinda could forget she ever even met me.
“Fuck you, Donna Franklin.”
Sweat blossomed under my arms and along my back. Staring into the cattails, I wished for a flashlight so I could call up the green glow of the gator eyes again. I knew it wouldn’t be too long before someone showed up, and then I’d have to go back to reality. Taking off my shoes, I sat down at the edge and dangled my feet in the water. They looked fishy white beneath the surface, algae slinking along the tops.
Red and blue lights flashed out across the water. I looked back at the reeds, hopeful, but no eyes shone back at me.
CANIS LUPUS FAMILIARIS—DOMESTIC DOG
In the second-floor women’s room, Brynn yakked up half a strawberry Toaster Strudel. She lay slumped over the toilet seat, the same one that nearly all the girls from our high school had sat their bare asses on.
She heaved again, a dry, hiccupping burp that her body seemed to feel more than expel, ribs jutting against the lip of the bowl as her back bowed. I’m dying. I’ve got the super flu.
No, you don’t.
What else could this be? I’m so fucking sick. When she heaved again, a tiny bit of drool ran down her chin. There was some jelly from the Toaster Strudel in it; a lick of bright red that looked like blood.
Behind us, the door squealed open. I turned in the stall so that the heft of my backpack blocked most of Brynn from view. Two underclassmen stood in front of the mirror and poked at their dark, crispy bangs, sharing a tube of pinky-orange lipstick and blotting grease from their foreheads with brown paper towels from the dispenser.
Brynn’s T-shirt had slipped up high enough that I could see the underside of her old gray sports bra. She usually wore the kind of underwear they sold at Victoria’s Secret during the semiannual sale, stuff full of scratchy lace and underwire and inset mesh that let nipples play peekaboo.
She held back until the warning bell rang and the girls spilled out into the hallway. Then she heaved again, a desperate, choking sound. I rubbed her back and gathered the sweaty hair away from her mouth, sweeping it behind her ears. When she finally quieted, I yanked a long strip of toilet paper from the dispenser and rubbed the spit and vomit off her chin.
Have you taken a test yet?
Tears that had dripped during her dry heaving collected and trailed dark streaks of eyeliner down the side of her nose. Dragging a corner of clean toilet paper beneath her eye, I gathered as much of the runoff as I could. The paper was cheap. When I pressed it a little harder beneath her right eye, she hissed and backed away, knocking into the toilet bowl.
We can pick one up today. Then you’ll know for sure. I knelt down and smoothed her shirt, which was still rucked over her bra. My butt knocked into my backpack. I felt like a turtle, crouched down on the sticky floor. A scrap of toilet paper was stuck to the bottom of my sneaker, and when I brushed it off, I nearly overturned myself.
I don’t wanna know. She rubbed at her eyes, which were raw from where I’d scraped them.
Don’t be stupid. You already know.
I helped her up and put her back together. She was like a wobbly, limp-limbed doll. I brushed her hair and reapplied her lip gloss, spritzing her body spray on her neck. The drops ran down into her cleavage and dotted the front of her T-shirt.
There was only one more period before school got out for the day, a trigonometry class that I was failing and Brynn was barely passing with the help of other people’s homework. Instead of walking in late, we went straight to the parking lot. Her shitty car was parked next to the chain-link fence that surrounded the high school.
I took her keys and helped her into the passenger side, knocking fast food bags onto the floor. We drove directly to the gas station closest to my house, the one where we sometimes got beer when the right cashier was working. There was only one kind of pregnancy test on the shelf. The box was dusty and it wasn’t a brand either of us had heard of, but we bought it along with a couple of Cokes and some Twizzlers. I heated up a decrepit-looking hot dog in the microwave, slathering it with nacho cheese and relish. Brynn bought a pack of Marlboro reds from the bored clerk, a woman so leathery her skin looked like something tanned in the shop.
We rolled down the car windows to let in the stagnant breeze. I drove slowly through the neighborhood while Brynn steadily consumed everything we’d bought. Biting off either end of a Twizzler, she stuck it in one of the Cokes and held it out to me for a sip.
It always tastes better with a Twizzler straw.
Yeah, it’s good. Like Cherry Coke.
I put my free hand on her bare thigh while she fed me more sips, driving past houses that all looked the same. Repeating yards, carports, pollen-dusted mailboxes. When we got to the lake, we sat in the parking lot with our feet hanging out the windows of the car. It was so hot that most of the moms sat back beneath the trees, ignoring their kids while they splashed around and screamed.
I drank my Coke until the Twizzler was soggy and couldn’t reach the soda. Then I gave it to Brynn, who’d already finished hers and was slurping away at the hot dog. She sucked the cheese-and-relish mixture from the ends and took bites from the side of the bun, like she didn’t want the meat, just the juice of the thing.
Casey’s going to be pissed. She picked at the bread, balling up bits of it and throwing them out the window.
Casey can suck my dick. I turned on the radio and punched in the cigarette lighter. Then I unwrapped the box from its cellophane and lit one for Brynn. Plus you don’t even know yet. Not for sure. There was still hope, even if it was minuscule. Maybe she did have some weird flu.
Nodding, she tipped the cigarette so ash fell out the window and not onto her legs. Casey and Brynn had been fooling around for the past couple of months. They weren’t really dating, and I couldn’t see him getting mad about a baby. I actually couldn’t see him reacting to anything at all. He was the kind of moonfaced guy who barely spoke more than two words at a time, spending most of his free time playing video games with his friends from the soccer team.
No way Casey would care either way, but there was something else. The other thing. A memory that floated through my mind whenever I saw Brynn and Milo standing too close together. I’d been sick with mono a few months earlier. I was bored out of my mind, and Brynn came over most nights to watch TV and keep me company. When I fell asleep, it was just her and Milo, hanging out for hours. They had their own inside jokes about movies they’d watched without me. They drew on my face with markers while I was passed out on the couch, oblivious. They went out for pizza and both ordered pineapple on it, which I hated. They drank our father’s beer in the carport and got drunk enough to play tag in the graveyard next door. Later I’d seen something on the floor of his bedroom. A baby-pink polka-dotted bra with lace trim around the cups, poking out from beneath a pile of dirty shirts. Underwear I’d seen a thousand times. Brynn loved polka dots.