I laugh, this girl is pretty funny, and she catches me looking at her again.
“Where did Jarrett go?” Stick asks.
“No clue,” Cara says. “They said they said they were just getting something from the car, but then this kid came in and I don’t know, there was way too much drama and who has time for all that.”
“Thank you,” Sammy says. “You saved my ass.”
“No problem, dear,” Cara says. “They were high.”
“They’re always high,” Stick says. “You can’t even talk to them. My brothers are fucking assholes.”
“Your brothers?” she says. “Wait—your brothers are black?”
Sammy laughs. Cara’s dark-skinned and pretty and she winces when she drinks. Stick snatches beers for the rest of us and gives her the ten-second synopsis of the family situation—everyone’s adopted, he’s not, it’s weird but it’s all he knows, and no one knows what it’s like to be one of thirteen children.
“You go to Woodbridge?” Sammy asks Cara.
“Oh god, no. St. Joe’s. And after witnessing the level of conversation in the garage, I feel at peace with my parents’ decision to push me into religious education. By the way, dear, you probably shouldn’t bank on people’s general awareness of the difference between Islam and Hinduism, at least not in this town.”
“What?” Sammy says.
“Exactly.”
Stick laughs and spills some beer and now that the door is open I can hear the party downstairs—louder than when I came up here, with music blasting from the kitchen, Rihanna I think, although I don’t know much about pop music. I mean, yeah, I went through a boy band phase when I was twelve but only because they were cute and who the hell knows anything at that age.
“Nice shirt,” Cara says.
“Thank you,” I say. “I think.” Her sarcasm is too thick to tell.
“Yeah, I mean the actual design is pretty stupid—is that a cat?” She shakes her head. “And the lack of style is burning my retinas, but my brother likes that band and he’s pretty great so …”
She leans back on Jarrett’s bed, against the wall with her beer. Her hair is cut tight around her neck, but her eyes are light and free of the layers of makeup that the girls in my school all wear.
“You want to hear them?” Sticks says, shifting into my shoulder.
“I’m good. I’ve heard them before,” she says.
“But it’s their new album, they just leaked it.”
“I’ll pass,” she says, staring at Sammy now, almost daring him to take a seat. I steal another sip of my beer, more than a sip maybe and it doesn’t taste too bad, it’s slightly metallic but less rancid than before, and I don’t remember being this close to empty.
“What’s wrong with your wrist, Matt?” Sammy says.
I didn’t give Stick all the details because they’re way too embarrassing to admit to him and I’m not going to now, in front of a girl—I mean, a woman—I know women don’t like being called ‘girls’ and I don’t want to be sexist because I’m very pro-woman, except for the sex part. But that shouldn’t count.
“Is it broken?” Cara says.
“I hope not. I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” She shakes her head and finishes the beer. “You might want to get it checked by a doctor… Matt, is it?”
“Oh um… uh, yeah,” I say, stammering a little or slurring maybe—have I drunk enough to be slurring?
“And your friends?” She’s up off the bed to grab another beer but I’m not sure what she means. I never know what women are thinking.
“I’m Sammy and this is Stick,” Sammy says.
“And what are you—freshmen?”
“Sophomores,” Sammy says. “About to be.”
“Yeah.” She rolls her eyes but does it so quick that she disguises it with a smile. “Hang on—did you say Stick?”
Stick nods.
“You mean like a ‘stick’?” She holds her hands together with clenched fists, motioning like she’s waving a wand, or an imaginary stick.
Sammy laughs. “What is that?”
“I don’t know, a ‘stick’.” She swings her arms now more like a bat than a stick. “It’s a weird name.”
“Yeah,” Stick says. “I was crazy skinny as a kid.”
“As opposed to now?”
“Huh?”
“Exactly.”
Cara looks to me again and it’s weird I think, it’s almost like she’s into me, the way she keeps looking at me or catching me looking and yeah… no—I must be drunk. Stick leans back along the mattress, this brief electric touching at my shoulder. My wrist is numb.
“Well, here you are.”
A taller girl with lighter skin and longer hair than Cara comes crashing into the bedroom. I’m guessing she’s Rhonda because Jarrett’s trailing behind her, his massive frame filling the doorway.
“Oh, thank god,” Cara says.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Bored out of my mind,” Cara says.
“Anyone want shots?” Jarrett says, lifting up a bottle of vodka. I watched him play football last fall, Stick and me in the stands at Woodbridge High, and Stick would point out him out during the games, whenever he flattened a defensive lineman who attempted to get past him.
“We need cups,” Cara says. “I am not sharing spit with you idiots.”
“Okay,” Stick says and he’s up off his bed, out into the hall and back with a fistful of Dixie cups.
“Fuck yeah!” Sammy shouts and we lift up our shots to do a chug in unison, raspberry vodka that spreads like flames down my throat and I almost choke, it’s too much liquid at too quick a pace and I grit my teeth to keep from gagging. Stick pours us another round.
“Damn, that’s nasty. What did you buy?” Cara says.
“Stoli,” Jarrett says, holding up the bottle again.
“No wonder. That’s trash.”
Sammy laughs and I wait for the room to settle—I mean it’s not spinning yet I just know it’s coming quick—as Jarrett pretends to pour the bottle down the back of Cara’s shirt. I have no alcohol tolerance, like literally none, a single beer gets me buzzed and hard liquor is like a gaping wound at the side of my head that needs the Yin Healing Wound Destruction to keep me from fainting. I take a second shot.
“Sammy, go get more ice.”
“For what?”
Cara pushes Jarrett away and climbs off the bed, ripping the watery baggie off my wrist and tossing it to Sammy. It smacks him in the leg.
“Come on, vite vite,” she says and shoos him away.
“My mom’s a nurse” is her only explanation as she yanks me off of the bed, down the hall into the bathroom where she doesn’t wait, she just rips off the bandages and shoves my wrist into the sink. The water starts to sting but she won’t let go, she pushes down harder when I try to pull back, and the frigid water numbs my fingers. My wrist has turned purple, or sort of bluish-black, thirty-eight shades of I should be afraid, and I haven’t drunk enough to manage the pain, the way the water keeps stinging.