She looked up at me, mascara running down her cheeks.
“I mean, not because of anything except, you know, the f lu thing. You don’t want to get everyone else sick. And you probably need to get some sleep.” I scrambled to make what I was saying not sound bad. I pressed the washcloth to each of her cheeks, wiping away the mascara.
I just didn’t want drama or disease or anything at this party.
Was that so much to ask? I wanted it to go smoothly.
“Yeah…” she agreed vaguely.
Remembering why I came upstairs, I stood and checked my face in the mirror. I looked drunk. Which I wasn’t, really, 8 4
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
the makeup had just faded into my skin from the water and everything. Nevertheless, I did not look my best.
My eyes were less open than I’d thought they’d been, and my skin was pale. My dependable mascara kept me looking good, but I was in dire need of lipgloss and blush. I was about to apply the gloss when I remembered Michelle doing her makeup with my stuff earlier.
“You didn’t…use this, right?” I held up the lipgloss.
“No.” She stood up.
“’K. Normally, you know, you can use my stuff. But I mean…” I let it hang. It would be rude to say that it was because of her nasty f lu spit. Which, I mean, it was.
“I’m just gonna go, I guess. So I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sure.” I looked at the dress she was wearing. “Do you want me to wash that or do you think you’ll just do it? I’ll just tell Meredith you needed to borrow it, no big deal.” I tried to sound reassuring, but it came off as brash and uncaring.
“I’ll do it,” she said quietly as she opened the door to leave.
“Jillian left already, by the way. Did you notice? Her parents called and made her come home.”
Only then did I realize I hadn’t seen Jillian all night.
“Feel better!” I shouted after the door closed behind her.
A few minutes later I was back downstairs. My hair was re-poofed and I had more color in my face than most of the other girls who’d had too much to drink and didn’t have their full makeup kits with them.
I’d also spent most of the night putting a bottle to my mouth and taking a small sip, holding back most of the liquid with my lips. The surrounding people always cheered and said things like “This girl can drink!” or something else about how I could really hold my liquor, and other impressed things.
As I walked down the stairs, I heard something that made the sound of Michelle’s vomiting practically melodious.
8 5
The chanting of Anna’s name.
I gritted my teeth. I’d spent the whole night trying to be impressive to everyone with how much I could drink (or pretend to drink), and now she was down there getting her
name chanted?
The best I got was picked up and spun around.
Which only made me dizzy.
I walked outside to see Anna, who was not out-drinking me. Instead, she was doing a handstand.
“What is she doing?” I asked Lucy, a cheerleader, who was standing near me. “And why?”
“She just did two cartwheels, a back handspring, and has been holding this handstand for like a minute. Some of the guys are placing bets on how long she can keep it up!”
“Huh,” I said, trying to sound unimpressed.
“We’re thinking of asking her to be on the squad,” said Tina, the smallest of the cheerleaders.
“Really?” I responded, unable to keep the note of desperation from my voice. I’d always wanted to be a cheerleader.
When I was a kid, I’d been on a squad that accepted anyone who paid. I’d been so uncoordinated that they gave the money back to my father so that I’d be off the team. Ever since then, I’d said that it was a childhood ankle injury that kept me from accepting a position on the team.
I watched as Anna curved her feet behind her head and landed gracefully on the grass, stretched into a backbend.
I knew she looked better than I had when I’d been playing Twister. She stood up from there and curtsied. Everyone cheered.
This made no sense whatsoever. I happened to
know
that it took more than just
that
kind of thing to impress these people.
It felt like they were all doing it specifically to mortify me.
Like they knew about my childhood dream and my jealousy 8 6
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
of Anna’s instant popularity, and they were doing everything in their power to make the situation harder for me. But I guessed I was the last thought on anyone’s mind.
I grabbed the bottle of tequila from the table next to me and put it to my lips. And this time, I really drank. Three huge gulps. My face contorted into something that surely resembled the Warheads candy logo, and my tongue burned.
I knew how tired it was to drink because of emotions, but this wasn’t just about that. I needed to be confident. Besides, it was my party and I could drink if I wanted to.
Unfortunately, the rest of the party just felt like the Anna Judge Show. Everyone seemed hypnotized by her, and no one was paying any attention to me. I even came up with the idea of skinny-dipping, and no one was interested.
Isn’t
everyone
supposed to be interested in that kind of thing in high school?
Eventually my attention—and only my attention—shifted from Anna to myself.
The last double shot of tequila, which I’d immediately regretted having, had turned my stomach into Jell-O. Apparently I was learning the hard way that alcohol doesn’t solve problems. Instead, it made everything that much harder. But it wasn’t until I found myself alone with Liam that I realized how difficult it was to be charming when you kind of wanted to puke.
By that point almost everyone had fallen asleep or gotten a ride home, and the people who were left were watching a movie Anna had brought with her. A movie that hadn’t been released yet—she’d gotten it straight from the production com-pany. I had left the room before finding out how.
I had just been about to nod off myself when I discovered that one of Meredith’s earrings was missing from my ear. I was 8 7
on my hands and knees searching the backyard for it when I heard a voice.
“Bridge?”
I started, entirely shocked to find anyone outside with me—
especially Liam.
“Yeah?” I said, my voice scratchy. I looked up to see him sitting on the settee on my patio.
He stood up, walked over to me and crouched down to my level.
“What are you…uh, what are you doin’?” He sounded like he was talking to a child he was babysitting but wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
“My earring?” I was having trouble thinking of words, much less saying them.
“Did you lose it?”
I nodded. “I did.”
He gave a light sigh. “All right, let’s look for it then. Do you know that it’s out here somewhere?”
I shook my head this time and started to stand. The heel on my shoe stuck in a crack between bricks, and I found myself on the ground again. Liam was instantly at my side, helping me up.
I felt nervous. Here it was. My moment to appear attractive to Liam, and I was sloppy smashed.
“Liam…”
“Y’all right, Bridget? Why don’t you sit down.”
“My
earring—”
“I know.” He helped me to the seat he’d just vacated.
“It looks like, um…an earring that’s, uh. It’s like a silver, sort of loops around…”
He laughed and knelt in front of me. I had no idea what he was doing, and then I felt him tuck my hair behind the ear that still had an earring. My head was spinning, and my heart was 8 8
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
beating so hard I was sure he could hear it. I watched the smile fade as he shifted his gaze from my earring to my eyes.
I knew him so well, and yet he was rarely thinking what I thought he was. I’d never have guessed that that night so long ago, for example, he was going to break up with me. And at this moment, I didn’t want to get my hopes up and think that maybe his heart was beating just as hard as mine.
I tried to look calm and collected as I felt his fingertips move down my neck. Then I felt the familiar ache of want and longing in my chest. The one I always felt when Liam was around.
A crease appeared between his eyebrows and he looked down at our hands, which until that moment I hadn’t realized were entwined. Why? Why did he look like that? Was he regretting getting this close to me? Was it that he wanted me, but knew that he might have lost his chance?
Or maybe it was none of that, just that his knees were hurt-ing from crouching down like this.
I watched his eyes move beneath his dark, straight eyelashes, and thought of all the times I’d looked into them and felt safety and relief.
I thought of the day at the pool that Liam had mentioned earlier. I’d knocked out my front tooth and lain pathetically on the side of the pool, crying from the pain and (mostly) the embarrassment. He had kneeled on the hot concrete next to me and asked if I was okay, moving my wet hair from my face just as he’d done again just now.
I missed the earliest days with him. My whole life, even in middle school and into high school, when I began to measure my happiness by how many “friends” I had, had always been better when he was there. He was the person in my life who knew me the best, and who was more interested in the side of me that knew every word to every Disney movie than the 8 9
side of me that could tell you what was “wrong” with the outfit of every girl I knew. Being around him had always felt like taking a deep breath.
It felt the same way now.
After trying too hard all night long to regain the popularity I’d been so sure was the most important thing about me, being around Liam felt as easy as it always had. I always felt like…
more around him. Like maybe I could be more if I was just with him. But I couldn’t be that girl, the one who depended on a guy that way.
I sighed and leaned into the hand he had moved around to cup my cheek.
“I’m so tired of being like this, Liam.” Once I said it, I felt ashamed. It was one of those drunken ramblings you regret in the morning.
“Like what?” He looked questioningly at me, melting me once again with his familiar gaze.
I thought carefully about my words.
“It’s…hard to say, I don’t know. I feel like every day is a struggle to keep my life the way it’s been for however long.
And I think…” I wrinkled my forehead, trying to put it the right way “…that it’s so I’m happy. But I’m not really very happy with who I am or how my life is or…whatever.” I tilted my head at him. “Am I?”
A quick smile f litted across his face as he pulled his hand away from mine.
“I’m not saying anything right,” I slurred. “I think it was the tequila. I don’t even
like
to drink!” I put my hands up in the air as if to say “go figure!”
“That makes five of us,” he said, and upon seeing my confused expression, he elaborated. “You, me, Michelle, Jillian and…” he hesitated for half an instant “…Anna.”
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P A I G E H A R B I S O N
I stiffened upon the reminder of Anna and let out a dramatic exclamation.
I didn’t want to think about her. It felt like being sure you’d almost talked your way out of jail and then having the guard lock up and say good-night.
“Right. Five of us.” I stood again, still unsteady. He took me by the waist and hooked an arm under my knees. After a brief moment of batting his arm away and failing, I leaned into his warm body and allowed him to pick me up, letting out a quiet “Okay, let’s go.”
“Come on, cliché drunk girl, let’s get you to your bed.”
I laughed, not thinking of anything except how nice it was to feel like
us
even for this brief moment. That feeling of us-ness had disappeared so quickly after we broke up. We had once been so close, and then all of a sudden it was…gone.
And we had to pretend it never happened.
I reveled in the feeling, pretending that we’d never split.
When Liam deposited me onto my bed, I felt the smallest f licker of hope that he might stay with me. That maybe we’d stay up all night talking like we used to (back when I had something interesting to say), and go out to the field and watch the sky’s color change from night to dawn again.
I felt sure I could set aside my exhaustion.
“Liam…” I said, putting a hand on his forearm. I pulled on him, and he sat down next to me, his feet on the f loor, and turned so that he could see me.
I couldn’t see his face. He was just a silhouette in the light that poured in from the hallway. “Yeah, B?”
A chill ran through me as he called me that. He was the only one who
ever
called me that.
“Do you ever miss me?”
His shadowy figure shifted. “I do miss you.”
I tightened my grip on his arm at the words, and then we 9 1
were silent for a moment. He leaned over to me, and ran his fingers through my hair. I opened my mouth to say more, not knowing what I’d end up saying, but closed it when he stood.
He pulled my shoes off and laid my blankets on top of me.
Suddenly I was awake again. I wanted to cry. I wanted to beg him to stay with me.
“You all right, Bridget?” he asked, stopping on his way to the door.
All I could do was nod, feeling like a little girl.
I felt sick. Though it seemed likely that it was from drinking too much, it felt more to do with Liam being here and my not being able to keep him. I wanted to tell him I could be me again, but why would he believe me? I didn’t know if I could be.
Here I was, my mouth tasting like swill-soaked cotton, and even with my eyes shut it felt like the darkness was moving like the rollers on a slot machine. I wasn’t just sleepy. I was passing out. Suddenly I missed the innocence of those summer days when the most I had before bed was a Coke and the worst I had when waking up was a hard time deciding whether to go to the pool or Michelle’s house. Now I was just a fool of a girl who spent her time trying hard to be cool. Not the best.
Not the smartest. Just…the most powerful.
The thought shook me, and made me feel like I was growing up too soon. Not that tonight had been mature in any way at all.