By Jamie Holland

There was so much news—who was going out with who, what the new kids were like.

People were breaking up and going out with other people. There were boy-girl parties. Seven minutes in heaven. Cigarettes. Sprite and vodka. They all wrote, How R U??? Are the guys cute there??? Everyone said they missed me, but I felt like I’d moved to the moon.

Everything was different now. Different and not different. My sister got popular all over again, Dad’s new job had him traveling all over, and Mom came home late every single night, which meant it was just me in a creaky house that always sounded like someone was trying to break in.

~

One day I invited Cathy, my bio partner, to come over. She was new last year, and, like me, wasn’t part of any clique.

We got off the bus and headed to my house. It was windy, and the leaves were blowing all over the place. Before going inside, I swung open our mailbox to see who’d written me back. No one. I told myself they were busy with their boyfriends and their vodka.

In the kitchen, I did what my mom would do with company: I got out the Stoned Wheat Thins and set a thick square of Wisconsin cheddar cheese on a plate with a knife. She’d offer Chardonnay, but we had Tang.

After we sat, Cathy tucked her long frizzy hair behind both ears, leaned in, and said, “Do you miss your friends like crazy?”

“Me?” I reached for a cracker. I made that my focus. Breaking it down its seam and breaking it again and topping each with slivers of orange cheese. If I admitted that I felt like a dark hole was gobbling me up, then surely the lump in my throat would burst all over the place. And then what? What if I couldn’t stop crying? Already I was starting to feel the frantic birds inside my chest, jabbing and pecking.

“In the beginning, I went back home a bunch,” Cathy said. “Me and my mom.”

It wasn’t just the birds. It was this cold sensation shooting through my veins, this liquid rush all over me, as if my spine had been yanked from my body, and I was now floating above myself in the form of a million throbbing fragments. I was a thick cloud of mosquitoes. A jellyfish tossed to the sand. All I could do was sit there and pray that it would be over soon.

“I wasn’t a fan of this place either,” she said, biting into her cheese and cracker. “I mean, when I first got here.”

From my detached place, I counted the crumbs that had fallen to the table. Seven, eight, nine. I couldn’t stop thinking about my friends back home and all the new stuff they were doing and how I hadn’t changed one bit.

“God, I was so homesick. I cried all the time.”

“Have you ever tasted vodka?”

“What? No! Why?” Through her freckles, a light pink blush emerged.

My cheeks burned. My one friend, and now I’d ruined it.

Cathy reached for the knife and sliced a piece but didn’t eat it.
She looked up. “What?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I—”

She tilted her head. “I mean, I’m not against it.”

Our eyes locked. A whoosh of wind howled through the trees.

There were so many bottles in the cabinet. I found the vodka, pulled it out. The tiny floating fragments of me were slowly forming back into an actual body. My body. The flapping creatures had flown. The jellyfish now creeping back into water.

I twisted the bottle open. Cathy, blinking, said, “Oh my God are you really gonna do this?” and I felt this force inside me like my Maryland friends were egging me on Do it! Do it! Do it! so I brought the bottle to my never-been-kissed lips, and when I felt the clear liquid on my tongue, I swallowed it down hard. There. I was not prepared for the burn it left in my chest.

“Whoa.” I pushed the bottle toward Cathy.

After barely a sip, she yelled, “Yuck!” and ran to the sink and rinsed out her mouth, her lips going “Puh! Puh!” as she splashed water all over her face in the most dramatic way that made me laugh for the first time since we’d moved.

~

After we’d gargled with mouthwash, Cathy’s mom honked out front.

Cathy, eyes wide, grabbed my shoulders and breathed all over me. “Can you smell it?”

“Not at all.” I gave her my last piece of Bubble Yum. “Just to be safe.” I felt like a mother, sending my daughter off with a snack.

Outside, the wind had died down. No one would be home for a while. I returned to the kitchen to make sure we didn’t leave any evidence. I wiped down the table, made sure the door to the liquor cabinet was closed. Not that my parents would notice. A half inch, an inch—it wouldn’t matter. I knew this in the same way that I knew that my sister, wherever we moved, would always be the most popular in her grade.

I pulled open the cabinet again, and this time, reached for a different bottle. Scotch whiskey, the label said. The fumes made my eyes water. The thing was, people forgot you when you moved. They said they didn’t, but little by little, they did; they forgot you.

The whiskey burned my chest even worse than the vodka had. I kind of liked that I knew the difference. That I could distinguish between the two. It made me feel older. Mostly, though, I liked thinking about the day when my chest wouldn’t feel the slightest prickle of anything. Not even the gentle sting of a sea creature.