Down With the Shine (3 page)

In the month since I received that voice mail, I’ve listened to it more times than I can count. I know Smith didn’t intend for it to be a gift, but in so many ways it was. I cried for days after hearing it the first time. I sobbed and shook and beat my fists against my own body, all with my personal volume level on mute so that my uncles wouldn’t hear and tease me about some boy breaking my heart. By the time I finished, I was so drained that I pushed my face into my tear-logged pillow and passed out. I slept for almost a whole day, and when I finally woke up, I realized
I couldn’t do this anymore. I didn’t
want
to do this anymore.

Dyl was a reckless, fearless idiot and that’s almost certainly why she’s dead now.

I am a frightened, play-it-safe idiot and will probably live a good long miserable life because of it. Except, at least for tonight, I’ve decided it’s smarter to follow in Dyl’s wonderfully reckless fearless idiotic footsteps.

I take a deep breath and feel the banked fire inside of me flare to life once more.

Much better.

After making sure that I save the message, I shove the phone back into my pocket and head into the basement to grab my stash of moonshine.

It’s time to party.

C
lutching the clinking and clanking bag of booze to my chest, I walk as fast as I can in my strappy sandals across the packed dirt scattered with tufts of weeds that my uncles call a lawn. As the dogs begin barking madly and throwing themselves against the chain-link fence, I pick up the pace a little more.

Even with my uncles out cold, I am still relieved to see that Larry followed instructions, parking several houses down and keeping his lights off. Reaching the car, I pop the door open and slide into the passenger seat. As softly as possible, I close the door behind me. “Go, go, go,” I tell Larry while grabbing my seat belt.

“Gosh,” Larry answers, his usually low voice breathy and high. A moment later the engine revs loudly . . . but the car doesn’t move. I reach for the gearshift and move it from park to drive.

“Try again,” I say, doing my best to be patient.

“Right. Thanks.” He hesitates for another moment, probably trying to remember which is the gas pedal, and then we finally shoot forward.

I twist in my seat to watch my house disappear from view, and as we turn the corner an unfamiliar thrill of energy goes through me. Between my dad and the uncs, getting off on doing something I shouldn’t is undoubtedly written deep into my DNA.

“Lennie,” Larry says, his gigantic hands squeezing the car wheel nervously. They must be sweating something awful; I’ve already watched him wipe them on his pants twice. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

I’m too on edge and too angry and too much of an asshole to say something reassuring.

But I also know that I can’t scream at him to shut up and grow a pair.

I can’t because he’s my ride.

And also sorta kinda my friend.

He would say that I’m his best friend. And maybe someday something more. He doesn’t think I know about that second one. But I can see the way he looks at me all moony. I know why he gets pouty and sullen if another guy talks to me, even if that guy is only passing along an insult. And once, when we were wrestling after playing
paintball, I counted six times that his hands “accidentally” grazed my boobs.

But the “and maybe someday something more” isn’t my problem with Larry. My problem with Larry is that I don’t want to be his or anyone else’s friend. I know it’s melodramatic to say that my friends tend to die young, since it’s only happened once. But the thing is, I’ve only ever had one friend. Dylan. Nobody was interested in the position before she came along. And after the way she died, well, I sorta figured she’d be the last.

Larry had been my lab partner in biology for all of junior year. Most of our interactions went like this:

Me: You understand what we’re supposed to do?

Larry: No. Do you?

Me: Not really.

Larry: Oh. Huh.

Me: Yeah.

As the year wore on, we sorta bonded over our shared C and D grades. And I was sorta impressed by his ability to laugh no matter what shitty things people said to him. Everything seems to simply roll off his enormous back.

And then Dyl disappeared. The first half of April was lost in a haze of growing anxiety while the rest of it is just . . . blackness. I skipped school as much as possible, and even when I was physically present, I wasn’t truly there.

I hardly noticed when Larry started following me around and doing things like meeting me at my locker. And while part of me thought it was pretty fucking presumptuous for him to assume he could slip into Dyl’s place, at the same time it was . . . nice. Comforting, even. In the last week before summer break, we hung out a few times after school and got embroiled in an epic
Grand Theft Auto
battle that somehow stretched into late August.

During all this time, he’s only asked one gently probing question about Dyl—that I immediately shut down. He’s never said shit about my family. I would’ve torn his head off if he had, so maybe that’s just Larry showing some good sense. Or maybe he’s a genuinely nice guy. I suspect the latter, and as much as that eeks me out, it kind of intrigues me too. It’s like being friends with a creature you’ve always thought was only make-believe, like a unicorn. It seems too good to be true. So I’m constantly waiting for him to tear the horn off and become an ass like everyone else.

In the meantime, Larry has two other things going for him.

Number one is his size. At six foot five and 250 pounds, Larry is big enough to be intimidating. Not that he uses his size to do anything. He has this idea that it isn’t fair for him to hit back because he’s so much bigger than everybody else.

Number two is his car. When he turned sixteen, Larry’s parents let him pick out any car he wanted. He chose a bright yellow Mazda Miata. I don’t know how the salesperson kept a straight face watching Larry climb into that tiny convertible for a test drive. Seeing him in this car reminds me of when I had my Ken doll use a Matchbox car to pick up Barbie at her shoe box house. It’s still nice, though, to have a friend with wheels. Especially one willing to drive me wherever I want to go and who never thinks to ask for gas money.

“Lennie.” Larry says my name again. Louder. And whinier. “Maybe we should go to my house instead. Watch a movie or play some
Donkey Kong
.” After growing tired of
Grand Theft Auto
,
DK
has become our new obsession. Normally, I’d be all over that suggestion, but tonight—

“No.”

“My mom made her amazing chocolate cake.”

“Your mom hates me.”

“She—” Larry stops. He doesn’t like to lie.
“Donkey Kong?”

“Yes, I have a weakness for
Donkey Kong
.”

“Yeah.
Donkey Kong
rocks.”

I laugh, for a moment forgetting I don’t
really
like Larry. It happens occasionally. “Yes, he does, but not tonight. Tonight
we
rock. It’s gonna happen exactly the way I’ve
been telling you. Once they see what we’ve brought”—I jingle the jars in the bag at my feet—“they’re gonna roll out the red carpet for us. Just trust me, okay?”

Larry wipes his sweaty palms once more, gulps, wiggles his butt in his seat, before finally grinning. “Yeah. Yeah!” He fist-pumps the air. “You’re right, it’s gonna be great.” He sounds like he believes it. As if my saying it makes it true. As if I am someone worthy of trust.

Cleary, Larry is not the sharpest guy around.

. . . Or maybe not, because at first everything does go exactly as I said it would.

We walk in like we own the place, not slinking in the back past the idiots doing keg stands, but strolling right through the front door and straight into the kitchen. One by one I pull the mason jars out of my bag and line them up on the glass table. I can feel a crowd gathering behind me, but nobody says a word. Grabbing the first one, I spin the lid off and let it hit the shiny hardwood floors. Larry snags a plastic cup and holds it out to me, but I push it away. “You always drink moonshine straight from the jar,” I say. It’s not strictly true—tradition only dictates that the first swig comes straight from the jar—but I like the way it sounds. I push the shine into Larry’s hand and then pick up a second one for myself. Off comes the second lid.

“Make a wish,” I say to Larry, holding up my jar.

This is another moonshine ritual I’ve seen performed a million times. Everyone buying shine needs to have a drink with my uncles first. Uncle Rod usually takes the lead, slurping a bit from the jar of shine and then pouring a few fingers into some
Looney Tunes
glasses they got from a gas station years ago. My uncles sit at the kitchen table with the poor schmuck, and as he lifts the glass to his lips they tell him to make a wish. Usually it’s some eye-roll-worthy, sad-sack nonsense like, “I wish my wife weren’t so mean to me” or “I wish I could get that promotion at work.” “Penny-ante shit” is what Uncle Jet calls it, but then he’s quick to add it’s better that way.

They never miss a chance to remind me to dream small.

I’d coached Larry in the car, not wanting him to ruin our first impression by saying something stupid like, “I wish I was home playing
Donkey Kong
.” I told him to say, “I wish I were the king of this party. Bow down, bitches!” He practiced, but every time it came out of his mouth like a question. And he refused to say “Bow down, bitches.” He thought it sounded too mean.

Now Larry’s eyes meet mine and I can see the panic in them. “Um,” he says. Around us people snicker.

Larry gulps. “I hope my mom isn’t mad at me tomorrow.”

I narrow my eyes, promising retribution, but make my
mouth smile as I give Larry his wish—with a little embellishment. “To your mom and everyone else’s parents’ staying chill, no matter what!” Then I add the words I’ve heard my uncles utter so many times: “May all your wishes come true, or at least just this one!”

He clinks his jar against mine. Then in unison, we drink.

The liquid dribbles out the sides of my mouth and burns going down. Smiling, I wipe my mouth with my sleeve. Next to me, Larry is doubled over, coughing hoarsely. I make a big show of taking the moonshine from him and patting him on the back. “Sometimes the first sip’s like that,” I say.

Another half-truth. The first sip is always like that.

My uncles rubbed the stuff on my gums when I was a teething newborn, poured a finger of it into hot tea anytime I had a cold, and every April Fool’s Day they find some way to make me take an unwitting taste of the stuff, whether by soaking my toothbrush in it or mixing it into the milk I pour over my Cocoa Krispies. And yet, despite all that, I have no tolerance for it. The shine leaves a scorched path from the tip of your tongue all the way to your belly. The only reason I’d been able to take a swig without coughing was the bottle of Chloraseptic I’d sprayed onto my throat before leaving the house.

By now the entire party is trying to squeeze its way into the kitchen. Everyone wants to know whether we’ll be welcomed or thrown out on our asses.

Here’s the thing about Michaela Gordon’s party: only the coolest kids are invited. The rest of the school comes to ride it like a bucking bronco—you hold on as long as you can until someone throws you out. For the cool kids, finding horrible new ways to let the unworthy know they’re unwelcome is part of the fun. And for everybody else who comes to school the next week with Sharpie-covered faces, or still clutching their stomachs after being force-fed laxatives, there is a strange mixture of shame and bravado in announcing that they were at Michaela’s for thirty-eight-and-a-half minutes and three of them were at the exact time the Barney twins performed their topless table dance.

If we’re gonna get tossed, this is the moment it’s gonna happen.

Just when things can’t get any tenser, Michaela Gordon herself comes pushing through the crowd until she is standing right in front of me.

Own it
, I remind myself.

I brazenly shove one of the jars at her. “Have some moonshine,” I say. Then, holding up my own jar, I officially throw down the gauntlet. “Make a wish.”

“I wish this party would never end,” she says with a smile that makes her look rather sharklike. “At least for those who last till morning.”

Of course, she had to get her dig in, knowing I’ll be ushered out long before the sun rises. But I’d rather she talk shit to my face than my back as I’m being tossed out the door, so I only reply, “To a party that rocks all night and forever more! May all your wishes come true, or at least just this one!”

Michaela doesn’t bother waiting for me to finish before she tips the jar back and takes a long swallow. A moment later she is bent over and gasping, waiting for the fire in her throat to go out.

I suddenly doubt the wisdom of this whole plan. Michaela Gordon does not like to look like a fool. Gently, I reach down to take the jar of moonshine from her, but she jerks it away and slowly straightens to face me. Her watering eyes have made her mascara run in streaks down her cheeks. I am tempted to apologize, to minimize the damage I’ve already done. I think about how right my uncles were—the stars in the sky are not to be reached for, but to remind us how small we truly are.

But then Michaela Gordon clinks her jar against the one I’m still holding. “Look out liver, here it comes,” she says, her lips tilting into a sly smile.

Grinning, I bring the jar up and take my second deep swallow. And this time—the crowd cheers.

It is perhaps the best moment of my life. I am at the biggest party of the year and I am owning it.

Bow down, bitches.

A
fter that, things get blurry. Every time a new group of partygoers pushes its way into the kitchen for a taste of the moonshine, I go through the whole routine. Wish. Toast. First sip.

It’s a lot of first sips. I lose count after a while.

Even people who make a point of letting me know my place in the universe at least once a week get in line, make a wish, and drink with me. Some of them high-five me when they finish, like we’re suddenly best pals.

In between I keep asking for, “Water. I need to drink water so I don’t get drunk.” Someone presses a glass of it into my hand, and I drain it in a few long swallows.

Then there is dancing. Another thing I hate that suddenly feels good. Larry and I thrash and spin and sing along, not caring that we’re getting most of the lyrics wrong.

Next thing I know, I’m lecturing a group of freshmen who were lucky enough to make the official list of invitees about the brilliance of my uncles’ moonshine. It’s my uncles’ sales pitch, which I’ve heard a million times.

“Making moonshine has been in our family for generations and everyone who knows about it agrees it’s the best moonshine around, taking top honors in the three essential moonshine tests.” I try to hold up three fingers, but can’t quite manage it and settle for all five. “One. Most likely to make a man fight someone he loves for no good reason.” I point in the direction of the screaming couple in the next room. “Check.”

The freshmen look impressed.

“Two. Most likely to lead to bad life decisions while under its influence.” This time I have to scan the room for a moment, mostly because it is spinning around me. Finally, I locate Arnold Tuney kissing Blake Graham. Arnold is out of the closet. He is the cool girl’s token gay. Blake is a guy who has been dating the same girl for three years and routinely refers to people, places, and things he does not like as “gay.” This time the freshmen don’t need me to point, they have followed my gaze and are staring in open-mouthed shock.

“Check. Wow, Arnie could really do better.” I shake my head, lose track of what I was talking about, and have
to be reminded why I’m holding my hand up in the air.

“Right,” I say. “Finally—and most important of all—it’s likely to make you so goddamn drunk you don’t even care about the other two.” I don’t have to point to any particular person for this. The whole party is insane. People are puking everywhere and then turning around to get more beer. They are too drunk to know better. Michaela’s house may never be the same. It gives me a certain satisfaction. Maybe the freshmen feel it too, because they all look back at me and say, “Check.”

By the time I open the final jar of moonshine, I feel certain that my whole life has changed. The crowd cheers me as a hero. We are all best friends, drinking from the communal jar of love. For the last few sips they even pick me up and place me on the dining room table.

Raising the jar of moonshine above my head, a gigantic grin on my face, I know I look like an idiot, but somehow I can’t stop smiling. The world isn’t the horrible place I thought it was. The world is great. It’s awesome and full of possibility that I was simply never drunk enough to see before.

I open my mouth to tell these wonderful people here how much I love them and how happy I am to be here with them tonight.

And then Smith walks into the room.

He has his arm slung around some long-legged girl who goes to another high school, or maybe even college. Smith is so cool he can’t date girls who go to his own school. After all, where’s the challenge in that?

Of course, half the room turns to stare at him and his latest hottie.
You idiots
, I think,
why do you all fall for his “coolest guy in the world” shtick
? The only problem is that my gaze is also aimed squarely in Smith’s direction, drinking in his skinny jeans, worn T-shirt, dark hair that looks casually tousled but has actually been painstakingly styled, and signature smirk. You know the kind of smirk I’m talking about. You want to slap it off his face. Or kiss it off.

Okay, fine. I’m leaning toward the second one and even worse, I’m so drunk that I forget to hold back the drool and naked longing.

And that’s when his eyes collide with mine.

Briefly.

It is much too long.

Smith. Dylan’s twin. Dylan. Oh, Dyl. Dead, dead Dyl.

It all comes roaring back.

How could he think that I’d had something to do with what happened to her? He should have known better. Maybe he did. Maybe he’d just been looking for an excuse to hate me. For being the one who didn’t die. And I hated
him for that because once we’d been . . . not quite friends, but close. He hung out with me and Dyl sometimes and we often ended up laughing at the same things, grooving to the same music, reaching for the same potato chip.

All right, so maybe I was inflating small moments.

Smith pivots, dragging his girlfriend with him, back out the door.

“Have a drink, Smith.” The moonshine takes over my mouth and I actually yell these words at his retreating form.

Along with the crowd I hold my breath, waiting for his reaction.

Smith pauses the length of three erratic heartbeats and then looks over his shoulder, flipping a lock of hair from his eyes while doing so. The bastard must practice that move in the mirror, it is that good. He raises an eyebrow, which seems a bit over the top at this point, but my wobbly knees don’t think so, especially when he pairs it with his trademark crooked smirk.

“Thanks, but I’m not sure if I’m up to date on my tetanus shot.”

The crowd laughs loudly, loving it. Stupid drunks, that doesn’t even make sense. It’s shine, not a rusty nail.

“I get it,” I toss back, all casual. “You’re scared.”

“OOOOOHHHHHH.” The crowd obliges.

Now it’s my turn to smirk, because I’ve got him and we both know it.

There is something about the male brain that makes it particularly susceptible to the threat of being called a chicken. They will do the dumbest shit to disprove it.

Smith, though, is worse than the average male. He and Dylan threw dares at each other the way other siblings might’ve played tennis for sport. Except they volleyed increasingly dangerous challenges, never backing down, always wanting to hit it back harder.

The crowd parts for Smith as he sprints toward the table, charging at me and reminding me of another one of my uncles’ favorite sayings: “Mess with the bull, you’ll get the horns.”

My liquor-soaked reflexes are too slow to do anything except pull the moonshine close to my chest, protecting those last precious drops from harm.

It’s a smart move, ’cause Smith leaps and, with the same grace he uses to clear the track hurdles, lands on the table beside me. The whole thing rocks and my free arm windmills, looking for something to keep me on my feet. But there’s only Smith.

My fingers brush against his shirt sleeve. I don’t grab hold, though. Falling seems safer.

Just when it seems that the floor is my destiny, Smith’s
arms circle around me. Our noses brush and his eyes are so close to mine I can see the little flecks of green and gold that swirl through the brown. His hands are warm against my back and the only thing keeping us from being completely sealed together is the jar of moonshine still clutched to my chest.

I swallow loudly, and something flickers behind Smith’s eyes. In the romance novels my uncle Dune (not so) secretly loves, the heroines are always reading things in the heroes’ eyes. They soften with love, grow hard with anger. Sometimes, if they’re really furious, they’ll shoot sparks. I can’t say what Smith’s flicker means, though. Maybe he’s thinking about that time we kissed. Maybe he’s thinking about that message he left me. Or maybe he’s gagging from my booze breath.

In case it’s the last one, I close my gaping mouth and lean back so I can bring the jar of shine up between us.

“Make a wish?” The words come out soft and husky, not brash and confident the way I’ve been saying them all night. The sound of them brings up a bubble of sadness that I quickly swallow back down.

All the while Smith studies me and I can only hope he’s no better at reading eyes than I am.

“I wish,” he says, his voice pitched low but easily reaching the ears of everyone in that hushed kitchen. “To be
there when you get what you deserve.”

It’s a sucker punch. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

So I remind myself of the lessons Smith’s little voice mail taught me. Crying doesn’t do anything except make me soggy and tired. But getting good and pissed, that’s the type of fuel that keeps a person marching through one shitty day after another.

I suck in a gasp of hurt surprise, and breathe it back out as fire.

“And I suppose you’re the one who’s gonna give me what I deserve?” I laugh like it’s a joke and jab a finger into his chest for good measure.

And there’s the Smith smirk™. “Nope, not me. I just want to be there watching.”

“Kinky.”

“It’s my wish.” Smith shrugs.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to miss a thing. So you can have a front row seat when I ‘get what I deserve.’ Or even better—you can take my hand and deliver me straight to the devil’s door yourself. That work for you?”

“It’ll do.”

I shove the jar at him. “To going to hell hand in hand!” He brings the jar to his lips and tips his head back, letting it flow down his throat. He coughs and gasps, but
somehow he makes even that seem cool, ’cause he laughs through it, as if he’s thinking,
Ha! Is that the best you can do?

“May all your wishes come true. Or at least just this one.” I spit the words at him and then take a sip, completing the ritual that no longer seems quite as funny.

I hate Smith then. A different type of girl might’ve given in to the booze blues and started crying. Or asked him what the hell his problem is.

But I only know how to be myself, so I drink more. And this time I toast myself.

“And
I
wish that Dylan was back home, in one piece, alive and safe in her bed.” I bring the jar up. Over the lip of the glass, Smith’s eyes burn holes through me. Fuck him. It’s the wish he should’ve made and he knows it. I thrust the jar toward him for the second time. His jaw clenches but he takes it nonetheless.

I finish things with a soft, “May all your wishes come true, or at least just this one,” while Smith throws the moonshine toward his tonsils. A second later he pushes the jar back into my hand, leaps from the table, and cuts through the crowd where he escapes out the door.

The kitchen is crammed full of people. And every single one of them is staring up at me expectantly, wanting to see how this drama will end.

They’d love to see me bawl my eyes out. I have no
intention of giving them the satisfaction.

I lift the jar above my head. “Bottoms up!” My voice is too loud, clownishly happy, and thiiiiis close to turning into a drunken sob.

“Bottoms up,” they yell, and for the last time I tip the jar back and drain it dry.