She wished she still hadn’t as soon as the bitter liquid hit her tongue. It tasted nothing like the bubbly, fresh champaign her mom had let her taste seven months ago. In a word, she thought it was awful. It tasted like she imagined horse piss must taste, not that she’d ever had that in her mouth. But she swallowed it back anyway, keeping her bottle tipped up as long as the other girls did, though she thought she only drank about half as much as they did. They all clanged their bottles together again.
Almost immediately, the girls turned their attention to Ryan, who was standing next to Michael, bottles in both of their hands. Beth wanted to run over to Ryan and take it away from him. She knew he wasn’t supposed to drink with the medication he was on—he’d joked about it when he’d first co
