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1002 Words
Some of it goes down the wrong pipe. I cough, spraying water into Kat’s face.
Which, because I’m a terrible, terrible friend, makes me laugh.
“Oh my God, you’re so lit.” She sighs, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She gingerly takes the water bottle from me like it’s a Molotov cocktail I’m about to toss into a crowd, and looks around. “Let’s go into the living room. Lie down on the sofa until I can get Marcus to drive you home—” “I’m not going home with him! He’s going home with the three little piggies! And I don’t crash on people’s sofas like somebody’s unemployed pothead uncle!”
The look she gives me indicates that my indignation is ridiculous for someone so drunk. “Ookay, then. A bed. We’ll find you a nice, quiet room where you can sleep for a bit.”
Two minutes or two hours later—my concept of time is completely shot—we’re standing in the doorway of a guest bedroom. There’s a king-sized bed, a matching modern dresser and chest of drawers set, and not much else. Everything is rocking in the most lovely, soothing way, like we’re on a boat.
Kat sits me on the edge of the bed. She takes off my shoes. She lifts my legs up, forcing me to lie on my back. She smooths my hair off my forehead with a cool hand and smiles down at me. “I’ve never seen you drunk,” she muses.
“I’m not drunk,” I slur, smiling dreamily. “I’m wasted.”
“I left the bottle of water on the nightstand right next to the bed, okay, sweetie?”
I nod obediently. She leans down and kisses my forehead, and then turns for the door. She shuts off the lights. Just as she’s about to close the door behind her I say, “Kat?”
The door opens wider. “Yeah, sweetie?”
Thinking of Brody’s beautiful face, I smile into the darkness. “I’m a tiger.”
She laughs softly. “I know you are, hon. Go to sleep.”
She closes the door and I promptly follow her instructions.
“How did she get so drunk?”
“She drank a lot.”
“Yeah, but who was giving her so much to drink?”
An amused chuckle, in a deep baritone that sounds like rolling thunder. “If you think anyone could make Grace do anything she didn’t want to do, you don’t know her very well.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Guys—”
“It means, Brody, that you’d have an easier time convincing the sky to rain money than you’d have convincing her to not drink if she wanted to drink, or drink if she didn’t want to.”
“Guys—”
“My point is that you should’ve been watching her—”
“Me!” Another deep, amused chuckle. “I should’ve been watching her?”
“Why is that so funny?”
“Guys!”
I recognize Kat’s voice. It’s the shrill, angry one.
“What?” respond two male voices in unison.
Brody. And Marcus. Yes, I recognize them, too. What are all these voices doing in my head? I’m trying to sleep here, people!
“She’s an adult. She had too much to drink. It’s happened to all of us. She’s safe, and she’s sleeping. She’ll be fine in the morning. Can we please move on?”
“No. No, we can’t move on, Kat, because she could’ve been hurt! What if she wandered away on her own and fell off a cliff?”
Marcus sighs. “There are no cliffs on your property, dude—”
“Or broke her ankle by stepping in a gopher hole and had to lie there in agony all night with a busted leg until someone found her in the morning?”
“You’ve got a pretty advanced sense of drama, Brody, you know that?”
“This isn’t f*****g funny!”
“Jesus,” Kat mutters, “please take me. Just take me now.”
“What’s all the hubbub?”
Another voice joins in. Male, strong, controlled. I recognize it instantly: Barney.
Kat says, “Nothing. Grace is sleeping, that’s all—”
“Sleeping? It’s not even nine o’clock. Why is she sleeping?”
“Because she’s drunk!” exclaims Brody. “Because this bozo was feeding her booze all day!”
“Now wait just a f*****g minute—”
“You got Grace drunk?” growls Barney, his voice low and dangerous. “Intentionally?”
“That’s it!” exclaims Kat. “I will not have a cockfight on my hands, do you understand me? Marcus, go get the assfuck triplets and go home! Barney, butt out, this doesn’t concern you! And Brody, calm the f**k down, Grace is fine—because I made sure she was!”
That shuts them all up. I hear some grumbling and grousing, and then heavy footsteps receding down the hallway.
Finally, I hear Kat’s heavy sigh. “f*****g men are such f*****g babies.”
And then I don’t hear anything more because I drift back down into darkness.Pain. Blood. Flashing lights. The smell of things burning: rubber, plastic, oil.
Hair.
A broken moan. It’s coming from me. The pain is everywhere, all over me, inside and out, devouring me. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can barely open my eyes. When I do, everything is upside down. I’m buckled into a car seat. My left arm is pinned against something metal. Something hot.
Something getting hotter.
I turn my head and see stars, hear a crunching noise in my neck. When the stars recede, I don’t understand what I’m looking at. The sky is made of black asphalt and yellow lines, broken pieces of plastic, sheared off hunks of metal . . .
Body parts.
- Writer
