Jennifer Yu - Four Weeks, Five People

“I’m going to sit this one out,” Clarisa says. “But, Stella?” She looks at me with big, sad, hopeful eyes, which means that the best course of action for me to follow right now would actually be to flee. “Make sure I do this at least once before camp gets out, okay?”

“Er,” I say. “Mason will do it. Right, Mason? Don’t say, ‘Fuck, yes,’ I swear to God.”

I pour out four shots of vodka and one of water, for Clarisa.

“And so our five dissolute campers make a toast to the experiences of their future,” Ben suddenly says. “It is stupid, it is night, it is youth. It is hope, it is rashness, it is liquid courage. It is—”

“Dude,” Andrew interrupts. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry,” Ben says. “Do you ever think, like, if life were a movie with really dramatic voice-over, what would that voice-over be saying? You know, like, if Morgan Freeman was—”

Ben catches the expressions on our faces and cuts off. “Yeah, never mind. I think I’ve seen too many movies. Just ignore it.”

This is why I can’t pretend I’m at normal camp, I think. But I hand out the shots and raise mine, anyway. “To pretending we’re at normal camp,” I say.

We take the shots.

BEN

HERE’S THE PROBLEM: the first shot, the excitement of it all, the rush—it all makes me ridiculously happy. Which in turn makes me ridiculously stupid.

It’s not even just the alcohol that does it—it’s the entire situation. I mean, here I am, in the middle of the night, surrounded by people I barely know, after sneaking out of our room and risking CERTAIN DEATH. Well, maybe not CERTAIN DEATH, but definitely CERTAIN DISAPPOINTED LOOKS, and when you’re the literal antithesis of cool, like I am, that’s bad enough to make you pretty nervous.

I didn’t even want to come at first. I know better than anyone that putting me in social situations with a bunch of strangers is like sending a firefighter into a forest fire with a watering can. But Andrew wouldn’t shut up about “bonding” (no, thanks) and “haven’t you ever done anything exciting in your life? You know, just for the thrill of it?” (definitely not) and “please don’t leave me alone with Mason” (I begrudgingly gave him that last one). So here I am.

And I guess Andrew must have had a point after all, because I’m feeling surprisingly good. Shockingly good. Better than I’ve felt since watching Fast & Furious 6 a couple of years ago and having every negative thought obliterated from my brain through sheer force of CGI. It’s the first shot that does it, I think—the taste, lingering in the back of my throat, the burn that follows it all the way down my chest and into my stomach. This is why Nicholas Cage becomes an alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. I finally understand.

So I take another shot—because Stella and Mason are still going, so it can’t hurt, right? And then another one—“to not letting ourselves reach Norman Bates levels of insanity”—with Andrew. And then another one—“to motifs in movies,” I vaguely remember saying, “because they’re all we can derive meaning from!”—at which point nearly everyone is in hysterics, except Clarisa, who merely looks tentatively amused. Even Stella has managed to break out a genuine smile.

“I’m done, I’m done, I have to be done,” I say, and I’m so happy I can barely think straight, but then Mason fills my glass and shouts, “To not being a pussy!” and the four shots I’ve taken already are enough for that to actually force me into action.

The really stupid thing is that I know exactly how this ends. I’ve been to enough therapy sessions and sat through enough boring health classes to know that I really shouldn’t drink like this, especially here, with people who now probably think I’m a total dumbass, for the first time ever. I’m not fun. I’m not anywhere near cool. I’m pretty much the last person anyone would invite to a party. In the fifteen minutes during which I am feigning sleep after we sneak back into our room, I realize that a) I have been an idiot, and b) more urgently, I need to throw up, now.

It’s hard to describe the emotional sequence that follows, not least of all because I am excessively inebriated for most of it. I make it to the bathroom in time to spend the next half hour alternating between puking, feeling all the positive feelings gradually drain away from my brain, and wishing, wishing, WISHING that I could feel like I’m inside a movie again like I did on the first day of camp, that this entire disaster didn’t all feel so capital-R Real. I hate alcohol, I think. I hate alcohol, and I hate that it did this to me, and I hate myself for being stupid enough to drink even though I knew this would happen, and I hate myself for being ridiculous enough to be crying right now because of something so stupid, and I hate Stella for bringing the alcohol, and I hate Mason for calling me a pussy, and I hate myself for proving him right. I had one chance and I fucked it all up—

“Yo,” Andrew calls from outside the bathroom. “Are you okay? Dude, open the door!”

“And can you quiet down?” Mason adds. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“I’m fine,” I shout, but I must not sound particularly fine, because Andrew opens the door and barges in. Pathetic, I think. He must think you’re so pathetic.

“Dude!” Andrew says. “Are you crying? Ben, what’s going on?” He pours me a cup of water from the faucet and hands it to me.

“What’s going on,” I repeat. I take a drink from the cup and then dry heave. “What’s going on? Our dissolute camper, once so filled with hope and youthful energy, is paying the price for his impulsivity, for the belief that he could ever—“Well, I feel terrible,” I say after catching the look on Andrew’s face.

“You have to stop doing that,” he says.

“I can’t,” I say. “And I drank too much.”

“Yeah, that happens sometimes,” he says.

“And they taught us in health class that alcohol is a depressant,” I add.

“Yeah, that happens, too. But I don’t think that’s what that actually means. Like, I don’t think alcohol actually makes you depressed, if you know what I’m saying. I think it just—”

“And I hate myself.”

Andrew shuts up.

“Oh, God,” I say. The nausea is beginning to fade now, into a constant, throbbing misery—the sense that I would be better off anywhere else, anyone else, or perhaps not at all. To make matters worse, Mason chooses this moment to walk into the bathroom, clutching—I kid you not—an issue of Playboy.

“I thought you were trying to sleep,” I say.

“I gave up,” he says.

I stare at him, speechless, before deciding that the best course of action is to pointedly ignore him.

“I shouldn’t have let myself do this,” I say, turning to Andrew. “People like me can’t do drinking.”

“‘People like me’?” he says. “What does that even mean? Depressed people? People who have emotions? People who do stupid things? People like us, Ben. Now shut up and drink water.”

“People like us?” Mason replies, not looking up from his magazine. “People like you guys, Andrew. Leave me out of it.”

I stumble out of the bathroom and climb into bed, thinking that camp so far has been far, far worse than Wet Hot American Summer.

CLARISA

THE SUNDAY SCHEDULE says we’re supposed to be up by 10:00 a.m., but waking up at a time like that is practically asking to have a terrible day. I set my alarm for 9:31 instead, and I’m feeling surprisingly well rested when it goes off. It’s going to be a good day, I think to myself. I’m going to get out of bed and brush my teeth. I’m going to write my mom a letter. I’m going to try to make friends. I sit up, open my eyes, and—//