Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

“No problem,” he said. “I’d stay here the rest of the night if I could. This is a really comfortable couch.”

“Just don’t fall asleep on me, okay?”

“Don’t worry about that.” He had his hands behind his head, his bulky cop shoes resting on the coffee table. “I’ve had at least ten cups of coffee since I started my shift. I’ll be wide awake until noon.”

They’d been talking for almost an hour at that point, not just about the tragedy of his graduation night, but about her divorce, and the engagement he’d broken off the previous summer, the suffocating sense he’d had that he was drifting into marriage because other people expected it, not because he’d made a choice to spend his life with Katie. He’d bailed out two months before the wedding, alienating lots of friends and even a few relatives, but he knew he’d done the right thing.

“Every morning I wake up and thank God I dodged that bullet.”

It was almost embarrassing how badly she’d misjudged him. Brian was a sweet guy, way more thoughtful and self-aware than Tony or any of the jerks she’d corresponded with on Match.com, the handful that would stoop to consider a woman on the wrong side of forty. He was kinda cute, too, if you could get past the gym-rat muscles and the look of squinty irritation that seemed to be his default expression, not that she was suffering from any romantic delusions. What was the point? She was twelve years his senior, a divorcée with a teenaged daughter, and no cougar by any stretch of the imagination. Even so, it was encouraging just to know that she was still in the game, that a guy like Brian would take the trouble to seek her out for a conversation, even if he was just trying to kill some time on the night shift.

She walked quickly past the phalanx of cardboard movie stars — they gave her the willies, all those famous people frozen in mid-gesture, grinning with manic intensity — and then turned left, onto an even more desolate hallway, in search of the faculty women’s room Sally had told her about.

Trust me, she’d said. It’s a lot cleaner than the other one.

She found it on the right, beyond two science labs and a bulletin board dedicated to the subject of “Careers in Health Care: A Growing Sector of Our Economy!” Liz stepped inside. She’d thought the restroom might be single occupancy, but it turned out to be large and well lit, four stalls facing a row of sinks and mirrors.

It took her a moment or two to realize that something was wrong — a sour smell in the air, a barely audible whimper — and by then she was already peering into the first stall, the door of which was slightly ajar.

“Oh, you poor thing.”

The girl was splayed awkwardly on the floor, her forehead resting on the lip of the bowl. Liz couldn’t see her face — too much dark hair was hanging in the way — but she recognized the orange T-shirt and these awful denim shorts.

“Sweetie,” Liz murmured, kneeling down, carefully extracting a strand of hair from inside the bowl. “I’m right here.”

LIZ WIPED the girl’s face and neck with a moist paper towel, as if she were a baby who’d just eaten a messy dinner. Her hair was harder to deal with, the sour smell lingering even after all the visible residue had been removed. A few stray clumps remained on her shirt, but she’d have to deal with those on her own.

“Your name’s Jenna, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, after a long hesitation.

“What were you drinking, Jenna?”

The girl’s eyes were cloudy, her expression somehow pathetic and defiant at the same time.

“Vodka,” she muttered in a feeble voice. “I fucking hate that shit.”

“How much?”

Jenna glanced at the toilet, which was going to spoil some poor janitor’s morning.

“Too much. Obviously.”

“Am I gonna have to call an ambulance?”

The girl bristled at the question.

“I just puked. I’m hardly even drunk anymore.”

Liz remembered the phenomenon from her own drinking days, the sudden bleak sobriety that follows the purge. She knew girls in college who carried little bottles of mouthwash in their purse so they could return to the party and get wasted all over again. She’d done it herself, once or twice.

“Can you stand up?”

Jenna gave a tentative nod and took hold of Liz’s proffered hand. It wasn’t easy to get her on her feet; she was either denser than she looked or drunker than she claimed.

“What about your boyfriend?” Liz asked. “Was he drinking, too?”

Jenna wobbled a bit, using the wall for balance.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Come on,” Liz said. “I saw you with him. When you snuck in?”

“Who, Quinn?” Jenna made a hocking sound in her throat, then swirled her studded tongue around her lips. She didn’t look too happy about the taste in her mouth. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“All right, whatever. I’m just trying to—”

Jenna leaned closer to Liz, as if sharing a secret.

“You know who his girlfriend is?” There was an odd sort of pride in her voice. “Mandy Gleason. Can you believe that? Quinn’s fucking Mandy Gleason. They’re dancing together right now.”

Liz had never seen Mandy Gleason, but she’d heard of her. Her beauty was common knowledge, the gold standard for Gifford girls. She was smart and athletic, too, captain of the tennis team, headed for Dartmouth in the fall. Lots of people said Dana reminded them of Mandy.

“Oh,” Liz said. “So you and Quinn aren’t…”

“She’s his girlfriend,” Jenna explained matter-of-factly. “I just suck his dick.”

She made a brave attempt at a smile, as if to say, That’s how it is and I’m cool with it, but it didn’t work, and she burst into tears. Liz held her while she sobbed, wishing there were something she could say to salvage the girl’s graduation night, a little adult wisdom that would take the edge off her pain, maybe put things in perspective. But when she did finally manage to speak, she found that she was crying, too.

“It hurts,” she heard herself whisper. “It just hurts so much.”

A SUBTLE odor of vomit clung to Liz for the rest of the night, like a badly chosen perfume. It was unfortunate, because the Chilling Station grew increasingly popu­lar as the party wound down. Exhausted kids began trickling in around four-thirty, occupying the couches and chairs, the army cots and the hammock, and then, when all the furniture was spoken for, just giving up and stretching out on the floor like travelers stranded in an airport. There was something sweet about the way they curled up together, bodies innocently touching, heads resting on laps or shoulders. Even the ones who kept their eyes open didn’t have much to say. They seemed content to just pass the time, surrounded by classmates, silently marking the end of an era.

By then Liz was pretty tired herself — light-headed and achy in her joints — but she did what she could, offering bottled water and energy bars to the new arrivals, making small talk with the handful of kids she recognized, mostly from Dana’s soccer team. It was the busiest she’d been all night.

She might have enjoyed herself more if she hadn’t been so worried about Jenna. Liz wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing, letting her sneak out of the party and walk home half-drunk in the predawn darkness, but that was the girl’s choice. She just wanted to get the hell out of the building, to put high school behind her once and for all, to not have to look at Quinn and Mandy or put on a happy face for a bunch of people who didn’t like her and wouldn’t even remember her name in a couple of months.

Liz felt guilty about lying to Officer Yanuzzi as well, telling him that Jenna was having severe menstrual cramps and needed to lie down for a while. He was suspicious — asked Liz twice if the girl needed medical attention — but Liz had kept her arm tight around Jenna’s shoulder, insisting that everything was under control, that she would take care of it.