Sara Jaffe - Dryland

Grease got turned off. Sleeping bags got pushed aside and the stereo got turned up, and the boys had beer and the girls refilled their cocktail cups. I filled mine halfway with vodka and added a splash of cranberry. A boy I didn’t know ducked into the kitchen and said, Slumber party! and knocked his cup against mine. I needed to find a couch with Erika on or near it. I needed a soft couch with enough cushions to bury myself in. Erika moved over on the couch to make room for me. She was laughing with two guys who looked like the opposite of PT — short and bulky, with hairy arms and crew cuts. Erika said, So what I want to know is, what do you do with the cup of spit when you’re done with it? She said, They’re wrestlers.

One of the guys said, Bottle it up and feed it to the losing team.

Erika said, Gross! She was loose and beaming.

The cool beige walls of the bathroom fortressed me. Against my cheek, my palm, they were what, marble? I pressed against the wall to soak in its smoothness. The face in the mirror didn’t look like me. I opened the medicine cabinet and drawers and clicked around the orange bottles. What was the name of the pill I could take that could get me through the rest of the night, let me pass out with my sleeping bag in a little sister’s room, in this bathroom? I didn’t recognize the names on any of the labels.

I gulped my cocktail. I flushed the toilet. I ran the water hot on my hands. The last thing I wanted to do was to go back into the living room. It was the only place to go.

I heard them before I got there: shrieks and loud, exaggerated groans.

I heard a guy’s voice — one of the wrestler’s? Greg’s? — saying, Oh yeah, do it again.

A girl’s voice — Melanie’s? — saying, Gross, I can’t look!

It wasn’t Melanie.

Because when I got back into the living room what I saw was a crowd gathered around in a circle, and at first I thought there was a fight going on. I thought maybe breakdancing, a performance. There were few enough people that I didn’t have to push my way through. I just walked into the circle like anyone, just as one of the wrestlers said, One more time, and in the middle of the circle were Alexis and Melanie, looking coyly at each other and Alexis stepping forward and Melanie stepping forward and their mouths coming together and the two of them kissing, in huge, exaggerated swallows, in absolute blind passion. Someone said, Touch her tits, and Melanie put her hand underneath Alexis’s shirt. I was drunk. I had a fever. I was so sure I was going to throw up that I told myself that was why I was running out of the room and back to the bathroom, and the door was locked, and I was sure that I had accidentally locked it behind me and there was no one in there and there was no way I’d ever get in there again.

I needed to find Erika because I needed to leave, before or because I was sick, and I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing my parents but I could find Erika and we could call her mom, which would be all right. I hadn’t seen her in the living room, thank god. I looked in the kitchen. I looked in every room of the house, my eyes hard set on finding her. The music was back up in the living room and the sideshow hoots were over. I was never going back in there. The only place left to look was outside. I went the way Alexis had led me, down the stairs and to the door of the mudroom and in there, leaning against the sliding-glass door to the patio, was Grapestuff, with his eyes closed, and Erika on her knees in front of him.

THE OUTSIDE AIRwas cold. I didn’t care. Thank god I’d left my shoes in the foyer. I’d grabbed the butterflier in the kitchen and told her to tell Erika that I’d gone home and was fine. The butterflier said, Which one was she? I told her to ask Erika to bring home my stuff.

Ben pulled up in his old tan car. He said, You were right about this being way the fuck out here.

I said, Thanks for coming. The car heater was on high, guitar music low from the speakers.

Ben said, No jacket? He said, I’m not going to ask if you’re okay, because obviously you’re not.

I said, I’m fine.

Ben said, Something with a boy?

I said, No.

Ben drove. He was driving back a different way than we’d come, up a wide road with a million old neon motel signs. The signs were bright flashing colors, improbable palm trees, broken bulbs. The signs went on for miles. Ben said, A girl?

The fabric of the car seat was the softest thing I’d ever felt. My face was all over it. I was snot and free feelings pouring all over the inside of Ben’s car.

Ben’s hand on my shoulder was warm, a true cup, a gauze. He said, Oh, little sister.

WHEN I WOKEup on the couch, Ben was still asleep. I wrote a note and took the key he’d said to take if I woke up before him. It was misty out. The cemetery went on for blocks. The tombstones were dark with rain or age. Nothing about walking in a cemetery felt inherently sad. No people buried in there wouldn’t be dead by now no matter how young they’d died.

I felt blank. The only thought from last night that I let myself think about was Erika in the mudroom. I had hated seeing it, but I could think about Erika and what could have brought her there and worry, thoughtfully, about whether she was okay and whether, in leaving, I’d left her to something more terrible. I knew her mom had been set to pick us up at 9:00 AM, and the pay phone in front of the Plaid Pantry was free.

Erika said, My god, Julie, what happened?

I said, I started feeling really sick, and I just had to go. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before I left.

Erika said, What kind of sick? From the vodka?

I said, Maybe.

Erika said, So you just called your dad to come get you?

I said, I didn’t call my dad. The drinking and everything. I said, I called my friend Ben.

Erika said, Who’s Ben?

I said, The older guy.

Erika said, No way! What about his girlfriend?

I almost said I’m his girlfriend. My heart pitched and caught. The sky was smooth and gray, the shell of an egg that couldn’t hatch. I said, He has a boyfriend, actually.

Erika said, Oh wow, really?

I said, It’s not a big deal.

Erika said, When did he tell you? Or did you just know?

I said, I kind of knew.

Erika said, I know what you mean. She said, That’s too bad, though. A lot of gay guys are really cute. She sounded normal, like Erika, her voice a little hollow and tired.

I said, It was nice of him to come all the way out there to get me.

Erika said, Yeah, it was. Then we didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to ask about Grapestuff in the mudroom. She could tell me if she wanted to. Erika said, You know, those girls and those guys are okay, but I don’t think they’re really our people.

I said, I guess.

Erika said, You know who is actually nice, though? Alexis. She was asking me where you were.

As I was trying to fall asleep on Ben’s couch, I’d gotten racked with doubt about having left the party. Not because I was worried about Erika, though that should have been why, but because it had suddenly seemed possible that after the guys had left or the hoots died down, Alexis would find me again and tell me that she hadn’t meant what she’d said on the patio, or, more likely, she wouldn’t mention what she’d said on the patio but she would ignore it, taking me by the wrist to a guest bed, a sister’s bedroom, and everything would be the way it had been.

I said, So nothing else exciting happened after I left?

Erika said, Is learning how to play beer pong exciting?

We said we’d talk again later in the day. I had only stood in the doorway of the mudroom for such a quick second, maybe it hadn’t been Erika in there. She seemed completely fine.