On the Fritz

Chapter 1 - Part 2

As more time went on, Fritz had made a discovery. After losing friends, his sleep schedule, and his own will to live, Fritz had also lost a respect for peer pressure.

It used to be cool, and it would leave him asleep on one of his older classmate's couches with lipstick marks over his neck, the smell of beer on his shirt. It was cloying and hazy, but it was in such a fun and glamorous way, of course he liked it. He wasn't a genius for having figured out that every teenager liked feeling cool.

These days, he wasn't faring quite so well. Every party left him stuck in the house of someone he hated with nothing but a pack of smokes he shouldn't have, his sister, and the responsibility of being somebody else's sober driver. On top of that, not drinking when he was surrounded by loads of his smashed classmates brought on a downpour of paranoia that he just wasn't used to.

From where she sat on the couch beside him, Ingrid asked, "Are you coming to town after this?"

"God, no," Fritz said back, watching on as she leaned over her legs to pick up another beer from the floor. He glanced up, his eyes catching on Simon and his collection of rugby boys who were all brazenly staring down her top. Fritz flipped them off, Simon pointedly directed his gaze elsewhere, Ingrid cracked open the can with a hiss.

Fritz usually wished he could trade places with his sister. His last doctor tried to spout something about how borderline is supposedly genetic, but he didn't believe a word of it, Ingrid was doing just fine. While he had a hard enough time saying hello to people he'd been friends with for years, she could chat a dead man back to life without even trying, and it wasn't helping his self confidence.

"Did I hear you say you're going to town?" A voice asked, and while Fritz fought off a wince, Ingrid turned her head.

"Oh, no," she lied flippantly. "Think we'll head off." In his peripheral vision, Fritz saw Todd Lock give her a creepy smile that made his skin crawl.

"Yeah," Fritz said, cracking open his cig pack and digging one out. "Piss off, mate."

"Can I get a smoke?" He asked, and Fritz looked to Ingrid who looked to Todd. Todd waited.

Eventually, Ingrid asked, "Didn't you just get caught cheating because you gave your girlfriend an STD?"

"No," Todd lied.

"Todd, you're a piece of shit," Fritz said loudly.

Todd grimaced, pursed his lips and swivelled, off to drunkenly wander somewhere else. Ingrid shot him a look, Fritz raised his eyebrows, pushed off the couch.

He walked through the house, shoving through girls that wouldn't stop yelling and ignoring the guy he didn't recognise that was dry heaving into the kitchen sink. He threw open the back door and stepped onto the deck, letting the door fall closed again. He lit up his cigarette and took a long drag, the air cooling on his skin.

He didn't miss drinking so much. There was something so horrendous in the way all his fake friends stumbled around and tripped over furniture, and Fritz felt awkward enough without alcohol making things worse. Besides, a big part of him didn't trust himself around liquor. One too many Smirnoffs and Rafael's name would come out of his mouth like a projectile vomit, leaving him with a mess on his hands that no amount of carpet cleaner could scrub out. Rafael would kill him.

On second thought, maybe that was actually an easy way out. Fritz wasn't suicidal, but he was an open-minded guy, and he had nothing against first degree murder.

"Oh, there you are!" He heard, and he fought off a groan.

"Hi Will," Fritz said dutifully. Will, whose head was currently sticking out from behind the door, grinned.