✅ A Dose of Humiliation

9. Adulthood

This bonus chapter is for Ross. Thank you for all your support, and thank you for letting me keep working on something I love.

Mallory's was a youth club that styled itself like an Irish pub. The people in there were mostly between fifteen and nineteen, people hanging out with their friends, and the majority of the staff were someone's parents. I'd heard that a few years before there had been some controversy about kids being encouraged to spend time in a place that served alcohol, but the city had decided they would rather have people my age having one or two beers under the supervision of a friend's parents than drinking illicitly-obtained bottles in the park. By the time I'd been old enough, it was just the way things were.

Marcie was already eighteen, and started the night with a glass of wine. Elspeth wasn't quite old enough to buy one herself, but could have just one so long as a responsible adult was paying. For some reason Elspeth had brought a friend along; a tall, skinny blonde called Serena who we barely knew from school. I wanted to ask more, but there were way too many other things to talk about tonight, and the presence of a rich, popular girl at our table wasn't enough of a big deal to break up other conversations. Nikki had brought Lance along, and he shrank back quietly into the corner, the only guy at the table and the only one older than me. Jodie was the youngest, and started the night by sipping mocktails with Nikki. Sooner or later one of them would get one with alcohol in, which was why they were sending Lance to the bar, and they would try to recognise that it tasted different. They never could.

Marcie was venting about her Mum again; that was nothing new. Thankfully she hadn't done anything to stop her coming out tonight, but she had prevented Marcie from doing her electronics homework, which would certainly earn her a brutal spanking in a day or two. Elspeth and Jodie were trying to think of some way they could help, but it was the practical part of the exercise that would have been a big problem.

At some point, amid a dozen other conversations, Marcie jokingly suggested that I might end up lisping like her, and that I could get some practice in. It didn't take long for the whole group to get started, and somehow we could laugh about it now. Marcie's impediment was already starting to go back to normal, so she could make fun of it herself by imitating how it had sounded before. I joined in, hoping that I wouldn't end up stuck like this tomorrow, and found that I was even harder to understand. Serena seemed to be fascinated by the lisp, asking Marcie how it felt; whether the words sounded right in her head; whether she could feel it in a particular part of her mouth, and more questions any of us had even thought of.

That was the important thing. Even when we were all next to incomprehensible, we were laughing together. Nobody was laughing at anybody else, and that reassured me that no matter what happened, my friends would be with me.

Marcie and Elspeth went back to Lance's house after Mallory's closed. They hoped there might still be some way to get her homework done and then get her home without her Mum noticing the late hour. The others split up, and I turned towards home.

"You were drinking soda all night?" Serena asked, as she came striding up beside me. "You the designated driver for this lot?"

"Heh, no. I just tried beer and don't really enjoy it. Sometimes I'll have one, but if this is my last night of dignity I'd rather be sober to enjoy it." That was true enough. I didn't need to mention one particularly stupid episode when I'd been a bit younger, which had put me off a whole range of other booze for life.

"Same," she offered a smile. "I mean... Dad always gives me a glass of champagne for my birthday. He buys a bottle for us all to share at my party, and a couple more for them and the chaperones. It tasted so bitter, I never enjoyed it, and like the last five years I've never touched mine. Lemonade's my choice."