Eighteen

Straight From The Bottle

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Unlike before, this time there was a car parked in front when we returned to the yellow house.

"Who's that?" Avery asked, as the headlights ruined any chance of being inconspicuous that we might have had.

"Probably someone for Lydia."

I moved the gear into park, and cut the engine. Without the sound of metal whirling, I could hear the crickets awakening from their slumber, ready to play the world their one-note tune.

We pulled ourselves from the car. I locked the doors behind us. If the grass wasn't still coated in what was left of the flood, I wouldn't have guessed that it even rained at all.

The air tasted the freshest it had all day—not too dry like it was while the unforgiving sun was out. But also not overflowing with moisture so that every part of my body felt weighed down by the humidity.

There was music playing somewhere in the house. It sounded like it was coming from below us as we walked quietly through the back door, so my guess was the basement.

"Faith!" Lydia's voice called from the bottom of the stairs.

I looked at Avery and waited for any kind of gesture, verbal or nonverbal, that told me not to go. But nothing happened. She didn't do anything that suggested she didn't want me to go downstairs, so that's what I did.

Lydia never failed to surprise me. There were so many aspects of her that I figured were best not to question, and this was one of them.

No more than five hours had passed since I was last down here, horror-stricken by the messy state the room was in. All of which were spent at graduation, where Lydia was also present.

The room didn't look like that now. The floor was spotless, and the bed was made. There was even a fragrance floating through the air that made the room smell like pine needles and sea salt.

I might've been the one burying my secrets this past year, but it was Lydia who held all the mystery.

She was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs, with my bottle in her hands. "I got this from your room; I hope that's okay."

I thought about the torrent and how the wind took turns attacking the curls in my hair from both sides while the water stripped away the glow from my face.

Lydia couldn't seem to relate. She was completely intact. Besides a change of clothes, she looked exactly the same. Not a single one of her hairs was out of place.

"Yeah. Of course." I smiled. Sharing my bottle with her was minimal in comparison to what she and her family provided for me.

They offered a roof with a bed. Food in the fridge. A nice house on a quiet street. And all I had to give in return was my company and some booze. But to Lydia, that was a fair trade.

"We were just about to take shots. You should do one with us." It didn't take much to piece together that she was already feeling the effects of my loganberry rum; her eyes were glossy, and the apples of her cheeks were the same shade of red as Avery's hair.

"Okay." I followed her, with Avery on my heels, into the main portion of the basement.
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Sitting on the futon, surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke, was the 'us' that she referred to.

"You guys know Faith and Avery, right?" Lydia glided across the tiles to sit on the empty cushion beside them.

Of course, I knew them. They were also at tonight's ceremony, celebrating the end of our coexistence with one another. Like Lydia, they traded in their evening attire for something a little more casual.

Noah had the blunt in his hands, and I could see the outline of his golden blonde hair from behind the gray stream of smoke. He was the one I was most familiar with.

We shared more than a few never-ending hours together in school. The relationship never progressed any further than being familiar. We just weren't a part of each other's narratives.

"What's up?" Ian had a little bit more anonymity. I didn't know as much about him except that he worked at a pizza place downtown. His eyes looked just like Noah's behind the stream, fogged over and pink.

"They're gonna do a shot with us," Lydia explained.

None of us had any actual shot glasses, so we settled for drinking straight from the bottle. I was happy when Lydia volunteered to go first; I needed a minute to prepare myself.

Avery and I made ourselves comfortable at the foot of her bed while she took her turn. Her eyes closed briefly as the liquid went down, and suddenly I was reminded of last night's bad decisions.

"You guys coming to the party tonight?" The bottle went to Noah next.

I nodded. "How do the cops know?"

"They bust the after-grad party every year; we're just hoping that because it's out in the woods, they won't be able to find it." He didn't flinch after his sip, but I could tell that he wanted to.

"People have been coming up all week to set up their tents." Lydia chimed in. "If everything works out, we're probably gonna end up staying out there too."

If I didn't already know how flawed our plan was, I would've been worried. Nathan only kind of agreed to take all of us tonight.

We didn't have a tent. Or any clue where the night was going to take us. Just half a bottle and a beat-up sedan.

"Faith." My turn came faster than I expected. I grabbed the bottle from Ian and walked my way back over to Avery.

I didn't know where the cap was; it wasn't given to me in the exchange. I had no choice but to concede.

The loganberry flavoring was a ploy. A marketing tactic used to distract people from the poison they were drinking. What hit my tongue only sort of tasted like artificial fruit; the rest was just pure rubbing alcohol.

Reality was just barely coming back to me as I handed the bottle over to Avery. "So what happens if the cops do come?"

"I'm running," Noah laughed. Ian joined him.

"As long as you have someone sober driving, you should be fine," Lydia reassured me.

Avery's turn completed the rotation. The burn lingered in the back of my throat. I couldn't stomach the idea of drinking any more of the liquid lava. But I knew that, in order for this to work, I was going to have to commit.

Nighttime would only be here for another couple hours. I had to make them count. So, I took the bottle back from Avery and braced myself for the fire.

Eighteen © Wordstothewise ™ 2024