“Me too,” I say. “But don’t make a yucky thing.” I made an effort to brush my teeth and shower before I came downstairs, because I felt I couldn’t possibly face Tatum and all my complicated feelings if I was smelly at the same time. My head is splitting open and my eyeballs feel like they might explode.
“We should eat eggs,” he says now. “So we get protein.”
I hate that he’s probably right. I want him to be wrong about everything. Because he wouldn’t tell me what he bought. Because he talked so much to Amma. And carried Winnie on his shoulders. And put his head down to hear Agnes.
“Aren’t raw eggs a hangover cure?” I ask. “With hot sauce? People drink it in the movies.” My face feels swollen. I’m simultaneously hungry and nauseated.
“Eggs contain cysteine,” says Tatum, “which breaks down acetaldehyde, which is what causes hangovers. I don’t know about the hot sauce, but bananas are good because the potassium helps—”
“Oh my god don’t tell us,” says Meer, running all his sentences into one. “It’s way too boring just feed us what we should have I am such a sad boy right now I don’t think rum is my drink and I will never have it again.”
I grab a Sharpie and Meer holds out his forearm for me.
I writeNo Rum.
“Those are my words to live by,” says Meer. “Now and forever. And did I tell you I barfed? I barfed in the night it was very dramatic with disgusting noises that I couldn’t even believe came out of my body.”
“I barfed, too,” says Tatum.
“So that’s why it smelled like barf in the bathroom already,” says Meer. “It was your barf. I wondered if I had already barfed and couldn’t remember it.”
“Nope,” says Tatum.
“Well, no thank you for smelling up the bathroom.”
Tatum has filled the blender with bananas and milk. Now he’s hovering over it with a bunch of June’s brown bottles: butterbur, willow bark extract, some other things. He adds ice and turns the blender on.
Meer and I cover our ears. “It’s so loud,” I moan. “The blender was never that loud before.”
Meer lies face down on the kitchen floor, scrunching his eyes in pain.
Brock takes eggs from the fridge and sets them on the counter.
Tatum stops the blender.
“I thought I was well enough to scramble eggs,” whimpers Brock. “But I’m not.” He leaves the eggs on the counter and lies down next to Meer.
“Did we play shoulder wars?” asks Meer. “I feel like we did.”
“I was on Brock’s shoulders,” I say. “Fighting someone. Fighting Olive.”
“You put a crick in my neck with your thighs,” says Brock.
“Oh, you poor man,” says Tatum.
“She rode on me because I’m the better warrior,” says Brock.
“Don’t flirt with me, Brock,” I say. “I feel pukey.”
“I flirt with everybody,” he says. “I used to get paid for it.”
“Is that sad or good?”
“Yes.”
I laugh.
“I maybe should stop flirting with everyone,” says Brock. “It’s maybe a pitiful behavior. But on the other hand, maybe it’s my nature and maybe I like that about myself. Also, I hooked up with Amma.”
