DESI
“Got enough candy?”Randy smirked at my arms full of licorice and peanut butter cups.
“It’s my birthday.” I took a red strip of bendy goodness and popping it into my mouth. We scooted into the seats of our nearly empty theater.
“You look like you just went trick or treating,” Mick chimed in.
“That’s next weekend,” I shot back.
“Take this,” Eric whispered, handing down beer after beer to the row. We glanced around, and thankfully, there were only a couple of pairs of teens making out in the back.
I popped my tab, and it hissed.
“Drinking game?” Tommy suggested.
“Sure, every time we see a zombie, we drink.” Mick laughed.
“Sounds good to me!”
The movie started and despite us trying to keep our voices low, a man in a red vest came down the steps toward us with a scowl on his face. “Excuse me, men, but we’re gonna need you to keep it down.”
I took a sip of my beer and stared straight ahead. “Get a life.”
“Yeah!” the others added.
Scowling, the man slunk away. The movie ended.
“Where to next, Birthday Boy?” Eric asked.
“The night is young and you’re a free man,” Mick added.
“I’m hungry,” I muttered. “Let’s get some food.”
“What’s open this late?”
A cold gust of wind swept past us on the road, and I shivered. I pulled my leather jacket tighter over my shoulders, covering up my faded Van Halen shirt.
“What about that diner across town?” Randy suggested.
“What diner?” Tommy scoffed.
Mick said, “The one that makes bomb-ass burgers. It’s a twenty-four-hour joint, right across the tracks.”
“Since when do you hang out over there?” I asked.
Randy rolled his eyes and shoved my shoulder. “Not all of us have daddies with trust funds and suspicious ties to the mafia. Some of us…” He paused, waving his finger between the semi-circle we were standing in. “…have these things called jobs.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. I reached for my smokes and quickly lit another one. “All right. Let’s go get a car and head over. I guess I can slum it with you guys tonight,” I joked.
“Who’s gonna DD?” Eric asked.
“Well, it is Tommy’s VW.”
“Fuck you!” Tommy slurred. We shared a look. He was not going to be sober by the time we got to the car.
“Well, it’s my birthday,” I said, putting my hands on my chest. We argued it all the way back to Tommy’s and finally decided that Randy would drive us to the diner, as he was the one who had brought it up in the first place.
“I can have fun without alcohol,” he tried to boast, but we all called him on the six-pack he’d had earlier that night. I rode up front with him so I could control the tape deck.
