Desiree passes me the bag and marches right to the bar area. “Should we open something fun to go with our lunch?” she says, running her hands across all the different bottles.
“Does that mean you’re staying here?” I ask. Desiree is a lightweight and her parents would know immediately that she had been drinking.
“Maybe. You want to?”
I shrug. My phone rings loudly in my pocket and we both jump a little.
“If it’s your mom, don’t answer,” Desiree says.
I press the side button to silence the ringer as I check the screen.Darius. I decline the call.
“Who is it?” Desiree asks, pouring orange juice into fancy glasses.
“Stupid Darius,” I say, putting my phone on the table. Darius is my ex who believes our breakup was mutual because I didn’t cry in front of him. I took my tears home and almost drowned in them. He’s in my last period class—and the main reason I keep missing it.
I’ve known Darius my whole life, and for the early parts of that, we were inseparable. I loved him a lot but not the way I did when we started high school. He had a crazy growth spurt the summer before, so his facial hair, deep voice, and big ego were the talk of all the freshman girls. It annoyed me so much that Desiree decided to tell him I was in love with him. I would’ve been upset with her, but he asked me to be his girlfriend, so I guess her tactic worked. He said he was always just waiting for me to admit I liked him. Things were cute and fun until the novelty wore off for my mom and she tightened her reins. It didn’t take long for Darius to realize that other girls had the freedom to drop everything when he wanted them to. He broke up with me in the hallway before class.
I shake off the memory as Desiree hands me a drink. The liquid smells poisonous.
“Drink up,” she says, clinking her glass with mine before taking a sip. She winces, then tries to smile.
“You’re so bad at this,” I say as I take my own tiny sip. It tastes worse than it smells. I slide into a plush dining chair set at a dark wooden table and carefully put my cup on a mat. The apartment is super nice and decorated how I imagine mine willbe one day: moody and expensive. If you close your eyes tight enough, you can almost hear a jazz band playing, almost smell the cigars.
My phone rings again just as I open my sandwich. Desiree tries to look at it from across the dining table. I groan and push the side button so it stops ringing. I didn’t even see who called butyes.
“I’ll stay,” I say to Desiree.
“What about your mom?” she asks with a half-full mouth.
I hear her concern loud and clear. My mom isn’t known to be very easy on anything, especially me. She thinks Desiree “lacks any real home training” and doesn’t like when I hang out with her outside of school. She has all these rules to make it hard, but we always find a way.
Things weren’t always so tense between me and my mom. We were close once, each other’s everything. But then I hit high school and suddenly she’s working two jobs and always looking over my shoulder, making sure I don’t make a single mistake. Probably she’s thinking about herself at my age—wanting to make sure I have options, since she was so young when she got pregnant with me and all of hers were suddenly shut down. But doesn’t she understand that I’m a teenager and need space to live my life, maybe even make my own mistakes? That the more rules she puts in my path, the more tempted I am to break them?
I used to wish that Desiree’s parents could take me in. They let her do whatever she wants.
“She’ll probably ground me for life, so you better wait for me,” I say, half joking. Desiree doesn’t laugh. I pick up my cup and take a big gulp. “Catch up or I’m going home,” I say, kind of hoping she tells me to leave.
She doesn’t. She picks up her drink, finishes it, and points it in my direction with a smirk. Then she laughs.
“Okay then, let’s do this.”
I’m woken up by a frantic Desiree standing over me with a large glass of water. I groan. Memories of last night come back in flashes: more of the poisonous drink, greasy pizza, an attempt to watch a movie, and then—nothing.
“Get up and drink this, Jas, your mom is pissed,” she says.
My head feels like a rock on my shoulders as I push myself up. “Huh? How do you know?”
“She called my mom at like five a.m.,” she says, “so she knows you’re here.”
I grab the glass and finish the water in what feels like one gulp.
Desiree looks worried. “Come on, Jas, my mom is gonna drop you off,” she says.
“What time is it now?”
“Seven thirty. I had like ten missed calls when I finally got up.”
“Shit. Are you in trouble?”
