I had briefly explained that to my sister—not the part where I wanted to meet a Woodsmen player and somehow entrance him, but only how I planned to go out.
“That sounds fun,” she’d commented. “Can I come?”
It had taken me at least a minute to respond. I had thought I had hallucinated her words or that she might have been body-snatched, but finally, I had heard myself saying yes. Sure, Morgan, go out for the first time in your life, tonight! Sure,wear some of my clothes (I didn’t have a great selection) since one hundred percent of what you own could be classified as pajamas! Sure, I’ll help you put on makeup so that you don’t look like an actual corpse with your paleness! My mom had been so thrilled when we’d come downstairs that it had made me angry, but also really, really sad. Was it actually such an occasion that her daughters would spend one night away from the restaurant, having fun?
The fun wasn’t happening, not quite yet. It was raining, just on the cusp of turning to sleet, and I was already worried about driving home on tires that should have been swapped out a few thousand miles ago. We’d had to park kind of far away, since there were a lot of people downtown tonight (I wasn’t the only Woodsmen supersleuth around). My high-heeled shoes made my legs look even longer but they weren’t the best for a protracted walk, and the pair that Morgan was wearing hadn’t worked for that, either. Hers also belonged to me and my feet were a tiny bit bigger. I was two inches taller and as I had explained to Shane, my extremities were proportional to my height.
I wondered what he was doing tonight. The amount of travel he did was insane, so he could have been anywhere…but I could quickly find out, because he checked in a lot. Ok, the last pictures he’d taken had come from Iowa where he was watching spring practices and talking to coaches. “Where are you going next?” I texted now. I also liked to keep in touch.
“I don’t think they’re coming here,” my sister said. She was dabbing at her eyes with her cocktail napkin, because theywatered every time she took another sip of her drink. “There aren’t enough people. If the Woodsmen were going to show up, this place would be packed.”
“Maybe no one is as savvy as we are,” I suggested, but that wasn’t true. My sister had been the most clueless high schooler I’d ever seen, without any friends and without any prospects, and I’d followed in a close second behind her. I might have been slightly more worldly in that I’d gotten myself to college, while she had taken to her bed and hadn’t improved at all.
“This is terrible,” she told me, finally giving up on the cocktail. I took a small taste and decided that she was right. “Why don’t we try another place? And a different kind of alcohol,” she added.
I hated to waste our money but she was right about whiskey. The Coke didn’t hide the taste at all. We split my pop and then I held her arm so that she didn’t step out of her shoes, which were my shoes, and we left the bar without anyone falling.
The next place we went, though, was also fairly empty. As was the next. By this point, my sister had tried three different kinds of alcohol: whiskey, gin, and tequila. She’d ordered that straight and swore that it really tasted pretty good. I tried it and did not agree, not at all. I was disappointed in our drinks and by the failure of my mission to find myself a Woodsmen player. But it was kind of fun even without that, because it was kind of fun to hang out with my sister. It was weird to admit, since we’d lived together for more than twenty years, but we didn’t know each other very well. I had always followed Max around, worshiping him, and then I had started working and studying all the time.
We didn’t have family dinners or hang out together for any events, except for going to our brother’s games before he’d quit playing. How else did relatives get to know one another?
Maybe over tequila, because Morgan was suddenly very into sharing. “Did I tell you about the guy I’ve been talking to? The one in Germany?Er ist so süß.”
“What did you just say?”
It turned out that during all those hours when I had thought she was sleeping and/or rotting, she had also been playing a very intricate online game, which she also described to me in great detail. Daniel, the German guy, was also hugely into it and they’d started chatting outside of playtime, too. “He’s teaching me his language. My favorite word so far isBackpfeifengesicht. It’s someone with a face that wants to be slapped and that’s what I’ve thought about Max for a while now. I also likeVollidiot. A full idiot, not just halfway.”
“Max is an idiot and a backpack-whatever,” I agreed. “What happened to him? He used to be fun and cool.”
“Icarus.”
“What? Is that more German?” I asked.
“No, it’s the guy in Greek myths who flew too close to the sun, melted his feathers, and died,” she said, not very patiently. “You took the same English classes that I did with the same teachers. I know you were supposed to read all those stories in ninth grade with Mrs. Hellman. Icarus was the thrill-seeker who didn’t listen to good advice. He was like, ‘I can fly wherever I want! Screw you!’ And then he drowned.”
“I have no recollection of Max trying to fly,” I told her.
“I’m not being literal,” she chided. “I mean that he never listened. All his teachers tried to tell him to study, that there were thousands of kids coming out of high school with his test scores and grades, that he needed to apply to some safety schools. Max’s coaches tried to tell him how difficult it would be to play pro baseball and they told our father, too. Dad never listened, either.”
“So you’re saying that he messed up his own life and turned himself into a jerk? I guess that’s true. He’s such a disappointment.”
“We all are,” she said. “Look at us.”
I got literal and glanced down at our outfits. As this night had gone on, I’d realized that our clothes didn’t begin to approach what the other women around us were wearing, despite how I’d tried to fix us up. But I knew what Morgan meant, and it wasn’t just that we dressed wrong.
“I’m doing my best,” I told her. “I’m going to graduate soon.”
“Then what? You’ll win the lottery? Rob a bank? Run away?”
Honestly, all of those ideas sounded ok to me. “What are we going to do, for real?” I asked her, as if she would have had a good answer.
“We’re going to lose the restaurant. Mom is also going to lose her mind and Dad will end up in jail, probably. Max will be homeless. I’ll…” She hesitated. “I don’t have any skills oreducation. I don’t know.” She finished the tequila and blinked a few times. “I might puke.”
“Well, this is sure fun,” I said. “I’m super glad that I decided to invite you.”
“You didn’t. I invited myself.”
I almost started to laugh. When had Morgan gotten funny again? I remembered playing when we’d been kids, but that was years before. “I had a plan to marry one of the Woodsmen,” I said, and she did laugh. “Why is that so hilarious? Why couldn’t I?”
