Expiration Dating by G.T. Marie Page A

failure. Emilia clomped around in her five inch bedazzled shoes and I raided every cupboard in the kitchen looking for a single, measly cookie. There were none anywhere, so I had to settle for plain old bread. I really needed to go grocery shopping. I stumbled into bed.

Chapter Eight
    E ight a.m. rolled around. I resisted waking up, reaching to my face to see if there were actual sandbags on my eyes. There were none, but it felt as if my eyes were glued shut. I finally coaxed them open and saw Emilia standing near the foot of my bed.
                  “Let’s go.” she shook me awake. “Five minutes until we leave.”
                  “How do your lips look like that?” I asked, conscious that I looked like a witch. Literally, my hair stuck out in all angles, I had a mascara smear on my cheek, and there were splotches of glitter on random body parts. Emilia tisked, she had no patience for my moans of agony.
                  “We will leave without you,” she said. I thought we had bonded last night, but apparently her fun side got tucked away with the light of day.
                  We arrived to class, and I poured myself into the same seat as yesterday. I didn’t even care anymore that it was front and center. I just wanted to sit. Crowded subways are not fun with a pounding headache. I put my head down on the desk between my hands.
                  “You had fun last night, huh?” Andrew sounded amused.
                  I peered at him through day old mascara, opening only one eyelid. It was all I could manage.
                  “Is that sarcasm?” My voice sounded like a dying frog.
                  “I’m just saying, you were quite the dancing queen.”
                  “Oh yeah, and how would you know?”
                  Andrew was silent for a minute. “Never mind.”
                  I sat up, now alert.
    “What did I tell you?” I asked, memories of Andrew at the club flooding back to me. I guess I’d had more to drink than I’d thought. At least that explained my mangled state of existence this morning.
                  “I just hope you found your Italian man.” He smiled at me. His teeth seemed so white they hurt my eyes, all the way through to the back of their sockets. I leaned over to retort, but only managed to grunt in dismay as the teacher began lecturing. I had to watch out for the invisible alcohol from now on. When it came time to partner up again, I grudgingly turned to Andrew and accepted his offer to be partners. With our disastrous Italian, it was impossible not to laugh at our conversation attempts.
                  “I think this is asking what you like to do,” I whispered to Andrew. I was cheating, speaking during ‘no English time.’ Andrew raised his hand innocently. The teacher came over.
                  He looked up and asked, “How do you say drink?”
    The teacher showed him in the book where it read ‘bere.’ There was a picture of a glass of orange juice. It made me sick to even look at the cartoon. Andrew nodded as if absorbing a profound statement. She began walking away and Andrew said, “Dana ti piace bere mucho.”
    I rolled my eyes.
                  “Andrew non é fun,” I said. The teacher of course heard my comments and gave me the evil eye.
                  “Italiano!” she roared.
    Class ended and we meandered slowly into the hallway. I stood with Andrew, waiting for Emilia’s class to let out. My stomach growled.
                  “Coffee shop?” Andrew asked. A tradition was born.
    We headed across the street with Maggie hovering behind us like a lanky shadow. She seemed to be part of our world about twenty percent of the time. The rest was spent somewhere in daydream-land. I ordered a caffé and a croissant. The barista delivered my food to the