friend like her. I am used to Natalie’s an-tagonism, the rhythm of combat and truce that could easily pass an afternoon. I miss the best friend who mows me over with her moods and her will. I miss being cut down, in the name of being forced to grow.
One night , Billie is fishing in the kitchen cabinets for something resembling a clear glass goblet to fill with salt water and dip our beaded necklaces into, in order to make them Poseidon protection charms. The closest thing she can find is a German beer stein, which we both agree will work just fine.
She is about to turn the cold knob on the kitchen sink when I say, “Wait a minute.”
I lunge for the refrigerator, where I know a big, round jug of
Chardonnay occupies a large portion of the wire shelf. Its green glass feels cold in my hands.
“What do you think?” I ask. “It’s a diversionary spell.”
Billie wears a horrified look, like I just suggested doing one of the black-magic hexes that involve torching chicken bones. It’s a look that says every good quality she’s ascribed to me has been wrong.
I should get used it. I will see this look many times in the years to come. I’ll see it later in high school, when a month after an alcohol overdose, someone sees me taking shots of tequila. I’ll see it in college, when someone sees me drinking beer before noon to alleviate a hangover. I hate this look, but I should get used to it. It’s the look you’d give a pregnant woman who orders a rum and Coke. It is people cocking their heads and wondering if they’re seeing me right.
Billie looks frozen. She is still holding the stein in such a way that it looks like she might burst into an old German drinking song at any moment: swinging the glass back and forth, a frothy stout slopping out. Instead, she slams it down in the sink with a small crash.
I am mortified. I didn’t think alcohol could ruin this moment so completely. I haven’t met a girl yet who hasn’t been interested in drinking. Every time I’ve seen a bottle emerge, girls have followed it the way children follow Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin: with small feet pattering, wooden shoes clattering, lit-tle hands clapping, and little tongues chattering.
I slide the green jug back into its spot beside the Chinese food takeout containers and try to figure out how to pass it off as a joke.
I lie and say, “I didn’t really mean it.” The wall clock ticks once.
40 INITIATION | First Waste
Billie says, “Fine.”
I should feel relieved, except she’s making the same face she’d made once in English class, when Mr. Coffee said there was no way that she read A Tale of Two Cities in a single Saturday.
She plucks the stein from the sink, and I fill it a quarter full with Chardonnay. My shaky hand makes the blond stream come out in fits and bursts.
She sips slowly. The cup’s wide rim covers half of her face, and I can’t gauge her reaction. When she brings the stein down to the counter, she says, “It almost tastes like water.” Under any other circumstances this would be an extraordinary lie, but everything in Mrs. Jankoff ’s cabinet has only a slightly higher alcoholic content than mouthwash.
We’ll mix drinks during our sleepovers from this moment on. We’ll sit on the tiles in front of the refrigerator or the liquor cabinet, shift bottles around, read their labels, and try to figure out what we have to work with. When it comes down to it, we have no idea how to tend bar. We mix gin with Coke and zin-fandel with orange juice. Every drink we make tastes too sweet or too bitter, repellent. They are concoctions we can’t bring ourselves to drink, and therefore don’t ever get drunk on.
Billie and I book Halloween as the night we will officially get drunk. It falls on a Monday, and Billie is spending the week with her dad in his four-bedroom town house in downtown Salem. I manage to persuade my mother to let me sleep over even though it’s a school night.
We enlist Billie’s
One night , Billie is fishing in the kitchen cabinets for something resembling a clear glass goblet to fill with salt water and dip our beaded necklaces into, in order to make them Poseidon protection charms. The closest thing she can find is a German beer stein, which we both agree will work just fine.
She is about to turn the cold knob on the kitchen sink when I say, “Wait a minute.”
I lunge for the refrigerator, where I know a big, round jug of
Chardonnay occupies a large portion of the wire shelf. Its green glass feels cold in my hands.
“What do you think?” I ask. “It’s a diversionary spell.”
Billie wears a horrified look, like I just suggested doing one of the black-magic hexes that involve torching chicken bones. It’s a look that says every good quality she’s ascribed to me has been wrong.
I should get used it. I will see this look many times in the years to come. I’ll see it later in high school, when a month after an alcohol overdose, someone sees me taking shots of tequila. I’ll see it in college, when someone sees me drinking beer before noon to alleviate a hangover. I hate this look, but I should get used to it. It’s the look you’d give a pregnant woman who orders a rum and Coke. It is people cocking their heads and wondering if they’re seeing me right.
Billie looks frozen. She is still holding the stein in such a way that it looks like she might burst into an old German drinking song at any moment: swinging the glass back and forth, a frothy stout slopping out. Instead, she slams it down in the sink with a small crash.
I am mortified. I didn’t think alcohol could ruin this moment so completely. I haven’t met a girl yet who hasn’t been interested in drinking. Every time I’ve seen a bottle emerge, girls have followed it the way children follow Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin: with small feet pattering, wooden shoes clattering, lit-tle hands clapping, and little tongues chattering.
I slide the green jug back into its spot beside the Chinese food takeout containers and try to figure out how to pass it off as a joke.
I lie and say, “I didn’t really mean it.” The wall clock ticks once.
40 INITIATION | First Waste
Billie says, “Fine.”
I should feel relieved, except she’s making the same face she’d made once in English class, when Mr. Coffee said there was no way that she read A Tale of Two Cities in a single Saturday.
She plucks the stein from the sink, and I fill it a quarter full with Chardonnay. My shaky hand makes the blond stream come out in fits and bursts.
She sips slowly. The cup’s wide rim covers half of her face, and I can’t gauge her reaction. When she brings the stein down to the counter, she says, “It almost tastes like water.” Under any other circumstances this would be an extraordinary lie, but everything in Mrs. Jankoff ’s cabinet has only a slightly higher alcoholic content than mouthwash.
We’ll mix drinks during our sleepovers from this moment on. We’ll sit on the tiles in front of the refrigerator or the liquor cabinet, shift bottles around, read their labels, and try to figure out what we have to work with. When it comes down to it, we have no idea how to tend bar. We mix gin with Coke and zin-fandel with orange juice. Every drink we make tastes too sweet or too bitter, repellent. They are concoctions we can’t bring ourselves to drink, and therefore don’t ever get drunk on.
Billie and I book Halloween as the night we will officially get drunk. It falls on a Monday, and Billie is spending the week with her dad in his four-bedroom town house in downtown Salem. I manage to persuade my mother to let me sleep over even though it’s a school night.
We enlist Billie’s
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