Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

now, you can’t just announce that you’re going to a party and then not go—Grace said, without looking at me, “I think I’ll go too.”
    I knew then. Grace Town, beautiful, mysterious, damaged, and thoroughly, thoroughly
weird
, liked me. The shaky bodylanguage and the lack of flirting meant nothing, because she was coming to the party and parties meant alcohol and dimly lit rooms and maybe after a drink she would lighten up a little and then we could talk about the cemetery and the car crash and everything.
    Grace wasn’t looking at me, so I watched her without blinking and said, “Cool,” in the most casual voice I could muster.
    â€œAre you going to drink?” she said.
    I wasn’t much of a drinker. I’d been truly drunk only once before, when I was sixteen. Murray had coerced me into drinking tequila with him, to test the legitimacy of the “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” theorem. Over the course of the evening I discovered that “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” is wildly inaccurate. It’s more like one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, vomit all over your clothes, cry while your father puts you in the shower, vomit some more, cry and ask your mother to cook you “salmon eggs,” whatever that is, be put to bed by your mother, decide you’re going to escape your parents’ totalitarian regime, vomit in the garden while escaping, be put back to bed by your father, floor.
    Not quite so neat and tidy as the saying would have you believe.
    But I said, “I might have a drink or two,” because I had a feeling Grace would be drinking and I wanted to do that with her, to watch her as she sipped her alcohol and observe the way it changed her. I wanted to know what kind of drunkshe was. Angry? Probably. Flirty? Probably not. Sad? Almost definitely.
    â€œI can get us drinks,” Grace said, and I said, “Cool,” again and then the bell rang and she packed up her stuff and left without another word.
    One thing was clear: only five short weeks after I’d met her, Grace Town was already stuck on repeat in my head.
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    Fall had kicked into high gear by the time Friday afternoon rolled around. The sunshine had a hazy quality to it, tinted by the gold and orange leaves that sifted down from the trees whenever the breeze blew. Everything for the party had been organized: the booze, the location (Heslin’s parents were out of town for the weekend—so cliché, but whatever).
    All there was to do was tell my parents my plans for the evening, which went something like this:
    Me: “Father, I intend to engage in illegal underage drinking again tonight.”
    Dad: “Good lord, Henry. It’s about time. Do you need a ride?”
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    Someone had decided it was a good idea, and our rite of passage as seniors, to drink on the school football field before migrating to Heslin’s for the party. By the time I arrived, around sunset, half a tub of punch had already been consumed by the stumbling attendees. And when I say
tub
, I mean a legitimate bathtub that someone had bought or stolen fromsomewhere and filled with a concoction of cheap vodka, even cheaper wine, and “fruit drink” (high schoolers don’t have the cash for
actual
juice).
    Grace was there when I arrived, sitting cross-legged by herself against a tree at the edge of the field, her cane resting across her lap. There were two plastic bottles in front of her, one empty, the other half-full of some strange pastel yellow liquid.
    â€œHenrik,” she said when she saw me. I don’t remember at what point we’d assigned each other Germanic/Russian nicknames, or why, but we had, and I loved it.
    â€œEvening, Grakov,” I said.
    â€œI procured you an instrument of intoxication.” She handed me the empty plastic