am actually staying with my parents and not an aunt. These are small distinctions, but to me they feel indispensable, like pronouns, without which he has no hope of understanding my language.
He says, “Don’t worry about your parents. They’ll be mad at
first, but so what? The worst they can do is ground you. It’s not the end of the world.”
The sun is creeping up the sky like a bug on a wall, and all around us people are climbing into their cars to go to work. I look at Greg, and notice for the first time that he is practically crawling out of his skin, anxious to go home and, presumably, sleep before his shift at the surf shop. He, too, looks younger in the sunlight, less collegiate, more like a boy I barely know.
The trolley pulls up and I thrust Natalie onto it.
The ride back to the condo is unbearable. Natalie vomits twice, and each time I struggle to hide her from the bus driver, who is watching us knowingly in his rearview mirror. I lean over and pretend to tie my shoelaces while I cover the puddles with stray newspapers. Whole families get on, carting canvas bags filled with black beach towels and sunblock. Businessmen drink coffee from foam cups and peruse USA Today. Construction workers clutch their scuffed hard hats in their laps. Some of them look at us with disgust, and others offer commentary, like “Friend had a rough night, eh?”
No one offers to help. No one pulls the emergency brake and shouts for a doctor. To them, we are no crisis; we’re a joke. Their smirks reflect my most grisly apprehensions. We are ingrates, prime examples of godless, suburban white girls, defects in the knit of society.
When we get back, Natalie is still too drunk to climb through the window. I am forced to do the unthinkable. I cringe, and carry her in through the condo’s front door.
When I lead her to bed she seems to wake up a bit, as though she has amnesia and the bed is the only thing she recognizes. She barely responds when I call her by name, but somehow the sight
72 INITIATION | First Offense
of the lace pillowcases flips a switch in her brain that says, Sleep, sleep here, sleep now. I let her crawl in between the covers without even bothering to remove the heaps of towels we had skill-fully sculpted only hours earlier. I change quietly into a nightgown and curl beside her. I put my head on her shoulder so I can monitor her breathing. As far as I can tell, the rising and falling of her chest seems regular.
I don’t have a chance to doze off before my mother material-izes in the bedroom doorway.
“Koren,” she whispers. I can see she has already changed into a beach cover-up and a wide straw hat. “We’re going down to the pool. Please come down after you’ve rested; we’d like to talk to you.”
“Shit,” I shout, after I hear the front door close behind her.
Hours pass, and I am filled with the same sense of doom I felt in seventh grade, when Mrs. Kent sent me to the principal’s office when I refused to read aloud. Fuck Greg for telling me this isn’t the end of the world. It is the end of my world, the one in which I am an admittedly mopey teenager, but still the firstborn daugh-ter, a decent student but for math and science, and the apple of my daddy’s eye.
Rest? Who was my mother kidding? My eyes burn with ex-haustion, but I can’t sleep. I keep imagining my head on a chop-ping block, instead of a too-thin hotel pillow. I try to evaluate the incriminating evidence. Until I decide how much my parents actually know, I can’t draft a speech in my defense. My mind spins. When I close my eyes, I feel like I’m nose-diving into a spiral descent. I’m not hungover, but I run to the bathroom and throw up. Natalie joins me a few minutes later, and we take turns holding each other’s hair and heaving into the bowl. We flush, and
she tries her best to tell me what happened. Alcohol has mud-dled the details, so she fills in the blanks as best she can. Wally brought her to his room,
He says, “Don’t worry about your parents. They’ll be mad at
first, but so what? The worst they can do is ground you. It’s not the end of the world.”
The sun is creeping up the sky like a bug on a wall, and all around us people are climbing into their cars to go to work. I look at Greg, and notice for the first time that he is practically crawling out of his skin, anxious to go home and, presumably, sleep before his shift at the surf shop. He, too, looks younger in the sunlight, less collegiate, more like a boy I barely know.
The trolley pulls up and I thrust Natalie onto it.
The ride back to the condo is unbearable. Natalie vomits twice, and each time I struggle to hide her from the bus driver, who is watching us knowingly in his rearview mirror. I lean over and pretend to tie my shoelaces while I cover the puddles with stray newspapers. Whole families get on, carting canvas bags filled with black beach towels and sunblock. Businessmen drink coffee from foam cups and peruse USA Today. Construction workers clutch their scuffed hard hats in their laps. Some of them look at us with disgust, and others offer commentary, like “Friend had a rough night, eh?”
No one offers to help. No one pulls the emergency brake and shouts for a doctor. To them, we are no crisis; we’re a joke. Their smirks reflect my most grisly apprehensions. We are ingrates, prime examples of godless, suburban white girls, defects in the knit of society.
When we get back, Natalie is still too drunk to climb through the window. I am forced to do the unthinkable. I cringe, and carry her in through the condo’s front door.
When I lead her to bed she seems to wake up a bit, as though she has amnesia and the bed is the only thing she recognizes. She barely responds when I call her by name, but somehow the sight
72 INITIATION | First Offense
of the lace pillowcases flips a switch in her brain that says, Sleep, sleep here, sleep now. I let her crawl in between the covers without even bothering to remove the heaps of towels we had skill-fully sculpted only hours earlier. I change quietly into a nightgown and curl beside her. I put my head on her shoulder so I can monitor her breathing. As far as I can tell, the rising and falling of her chest seems regular.
I don’t have a chance to doze off before my mother material-izes in the bedroom doorway.
“Koren,” she whispers. I can see she has already changed into a beach cover-up and a wide straw hat. “We’re going down to the pool. Please come down after you’ve rested; we’d like to talk to you.”
“Shit,” I shout, after I hear the front door close behind her.
Hours pass, and I am filled with the same sense of doom I felt in seventh grade, when Mrs. Kent sent me to the principal’s office when I refused to read aloud. Fuck Greg for telling me this isn’t the end of the world. It is the end of my world, the one in which I am an admittedly mopey teenager, but still the firstborn daugh-ter, a decent student but for math and science, and the apple of my daddy’s eye.
Rest? Who was my mother kidding? My eyes burn with ex-haustion, but I can’t sleep. I keep imagining my head on a chop-ping block, instead of a too-thin hotel pillow. I try to evaluate the incriminating evidence. Until I decide how much my parents actually know, I can’t draft a speech in my defense. My mind spins. When I close my eyes, I feel like I’m nose-diving into a spiral descent. I’m not hungover, but I run to the bathroom and throw up. Natalie joins me a few minutes later, and we take turns holding each other’s hair and heaving into the bowl. We flush, and
she tries her best to tell me what happened. Alcohol has mud-dled the details, so she fills in the blanks as best she can. Wally brought her to his room,
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