Schoolyard
‘Turn into a grape!’ the girl screamed. She was addressing Tim, but I’d be damned if I let the guy have all the glory – he was good at sports and cute and tall. He could afford to lose this one. Tim was my best friend. I was cute too, but in the way an infant’s cute, because I was chubby-cheeked and short and shit at sports. This was my chance. My face could turn into an amazing fucking grape, they’d see, and they’d feel like stupid idiots for not telling me to turn into a grape.
‘Give me that.’ The bottle of brandy was heavier than I had accounted for – I barely kept it from bursting on the asphalt. Once I had a grip of the thing, I twisted off the cap and gave it a sniff. The blast rocketed from my nose to my earlobes and back in half a second. And my eyes were wet.
To try and put it simply, the goal was to force enough blood into my face to cause a discoloration that an imaginative little girl might identify as the color of a grape. The blood did not come quickly. But it did and my face began to darken.
They all saw the way I reacted. There was no turning back, and no pussy-footing. These guys thought I knew how to fuckin’ party. I don’t remember saying or doing anything to give them that idea. I really liked that they thought that about me. I sure as shit was going to live up to it. My bicep quivered as I brought the bottle to my lips.
At that moment I understood how I imagined a puffer-fish must feel – their pain and suffering being the only justification for a pointless talent. Tim was doing it too. Tim was purple. There is no way I was that purple. No wonder they told Tim to do it instead of me… But just then, Tim peaked. He was on his descent. Hope was alive.
There is a fleeting grace period between the first gulp and the first taste. I must have dumped four or five ounces down my throat by the time that flaming shit-water punched me in the teeth. At that point it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. I just drank as much as the rest of the group combined, because I knew how to fucking party.
It was dark. Sounds knocked around in my skull like a superball in a hallway. They were the sounds of kids on a schoolyard. I was on a schoolyard. The darkness was black and absolute. When I eventually clawed my way out and opened my eyes, there was Tim, standing over me. I was lying on the asphalt, in the middle of the schoolyard surrounded by giggling kids. And my hand, my stupid goddamn hand had its fat little fingers wrapped around just one of Tim’s fingers. How the hell that happened I will never know. Tim’s face was its resting tone, mine was fucked. Blood leaked from somewhere beneath my bowl of hair and onto my adorable little face. Apparently I passed out and banged my head pretty good... I knocked myself unconscious with my pride. And worst of all, supposedly I didn’t turn into a fucking grape. Fuck grapes. I will definitely keep Tim around.
The impact of the vomit on the asphalt echoed out like applause. If it was applause it was sarcastic and I hated it. The night’s inaugural swig was all over my Ice-Creams. Who the fuck does that? Not a fuckin’ party-animal rock-star. Oh, that’s right I didn’t know how to party, they just thought I did. Now I was back to being one of them. We laughed. My body did a pretty shit job of evacuating my gut because I was piss drunk. The bottle went around a few more times, I sat out, let them catch up. It was merry – we were merry, scampering around the school yard like tots. At some point Tim and I sat down. We looked out over the schoolyard. He reminded me of the time I fainted. He pointed at the exact spot where it happened, no more than three yards away. I had to spew again... I almost made it.