Competition does funny things to people. Like my mom at Christmas. Every year our neighborhood held a competition, giving out awards to the houses with the best decorations. Pretty much every participating house got some kind of award, like “Best Use of Reindeer,” or “Best Paper Luminary Display.” But only one house got the coveted “Holiday House” award for best overall display. Every year my mom turned into a crazy person obsessing over that stupid prize, which incidentally was nothing more than a metal sign stuck in the winner’s front yard a few weeks before Christmas.
It was the only thing my mom could talk about for the entire month of November, and my poor father spent the better part of his weekends on a ladder stapling crap to our house while my mother shrieked at him from the safety of our yard. A little more to left, Todd. No left! I said LEFT!
One year someone stole the baby Jesus from the Cumberlands’ nativity set and poked a hole in the Schmidts’ giant inflatable Santa. I never could prove it, but I swear I heard my mother sneaking back into our house late the night it happened. And it always seemed a little coincidental that our house was one of the few on the street that didn’t get vandalized, or that the Cumberlands and Schmidts were the two previous “Holiday House” winners.
But that’s my mom. Perfection at any cost.
I never really understood how you could want something so badly you’d go all crazy like that, at least not until the whole Justin/Sunny debacle. To clarify, I didn’t want to break Sunny’s legs or anything that insane, but something shifted in me and I didn’t like the way it felt. I didn’t like the competitive glances we’d started giving each other after Sunny made her interloping crush announcement, or the way I’d started comparing myself to her. So when I showed up at Sunny’s house the night of The Fields, I made a silent vow to be cool about everything. To relax. Sunny was my best friend, I reminded myself, and I couldn’t let a guy come between us. That was almost as dumb as stealing a plastic Jesus to win a yard sign. I vowed that all the drama I’d sensed between us would end the night of The Fields.
We were standing in the kitchen waiting for Jenny Schlitz and Amber Grossman to arrive, passing the time with a game of Blind Man’s Bar. Jenny was perpetually late. She was the only person who could rival Sunny when it came to tardiness, but Sunny’s lateness was considered fashionable. With Jenny it was annoying.
Miss Violet Beauregard was in her usual state of panic at my presence, circling protectively around Sunny’s feet as she snarled in my direction. Her ears were large and bat-like, surrounded by tufts of matted yellow hair. The rest of her tiny body was splotched with bald patches, as if someone attempted to give her a haircut but the hyperactive dog couldn’t sit still long enough to let them finish the job. When she growled at me (which was pretty much any time she saw me), she exposed a row of ragged, half-missing teeth, and her tongue lolled out the side of her snout, making her look like a half-crazed jack-o-lantern.
“That dog is going to give itself a heart attack,” I said, eyeing the hideous creature as it bounced around Sunny on its hind legs.
“She’s just excited. Aren’t you excited Miss Violet Beauregard? Aren’t you? Yes, you are. You are excited, my sweet girl. Such a sweet girl.” Sunny cooed at her as she bent down to pet one of the dog’s oversized ears. It looked back at me with its bulging eyes, one of them veering off to the left slightly so I couldn’t tell for sure if it was looking at the wall or giving me the stink eye.
“Are you ready to play, or what?” I asked, nodding at the sweating glasses waiting for us on the counter.
The rules to Blind Man’s Bar were simple: each person got thirty seconds in the liquor cabinet to create a mystery concoction for their competition. The first person to puke was the loser.
“Drink up, bitch,” said Sunny, clinking her glass against mine with enough force to crack it. I held my nose while I chugged, thinking if I couldn’t smell the drink I stood a better chance of keeping it down. I still almost yakked the mixture back up twice.
Sunny slammed her empty tumbler down and made a gagging noise. “That was disgusting! Are you trying to kill me?”
I made a face and set my glass down next to hers, some of the mystery drink still sitting in the bottom. There was no way I could finish it all.
“Please, you’re the one trying to kill me,” I said between chaser sips of orange juice. “That was your worst one yet!” I tried not to laugh because I could barely hold on to my stomach. Laughing too hard would most definitely make me puke.
“Yeah, you don’t look so good,” she said, making a sympathetic face as she bent down to pat one of Miss Violet Beauregard’s bald patches. “Do you want to know what was in your drink?”
I shook my head. Ignorance was always best when playing Blind Man’s Bar. At least it was in my case; I didn’t have the stomach for it.
“Do you want to know what was in yours?” I leaned over the sink a little because I still wasn’t sure I was in the clear from barfing. I puked about half the time we played. Sunny, on the other hand, never seemed phased by my concoctions. The only time I ever made her yak was when I mixed pickle juice and bourbon together. Man, I got her good that time. She had to take a shower, re-do her makeup and everything.
Sunny sniffed her empty glass and made a thoughtful face while pretending to slosh something around in her mouth. “Was it tequila and Crème de Menthe?”
I nodded. “How do you do that? It’s disturbing.” I wrinkled my nose and stuck my tongue out at her.