He laughs.
“You’re hungover?” Holly says.
“If I say yes, will you think less of me?”
Declan says, “Not if it was really straight vodka shots …?”
I nod carefully.
He laughs again. “I had no idea you were a heavyweight.”
“First time drinking anything.”
“Even more impressive; skipping over Beginner and Intermediate straight to Expert. Well done. What was the occasion?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I say. “I don’t feel well.”
“You don’t look well,” Declan says.
Someone pounds on the door.
Holly says, “I’ll get it.”
She goes and opens the door.
“Where is she?” Zumi’s voice is deep and unreadable, like it carries too many emotions to separate out. Probably because she drank way more than I did.
Declan points to me warily.
Zumi comes around the sofa, Connor right behind her. He looks lost but on alert somehow. He had a lot to drink, too.
“Hi,” I say. “What’s—”
“That yours?” Zumi points at my open laptop.
“Yeah—”
She sits hard on the sofa, knocking my knees. I stretch my legs out to give her room. She jams a thumb drive into the USB port and copies a file to the desktop.
“You, Declan,” Zumi says. “You can’t see from over there. This is too good to miss.”
He comes around to stand by Holly.
I look up at Connor behind the sofa. “You know what this is?”
“No. She just called and asked for a ride.”
Zumi says, “All last week I kept calling Annie, texting and e-mailing. Last night I finally got an answer.”
I push myself up. “What’d she say?”
“Ten words.” Zumi counts them on her fingers: “Stop bugging me. Get over it. Maybe this will help.” She jerks the stick from the laptop and taps on the keyboard to open a movie file. “Sixty seconds of video can say a lot.”
The screen shows Annie’s room, pretty much exactly as I remember. The image shakes from someone adjusting the camera. It centers on Annie’s bed with her rose-colored comforter. The view stops jiggling but no one appears or talks for maybe thirty seconds.
“What took so long?” Annie’s voice finally says.
Then some soft talking. It’s impossible to make it out. It might not even be speech, just mumbling or something similar.
Annie appears, backing up toward the bed. She wears her favorite white button-down sleeveless shirt, only with the top few buttons undone. Her arm is stretched out of frame. She briefly makes eye contact with the camera and smiles. Her head turns to reveal a bright orange California poppy over one ear— I lunge for the laptop—but Zumi grabs both my wrists and drags me back to the sofa.
There it is. On the screen. Annie has pulled me up on the bed. We’re kissing, clumsily groping each other’s chests. It’s messy, awkward fumbling, but not tentative, and not one-sided. It’s enthusiastic, and not the first time, or the last. I had no idea she’d recorded anything.
Holly slams the laptop shut and grabs one of Zumi’s arms. “Let go!”
Connor jumps over the sofa and they both pry Zumi off me. She glares at Connor hard enough to melt lead but he forces himself between us anyway.
I curl into a ball and wrap my arms over my head and Zumi leans around Connor and growls through her teeth, “Don’t … ever … talk … to me … again!”
“Zumi!” Connor shouts in her face.
“What the hell, Connor?!” She pushes him back—he stumbles against the coffee table.
He stands up straight again and says to her, “We’re going.”
“Goddamn right, we’re going!”
I say, “Zumi—”
“Fuck you, Mel!” she yells down at me. “Fuck you, too!”
I’m going to throw up. I scramble past Holly—my heel lands hard on her toes and she cries out—and push past Declan and run down the hall.
In my room, door closed, puking bile and bits of toast into the trash can, I’m convulsing way more than my body needs just to empty my stomach.
During the heaving and sobbing, the yelling stops and the front door slams. Holly and Declan talk through my door, asking if I’m okay and to let them in until I shout “Go away!” enough times that they finally leave.
HAMSTER IS SPRINTING
HUMMINGBIRD IS PERCHED
HAMMERHEAD IS THRASHING***
HANNIGANIMAL IS CRASHING/MIXED