“I know a guy.” Jennilynn shrugged again as she looked in the mirror.
Black flecks speckled the glass where the silvering had come off on the back. This mirror was an antique, attached to an old dresser that had been their grandma’s when she got married. When she died, their mom got it. It had been in their room forever, so both of them had gotten used to standing in weird poses in order to see all of themselves. Still, the way Jennilynn stood now, a hip cocked, her head tilting as she let her hands run up her sides until her fingertips rested on her chin, thumbs pressing downward on her throat . . .
Weird. And who’s this random beer-buying guy? Something’s going on with her, and she won’t tell me what it is.
“Where did you meet a guy that old? The diner?”
Jennilynn had been working there since she got her driver’s license, which was about the same time she started growing distant and irritable about things that never used to bother her. Now her dreamy, vacant expression went tight. She turned with another toss of her hair.
“What do you care? Ilya said bring beer. I’m bringing beer. What difference does it make to you what I had to do to get it?”
Asking how she got the beer and where she met the guy who was bringing it was totally different from asking what Jenni had to do to get it. “Jennilynn! What did you have to do?”
“Jesus, Alicia. Enough with the Spanish Inquisition. I met a guy, he’s old enough to get beer, and he likes me enough to bring it to the party. Quit acting like this is some kind of big deal, because it’s not.” Jennilynn turned to the mirror again, pursing her lips and turning her face from side to side as though she was looking at something only she could see.
“What’s going on with you lately?” Alicia demanded.
Jennilynn looked at her sister in the reflection, then once again turned to face her. Slowly, this time. Without the flounce. For a second or so, Alicia was sure her sister was going to come clean about all the secrets she’d been keeping lately, but then she shrugged and gave Alicia another vacant smile.
“Nothing.” It was a lie, and Alicia knew it. Worse, her sister knew that Alicia didn’t believe her, but she didn’t seem to care. “It’s going to be a slammin’ party. Don’t be such a loser.”
Alicia ignored the L her sister made with her thumb and first finger pressed to her forehead. “We’re going to get in trouble.”
“Not unless someone narcs on us. Mom and Dad won’t be back until late Sunday. Galina’s working a double, or something. Ilya said she won’t be home until morning. Barry went fishing for the weekend. And Babulya’s staying with some friends in Camp Hill, some kind of quilting thing.”
Galina worked a lot of nights and weekends. Her still-newish husband was also often away during the same times. Alicia’s parents, however, went away for the weekend occasionally, and never before without having someone come to stay with them. Babulya was almost never gone. If there was ever a time to have a party, this weekend was it.
Alicia wasn’t satisfied. This had all the makings of disaster. “What if someone calls the cops?”
“Who’s going to call the cops?” Jennilynn rolled her eyes. “We’re the only houses on this dead-end street.”
Four hours later, their parents barely two hours on the road, Jennilynn was wasted and dancing so hard in the center of the Sterns’ living room that her halter dress could barely stay up. The guy who’d bought her the case of beer showed up to the party with a couple of bottles of rum. He was at least in his thirties, way too old to be at a high school party, but nobody seemed to care. Especially not Jennilynn. The Stern brothers pulled out a stash of vodka. Ilya was mixing some with red punch. Someone else spilled the chips all over the living-room floor, and kids danced on them, crushing them into the carpet.
“Of course it’s vodka. Like water for Russians.” Imitating his grandmother’s thick accent, Nikolai lifted the bottle toward Alicia’s nose until she recoiled from the stinging scent. “Water of life, come on, have a drink. It’s Galina’s.”
“Won’t she notice it’s gone?” Alicia had to shout over the sound of the music getting louder, louder, louder, the bass thump pressing her in every place her heart beat.
Nikolai didn’t hear her. He swigged right from the bottle, but she turned her head at his offer to drink. She already had a beer and didn’t like the taste or how it made her feel. She needed to get outside, get some air, away from the now-hovering haze of marijuana. This party was getting out of control, just as she’d predicted.
The Sterns’ backyard was rarely mowed. The flower beds went unweeded, unmulched, untended, and the flowers there grew wild and lush. Like a meadow. Alicia’s mother tut-tutted about it under her breath, about how a woman alone raising two boys shouldn’t need to hire a gardener to keep her yard in shape. That was what boys were for, Alicia’s mother had said to her father in the kitchen after dinner one night. Or that new husband. To mow the lawn and take out the garbage. To fix the sagging shutters and the screen door that blew open every time there was a storm.
But what difference did it make? Out here at the very end of Quarry Street, with only two houses and nobody to even see the Sterns’ backyard except them? It wasn’t like they lived in one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, where all the houses looked the same, one on top of the other, every yard nudging up against the next so you couldn’t be sure where one stopped or started except by the placement of the swing sets.
Sometimes she wished they lived closer to town, so she could walk to places the way her friends did, or so she didn’t have to get up so early to catch the school bus, but most of the time, Alicia loved living out here on the end of Quarry Street with nobody but the Sterns. It was quiet, at least on nights when her sister and Ilya weren’t throwing a party, and because there were no streetlights, there was never any problem seeing the stars.