“You’re a snob.”
“I’m so—”
“You’re sorry? I’m sorry. That’s a shitty quality.” When I didn’t say anything, she backed off, probably realizing, and rightly, that I was humiliated. “Just forget it. What I really need is for you to be a girl right now. Can you do that? Like a stupid, gossipy girl?”
“Uh, sure.” I sat up, still blushing, and got into a listening pose. How was what I was doing not being a girl?
Marlena’s problem was this: She and Ryder weren’t having sex anymore, at least not when they weren’t high or drunk or stoned or rolling, and the worst part was that she didn’t even care. She didn’t miss it. But wasn’t it weird that she still liked cuddling and kissing and stuff? She still loved him—she’d always love him. I mean, she didn’t even know what love was except in relation to him—she felt bad even saying this kind of shit. Was it possible that they were outgrowing each other? All of this was a terrific betrayal. If she ever got wind that he’d had a thought in the same family as the stuff she was saying, she’d cut his dick off and feed it to Bolt.
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair,” I said. “Especially because Bolt would probably like it if Ryder didn’t have a dick. Less competition.”
She fake-retched. “You think Ryder’s thinking this too, don’t you? How is it that I can’t stand the idea that he might not be like, absolutely crazy about me still, when I’m having so much trouble getting it up for him?”
“My parents stopped having sex, I heard my mom talking about it to her friend, like years and years ago.” I was dying to ask her what sex was like but I also didn’t want her to know, unless she did already just by looking at me, that I was a virgin. Men had done things to her, and she had done things back. How did she know what to do, and when to do it, and what what he did meant, and whether any of it was what she wanted? Would anyone ever do those things to me?
“Oh, boo-hoo. Nobody’s parents have sex. That’s not why they got divorced. They got divorced because they couldn’t stand each other and probably because one of them was screwing someone else.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Something about the way I said it gave me away. Maybe it was that I couldn’t look at her. Or maybe it was that my voice cracked halfway through yeah.
She flipped around, going from sprawled on her stomach to sitting at the foot of the bed, her legs dangling.
“Wow. Are you like, screwed up about it?”
“It’s not that.” My eyes boiled and I needed to stop talking but I couldn’t. “I just want to go home.” A few tears followed my nose to my mouth. I was trying, at least. “The messed-up thing is that I don’t know what that even means.”
Marlena leaned forward and wiped the tears into my cheeks with her knuckles. “It’s okay. Go ahead, let it out.” She hugged me. I tilted into her like a plank of wood. She combed my hair with her fingers from scalp to ends, like my mom barely ever did anymore. Without thinking I softened against her shoulder, eventually turning my face into her neck and crying so hard I shook.
“Hey,” Marlena said. “I’m here.”
Mom knocked. I jumped out of my chair, whirling to face the door.
“Girls,” she said.
“Yeah,” we answered.
She stepped into the room, taking in my tense stance and still-puffy eyes, Marlena’s rooted posture.
“Marlena, sweetie, you’re welcome to stay the night,” Mom said. “Do you need to call anyone, or anything?”
“Oh no,” Marlena said. “It’s fine.”
“Okay.” Mom watched us for a second. “I’ll just go to bed, then.”
*
As soon as the strip of space underneath Mom’s door turned black, Marlena and I set up camp. She rooted through our cabinets, pulling out a can of refried beans and a cat-food-sized tin of chopped green chilies, which were definitely not something we ever ate and may very well have come with the house. She mixed the contents of the two cans into a paste she smeared across a cookie sheet, and then covered the brown, sloppy mess with a layer of American cheese, sliding it all into the not-preheated oven.
“Oops,” she said, and turned it on. “Anything to drink?” I opened the fridge and pulled out a gallon of whole milk, fake chugging it until we both died. Marlena laughed with her mouth wide open, an ugly laugh. She bent over, punching herself in the thigh, not a sound coming from her except a kind of wheeze. After we calmed down, Marlena scrutinized the pantry again. Boxes of Franzia Chablis, Mom’s nighttime drink for as long as I could remember, filled the bottom shelf. Marlena weaseled one from the very back. “Your mom really likes her fine whites. There are about a hundred of these.”
While Marlena filled two giant plastic cups with wine, I reorganized the Franzia boxes so that the missing one would be less noticeable. A greasy puddle of nerves collected in my stomach. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant. I felt hyper-alert, like I always did with Marlena, that eye-of-the-storm feeling. Mom had no reason not to trust me, and she bought a new box every time she went to the grocery store. When Meijer had sales, she’d buy four. My chances of getting caught were small. I imagined Mom waking up because we were banging around and finding us drunk; Mom noticing the missing wine after randomly organizing the pantry; Mom smelling the cooking food and springing awake, sure the house was on fire. But I had memories—Jimmy and I shaking Mom by the shoulders after she fell asleep on the couch at eleven p.m. on a Saturday, Jimmy and I getting into a screaming fight in the bathroom outside her bedroom door one of those nights before the divorce when Dad still wasn’t home. Sleeping Mom didn’t wake up until she was ready. I shifted the Franzia boxes to cover the gap. We wouldn’t get caught.
It took two trips to transport the wine box, our glasses, the bean dip, and a sleeve of saltines, a substitute for the tortilla chips we did not have, into the living room, where we polished off both the food—not as bad as I expected, especially once I’d finished my first glass—and enough wine to make us attempt headstands against the living room wall. After an unknown amount of time, I hit my head on the coffee table so hard that the next morning my temple sported a bump the size of a halved Ping-Pong ball. Marlena let out a stream of startled nonsense that sounded almost like French. I pulled myself into the computer chair, turning on the modem, and Marlena draped herself across the couch. When the screen flickered on, I learned that it was after one a.m.