She kept drinking. The radio played; the window opened and shut, opened and shut; and Chad and Steph leaned out to smoke, tapping ash along the side of the building, putting out their cigarettes on the Super 8’s cement exterior. Fiona’s head fell back on the bed, and she looked up at the yellowing ceiling. Rachel’s head met hers. Rachel took Fiona’s face in her hands, kissed her briefly on the mouth. “Love you forever, Fee-Bee,” she said. Why? Fiona thought. Why do you love me?
Yonatan and Chad sang loudly, practicing the camp songs: “Here’s to sister Rachel, sister Rachel, sister Rachel!” Steph went to pour herself another drink. “Ice! We need ice!” she said. She put on Yonatan’s shirt, which came down to just above her knees. She swung the door open, and it stayed that way. “Here’s to sister Rachel, the best of them all.” Fiona felt alarmed about the door being open like that. In her increasingly drunken state, her caution had dissolved, but now it was coming back up, more bitter than before. “She’s happy, she’s jolly, she’s”—and they changed it here—“fucked up, by golly!”
Fiona stood and rushed to the door, slamming it louder than she’d intended. Yonatan and Chad stopped singing.
“What?” Chad said.
“You guys are being so loud,” Fiona said. “We can’t just leave the door open like that.”
A loud rap on the door. Fiona started before remembering Steph.
“Lock me out, why don’t you?” Steph walked past her into the room and added ice to her drink before lighting another cigarette.
The others were all sitting near the window, Chad and Steph on the inside ledge and Yonatan and Rachel on the edge of the bed facing them, forming a neat square. Fiona took a seat next to Rachel, upsetting the symmetry. They gossiped about their campers and their fellow counselors, but there was a hush, a shift in the atmosphere, like they all had to watch themselves around Fiona now.
“I have to pee,” Fiona said. Instead of walking through the square, she rolled awkwardly over to the other side of the bed to get to the bathroom.
She turned on the fluorescent overhead light and closed the bathroom door. She looked at herself in the mirror—her frizzy, unruly hair in a messy bun on top of her head; the skin around her eyes black from mascara that had smeared throughout the course of the night; a greasy face and a few new pimples: one there between her eyebrows, another at the tip of her nose. There was something about the water in Lakeville, or maybe it was summer humidity: She couldn’t keep her skin or her hair under control. Or, maybe, she had just stopped trying. She swayed as she stared at her disappointing reflection; she was drunker than she’d realized. She lifted her shirt and inspected how the night’s vodka and SunChips made her stomach protrude. Her breasts strained against her now-too-small bra, and below the bra’s underwire, her thick stomach stretched away from her body as if it had an agenda of its own.
She sat down to pee, and as she did so, she could no longer hear the conversation in the room clearly. The voices sounded deliberately lowered. When she finished peeing, she stood up from the toilet and put her ear to the door.
“…such a narc,” she heard from Chad.
There was some mumbling, the female voices. Rachel’s so quiet.
“True,” Chad said as Fiona strained to hear. “There’s always the car.”
A few more mumbles; then their voices were normal again.
“I’m starving!” Rachel announced.
Fiona flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and looked at her puffy face once more.
As soon as she emerged, there was another knock on the door.
“Front desk,” came the voice from the other side.
Chad stubbed out his new cigarette and threw it out the window, stupidly using his hands to try to push the smoke outside. Steph gave Yonatan his shirt and put on her own. They were all scrambling to hide the vodka under the bed, and the beers, but there were so many cans now, and rings of condensation on the tables, and probably even the smell; there had to be a smell by now. Chad went into the bathroom and quietly closed the door.
Another knock.
“Coming!” Rachel said, her voice high and cheery as she pulled an arm into her T-shirt.
“Get into bed,” she said to the others in a low voice, and they did as they were told, Steph and Fiona in one bed and Yonatan in the other. Rachel glanced around the room one last time, then opened the door.
It was Mary Ann. She was frowning, and her round face was glistening. “Do you know what time it is?”
“We were just climbing into bed,” Rachel said innocently. “Were we being too loud?”
“We got a noise complaint from the next room.”
“Really?” She cocked her head to the side. “We just finished a movie.”
“The TV was probably too loud,” Yonatan said from the bed. He was sitting up against a pillow, his arms folded over the comforter. “It was an action movie.”
“Someone said they heard singing,” said Mary Ann.
“Weird,” Rachel said.
Mary Ann peeked her head through the doorway. Fiona thought she saw her sniff the air. Her face was red and contorting in an ugly way.
“Unbelievable,” she said. “You camp people are unbelievable.”
“Ma’am?” Rachel said.
“This room reeks.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Is it really that hard to follow rules for one night?” Mary Ann seemed jumpy, almost excited, and then turned to point into the hall. “Get out.”
Rachel’s shoulders slumped, and she pursed her lips into a pout. “But it’s two in the morning,” she whined.
“That’s not my problem.”
Then Rachel stood straighter and folded her arms in front of herself. “You can’t make us leave,” she said. “We’re paying customers.”
The others said nothing.
“Yes I can. I can make you leave for”—Mary Ann counted the reasons off on her fingers now—“disorderly conduct. Smoking in a nonsmoking motel. Underage drinking. Sneaking in a nonpaying guest.” She gestured to the closed bathroom door. “And I can call the cops if you don’t go.”
“No one signed a contract,” Rachel said.
“Sure you did. That girl”—she pointed to Fiona—“signed something when she gave us her credit card.” This was Mary Ann’s moment, reminding the kids that she was the adult here. She was the one with the power. “Which I’m charging for damage, by the way.”
Rachel, Yonatan, and Steph all turned to look at Fiona—searing, blameful looks. She wanted to hide herself under the overstarched comforter of the motel bed and fall unconscious beneath its dark weight.
—
Out in the parking lot, they fought over who would drive the car back to camp.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do, Fiona?” Steph was saying. “You won’t drive, but you won’t let anyone else drive either?”
“Someone could come pick us up,” Fiona suggested, half-knowing she’d be shut down.
“We can’t call the camp,” Rachel said. “I can drive. I’m honestly not that drunk.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Fiona.
“Test me,” said Rachel. She put her arms out and walked in a straight line.
“Look at that!” Chad said. “She’s perfect.”
“Fiona,” Yonatan said. “The camp can’t find out about this. Chad and I will lose our visas.” How reasonable it seemed when he explained it.