C A I T L Y N
The party had started, and I was still on the couch, watching Twilight. I had somehow gotten popcorn, but I didn't know how. Tristan wasn't sitting next to me anymore, but I didn't know where he had gone, or why he had gone there. The kids were all outside, but I couldn't turn my head around to see what exactly they were doing. I wanted to but I couldn't. It was too much.
"You're still watching it?" someone asked. It was a stupid question seeing as I was obviously still watching it, so I didn't answer.
Whoever it was sat next to me on the couch, and said, "I used to really love this as a kid."
I wanted it to be Richard, but Twilight didn't exist when Richard was a kid. It couldn't be a kid either. It definitely couldn't be Tristan because Tristan thought Edward was pedophile. So it had to be...
"Zoey."
"Yeah, I'll shut up, I know," she said. "Who's your favorite though?"
"Jessica."
She laughed, "I meant between Edward and Jacob."
"Still Jessica."
She laughed some more, "Why? I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Jessica. I actually think they do her a disservice in the movie –"
"They do her fucking dirty!" I said. I couldn't help it. I was high out of my mind. "She's just there to show Bella's not like other girls, which she absolutely is. She's a fucking idiot. She wants to fuck a guy who wants to kill her. That's not new."
"I know, right? It's a blatant attack on girly girls. They basically want us to like Bella more because she doesn't care about prom. Stephanie really–"
"Who the fuck is Stephanie?"
"She's the writer of Twilight."
"Right, go on."
"Oh, well, I was just saying I think Stephanie fell for the whole girl-power movement of her time, which actually gave no real power to girls anywhere, I mean, it was totally bogus. It just made girls deny their girlhood everywhere, so they could finally be allowed in the men's world–"
"Because it's still a men's world at the of the day!" I said.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" someone else asked. I looked up this time.
Tristan was standing at the other end of the couch with a confused look on his face. I turned to Zoey. She was right next to me. I hadn't realized she was this close. She was also smiling.
"Tristan thinks Edward's a pedophile," I told her.
She looked at him, "Why?"
I looked at him too. He said, "He's over a hundred years old and she's seventeen."
"Well, he's basically seventeen too," Zoey argued.
"No, he looks seventeen, but he's been around since the Spanish flu. He's a pedophile."
"He makes a good point," I admitted, looking back at Zoey.
She shrugged, "He does actually."
"I know," Tristan said. "And I didn't even watch the movie. Everything I know about it I learned against my will."
I laughed, "Where have you been anyway?"
"I had a nosebleed," he said, taking a seat next to me.
"Did you really?" Zoey asked.
"No, I'm lying to you," he said, even though he wasn't. "Right, put something else on. I'm not watching this shit."
"I don't know where the remote is," I said, turning the sound up.
Tristan was not impressed. He said, "It's in your hand."
I hid it behind my back, and showed him a smile, along with the words, "I love this scene. She's gonna ask him to kill her."
"Not really –" Zoey started, but I shushed her before she could go on.
Then Sam came running in, his blonde hair sticking to his forehead, his t-shirt stained with water, because, for some reason, kids didn't know how to drink anything without getting it all over themselves. At least the kids at the daycare didn't.
"I need all three of you!" Sam said, stopping in front of the tv.
I rolled my eyes.
Zoey asked, "For what?"
Sam said, "Football."
Tristan said, "No."
So Sam begged, "Please! Dad's playing too!"
Tristan shrugged, "Well, I feel like shit, so."
Sam looked at me. I said, "I'm high out of my mind."
He looked at Zoey. She said, "I'll go."
And, just like that, she was gone. We saw her again only a while later, once the game of football was over, and the kids were all busy getting their hands on all the food and drinks they could find, which was a lot, courtesy of Richard's fat wallet.
She was on her way to the bathroom with a kid, while we were on our way upstairs with weed. Tristan insisted he wouldn't be able to keep my brownies down, so he wanted to roll a joint instead. When he saw Zoey, he stopped.
"What the fuck are you doing with Dave?" he asked her.
Zoey hadn't seen us on the stairs, so she screamed, "Fuck, you scared me!"
"Good," Tristan said. Then he pointed at Dave, who was laughing for some reason, and asked, "What's happening?"
"I walked in on him eating one of Caitlyn's brownies," Zoey said to Tristan, and then to Dave, "Also, please forget I said that."
"Said what?"
"You know what."
"You said a lot of things."
Zoey rolled her eyes, "I'm not doing this with you right now."
"Doing what?"
"This," Zoey said. "Whatever this is."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I like him," I said. Dave smiled. Zoey didn't.
"I don't think you understand," she told me. "He ate your brownies."
"I thought you put them away."
"I did!" Zoey said. "I put them in the fridge with a note saying, do not eat!"
Next to her, Dave shrugged, "I'm nine years old."
"How many did you eat, you fatty?" Tristan asked, which was funny because Dave wasn't fat at all, just tall.
"I don't know, a couple?" He said with a shrug. "They were really good."
"He needs to throw up, right?" Zoey asked us. "It takes time to– You know, it doesn't go straight into your –"
"You're gonna die," I told Dave.
He shrugged again, "Okay."
I laughed, "I love him."
Dave smiled again. Zoey didn't.
"This is serious!" she said, covering Dave's ear, so he wouldn't hear what she said next, "He could have a seizure or go into a coma or be traumatized for the rest of his life –"
"Who told you that?" Tristan asked.
"The internet," she said, as a matter of fact.
"I don't know if that's true –" I started.
"Well, I'm not gonna wait to find out," she said, letting go of Dave to tell him, "You have to throw up. I'm really sorry."
"I can't throw up on command," he said, like it was obvious.
"Just stick your fingers down your throat," Zoey said.
"Yeah, I can't do that either," he said. "It's disgusting."
Zoey opened the bathroom door and pushed him inside all the same. Then she looked at us, and said, "If you're not gonna help, you might as well leave."
"Fine," Tristan said, turning around.
I stopped him, "We gotta help. It's our weed."
"She's the one who put it in the fridge, where the food you can eat usually goes."
Zoey's face fell, "What is wrong with you?"
He shrugged, "We've been over this."
"I know you don't like me," she said, covering Dave's ears again for whatever was coming next, "but this is a kid we're talking about, and not that it matters, but not just any kid either. This is your brother's best friend."
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"How does that matter right now?!" She was losing it. Even Dave, who had been okay with dying just moments ago, seemed concerned now.
Tristan rolled his eyes, and followed me inside the bathroom, closing the door behind him, but not without telling us he was probably going to throw up too if he saw someone else do it, especially right in front of him.
Zoey ignored him and looked at Dave with one of her smiles, "It's gonna be fine."
He shook his head, "Yeah, I don't think so."
"I do," she said. "It's gonna be horrible at first, but then it's gonna fine. You just gotta get through it. I promise."
Dave shook his head again but then kneeled in front of the toilet. Zoey kneeled next to him and put her fingers down his throat. As soon as she took them out, he started throwing up. She held his forehead for him. Next to me, Tristan turned around and started throwing up on the sink too.
"You're disgusting!" I said, even though he had warned us.
Zoey turned around at him, in shock, then at me, "Help him!"
"He's a big boy," I said, patting him on the back as he got whatever else he had in him out. As it turned out, it was almost nothing. "Did you even have breakfast?"
He showed me his middle finger, his face under the water coming out of the tap, the mess he had made gone down the drain. By the toilet, Dave was done throwing up too. There, crisis averted. Zoey had been surprisingly good at averting it. She could have just gone to Richard. That would have been a much bigger crisis.
"Are you okay?" I asked Tristan. He wiped his mouth with a hand towel and then threw it at Dave, who was just finishing washing his own mouth on the sink. Zoey caught it before it could fall on the floor.
Tristan asked, "Do I look okay?"
"No, you look like shit," I said.
"Well, there you go."
"Are you sick or something?" Zoey asked.
And he said, "I'm dying."
"That's not funny."
"It's not supposed to be funny."
Zoey didn't answer that, instead, she turned to Dave, "You should fine now. You can go back to the party. I'm sorry I had to, you know, do that."
"What was in the brownies anyway?" he asked.
I opened my mouth, but Zoey pointed a finger at me, and said, very seriously, "Do not answer that!"
"I was gonna say milk," I lied. I was going to say weed. "You're lactose intolerant."
"No, I'm not," Dave said.
"Yes, you are. Your mom said so."
"You don't know my mom."
"We know Sheila," Zoey said.
At this Dave stopped and frowned, "How?"
"I pick up Sam from school sometimes," she said.
He was still frowning, "Okay, so you know her. How do they know her?"
"We go to Pilates with her. Who cares?" Tristan said. "Just get out of here, Dave."
"Fine, but I know you're lying," he said as he moved for the door.
I crossed my arms over my chest, and said, "I don't like you anymore."
"My teacher says my personality gets old pretty quickly," he said, shrugging like he couldn't care less that a teacher had essentially said he sucked, and then leaving out the door and back into the party.
"That is the coolest kid I've ever met," I admitted. I was still high.
"His teacher sounds like a bitch," Zoey said, surprising both me and Tristan at the same time. "Who would say that to a kid?"
"So you are capable of critical thinking. Where was all that this morning?" Tristan asked, one foot already out the door. She showed him the middle finger, which, again, surprised both me and him, and then left, just like that.
Tristan turned to me, "Can we go smoke now?"
I said yes, of course, and we went up to his bedroom and rolled a fat joint by the window, which had a view to the backyard where the kids were still stuffing their faces with candy and soda. Zoey was there too, talking to Richard, with her silly little smile on, arms crossed over her chest, hair tucked behind her ear.
"What do you think of her?" Tristan asked after a while, blowing the smoke inside him out, and then handing me the joint.
I took it and shrugged, "I wish I could be more like her."
"An idiot?" he asked.
"Happy," I said.
"Same thing."