We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(49)

The rest of the night is a blur.

Tatum talks to Amma for too long, sitting on the edge of the pool while she stands in the water.

He lets Winnie climb on his shoulders in the pool. He helps her back up when she falls. His hands wrap around her legs to keep her stable.

Agnes makes a rum and Coke and hands it to Tatum in a red plastic cup. He bends down to hear what she has to say, above the sound of the music.

I hate that I notice every single thing he does. I don’t want to be thinking about him. Or talking to him. I don’t care what he thinks, because he’s manipulative and controlling and strange and friendless and a moody weasel on top of all that.

But I clock every gesture, every smile, every time his eyes glance my way.

It makes my sternum hurt.

I lose track of how many drinks I’ve had.





44


Next morning, around eleven.

The boys and I are hungover. Except Brock, who abstains.

Not for the first time, I wish there was coffee at Hidden Beach.

We stand around a loaf of home-baked white bread that June left us in the night. We saw her briefly when we came in from Holland’s. She wore an indigo apron with her sleeves rolled up. She didn’t ask where we’d been.

“My head hurts,” says Brock. “I didn’t even drink.” He looks seriously underslept.

“I’ll make you a thing,” says Tatum, staggering to the fridge. His hair is sticking up. He has skipped his morning swim and wears pajama bottoms and his favorite cable-knit sweater. Bare feet.

“Oh, me too,” says Meer. “Because I did drink.” He seems to have slept in his swimsuit.

“Me too,” I say. “But don’t make a yucky thing.” I made an effort to brush my teeth and shower before I came downstairs, because I felt I couldn’t possibly face Tatum and all my complicated feelings if I was smelly at the same time. My head is splitting open and my eyeballs feel like they might explode.

“We should eat eggs,” he says now. “So we get protein.”

I hate that he’s probably right. I want him to be wrong about everything. Because he wouldn’t tell me what he bought. Because he talked so much to Amma. And carried Winnie on his shoulders. And put his head down to hear Agnes.

“Aren’t raw eggs a hangover cure?” I ask. “With hot sauce? People drink it in the movies.” My face feels swollen. I’m simultaneously hungry and nauseated.

“Eggs contain cysteine,” says Tatum, “which breaks down acetaldehyde, which is what causes hangovers. I don’t know about the hot sauce, but bananas are good because the potassium helps—”

“Oh my god don’t tell us,” says Meer, running all his sentences into one. “It’s way too boring just feed us what we should have I am such a sad boy right now I don’t think rum is my drink and I will never have it again.”

I grab a Sharpie and Meer holds out his forearm for me.

I write No Rum.

“Those are my words to live by,” says Meer. “Now and forever. And did I tell you I barfed? I barfed in the night it was very dramatic with disgusting noises that I couldn’t even believe came out of my body.”

“I barfed, too,” says Tatum.

“So that’s why it smelled like barf in the bathroom already,” says Meer. “It was your barf. I wondered if I had already barfed and couldn’t remember it.”

“Nope,” says Tatum.

“Well, no thank you for smelling up the bathroom.”

Tatum has filled the blender with bananas and milk. Now he’s hovering over it with a bunch of June’s brown bottles: butterbur, willow bark extract, some other things. He adds ice and turns the blender on.

Meer and I cover our ears. “It’s so loud,” I moan. “The blender was never that loud before.”

Meer lies face down on the kitchen floor, scrunching his eyes in pain.

Brock takes eggs from the fridge and sets them on the counter.

Tatum stops the blender.

“I thought I was well enough to scramble eggs,” whimpers Brock. “But I’m not.” He leaves the eggs on the counter and lies down next to Meer.

“Did we play shoulder wars?” asks Meer. “I feel like we did.”

“I was on Brock’s shoulders,” I say. “Fighting someone. Fighting Olive.”

“You put a crick in my neck with your thighs,” says Brock.

“Oh, you poor man,” says Tatum.

“She rode on me because I’m the better warrior,” says Brock.

“Don’t flirt with me, Brock,” I say. “I feel pukey.”

“I flirt with everybody,” he says. “I used to get paid for it.”

“Is that sad or good?”

“Yes.”

I laugh.

“I maybe should stop flirting with everyone,” says Brock. “It’s maybe a pitiful behavior. But on the other hand, maybe it’s my nature and maybe I like that about myself. Also, I hooked up with Amma.”

“You did?”

“Just a mini. Fifteen minutes in the woods, which was kind of awkward.”

“Use protection,” I say.

“It wasn’t all the way, sheesh. I said mini. I’ve been a monk this year at Hidden Beach,” says Brock. “You’re not supposed to like, sex it up when you just got sober.”