“Hey, Lena.”
My brother was a popular kid, a jock, wrestling for Breaux Bridge High School. People knew his name and it always confused me, watching him make friends as naturally as I kept to myself. He didn’t discriminate when it came to company—he’d hang out with his wrestling buddies one day, make small talk with some stoners the next. Mostly, his attention just seemed to make you feel important, like you were somehow worthy of something valuable and rare.
Lena was popular, too, but for the wrong reasons.
“Y’all want a sip?”
I eyed her carefully, her flat stomach sticking out from beneath a skintight henley that looked two sizes too small, pushing her cleavage up through the buttons. I caught a glint of something sparkly on her stomach—a belly-button ring—and I immediately snapped my head back up, trying not to stare. She smiled at me, lifting the bottle to her lips. I watched a bead of liquid dribble down her chin before she wiped it with her middle finger.
“Do you like it?” She pulled her shirt up, rolled the diamond between her fingers. There was a charm dangling beneath it, some kind of bug.
“It’s a firefly,” she said, reading my mind. “They’re my favorite. It glows in the dark.”
She cupped her hands around her stomach and motioned for me to peek through; I did, my forehead pressed against the edges of her hands. Inside, the bug had turned a bright, neon green.
“I like to catch them,” she said, looking down at her stomach. “Put them in a jar.”
“I do, too,” I said, still peeking through the hole in her hands. It reminded me of the fireflies that emerged in our trees at night, the way I would run through the darkness, swatting at them like I was swimming through stars.
“And then I take them out and squish them between my fingers. Did you know you can write your name on the sidewalk with their glow?”
I winced; I couldn’t imagine squishing a bug with my bare hands, listening to it pop. But that did seem kind of cool, getting to rub its liquid between my fingers, watching it radiate up close.
“Somebody’s staring,” she said, dropping her hands. I snapped my head up and looked in the direction of her gaze, directly at my father. He was across the crowd, staring at us. Staring at Lena, with her shirt pulled up to her bra. She smiled at him, waved with her free hand. He ducked his head down and kept walking.
“So,” she said, pushing the Sprite bottle in Cooper’s direction and wiggling it in the air. “Do you want a sip?”
He glanced over to where my dad once stood, finding a gap instead of his watchful eye, then back at the bottle, snatching it from her hand and taking a fast swig.
“I’ll take some,” I said, grabbing it from him. “I’m so thirsty.”
“No, Chloe—”
But my brother’s warning came too late; the bottle was on my lips then, the liquid pouring into my mouth and down my throat. I didn’t just take a sip, I took a gulp. A gulp of what tasted like battery acid burning my esophagus the whole way down. I yanked the bottle from my mouth and heaved, the feeling of vomit rising up my throat. My cheeks inflated, and I started to gag, but instead of puking, I forced the liquid down so I could finally breathe.
“Ugh,” I choked, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. My throat was on fire; my tongue was on fire. For a second, I started to panic that maybe I had been poisoned. “What was that?”
Lena giggled, taking the bottle from my hand and finishing it off. She drank it like water; it amazed me.
“It’s vodka, silly. You’ve never had vodka before?”
Cooper looked around, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. I couldn’t talk, so he talked for me.
“No, she’s never had vodka before. She’s twelve.”
Lena shrugged, unfazed. “Gotta start somewhere.”
Cooper thrust the popcorn in my direction and I shoved a handful deep into my mouth, trying to chew away that awful taste. I felt the fire traveling from my throat down to my stomach, blazing in the pit of my belly. My head was starting to spin just slightly; it was weird, but kinda funny. I smiled.
“See, she likes it,” Lena said, looking at me. Smiling back. “That was an impressive swig. And not just for a twelve-year-old.”
She pulled her shirt down then, covering her skin, her firefly. She tossed her braids behind her shoulders and turned on her heel, a ballerina-type twirl that sent her whole body into motion. When she started to walk away, I couldn’t stop watching her, the way her hips swayed in unison with her hair, the way her legs were skinny but toned in all the right places.