Still, he couldn’t just leave Lulu to wallow in her old-dog misery, so he went in search of a rawhide or a treat, which required a trip to the basement—where Chad’s attention was snagged by his parents’ wine cave. （They pronounced it “kahv,” which made Chad and Leith cringe.） He snatched a bottle of champagne off the rack, and upstairs, he grabbed a ten-inch chef’s knife from the kitchen. In Chad’s final week of school, his professor of French culture had shown the class how to saber the top off a bottle of champagne.
Chad ran outside to the deck, but the party was so out of control, there was no way to get anyone’s attention. Everyone was in or around the pool—swimming, drinking, smoking, making out, dancing. The outdoor speaker blasted Pop Smoke’s “What You Know ’Bout Love.”
Chad ran the blade of the knife along the throat of the champagne bottle, just as Professor Legris had shown them, then hit the bottle with the blade, and—whoosh—the top of the bottle sliced off, neat and clean. Bubbles spewed over Chad’s fingers. He enjoyed one split second of blissful satisfaction—the sabering worked! This was a party trick he could use for the rest of his life!—before he saw his college roommate and best friend, Paddy, hunched over, holding his face.
Somehow without even knowing, Chad knew.
He ran over to Paddy. “You okay, man?”
There was blood spurting out of the fingers that Paddy was holding over his left eye. The cork and the top of the bottle with its thick glass edge had hit Paddy in the face.
“Call nine-one-one!” Chad shouted, but nobody heard him and Chad’s phone was over by the outdoor speaker, controlling the music. He grabbed the nearest person—Tindley, as it turned out—and called the ambulance from her phone.
Paddy wasn’t making any noise, and he was as white as a sheet. Tindley had the presence of mind to bring Paddy a damp towel for his eye. Chad held Paddy’s arm, the one that wasn’t pressed to his face, and wished like hell the cork had hit anyone but Paddy. Paddy Farrell was not only Chad’s best friend; he was a genuinely good and smart person. He’d been a scholarship student at Bucknell. His dad was a long-haul trucker and his mom worked as a legal secretary; they lived in a town of four hundred called Grimesland, North Carolina.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Chad said, wondering why the hell he had sabered the champagne when there were people around? How irresponsible was that? He hadn’t noticed Paddy sitting on the deck; that was the thing. Paddy must have been alone in the dark, which made Chad feel even worse. Paddy didn’t know anyone at the party besides the three other Bucknell guys, and he was quiet by nature. Paddy had driven up from Grimesland at Chad’s insistence. You have to come, man! There are going to be so many girls!
When the ambulance arrived, some people scattered, thinking it was the police. Chad grabbed his phone but left the music playing and climbed into the back of the ambulance with Paddy, who kept insisting he didn’t need to go to the hospital and shouldn’t go because his parents didn’t have that kind of health insurance.
“I’ll pay for it, man. It was my fault,” Chad said.
The paramedic, a woman named Kristy who was actually kind of hot, managed to pry Paddy’s hand away from his eye. She said, matter-of-factly, “That’s going to need surgery.”
“I can’t,” Paddy said. “Afford it.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Chad said again and he thought about how what he meant was that his parents—who at that very moment were probably gazing across a candlelit table at each other, splitting a chocolate mousse—would pay for it. They would find out about the party unless Chad got everyone out of there pronto. He wondered how bad it would be if he didn’t go to the hospital with Paddy and instead stayed home and did damage control.
Bad, he thought. And for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, said a prayer.
When they got to the hospital, Paddy was rushed away; Chad heard someone mention an eye specialist. He was buzzing from the cocaine but also drunk and high and teetering on the edge of paranoia. A nurse gave him a form to fill out but he knew only some of the answers. He needed to call Paddy’s parents—or his own—but he was waiting to see what the doctors said. He was hoping it would turn out to be just stitches and a shiner.
When he handed the clipboard back to the nurse, he said, “Whatever this costs, I’ll pay for it, just make sure he gets the best care.”
They were at Bryn Mawr Hospital, which was where Chad had been born. He hadn’t had a reason to return here in twenty-two years and neither had anyone else in his family. They were just that fortunate, so fortunate that Chad almost broke down crying, but instead he stumbled over to the water fountain and tried to suck it dry.