Squirrel

See, Caroline and I were going to share the big bedroom and get our lives together. That was the plan. I remember the night we hatched it. I’m at Ranch Hand’s annual Christmas party at Lucky Jake’s, and I come out for a smoke, and who do you think I find in the parking lot with his hands all over Jill’s fat ass? I can’t help it, I pick up the beer bottle that I accidentally kick as I’m jogging toward him and actually—lucky shot—get his shoulder. I have to hightail it before he fucking kills me, but I can hear her yelling in her fat girl’s voice, calling me a crazy bitch. And I’m thinking even as I’m running, Right, I’m the crazy bitch, and of course I’m also thinking it was only last week that Jill and I were drinking the apple schnapps sodas that Darrell makes for us by the dumpsters and laughing about what scum guys can be. That’s the kind of friend she was. The kind who shares an apple schnapps and soda with you one minute and the next sticks her tongue down your boyfriend’s throat. Not that we called each other boyfriend and girlfriend. We were above that in a way. It’s hard to explain. But, really, it went without saying. We lived together, people.

So eventually Jake stops chasing me. And I’m in front of Rock Island, and I hate that place more than anything, but there’s just about no one on the street, so he’d be able to pick me out pretty quick if his plan was to go back for the car, and I figure what he’ll want to do is explain it all away, and I’m too sick of myself to offer up the chance to fall for it.

I don’t want to go inside, but I do anyway, and as soon as I’m through the door I start to shiver. I’ve never just walked into a place like this by myself, and I’m feeling like, I don’t know, a prostitute or something. The rainbow lights are spinning webs around the room and my head is so light I think it might just rise off my body. But then Caroline finds me.

“Hey, sweetie pie,” she says, giving me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. This is just how she is. I used to think she was gay, but she’s always with some dopey guy. She does have a big thing for Madonna, though—has magazine pictures of her all over her walls, and wears one lace fingerless glove in honor of her most of the time. Today’s glove is fuchsia. “How you doing?” she asks.

I want to just fall down on my knees and cry, but Caroline puts a stopper to that, because her eyes are slick and darting all over the place. “Can you get me a drink?” I ask. I ask it because I can see she’s somehow got her hands on a green wrist band—which is what they give you at the door to prove you’re twenty-one. She nods and hands me her drink, so she can get back to the bar. It’s a rum and coke, which I hate upon hate. But I drink it anyway.

It’s not so bad after that. Petey’s there and he’s wearing shiny red heels and a short pleated skirt. He’s doing this dance that involves a shoulder shimmy and a butt pose angled so you think you’re going to see something you don’t want to see—only you don’t. Then it’s 3 a.m., and we’re all in Petey’s car.

“You’ve never freebased before? I can’t believe it.”

“She’s a righteous prude, Petey. But I love her still,” Caroline says hugging me with her free hand, but only for a minute because she yanks it back to take the foil and the...