Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls (10 page)

Chapter 22

1 year, 2 months, 6 days earlier

“Say cheeeese,” Ryan said.

“Not so fast, fucko,” said Delia. She leaped up and made a grab for his phone. Ryan held it behind his back. The two of them tussled, and June watched from the couch, her entire body filled with warmth.

“What are you smiling about, smiler?” Ryan said.

June touched her mouth, which was all curled up on the sides, and realized he must be talking to her. She hadn’t even known she was smiling! She guessed it must be because of how well all of this was going, because of how happy that made her. (Also, possibly a little tiny bit because of the alcohol.)

They’d made the plan weeks ago once they found out Ryan’s parents would be out of town. It was supposed to be four of them: June and Ryan, who Delia had never really hung out with before, and Delia with her new boyfriend,
who June had never even met. His name was Sloan and he was the drummer in a band that Delia liked. Delia had met him after one of his shows. The first thing he ever said to her was, “If there are an infinite number of parallel universes, then in at least one of them we’re already fucking.”

“I was into it,” Delia had told June. “Obviously. I mean, that’s a hot line right there. Turns out he stole it from a much smarter friend.” But Delia said he was so sexy it didn’t even matter. “Being interesting is not what he’s here for.”

June had seen many pictures of him, including a picture of his dick, because Delia would do things like that, show you a bunch of normal pictures with a penis thrown in like it was nothing. “And there’s Sloan’s dog, and there’s his roommate whose beard has fleas, I think, and there’s a naked Sloan peen.” She was so good at being completely deadpan about it, as though she didn’t even know that what she was doing was out of the ordinary at all. So yeah, June had hoped she would forget about seeing Sloan’s crotch by the time she met him, because, y’know . . . But then, well, it turned out she never
would
meet him, because an hour and a half ago instead of arriving with Sloan, Delia showed up with a half-filled jug of cheap vodka, a jar of maraschino cherries, and a story about how she’d dumped that snoozy loser on the car ride over (but not before, because he was giving her a ride). “More vodka for us,” Delia had said with a wink, and then toasted the air and took a long chug right there on the front steps.

But as June had watched Delia, standing alone, pouring vodka into herself, June had gotten a feeling of deep dread down in her gut. The feeling like something
bad
was going to happen that night.

Lately, when it was her and June alone together, and Delia was drinking—which she was doing an awful lot now—Delia got dark. They’d always looked at the world as us-against-them, but while it used to be in a because-no-one-else-quite-
gets
-it sort of way, now it was
because-everyone-else-and-the-rest-of-the-world-is-shit.
Alcohol was the fuel that powered the Delia rocket down-down-down to the pitch-blackness.
June didn’t
want
to see everything like that, but Delia’s feelings wrapped around her and slid under her skin until they were indistinguishable from her own.

When they originally planned the night, June had hoped, assumed even, that with Sloan there, Delia would be her sparkling, fun, charismatic self. Being around guys she was currently having sex with or might one day want to have sex with usually kept her on her best behavior. But without him, who knew what would happen? What would it be like, just the three of them?

At first the answer to that question was:
very awkward
. Ryan was being uncharacteristically quiet, and Delia was talking a lot, the way she sometimes did when she’d been drinking. June was glad that Delia hadn’t immediately sunk into a pit of blackness, but Delia kept bringing up private
jokes between her and June, things they hadn’t even talked about in years. It was like she wanted to make sure that Ryan knew how close she and June were, that if there was going to be a third wheel, she wouldn’t be it. Then Delia started saying how boring Sloan was, but how she was going to miss
certain things
about him, and then she looked at June meaningfully and winked. “June knows what I mean,” Delia had said. And June felt embarrassed, since it was obvious what Delia was talking about, and she hoped Ryan wouldn’t then assume she’d told Delia very, very private things about
him
, which actually wasn’t true. Though if it had been a few months ago, she would have told Delia everything. But because things had been changing, she hadn’t. She was, in that moment, oddly grateful for that.

So things started out very awkward. But then what happened on that crisp clear night in early October was that June, who never drank at all, decided she would, just this once, because, dear Lord, was this hard. And because Delia was already half drunk, and Ryan had started too.

“Hit me, barkeep,” June had said then. And if Delia was surprised—which she must have been, how could she not have been?—she didn’t show it in front of Ryan.

The first shot burned and made her cough, and Delia gave her some of the syrup that came in the jar of maraschino cherries to chase the shot with, which didn’t make it much better. But right away June felt a warming in her belly
and up the back of her neck. And the second shot wasn’t nearly as bad. And a few minutes later things didn’t feel quite so awkward anymore; that impending
doom
feeling had vanished. After the next shot she wondered why she’d ever been concerned at all—about Delia and her darkness and the weirdness that had worked its way into their friendship, about Ryan and whether he’d leave her, about her mother, school, life. About anything, really.

And now, watching Delia playfully try to steal the phone from Ryan, watching Ryan smiling at her, June felt a rush of pure joyful pleasure and realized that actually, it was much better this way with just the three of them. And that everything that was happening right then was better than anything else that had ever happened. This was maybe the happiest moment of her life so far. Which, come to think of it, was sort of ridiculous.

June giggled.

“She’s laughing at how her best friend is so much slicker than her boyfriend,” Delia said to Ryan. And then Delia yanked the phone out of his hands, threw it on the couch, and sat on it.

“Something like that,” June said. And she smiled even wider at her two favorite people on this entire planet. June leaned back, and Delia started pouring more vodka into the mugs they were using as shot glasses.

“I don’t know if I . . . ,” June started to say. She felt perfect
right now; she didn’t want to ruin it. Actually, maybe her head was already spinning a little.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Delia said. “Listen to your father.” She pointed at
WORLD’S BEST DAD
printed on her mug. Then handed
VERMONTER!
to June.

June drank her shot. It didn’t even taste like anything at all.

Ryan was standing up at the end of the couch, sipping from the beer that had somehow appeared in his hand. And for a second June wondered if maybe he felt left out, and she thought about going over to give him a hug or to tell him to come and sit with them. June started to stand up. Delia grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.

“Okay, NOW take a picture,” Delia said. June looked up at Ryan. He wasn’t the sort of person who could be commanded. She’d heard how annoyed he got when his younger sister Marissa tried to tell him what to do. But right then Ryan only smiled and nodded. Delia tossed him her phone, then pressed herself right up against June. She grabbed a chunk of June’s long blond hair, pulling it across her own forehead and behind her own ear. “How do I look as a blonde?” she said. She was using this funny accent she only ever did when they were alone. In the accent, “blonde” sounded like “blow-nd.” Delia’s cheek was warm against hers and her elbow was digging into June’s chest, but June could barely feel it.

June took a fistful of Delia’s curls and held them behind her own ear. Trying on each other’s hair was something they’d been doing for years.

“CLICK,” Ryan said loudly. And he snapped the picture. Then he put the phone back on the table.

“You girls are like kids playing hair salon,” Ryan said. And June realized she and Delia were still squashed together. They were so touchy, her and Delia. It was nice, to be like that with a friend, to cuddle up together when watching a movie, or walk with your arms around each other. “You don’t get hugged ever at home,” Delia had said a few years before. “And whenever I get hugged, it’s creepy. But there’s a chemical that has a name that I can’t remember, and it explains why hugging is so good to do with someone you love.”

June had forgotten that Ryan had never seen her and Delia together before, really. She felt, for a second, the tiniest bit embarrassed, or like maybe he would feel awkward about the whole thing because he was the one who was supposed to be her boyfriend.

But when she looked up at Ryan, he was grinning. She thought about how sexy his grin was. He didn’t usually grin, he smiled. He was sweet and acted like the boyfriends—the nice ones—on TV shows and in movies, which was not unwelcome and always made her think how different he was than other boys who’d liked her, how different she felt
around him. But this, this grin, it was not something she’d seen before. Maybe his face looked this way because he was drunk. Or maybe because she was.

Things went on like that for a while, the drinking, laughing, every moment melting into the next one. At some point Delia sat straight up, stretched her arms up over her head, and said, as though it had just occurred to her, “Hey, I know a better game we could play.”

Later June would think about this, the casualness with which Delia had suggested this. She’d wonder how drunk Delia had been and if she’d known what might happen next. June might go back and forth forever, but she wouldn’t figure it out. You could never be sure, that was a thing June had learned. You could just never be sure about anything.

“So how do we do it?” Ryan said.

“Well,” said Delia. “First we all sit down, and then everyone has to get a pillow. And then . . . Do you have some cards and also some dice?”

Ryan nodded and went into the drawer under the TV where his family kept games, because they were the type of family who had a drawer for that.

“Great,” Delia said. “Now, everyone”—June thought it was funny that Delia kept saying “everyone”
like there were many more of them—“needs to have somewhere between four and six cards, which is to say five cards, since that’s the only number in the middle. Unless you want to tear the cards
up. Do you?” She turned toward June and held up her hand, then whispered loudly, as a joke, so that Ryan could hear, “I’m making this up as I go along. Help me out, babycakes.”

“Oh wait,” June said, trying to sound serious and sober, which was actually really hard right about then. “Delia, you forgot the part about the shoes.”

“The shoes?” Delia said. “Oh right, how silly of me.”

“Ryan,” June said, “you sit down on the couch and take off your shoes and then . . .” And she couldn’t think of anything funny to say, because her brain was moving so slowly, with the alcohol that was in it, so instead she said, “And take a shot!” She pointed at him. “You there! Sir! Take! A! Shot!” She was yelling now for no reason. Did she even
want
him to take a shot? He was looking at her, seemed amused, maybe. And then he did it. And afterward he winked at her, which he’d never done before. She didn’t even know he
could
wink. He was good at it!

And . . . the game started to evolve. Later June would try very hard to figure out which one of them had made it go in the particular direction it went.

They decided it was a drinking game, kind of like truth or dare and spin the bottle and strip poker all combined, with some other stuff from other games in there too. None of them were entirely clear on the rules. Or if there even were any.

They tossed cards into the center of the table and everyone had to drink, and then Ryan danced like a stripper and
took off his shirt while Delia laughed hysterically.

“You’re right,” Delia said loudly. She wiped laugh-tears off her cheeks. “He isn’t boring.”

Ryan pretended to look offended. “You were right,” he said to June about Delia. “She’s not a
complete
freak.”

“Oh yes she is.” Delia waggled her eyebrows.

“Okay,” said Ryan. “But only in a good way.”

And the game went on. They drank more. Delia spit a shot directly into June’s mouth, and Ryan talked dirty to a pineapple, and June tried to take off her bra without taking off her shirt and somehow ended up falling off the couch.

And then they were kind of playing Twister! They were kind of dancing! They were in a pile on the floor! And it was so weird and so fun! But the moment she saw Ryan and Delia’s lips meet, which was really part of the game somehow, she was pretty sure, June knew this whole thing was a terrible mistake. Even numbed by all the alcohol, she immediately felt hot panic rushing around inside her.

And suddenly she was very sick.

She stood up, shaky on jelly legs. She had to get out of there. She was not feeling well at all—this was possibly the worst she’d ever felt in her life. “I am going to go to the bathroom,” she said. But her voice barely worked and maybe no one heard her.

She didn’t want to throw up here on the floor. She started walking away without turning back, so she wouldn’t have to
see them. Her face was on fire and she was sweating but so cold. The walls kept moving and she gripped on to them, and then the whole room tilted like a carnival ride. She somehow made it to the bathroom. The lights were bright, and when she accidentally looked in the mirror, she saw some kind of monster with messy hair, puffy face, and red cherry syrup on her chin like a goatee. She did not want to look in the mirror anymore then, so instead she turned off the light and sat on the floor and leaned her cheek against the cool porcelain of the base of the sink. She waited for the throw-up to get ready to come out of her mouth, but it didn’t. She thought,
I wonder if being able to drink a lot and not throw up is generic,
and then she was sort of impressed with herself that she could think of the word “generic” then. Only a few seconds later she realized that wasn’t the word she meant, but she wasn’t able to think of what word she did mean. And then she thought about her mother, and she thought about Ryan and Delia in the living room, and then she started to cry.