Family Law, Gin Phillips [top novels of all time .txt] 📗

“What’s faster than a black guy stealing your television?” Travis said, barely pausing. “His brother with your stereo.”

I usually reached this stage of disappointment at a party. I started out having a decent time and then everyone got drunker and then some people got naked and some people got stupid and some people got unconscious, and I started regretting going to the trouble of lying to Mom in the first place.

The lying was a new experiment. No other eleventh grader I knew had a 10:00 p.m. curfew on the weekends, and I was done with it. I was done with plenty of things. The dishonesty had gone well so far: on this particular night, I’d told Mom I was having a sleepover with Tina, and that was true. Granted, Tina was on the patio doing Jell-O shots with a couple of her brother’s college friends, but eventually she would be asleep and so would I.

I headed down the hallway, careful not to nudge open any doors. You did not want to glance inside a bedroom at this time of night. I was aiming for the end of the hall and the room that belonged to Tina’s oldest brother, the one who’d graduated college last year. He’d moved his old bed and dresser to his new apartment, so his empty bedroom had turned into the place where everyone dumped their purses and jackets.

The door wasn’t closed. I stepped into the quiet room. The purses were lined up against the wall, and the coats were piled in the corner in a way that made me want to jump into the middle of them. I’d borrowed a black halter top from Tina, which possibly made me look like a stripper, and besides that, I was freezing. I missed sleeves.

I was studying the coats when John came in. Even from the corner of my eye, I recognized the dark-green shirt he’d been wearing. I wondered if he’d followed me, but that was ridiculous.

“Do you ever get tired of being the only one who doesn’t drink?” he asked.

I turned toward him.

He wasn’t wrong. I’d had a sip of someone else’s beer a couple of times, but nothing more than that. I didn’t drink. I didn’t swear. I didn’t do anything. I’d never let a single boy put his tongue in my mouth or his hand up my shirt, although that was possibly related to the lack of beer. Mom had taught me well. Once you started something, there was no telling where it might go. What if something happened? What if someone saw?

“Do you?” I asked. He sometimes had a beer or two, but for a guy that was the same as not drinking.

“It’s more fun to watch everyone else,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “Why are you staring at the coats?”

“I’m bored,” I said, and thought about our English teacher’s instructions for writing a college essay. She told us to do more than convey basic information. She said that if we wanted to be chosen, we needed to be distinctive.

“I was thinking of how they’re like a pile of leaves,” I added. “It would be a soft landing.”

“Huh,” he said, rubbing his chin. His jaw looked like it could have been drawn onto a cartoon superhero. “I feel like the purses have more potential. We could build something. Like a maze.”

He picked up a small, neat bag, shiny blue and zipped.

“A purse maze?” I said. “Not very challenging. You need high walls for a good maze.”

He did not seem to mind the criticism. We discussed purse pyramids and purse juggling, and we landed on purse bowling. It happened so quickly, the shift from communing with coats to holding up my end of this unexpected weirdness. We arranged the purses into a triangle, and the whole time I had to keep one hand across my chest to make sure I stayed inside my halter.

Once we had all the purses standing on their sides, precarious, we counted our paces and marked a starting spot with someone’s plaid scarf. We kept the rectangular blue purse for our bowling ball. John waved for me to go first, and I took two steps back and sent the purse tumbling through the air, skimming the carpet before it smacked into a denim, an Esprit, and one massive gold lamé.

I got a spare.

He got a split.

A few throws later, I managed to bounce the blue purse under the one remaining piece of furniture in the room, a small bedside table with a flower-patterned ceramic lamp like something my grandmother might have. I could see why Tina’s brother hadn’t taken it with him.

I dropped to my knees and reached under the table, and as the carpet nubs came close to my face, I remembered lying on Lucia’s floor with her elbow against my spine, her hair in my face. My cheek had been pressed into the carpet, my hand under the dining-room table. I’d felt only carpet at first, but then I’d latched onto something hard, and it was a pencil, the small eraserless kind you use to score putt-putt, and I’d been thinking, Wait, Lucia and Evan play putt-putt? as more glass fell from the window. I was still holding the pencil in my hand when the shooting stopped. I didn’t let go of it until I got in my car.

After that first shot, Lucia had reached for me and pushed me down, and her hand curved around my head and her body covered mine.

It had been nearly three months, and I never thought about Lucia anymore. I didn’t wonder whether she liked the B-52’s or whether she’d ever worn halter tops. I didn’t imagine her response to Travis and his racist jokes. I didn’t construct entire conversations where I told her about my history teacher kissing boys on their birthday or about Aunt Molly setting her kitchen on fire. I didn’t ever replay that afternoon when we’d stood in a laundry room facing