How to Be Brave(31)

I didn’t know that.

She reaches out to me for the cigarette. “You guys are like my first real friends.”

Oh.

I feel like I should say something in return, something cheesy and heartfelt, something to make up for saying those mean things about her to Liss.

But Evelyn keeps going before I can. “Anyway, my mom’s not going to pay fifteen thousand dollars for a snotty Catholic private school that I’ll probably get kicked out of. She couldn’t afford it.”

“Would she move again?” Liss asks.

“Who knows. She might. Her solution to any problem is to run from it.”

“What about Choices?” Choices is a city-run school where potheads and pregnant moms often escape to so they can finish up their degree without the scrutiny of fifteen hundred other acne-ridden faces. I guess there are only like one hundred kids at each location.

“Yeah. That would suck, I guess. Or maybe not. It would mean school from eight to twelve and then a job in the afternoon. But really, the only way that would happen is if Q-tip kicks me out. And he’s a wimp. He’s totally scared of my mom.”

That’s easy to imagine. Our principal, Mr. McKee, is short and thin and has a bald, shiny head, thus the nickname. His personality is just as limp as a Q-tip, too. I’ve never met Evelyn’s mom, but from the various photos lying around the house, she looks nice enough. After hearing about their constant moves, though, I can see why Evelyn likes to piss her off so much.

“Anyway, let’s talk about something else, okay?” Evelyn takes a drag. “Let’s focus on the positive.”

Ah yes, the positive.

Evelyn unpacks some special dessert for us. We rest our cigarettes in an old bowl on the side table.

“Freshly baked,” she says, passing around the plastic bag full of goodies. “Just as you will be in about, oh, twelve minutes.”

Man, I love this stuff. I know that this is probably not at all what my mom meant by her final letter, but it just feels so good when I do it. I feel alive. Like really alive.

The sun goes down, and we stay up, stuffing ourselves on pizza and Doritos and Coke and Oreos that are beyond stale but that still, somehow, taste utterly divine.

These brownies are relatively mild compared with some of the crazy stuff Evelyn’s gotten for us in the past. I like it. It’s a chill night. We listen to music and do each other’s hair, and I sketch a bit—images of the skyline, which is gorgeous from Evelyn’s twelfth-story window—and we talk about nothing in particular and everything we can think of.

“Hey,” Liss says. “You didn’t cross off number ten yet.”

“Oh yeah,” I say. “Right.” I reach in my bag, pull out my list, and cross off #10. Tribal dancing. That makes four items out of fifteen accomplished. “I’ve only completed twenty-five percent of my list. Lame. I sort of feel like I haven’t done anything, really.”

Liss and Evelyn look over my shoulder at the list.

Evelyn downs her Coke and asks, “What about skinny-dipping?”

“Can’t. Already established that. It’s November and the lake is a frozen tundra.”

“Well, there’s a pool upstairs on the top floor.” Evelyn checks the time on her phone. “It’s two thirty-eight A.M. It’s inside, no one is there, and I have a key. This is a no-fail plan.”

Liss jumps up and down like a kid on Christmas morning. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Let’s do this! Two in one day, Georgia. This is a perfect plan!”

Even in my stoned haze, this plan sounds anything but perfect. “We’ve been dancing all day and now we’re high and stuffed and exhausted,” I say. “This is the perfect recipe for a drowning.”

“Come on,” Liss begs. “You really couldn’t ask for better circumstances.” Her eyes are totally bloodshot, and she’s hyped up on brownies and Coca-Cola.

Ugh. I don’t want to get naked in front of anyone, even if it is my two closest friends. The thing is, the two of them are sort of perfectly thin, whereas … well, I’m just not.

Whose big idea was this, anyway?

Oh right.

Mine.

It’s as though Evelyn can read my mind. “My mom has a closet full of terry-cloth robes stolen from various hotels throughout Europe. We could strip down here, get in our robes, and then all we’d have to do is head upstairs, tear them off, and jump in.”

Well, that certainly makes it sound more enticing. A quick strip, a quick swim, and then I can mark #5 off my list.

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

“Yes!” Liss screams. “Number five, let’s go!” That girl has a set of lungs on her.

“Okay,” I say. “But you have to be quiet in the hallway. People are sleeping.”

“Whatever,” Evelyn mumbles. “They’re dying a slow death, is what they’re doing.”

Evelyn leads us into her mom’s room, which is even messier than hers, and we pillage her closet and each pick out our own robe, mine with a Hilton emblem on it, Evelyn’s with a W, and Liss’s with what might be the Four Seasons. “Your mom actually got to stay in these places?”

“Yeah, a long time ago, when things were better. Now she can’t afford to anymore, but she keeps this shit as a reminder of her long-lost glorious youth.”