This Is Where the World Ends(32)

“Never Have I Ever,” Piper insists, and we all ignore her.

“We could play beer pong again,” says Big Jizz.

“We’re not playing beer pong again,” I say, and my tongue feels fuzzy. I am spectacularly bad at beer pong. “Oh, Flubber! Let’s play Flubber! Wes, get the cards.”

“What the hell kind of a game is called Flubber?” asks Gonzalo.

“FUBAR,” Ander explains. “Janie doesn’t like that, so she calls it Flubber.”

“Flubber is such a cute word,” I say, and giggle, and can’t stop giggling. Flubber, flubber.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” Wes says, coming back with another bottle of vodka and the deck of cards, which he rains down on my face. He drops down by Piper and takes a swig of Keystone Light, and I roll out of Ander’s lap and pull the cards across the carpet to me as he explains: one shot for an ace, two for two. Pick three people to drink for three. Answer a question for four. Five for five. Six, everyone drinks. Seven, a round of Never Have I Ever. Eight, everyone drinks. Nine, rhyme, loser drinks. Ten, everyone drinks. Jack, guys drink; queen, girls drink. And king, what do we do for king?

“Waterfall,” I say. Trip, stumble, bubble, burp. “Dealer drinks and then the next person drinks and the next person drinks and you drink until you can’t drink anymore. Like chicken but more fun.”

“It’s a stupid game,” Jude says, but he takes the deck from me to deal. “All right, let’s go. Jizz and I gotta head out after this. My parents are getting back from Des Moines tonight.”

“Why does Jizz have to go?” I ask.

“I’m his ride, remember? You’re such a lightweight, Janie,” says Jude, and throws a card at my face.

“Am not,” I say. “You guys are cheaters. You never drink when I get the ball in your cup. At least I’m not Gonzalo.”

“Yeah, Gonz.” Ander laughs, leaning over to slap Gonzalo’s shoulder. “Dude, he’s out. Damn, he had like, what, seven shots?”

“Piece of shit,” Wes snorts. “I brought the hard lemonade for the * and he gets wasted on the good stuff. Typical. Jude, f*cking deal.”

“Shove it,” Jude says, but he flips a card at him. Ace. Wes throws back the last shot of the old bottle and flicks the tiny bit of leftover vodka at Piper, who’s sprawled on the ground in a crop top that barely covers her bra. I try to remember what Dad said about the carpets when we first moved, but I only remember that they were expensive. It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve spilled enough that it doesn’t even pay to worry. I’m in one of Ander’s shirts because I spilled beer on mine. It has his name across the back in big red letters: C A M E R O N.

Piper flips him off and Wes grins at her, a big blurry grin. Jude hands her a card. Seven.

“Ugh,” Piper says. “Okay, okay. Um. Never have I ever . . . never have I ever finished a large order of fries from McDonald’s.”

“Bullshit,” says Wes. “Bull. Shit. Seriously? Girls, man.” All fingers down. Mine too. One large order of fries? Please. I’ve had five. Micah and I went through a phase where we’d go to McDonald’s every Metaphor Day. We built Jenga towers out of fries and threw them at ducks.

“There you go, Janie,” Wes says appreciatively as my finger goes down. He snaps my bra strap and snaps it again, picking me like a guitar. “At least you know how to live.”

How to live. I am living, living, living.

Jude hands me a three. “Me,” I say, “Ander, Piper.”

We throw our heads back and the vodka rushes down my throat and drowns all of the butterflies. If it didn’t taste like burning, it might have tasted like apples. Apple vodka, one of my dad’s fancy bottles. Micah once told me that he thought that he hated vodka. I don’t hate vodka. Vodka is easy. I don’t even need a chaser for vodka, not for vodka.

They cheer me on.

Ander gets a ten. We all drink. Jizzy gets another seven. We all drink again. Jude pulls a nine. “Nine,” he says.

“Wine,” says Wes.

“Swine,” says Piper.

“Line,” says Ander.

“Vine,” says me.

Sign, dine, mine, incline, aine. “Aine?”

We all look at Ander, who’s very, very blurry.

“What?” he says. “It’s a word. Old English or some shit. It was in the Shakespeare we read in class. Right?”

“No, shithead,” says Wes. “This is America. We play American FUBAR. Drink.”

He drinks.

And we go and go and go. Queen, five, ace. Ace, three, nine.

“This game is too complicated,” Jizzy complains, probably because he only has two brain cells: one that’s in charge of making sure his hair is perfect every morning and one that’s a balloon in his head, pushing on the sides of his skull so he thinks he’s smart. He grabs a bottle of vodka for the road and kicks Jude. “We should go.”

“Yeah, sure,” says Jude, and he leaves the deck while Wes calls them faggots.

“I don’t like that word,” I tell him. I try to frown. Come on, caterpillar eyebrows. Work with me.

“I don’t like you,” he says, and it’s true. Wes told Ander when we first started going out that he’d rather jump into the quarry than date me.