six, she’s drinking wine and dancing around the kitchen in her long, striped pool cover-up to the music Ethan already has blasting in the yard, trays of mini hot dogs spread across the kitchen counter.
“No chance she’s awake past ten p.m.,” you whisper, as you sneak me past the kitchen and up the stairs to your room.
* * *
By 9:00 p.m., the party is in full swing, the music so loud, I can’t believe the neighbors haven’t called the cops. Then again, everyone knows and loves your brother, don’t they? Eagle Scout, honor roll, varsity tennis champ, Ethan Andersson.
You and I walk out to the backyard. It’s thick with bodies, sweaty guys in swim trunks playing volleyball with girls in skimpy bikinis, couples against trees making out, kids in the pool. Still others who have wandered off to the basement to play Ping-Pong and video games.
I barely recognize your mom’s perfectly manicured yard with its tent and tables and streamers and lanterns and mostly catered food, even a giant ice sculpture of tennis rackets crossed over each other, lit in purple and blue that, much to your father’s later unhappiness, intentionally or unintentionally, doubles as a luge for shots of Jack Daniel’s poured from bottles hidden in various spots around the yard.
At the moment, the luge is unattended and your dad is happily chatting with two pretty girls, your mother in the chair next to him, sipping what might be her third or fourth glass of red wine.
“Jesus, they’re lame, way to ruin a party,” you say, grabbing my hand. “On the other hand, now’s our chance,” and you pull me toward the kitchen, closing the sliding glass door behind us. Leaving me there, standing guard, you fetch a bottle of red wine from the fridge, pour two big paper cups, hold the bottle under the tap for a second, and swirl it around before shoving it back in behind others on the shelf. You summon me with a raised cup, and I raise my eyebrows in response, so you add, “Hopefully they’ll be too wasted to even notice.”
* * *
Up in your room, we sip at the wine and change into our new bikinis we bought for the occasion—one purple and white stripes, the other green paisley—and we each take half, and admire ourselves, tipsy opposites, in the mirror.
You cup your chest in your hands, push up, and say, “You look bigger; maybe I should take the striped top,” and without missing a beat, I whip it off and hand it to you, and you strip off your bottoms and we switch, so that now we’re opposites once again, smiling at each other in the mirror.
“You really would do anything for me, wouldn’t you?” you say, and I bust out laughing, though I’m not sure why. It’s like a bunch of mixed emotions are swirling inside me and coming out as uncontrollable laughter: I feel happy and giddy and excited and nervous and guilty and sad all at the same time. Maybe it’s the wine. You do another spin, locate your cup, and down the rest impossibly fast.
“Finish yours, too,” you order. I oblige, and lie down next to you where you’ve collapsed backward on your bed.
“I love you, JL,” you say, finding and holding my hand, and stretching one foot up in the air, your blue-polished toes pointed toward the ceiling. “Hey, remember that?” You draw a circle with your toes around a shadow of splatter on the ceiling.
“Mr. Popper’s Pepsi,” I say. “Our TV commercial phase.”
You drop your leg and laugh. “Mr. Popper’s Pepsi will pop your taste buds wide open,” you say, putting on the too-perky voice you used that day. “Personally, I prefer it!”
“Pop one today!” I say, extricating my hand from yours to pretend to pull a pop-top can open in the air above me. “And that’s when I jumped down from the bed and…” I make an explosion with my hands. “Who knew soda could reach that far?”
“We were so scared, remember? But my parents never found out.”
I close my eyes and smile. The wine is making the room spin a little, the dizziness mixing with good memories of us little, doing dumb, carefree things. It feels like so long ago since I felt like a kid, like you and I could be light and silly, and play pretend. The real world and high school have been so much harder.
“Should we go down?” I ask, my brain skirting for the first time since