pain through her knuckles, which
coincided with a fit of laughter at how satisfying it was to drunkenly
punch a wall in anger. She did it a second time, too in love with the
thought of it not to try again. The pain was too bad for a third attempt.
She hurled a bowl of chip crumbles across the yard, and it soared like
a broken Frisbee. She broke the chair Joey Planko had sat in against
the lawn, leaving wooden splinters sticking out of the scorched grass
at dangerous angles.
172 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES
She pictured Dave—her Dave, the funniest guy she knew, her best
friend, the only person she could even imagine spending her days
with—side by side with cookie-cutter Gretchen and her perfect blond
waves and Julia broke into laughter so uncontrollable she had to lie
down and let it tear through her. She ripped out a patch of grass and
ripped the blades to shreds, throwing them in the air like confetti. As
the bits of green rained down on her, she thought about waking up the
guy on the couch and kissing him as an act of revenge, but she settled
on going to the kitchen and finding more beer. Whether to drink or
throw she hadn’t yet decided.
Julia loved Dave. And she would tear her house apart to prove it.
Julia woke up to the sound of the garage door rumbling open.
Sunlight streamed into her room. She’d forgotten to close the blinds
last night, and she hadn’t bothered to change out of her clothes. She
was on top of her bedding, sweating slightly from the heat, her head
pounding, a pain in her hand. In the far corner of her room, her
phone lay facedown on the carpet, she didn’t know why. It looked
like it’d been thrown against the wall, but she couldn’t remember
doing that. Ugh, alcohol.
The garage door rumbled shut, and she heard the muffled voices
of her dads getting out of the car. Julia wondered if her dads would
wait to ambush her downstairs or if they’d come barging in. Then, in a
flash, she remembered the love seat that she’d drunkenly dragged into
the bathroom. Looping this image into the memory of last night, she
JULIA 173
knew it had happened after Dave had left, though it felt like something
they would have done together. She laughed into her pillow, as pieces
of the night started coming back, knowing for a fact now that the
dads would be running in at any moment. She was so hungover that
laughing hurt; she felt like a desert floor with cracks running through
it. Looking over at her empty nightstand, she wished her drunken self
had been smart enough to get a glass of water for this exact moment.
The dads started stomping their way up the stairs. They knocked
twice, loud and hard, like a couple of gunshots. Tom came in first,
his face bright red, the way it looked when he had even a sip of wine.
Ethan, in poorer shape, lagged behind, huffing from the hurried climb
up the stairs.
“Julia,” Tom said, arms crossed in front of his chest, “care to explain
why the hell my house looks the way that it does?”
Julia decided she was going to lie in bed and take the yelling barrage
without comment for a while. She tried to remember getting into bed
last night, but all that came to her was a fuzzy memory of a bonfire,
which felt more like something out of a dream. Why did her hand
hurt? And why hadn’t Dave slept over, sprawled out next to her bed in
that musky sleeping bag like he usually did?
“There’s a hole in my wall, ash all over my carpet, and a crusty
puddle of puke on my suede couch,” Tom was yelling, that vein in his
neck starting to pop out. Ethan was standing by the door, biting his
thumb, looking like he was the one in trouble. “There’s trash all over
the place, and that doesn’t even come close to mattering compared to
174 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES
the fact that you had underage kids drinking here. The whole school
judging by how many empty beer cans are around. Do you realize how
irresponsible that is?”
The memory of a fight with Dave appeared suddenly, her on the
verge of tears after he’d left. Wait. Had she drunkenly decided that she was in love with Dave? Julia almost laughed in the middle of her dad’s
tirade. Of all the stupid ideas people get when under the influence;
Julia shook her head at the thought. It couldn’t have actually happened.
And even if it did, Julia would plead temporary beer-induced insanity.
But it didn’t happen. “What if the cops had been called? What if
someone had been hurt?” Tom was leaning over her now,