Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,61
pretty sure Luke had played once or twice, but I didn’t understand the game. How could you drink beer while playing ping-pong? That’s how I thought you played, holding a bottle of beer in your left hand and your ping-pong paddle in your right hand.
But the beer was in red plastic cups, not bottles, and the cups were grouped together in triangle shapes on the surface of the ping-pong table. There were no paddles, but there were ping-pong balls—the guys just used their hands to throw the balls into the cups of beer. There were only guys playing. It looked like this was a “no girls allowed” zone. Backed two cautious feet from the testosterone-laden and splintered wood table, the girls stood in twos or threes, in jean skirts, gnawing at the rims of their own red plastic cups. Somehow, even though they didn’t play, the girls knew a lot about the rules of the game. But how many rules could there be for throwing a ball in a cup?
“His elbow was a millimeter over the edge of the table! That shot doesn’t count.”
“His partner didn’t say he was ‘heating up’ after the second shot sunk but before the opponent’s turn began. He won’t get the ball back upon sinking a third consecutive shot.”
Apparently, there were more rules than I thought!
“Do you know how to play beer pong?” I asked Kate as we stood on the sidelines watching, holding red plastic cups. Ours contained Mountain Dew, though; Luke had poured our nonalcoholic drinks in the kitchen while he got himself a beer.
Kate shook her head.
I quickly resolved to go home that very night and learn beer pong. Once I was a master, I could beat seniors, and Kate would be impressed. So how would I get good? Luke would practice shots with me. I’d find a piece of wood for a table and we could sacrifice Luke’s desk, which he never used anyway, to practice. We’d fill cups with water. I figured we’d get about two weeks of practice in before my mother discovered the cups in triangular formation and assumed we had joined a satanic cult. Yes, we were rehearsing for a game that involved drinking beer, and we were underage, but I knew my mom’s mind would leap first to satanic cult.
Of course, I had never even had a beer. Maybe you had to learn how to drink beer before you learned how to play.
Or maybe if you drank too much beer, you couldn’t play at all: none of these guys were actually getting their ping-pong balls in the cups of beer. So it was a pretty boring game to watch. The only entertaining thing was watching girls try to chase and retrieve the stray balls from the cobwebbed corners of the garage without bending over too far in their short skirts.
“Is this cup of water really used to clean the ball?” Kate asked, peering over the edge of the table at a red cup of water with a dirty clump of hair floating on its surface. “I don’t think it’s working.”
“We probably got swine flu just by watching this game,” I said. “Should we go see if the iPod DJ is still playing Chris Brown?”
“I think we should go to the kitchen and see your brother do a kegstand,” she said. “He’ll make it into an Olympic sport.”
Kate led the way up the basement steps, and I had my hand on her back, possessive yet cool about it, when—Bang! The door swung open in front of us and hit a beam of the garage wall. This wasted kid who couldn’t even see in front of him stumbled into the garage. Kate and I both backed up, because he stumbled down all three basement steps. Then he stopped, turned to us, and rocked back and forth, back on his heels, forward on his toes. Back on his heels, forward…
Rocking Chair pointed to Kate, his finger reaching forward out of his drunken stupor.
“Hey,” he said. His eyelids drooped down over his eyes. “I know you,” he told Kate.
Kate stood still, like she was hoping not to be noticed. Thinking this kid didn’t even know who he was pointing to (or where he was), I led the way up the stairs again, took the first step, but—
“Katie,” Rocking Chair said loudly, over the sound of a runaway beer pong ball and the girls shrieking over it. “Katie Gallatin.”
“Kate?” I began. How did this creepy guy know Kate? This chest-filling, defensive,