SIXTEEN
Georgia
“ONE, TWO, THREE,”Emmanuel shrieks.
“EYES ON ME,” the bar responds.
“THREE, TWO, ONE,” Emmanuel screams.
“DOWN AND DONE,” we scream back, knocking back bottom-shelf tequila.
The bar, a dive named ‘Tim’s’ a block away from the school, is silent for a moment as twenty-ish teachers suck on lime wedges. I don’t know exactly how many. I did know at some point, but that was before this fourth or fifth shot of tequila and now-warm half-finished beer in my hand.
I turn to my team. “I love you guys.”
“We hate you,” Emmanuel tells me, dark eyes glazed yet still bright with mirth.
Mia’s tiny body is half seated on a bar stool, one foot on the bottom rail of the bar, the other not-so-firmly planted on the ground, her normally perfect ponytail slightly askew. “I should probably head home soon,” she slurs, but tries very hard not to.
“What? No,” I try equally hard not to slur back.
“I gotta head in a bit, too,” Tamika states. She, unlike therest of us, sits perfectly poised on the top of a bar stool. The only sign she’s been drinking is the four or five shots I watched her put down with the rest of us.
I look at her with one eye. “How do you look so perfect right now? How do you look like that, and we,” I say, gesturing to myself and Mia, as Emmanuel moves away, “look like this?”
“Don’t count me in attendance to your white girl wasted party,” Emmanuel says, standing next to Tamika and resting his head on her shoulder.
“I’m wasted,” Tamika says.
“Not like them, you’re not,” Emmanuel says.
“We’ve been drinking for, like, a million hours.”
Tamika looks at her watch. “Four hours.”
“I hate that man,” I say.
“ME?!” Emmanuel screeches. “What did I ever do to you?! I fought the lunch lady for a string cheese for you!”
“No, not you. Oliver,” I reply.
“I think we’re really losing the plot here,” Tamika says, propping Mia up so that both her butt cheeks rest on the stool.
“I really didn’t want him to be like my last admin,” I wail. “They were the worst.”
“So, you purposefully antagonize him?” Tamika asks.
“Not anymore!” I yell indignantly.
“I love this song!” Mia and Emmanuel shriek, as a song about calling your girlfriend comes over the speakers. They grip hands and run to the corner of the bar to dance with a group of first grade teachers.
I heave my body onto the stool Mia has just vacated, resting my elbows on the bar and putting my suddenly very heavy head in my hands.
“What happened with Max’s dad today?” Tamika says. I am learning that Tamika is one of those heart-to-heart people,not a butterfly in social situations, but a ‘let’s sit down one-on-one in the middle of this party and have a deep conversation’ person. Not like me. Like Eloise, though. “I saw you and him getting into it the yard.”
“Max’s dad came for me and Max and Dorothy and her family today. I gave it right back to him,” I tell her, seething.
“Good,” she replies. “Was Oliver able to handle it?”
