“You drink, don’t you?” Daniel asks, as he pulls a can from a six-pack’s plastic rings and holds it out to me, though I hesitate because it’s hard to see what I’m reaching for in the dark.
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”
“You sure?” he asks, because of the way I hesitate.
“Yeah.”
I do drink, but I almost never drink beer. I don’t like it. I hate the taste of alcohol, and so, when we want to get drunk, we get the cheapest, most disgusting vodka we can find to get drunk fast. Skylar has a thing for the flavored vodkas like Burnett’s, which her cousin buys for us, and then we sit in her bedroom taking shots out of the bottle before we go to parties that she was actually invited to (I just tag along, and as long as Skylar’s there, no one really cares), though that was before, when we were still friends and people didn’t think of me as a freak.
“Then let’s see,” he says.
Sitting beside me, so close that our legs almost touch, he cracks open his can, waiting for me to copy, which I do. I try not to think about the taste as it goes down, about how much I don’t like it. Uncle Elliott was the first person who let me drink beer, when I was about nine. I remember still, him holding out his glass when no one was around, grinning, a mischievous look in his eye.Wanna try?he asked, and I did. I didn’t like it. I almost spit it back up. He laughed and told me it was an acquired taste, that I’d get used to it one day.Same with boys, he said.You think they’re gross now. Just wait.
He was right.
“I went back to the cemetery today,” I tell Daniel as he slides closer to me on the dock so that our legs actually do touch.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see it in the daytime,” I say.
“And?” Daniel asks.
“It’s not haunted like I said. And there’s an unmarked grave.”
He hesitates. “I don’t know anything about that,” he says, taking a long swig of his beer before setting the empty aside and tugging another from the plastic ring. He offers me one, but I say no. “Don’t you like it?”
“No, I do,” I say, because I don’t want him to think I’m ungrateful or that I don’t like his beer. I lift mine to my mouth to show him, to prove it to him, and after a few sips, the beer goes down easier so that my edges start to blur.
“I have something for you,” he says.
“You already gave me something,” I say, meaning the flower on my pillow.
“This is something else, something better. Close your eyesand hold out your hand.” I do. When he says, “Open your eyes,” I look, reaching into my hand and holding it up to the moon to see: a gold chain with beads.
I don’t know what to say. No one has ever given me something like this before.
“What’s this for?” I ask, as he turns me around, as I lift my hair and he fastens the chain around my neck, the soft stroke of his hands on my neck making my heart race. I look back at him and say, “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“I know I didn’t have to. But you like it, don’t you?”
I touch the necklace. “Yes,” I tell him. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s because I like you. A lot,” he says with a smile in his voice. “I’m actually kinda obsessed with you.” I hesitate, only because no guy has ever said something like that to me before. In my whole life, I’ve never had someone so super into me, or even remotely into me. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it feels to be liked by a guy, because it’s never happened.
He lowers his head. The look in his eyes is hurt and then he turns away, gazing out over the lake.
He says, his voice quieter now, “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it.”
“No, it’s not that,” I say, scrambling for words. “I told you I did. I said that it was beautiful.”
“What then?” he asks, taking it the wrong way, feeling rejected. His eyes come back to mine and he asks, “You don’t like me?”
“No,” I say, speaking fast, reaching for him. “I do.”
