I clear my throat and take a tentative step forward. “I-I-” I start, but unease and anxiety clog my throat. Alexis smirks, and my face warms. Even so, I force myself to take a breath and try again. “I should go. Homework.”
She ignores me, instead looking at Ava. “Cut an extra wedge for Ivy. Shelovestequila.”
Ava glances up at me, nearly slicing her finger off as she does so. “Really? I thought you didn’t drink.”
“Oh, she drinks alright,” says Alexis, “and makes all sorts of fucked up decisions afterward.”
“How do you two know each other again?” asks Kinsley, her eyes bright as she looks between us, clearly enjoying this.
“We went to high school together. So many good times, right Ivy?”
I don’t respond. Just watch Ava line up the shot glasses, adding an extra one for me, and fill them with liquor. Alexis helps her pass out the shots and the limes. I don’t want to take them from her, but I do, knees locked, body paralyzed, soles glued to the floor.
“To the perfect Friday night before the storm!” calls Kinsley, raising her glass in the air and then throwing back the alcohol. Everyone follows her lead, except me. My hand doesn’t move.
“Go on,” urges Alexis. “Take the shot.”
“I don’t think?—”
Her eyes harden, pinning me where I stand. “Take the fucking shot, Ivy.”
I should tell her to fuck off. Instead, I take the shot.
It burns going down, searing my esophagus, and settles warm in my stomach. Someone laughs.Some of my apprehension eases away as the alcohol permeates my nervous system.
“So,” Alexis says, “who on the football team are you fucking?”
And likethatmy anxiety returns.
Kinsley laughs like Alexis told the most hilarious joke and asks, “Are you kidding, Lex?”
Alexis shakes her head. “Madison and I tried to get into the football party last weekend, and they turned us away. Can you believe it? But Ivy got in.”
Kinsley’s mouth drops open, her gaze swinging toward me. “Youdid?”
“How?” demands Ava.
I shrug. “Dumb luck, I guess.”
Alexis throws her head back and laughs. “You always were a terrible liar. Like in high school, when I asked you if you fucked Mason Bryce, and you said you didn’t know what I was talking about. Remember that?”
The world tilts.
I can’t even think his name, yet she throws it out there like it’s nothing.
Like it’s meaningless.
Like it’s just a name, and he’s just a boy, and none of it matters.
“RememberMason, Ivy?”
She says it again, brandishing the name like a weapon. Wielding it like a knife to puncture my lungs and carve throughmy insides and cut away the protective barrier I’ve molded around these memories. I thought it was thick enough to withstand an attack, but it turns out I was delusional. Even after almost two years, it’s still paper thin.
And I see it in my head.
Dragging myself back to school, an empty, hollow shell of a girl who somehow made it back from the edge but is now worse off than before. Alexis cornering me in the girls’ bathroom like a hunter circling prey.
One strike,where the hell have you been?
