Free Drain You by M. Beth Bloom Page A

and wet.
    “Go home. I can close out alone tonight.” He looked away from me, at the schedule on the wall.
    “Why?”
    “It’s not a request.”
    I couldn’t call James to change our plans, because he had no phone. I’d just have to go home for a few hoursand walk back here at eleven, meeting him out front as if I’d worked a full regular shift.
    So I collected my stuff, collected myself, and wandered outside, feeling ridiculous for being sent home after two hours of uselessness. But I deserved punishment. Even if it didn’t fit the crime.
     
    When I reached my house and saw three unfamiliar cars parked in our driveway, I put two and two together and guessed that my parents were having guests over tonight. I also guessed that my mother would probably kill me if I crashed her party looking this way: splotchy, post-sobbing, like an extra from Les Miz .
    Fortunately, the eight adults in the dining room were too busy with appetizers and Riesling to notice me sneak past them up the stairs. I climbed into bed and hugged a pillow over my face and crashed. Later, when I willed myself awake, I was covered in sweat. I looked over at my clock and panicked: 10:56.
    I sprang out of bed and started searching for a shoe I hadn’t seen in weeks but that somehow seemed crucial for my meeting up with James. In my rational mind I knew James wouldn’t just leave if he didn’t see me outside the video store at exactly ten past eleven. He’d probably wait a while, or even start walking to my house, and then we’d meet in the middle. That’d be the best-case scenario.Almost romantic, really. Worst-case scenario: James goes home. If that happened, I’d have to sneak out after my parents were asleep, take the Lexus without permission, and deal with the consequences tomorrow. Worst, worst-case scenario: James bails to do whatever weird stuff Naomi alluded to last night and I can’t find him. Then I’d have to call her again, invite myself over for the second night in a row, lure her to fall deeply asleep, and sneak off to the garage studio to wait for him, thereby confirming Morgan’s theory that I was both a brat and a psycho. What a drag.
    Seriously, I needed that damn shoe.
    I only had half a minute to give myself a once-over in the mirror. I was wearing a short, ripped, white cotton button-down dress with the first three buttons missing, but it came across less as scandalous and steamy than it did just sloppy. My earrings were tangled up in my hair, and all my chain necklaces had somehow coiled together into one fat knot. I gave up on finding the cute shoes and so settled on my dirty flower-print ankle-high Docs, unlaced, with no socks. The sweat from my nap plus basic summer night body heat had smeared my black eyeliner into raccoon chic and my cheeks into crazy flushed rouge pots. My skin felt like damp flypaper. The fabric of my dress was so thin I could see my black underwear and bra in the mirror but now it was 10:59, so I had no time to change.
    I noticed a half-empty Diet Coke on my bedside table and chugged it. The taste was warm and flat and syrupy and reinforcing. I was ready to sprint for my life. Instead I tripped down most of the stairs, dropping my keys and bag onto the tile foyer floor.
    “Quinny?”
    My father’s voice.
    I pivoted, calmly, in his direction. Eight adult-y adults were sitting in the den, in silence, staring at me. My father stood up from the white leather couch.
    “Where are you going?”
    “It’s cool, Dad.” I tried to smooth out my dress, wondering just how transparent it might look under the chandelier.
    “So, you’re leaving then?” He raised his eyebrows inquisitively. A very well-dressed woman in a pashmina sweaterdress sitting next to my mother took a sip from a glass of white wine.
    “I’m…not even here. I’m, like, at work right now anyway.”
    The couples looked from me to each other to my parents, then down at their wineglasses. Beverages in the white room? My mother was