Free Summer Boys by Hailey Abbott Page A

into the corner of her dresser mirror. She’d have to burn that soon. Once she got out of bed—if that ever, ever happened again.
    There was a knock at the door. “Jamie?” It was Ella.
    Jamie groaned and buried her face in the pillow.
    “Jamie, let me in. I think you’re about to fall into the void.”
    “Go away, all right, Ella?” Jamie said, feeling the tears well up now that somebody was around to hear her cry. She’d expected Ella to show up at some point. She could be selfish sometimes, but Ella was a mother hen at heart.
    “You can’t stay in there forever,” Ella insisted.
    “Why not?” Jamie rolled over and faced the window.
    She could still hear Ella out there, sighing dramatically. “I’ll be back,” she said firmly, and her footsteps sounded down the hall.
    There was no telling how long she’d been sleeping when Jamie woke to a scratching at the door. At first, dazed, she thought it was a cat. Then the doorknob turned, and Ella appeared in a pink tank top and gray Juicy sweatshorts, holding a bulging plastic bag in one hand and a bobby pin that she’d used to pick the lock in the other.
    “We can do this the healthy way or the trashy way,” she said, walking up to the bed, dropping the bag beside Jamie, and tucking the bobby pin into her hair. “But we’re definitely doing it.”
    Jamie couldn’t help feeling a little curious. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. A major head rush followed. She felt like she’d been run over by a bulldozer.
    Ella was carefully extracting the items from her bag: a video ( Legally Blonde, one of Ella’s favorites), a tube of Queen Helene’s Mint Julep facial mask, a cucumber, a tiny glass tub of Pink Pepper nail polish, a pack of minicigars, and what no feel-better care package would ever be complete without—a small bottle of tangerine-flavored Stoli vodka.
    Jamie rubbed her face again. “I’m looking for the common thread here.”
    Ella started separating the things into two piles. “I was thinking we could do a spa night—mask and makeovers and a movie…,” she said while spreading everything out onto the bed. “Or we can drink and smoke cigars and play poker.” She pulled out a pack of cards from her back pocket. Jamie recognized them from the trunkof games in the living room. Ella held up the cards and the video, moving them up and down like they were on scales, her eyebrows high and questioning.
    Jamie was surprised to feel her soul emerge from the darkness for a second. “Can’t we do both?”
    Ella threw back her head and laughed. “Whatever you say.”
    “Hey, where is everybody?”
    Ella took a quick look at the clock. It was 4:35. “Down at the beach, where else? Then dinner at our house. So let’s get cracking. We don’t have all day!”
    The afternoon sun was shining dimly through the blinds. Jamie swung her legs over the side of the bed, then stood up and pulled the cord for the fan. Then she locked the door again.
    “I’ll take one of those cigars,” Jamie said, setting herself up against the headboard.
    Ella smiled at her as she opened the window to let the smoke out. Jamie found the energy to smile back.
    They hunkered down on the bed and took swigs straight from the bottle. Ella dealt the cards, but stopped halfway through to veto the Jeff Buckley CD.
    “What is this shit?” she said, switching it off and turning the knob to radio. She surfed the channels until she found a Jay-Z song, then cranked up the volume to an eardrum-thumping level.
    “What you gotta do is forget that loser,” Ella shouted above the music, crawling back onto the bed and dealing the rest of the cards. She fanned hers out in front of her eyes. Jamie tapped her cigar on a bowl on the nightstand.
    “Forget him,” Jamie repeated hollowly.
    “Yeah, there are plenty of guys out there that are way, way better than him. Did you ever notice how nasty his feet are? I did.”
    The thought of being with anyone else was ludicrous to Jamie. But Ella’s