Free Club Storyville by Riley Lashea

but it was with pride that I took the open bottle out of Scott’s hand. The thing I admired most about Nan, but knew I would never be able to emulate, was how she never let the world tell her what to do. Only God could do that, she thought, and only to the extent she deemed His interference reasonable in her mortal life.
    Popping the cap on his own bottle beside me, Scott looked hesitant, but I knew he was going to drink it anyway, that he would drink just about anything to get through the night, and the next few days in which he would leave his home country for the first time to face certain peril.
    “You first,” he flicked his eyes to the bottle in my hand, and, figuring it was the least I could do for the war effort, I put the bottle to my lips and tipped the barely-cool liquid into my mouth.
    “Oh God, that’s awful,” I warned him, but Scott only laughed as he took his first drink, accepting the fact that, with what he was about to face, bad beer was better than no beer at all.
    Thinking of Jackson, and his proposition, and twice as much about Ariel, because thoughts of her seemed to live in both the well-lit areas and the darkest shadows of my mind, I agreed with Scott’s assessment of the situation and took another drink, not sure which of us needed intoxicating more.
    Halfway through a second bottle that tasted every bit as bad as the first, but that, with the alcohol already coursing through my system, was considerably easier to drink, the nostalgia kicked in as I stared out at the yard stretching away from Nan’s house.
    Remembering the days spent there with Scott and Edward, when we often forgot there even was a Depression, and felt nothing aside from freedom and possibility, I wished someone would get around to inventing a time machine, like the one H.G. Wells imagined in his book. If we went back, I wondered what we could change, if Scott could be preparing to go back for another week of school instead of overseas, if Edward could be balanced on the railing beside us, distributing the beers unevenly, because he was technically the oldest and thought he could handle more alcohol.
    “I wish things were the way they used to be,” I uttered, smiling at the past, even as my eyes welled at the knowledge the past was all it would ever be. “Back when we could tell each other anything.”
    “You can still tell me anything,” Scott said, but, even with the beer more potent after the years spent in Nan’s cellar, I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to believe him. I knew Scott believed it, but I also knew people had a way of saying ‘anything’ when they didn’t really mean anything, and they would only know they didn’t really mean it once they were staring from the other side of a secret with eyes that would never see the secret-sharer the same way again.
    Realizing, in that instant, the things I had been feeling could never be confessed, not even to Scott, opening my mouth, I couldn’t even come up with an adequate lie. I couldn’t tell Scott I was upset about him leaving, or about Nan’s poor health. A sob suddenly escaping, I began crying instead, harder than I had cried since I was a little girl, with the same desperate feeling the world would end if I didn’t get my way.
    “What’s wrong?” Scott pleaded with me to tell him, but, as his arm slid around my shoulders, I could only cling to the front of his shirt and cry. Cry until my head ached and my eyes were puffy, cry until I felt all dried out inside, cry until the fabric against Scott’s chest was soaked through, but neither of us found any absolution.
    N an had so many opinions, it would take years to file them alphabetically, but she never had more of an opinion about anything than she did about Adolf Hitler.
    Although she told Scott she was proud of him when he went into her room to say goodbye once we had his bags packed in Daddy’s car, Nan’s pride lasted only as long as it took for Daddy and I to return from the train station, where