Free Cupcake by Rachel Cohn Page B

You sure ain't no scrawny Lolita girl anymore. You still carry that old rag doll?"
    "Gingerbread retired," I told Luis. "She came along for the ride to Manhattan, but she mostly just hangs out in my bed in my new apartment now. She's not into traveling in my handbag all the time anymore. She's got, you know, canasta games with the various bedroom tchotchkes to figure out. Better ways to spend her time than looking after me."
    "Does she now?" FUCK! That Luis smile. He handed me a bag of piping hot fries. I could taste the extra salt.
    Two summers ago when Gingerbread wandered this city with me, lodged inside my handbag, she shared my crush on Luis. She
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    also shared a certain psychic vibe with me, and I could feel it returning full force now, wafting over from her current doll emeritus state of retirement in my bedroom. I knew she would not only authorize, she would also absolve me for the sins I knew I was about to commit.
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    ***
    FOURTEEN
    So this was what the Walk of Shame looked like.
    I stumbled past the white hallway walls leading from my bedroom, but the walls had turned psychedelic, swirls of sherbet pinks, reds, and oranges dizzying me. The hallway's round ceiling light appeared to hang extra low, hovering like a UFO, attempting to grab my throbbing head and twist it, throttle it, destroy it. Although the distance to my destination was only several feet, each step forward felt like two steps back, as if I were attempting to cross an infinite, barren dessert, parched, instead of simply trying to find my way to the bathroom, to puke.
    I don't know how long my bathroom prison sentence, prostrate before the porcelain goddess, lasted. I could have been there for five minutes or an hour. The time-space continuum blanked out.
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    Danny stood leaning against the hallway wall when I finally emerged--or was it crawled? (felt like it)--from the bathroom. That hallway wall definitely played favorites, because it did not appear to sprout monster-goblin hands trying to envelop Danny, to harsh him.
    My arms reached for a table to steady myself, but my shaking hands found no such support. My blurry vision tried to make out the time on the wall clock behind Danny. It may have read noon, or it may have flashed a rainbow-sherbet-colored neon sign: Care to puke again? Care to puke again?
    Danny said, "Luis left about an hour ago, if that's who you're looking for."
    Luis? Who's Luis?
    Want to be magically transported back to bedroom without any physical effort on my part. Want peace, not Loo-eese. Head. Pound. Head. Pound.
    In response to my silence Danny continued, "Think you can make it to the living room for a little talk?"
    From the tone of his voice, no way was the Talk going to be "little."
    "No," I muttered. "Back to bed."
    I staggered past Danny. I could barely find my way, for all the unkempt strings of hair falling in front of my face, but as I returned to my bedroom, I could see through the hair enough to
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    spot a tiny Dixie cup on my nightstand, with what appeared to be green Jell-O inside it. As I collapsed onto my bed, an unopened condom wrapper fell to the floor from underneath the pillow at the far side of the bed. Oh, that Luis.
    Oh, shouldn't that wrapper be open--and discarded in the trash, after its contents had been properly used?
    Vague memories crept into the available 1 percent of my conscious waking state. Something about Jell-O shots at a salsa club where Luis's friend worked and wouldn't card me. Salsa dancing with Luis even though I don't know how to salsa dance. Yes, yes, it was coming back, 28 percent and getting stronger, now I saw it: Two bodies jiggling, pressing together, the cinnamon boy can really dance and the vanilla girl really can't, but it doesn't matter, there they are, grooving and laughing, gulping agua with Jell-O chasers. Catch up with them now, Ay ay ay, they're making out in the bathroom (oh, so sweet), and hello, they're racing back to vanilla's apartment, toting along some extra