Free Spree (YA Paranormal) by Jonathan DeCoteau Page A

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    Chapter 6
     
     
    Two mornings before the school shooting Takers hovered, watching over me.
    I could feel Preggers’s macabre presence, could smell the fire and brimstone before I could see her.
    The memories of my drinking days came back to me.
    I saw myself, at thirteen, in the basement, experimenting with cigarettes and alcohol, nothing too big. By that age, at least one-third of the kids I knew had experimented with actual drugs. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be popular. I wanted, most of all, to be Alex Maroshe’s girlfriend. The sweet taste of whiskey intrigued me. Heinekens repulsed me at that age, but I drank them anyway. I found that I could loosen up more if I drank, that I could do more wild things that kids in my class would remember after the weekend was done. As plain old Fay, I was the smart girl trying to be pretty and popular. As Fay the partier, I was uninhibited, wild, free.
    Ironically, I’d just gotten done working on history project with my ex, Zipper, still John at that point. He’d tried to get me to stay, but I’d run off after mocking him a bit. That’s how eighth graders can be, I guess. Immature and mean. As I sat there, surrounded by bottles in a competition to see who could drink the most, I didn’t even remember Zipper. Like everyone else, I’d come to forget him.
    “Hey, Fay,” Preggers told me. “Bet I can drink you under.”
    I laughed. “Make it worth my while and I’ll take you on,” I said.
    Preggers looked right at Alex.
    “Winner gets a kiss,” Preggers said to Alex.
    Alex smirked.
    “So long as you don’t barf in my mouth,” he said.
    “No promises,” Preggers said.
    We ponied up to the coffee table. Kids surrounded us, chanted.
    “Whoever downs the most in two minutes,” she said.
    “You’re on.”
    We set up a whole row of scotch, whiskey, Heinekens, Budweisers, even a few chick drinks.
    Alex called time, and we were guzzling. I saw myself for what I was, a kid, really, who looked ridiculous with foam from beer running down her cheeks. I looked like a mess. I was already bad at applying makeup, but the beer foam made it run even more. Camera phones flashed as kids threatened to put up pics on Facebook and Youtube. I kept drinking.
    Preggers was a true friend that day. She had the weight advantage and could’ve easily held more liquor than me, but she let me win.
    I smiled, looking as awful as I did, and Alex puckered up. I kissed, went in deep, trying to turn it into a French kiss to act cool. That kiss signaled the first time we’d become a couple. Not that it was me, really. It was Popular Fay, the girl who knew how to have fun at parties. Watching my old self kiss Alex, I wondered when I lost sight of who I really was.
    The focus changed to an image of Zipper, or John, as he was then, back at his home. He was curled up on his bed, listening to old music from Joy Division, crying his eyes out. He had a middle school yearbook picture of me, and for all intents and purposes, that picture was his girlfriend. He kept it with him always. I felt shame. I knew I had hurt him. I liked Alex, but I never really gave John a chance. There was just something about him—too serious, too depressive, too quiet, too far removed from the friends I’d soon call my drinking buddies.
    “You did this,” I heard a voice say. “You took my life.”
    It was bodiless, deep, hollow, but still had some girlish familiarity. The ghostly voice was Preggers’s.
    “You liked Alex too,” I said.
    I could see her red and blue aura in the vision; she was such a good friend, but still jealous.
    “I gave him up for you, and this is how you repay me?”
    “I drove that night as a favor to you,” I said.
    “You did it because you couldn’t get to the party fast enough so that you could put down the one girl Alex was going to announce as his girlfriend. You always were a jealous bitch.”
    I looked more closely at what was left of Preggers. She was a giant black mist,