It was two a.m. by the time Spencer knocked on my bedroom window. She had already my bike from the carport and had two bags—a backpack over her shoulder and her purse hanging around her neck. After I climbed out the window and gave her a hug, she shoved the backpack in my direction.
"Let's go to the old baseball field," she whispered after I had shut my bedroom window and climbed onto the bicycle. "I've got it all planned out."
I nodded and pedaled off as soon as Spence was safely perched on top of the pegs. It didn't even strike me as odd that we were going to the old baseball field until we were halfway there. But I didn't waste my breath by asking her about it, because I knew she wouldn't answer, and she probably couldn't give me much of an explanation anyway.
I reached the baseball field, which was grown up with weeds and probably housed a few snakes and gophers. Nobody uses the field anymore because a couple of years before this incident, the city got a grant to construct a huge baseball complex on the other end of town. The old field is in an area of town that holds no houses or businesses or anything important anymore, really, so people have mostly forgotten about it. The only thing that really stood out about the old field was the unused water tower behind the outfield. It wasn't as tall as the newer ones in town, but it was still taller than I liked to climb.
Speaking of climbing the water tower...
"Are you ready to climb?" Spencer questioned with a more-than-evil grin on her face.
She must have been drunk. High. Something.
"I've brought liquor, too. But we can't drink until we decide to come down. I don't want you to fall and get killed or something equally terrifying. Actually, I already drank a few shots before I got to your house, but I'm okay. I hold my liquor well."
"And I don't?" I posed, pretending to take offense to Spencer's rightfully made accusation.
"Of course you don't. You've never drank before," she said, as if I had just made the dumbest statement in the world. Maybe I had.
She knew me too well. I had never told her that I hadn't drank before, but I wouldn't be able to lie to her about it. She knew me way too well.
Spencer took the initiative to climb the ladder on the water tower first. I know what you're thinking—she just wanted me to catch her if she fell. But that's not true. She was the one who always caught me. She took a step, one rung at a time, and before moving up any more, she would look down at me, to make sure I was still coming. I told myself to concentrate on her instead of the ladder, and that worked in diluting my nervousness. After she reached the top and I was close behind her, she reached her hand out to me.
"Don't let go," she said, just loud enough to be heard over the wind. "I won't."
It would have been easier on both of us if we had just let go.
-
I'm sitting at the bottom of the water tower now. The wind is blowing again, and I can see our initials scratched onto one of the poles of the tower. They're backwards, so that we're the only ones who know that we signed it. SC+ AD = best friends forever, till death do us part.
-
"There's nothing to do up here," I complained, though I should probably admit now that I was admiring the view more than I thought I would.
"Just talk to me," she said. "We never talk."
We talked all the time, but I didn't argue with her.
"What do you want to talk about?" I asked.
"Let's talk about you."
"What?"
"What's going on with you? f What have you been thinking about?"
"I've been thinking about life." I paused and took a bite out of the snack cake she had brought for me—my birthday cake. "About why we're here. I've come to a few decent conclusions."
She looked at me for a split second, then closed her eyes and leaned her head against the tank behind us. I had no clue if she planned on saying anything or not, but I really didn't want to tell her the ideas I'd had.
"Give me some Dr. Pepper," I mumbled. "I'm thirsty after that birthday cake."
"No!" Spencer shrieked and snatched the backpack away from me. "We have to use it to chase."
"Chase what?"
"The alcohol, dumbass."
Silence. I felt like an idiot. I was an idiot. After a few moments, I lay my head down on her lap. She should've known better than to keep me out this late at night.
"What are they?" she said and ran her fingers through my hair. When it became obvious that I had no clue what she was talking about, she clarified her question. "What are the conclusions you've made about life?"
"Well..."
"Well?"
"Well, I think we're here to live, love, and die. I've already lived and loved, so..."
"So you think you're ready to die, huh?" she shot, and I could tell I had struck one of her nerves. "You think you've lived? Well, let me ask you this. Have you ever run around naked? been to Paris? smoked pot with people ten years older than you?" She waited for me to answer, but I wasn't going to. The answer was no, to all of her questions. "No? Well, then, you better not even think about leaving me here alone on this planet until you get all of that done. What about love?"
I nodded. I had loved someone.
"Who was it?" she wasn't even questioning whether or not I was really in love. She just wanted to know who. I couldn't tell her. "They hurt you pretty bad, huh?"
I shrugged. The pain in my eyes made it obvious that I had rather not talk about it. She nodded in understanding and stood up. She turned away from me to wipe tears from her eyes. God, she was crying and I couldn't. Pathetic, right?
"Let's get down from here," she said as she faced me once again with a smile on her face. "It's time to drink."
-
My phone is ringing again. It's Glen.
"Hey, Ash," he says, once again preventing me from saying anything first. "I just decided to check on you. I'm sorry for the way I was acting earlier. It's just getting to me. You know how it is."
"Yeah, don't worry about it. I'm fine. I'll be fine."
"Yeah. Yeah, alright. Take care of yourself and don't do anything Spencer would do."
"Fine," I manage to say before ending the call and turning off my phone.
-
"Take a shot," Spencer commanded as the shot glass full of vodka dangled loosely from her fingertips, like drinking alcohol wasn't a big deal. Maybe it wasn't to her. To me, it was a big deal. She knew that, but she wanted to make it easier on me to drink for the first time.
"I can't, Spence," I groaned and leaned forward. We were sitting cross-legged in front of each other in between first and second base on the old baseball field. Our knees were touching slightly and her hand was resting on my leg. Her other hand still held the shot glass. She was pushing it closer towards me.
"Take a shot," she repeated. "It's no big deal. Seriously. Just drink."
"I don't know how," I whispered.
She laughed. It wasn't a mocking sort of laugh, or a cruel laugh of any sort. She was just amused by the fact that I was different than she was. I knew that laugh extremely well. "You don't know how?"
I shook my head. Was I supposed to know how?
"You really don't know how to drink? God. It's just like drinking water or soda or your mom's sweet tea. That reminds me, do you think you can ask her to make me a gallon of sun tea when we're allowed to see each other again? Anyway, it's no big deal. Seriously, Ash. Drink."
"But, I mean...how do I mentally prepare myself to drink?"
"Mentally prepare yourself? Seriously?" Spencer could have kept picking at me, but she took my question seriously. "Okay. You need to...well...this is hard for me to say."
"Hard to say? Really? I've never known you to find something that's hard to say," I mused, but I let her continue to think.
Finally, she looked me brightly in the eye. "Okay, now, I normally don't tell people this, but since you're kind of my best friend,"—this was said with a smirk—"I'll tell you. When I'm about to drink, I think about something that makes me mad. Something I want more than anything else but I know I can't have."
I took the glass from her hand and held it by a shaking hand. I tried to think about what she said, but it was so hard. It was harder than it should've been.
"Look me in the eye, Ashley," she said softly. "Think about it. What's something you want and can't have? Something you dream--."
"Please don't make me say it out loud, Spencer," I interrupted. She knew what I was thinking about. I knew what I was thinking about. There was no point in hurting myself more than absolutely necessary.
"It's okay, Ash," she whispered. She took the glass from my hand and tipped it back into her mouth. "That's enough for me."
"One shot?" I asked. She usually drank profusely, from what I had heard from everyone in town, even her.
"Yeah. You drink as much as you need to," she said, handing me the bottle and laying down on her back with her knees bent.
I didn't even think about what I was doing; I just turned the bottle up to my mouth and drank as much as I could hold before swallowing. It burned my mouth and throat and veins, but I drank some more. Spencer tried to get me to stop, but I couldn't. I drank until neither I nor the bottle had anything left.
-
It's so dark. She would like walking around right now, and I wish she was here. The air around me has warmed up, so I can't see my breath anymore. But unlike Spencer, I like the fog in front of my face.
It is proof that I'm alive.
-
"What kind of drunk are you?" Spencer asked with a slur. It was an hour or so later. After an argument about the fact that I drank all of the vodka, even after she told me I could, she had rummaged around in her bag to find a half-empty bottle of whiskey.
"I don't know what types of drunks there are in the world," I said after thinking about it for a moment.
"There's the sad/quiet drunk. The mad/quiet drunk. The raging/mad drunk. There's the 'I'm in love with every person in sight' drunk. And my personal favorite, the drunk who vomits giggles."
I laughed and rolled over to face her. I took a long blade of grass and touched it lightly to her face, traced her features. She chuckled and snatched it away.
"You're lucky," she said and glanced my way. In pure thoughtlessness, she ripped the blade of grass to tiny bits. It was a nervous habit of hers. "Usually, when I drink whiskey, I'm one of those raging, angry, bitter drunks. You're lucky I'm not a bitch right now. Anyway, what kind of drunk are you? I can't tell."
"Spencer, I love you," I joked and lay my hand on her cheek. Well, I wasn't joking. But she thought I was.
"Oh, you're one of those, huh?"
Before I knew it, we were both heaving with laughter, and it didn't stop until we were sobering up around sunrise. In a still slightly tipsy daze, we pushed the bike back home. We couldn't afford to have another crash and be separated for seven more days. After all, neither of us can live without the other.