Cheap Thrills, Mostly

The house is crowded, the air thick and hot, and Cherry disappears only moments after entering the door. This is quite a feat, I think, for someone who so desperately wants to be seen.

I have always been most comfortable on the back porch of house parties. In the winters there is always a fire smoldering. Sometimes I'll throw things into it and see how long they take to burn. I once saw a guy throw up in a fire pit, too; the smell was so wretched that I didn't bother standing around to see how long it took to sizzle away. But there is no fire blazing now, nor are there any kids blazing up.

But Cherry was wrong. Barney is here. He's so much here that we make eye contact and I can feel myself shift. He has the gaze of a cop. Because he is one, because he's a cop at a house party and I'm trembling even if I haven't done anything to warrant my arrest.

I think: my dad is going to hear about this.

I think: Cherry is a liar.

I think: I have always known that Cherry is a liar.

"Here to supervise?" I ask, because I thought that might sound clever. But I'm not confident enough to pull off clever, not like Cherry. No, I'm only just nervous enough to pull off suspicious.

So Barney raises his eyebrow and asks me if he knows me from somewhere.

I want to tease him on the line that most certainly is not, but most certainly does, sound like a flirtation. I don't though. I just say: "This is a party." Because I'm good at stating the obvious but I'm not so good at clever.

And he laughs like I'm funny. But I'm not. Cherry never laughs at my jokes. I'm only ever funny in my head.

The party spills into the night for a moment like my guts feel like they are on the floor but they're not. I know this because my hands are on my stomach and I can feel that everything is still intact.

A girl stumbles out onto the porch and she's drunk. I mean rip roaring drunk. If there was a fire lit in the pit then I think she just might have puked in it. I recognize this girl too because Cherry likes to make fun of her and I accidentally gave her this awful nickname a few years back that seems to have stuck.

Nobody ever calls Maria 'The Rat' Rabease by her real name. They either call her Rat, Beasy, or The Rat With Rabies if they're feeling witty and particularly superfluous at the time of greeting. She'll answer to any name and she'll do it with a smile; I'm not sure if it's because Rat thinks we're all just good friends and having fun or it it's because she has some pretty sharp incisors and likes to show them off. It could be both.

Tonight I call her Beasy because she's drunk and I'm trying to be a better person and that's what the nicer people at school call her.

Beasy stumbles, her sweaty hands leaving horror-movie-marks on the glass sliding door, and then repays my politeness towards her by puking on my shoes. Not my best thank you.

Barney groans and it's like were both just wondering why we're here right now, leaning over this girl who never learned how to hold her liquor. "Do you know this girl?" He asks, lifting Beasy up from under her armpits and carrying her in through the open door.

"Yeah," I say, because I do, but somehow it still feels like the wrong answer. Maybe it's because he's already receding into the darkened household and I'm left outside hoping the vomit doesn't seep through my socks.

It doesn't, by the way. Instead, Barney comes back to see me shedding the filthy footwear, a pair of worn work boots in his hands. "These'll fit big but it's better than nothing," he says, dropping them down in front of me. I know they're heavy even before I wear them. They're made of that thick brown material not unlike leather, you know, the kind that makes clunky noises every time you walk in them. They feel odd on my bare feet; my own toes smooth over the sweat worn creases someone with much larger feet had left there previously.

"Did you arrest her?" This question comes from my own mouth without consent and I blush.

Barney looks incredulous. "What, you mean did I hand cuff her to the toilet?"

I try to scoff because that's what Cherry does when someone makes her feel stupid but it only comes out like a strangled cough, the kind a cat makes when it's puking up a hairball. I blush again.

"I called her parents," he rubs his knuckles against his jaw line, "and I'd call yours too if I didn't want Morelli all over my ass about it." So he figured out who I was. Maybe he always knew. Maybe that was a line.

I stand up, hands on hips. My dad would laugh and say I look like my mom if he really was here. "Then why are you even at this stupid party in the first place?"

"If the party is so stupid then why are you here?"

That's a good question, and the good questions never come with answers to them. It's odd to stay quiet when you're upset like this, like mad but not mad enough, your face all warm and your feet clomping around in another man's shoes. The music is loud and makes me ears ring double time. "I'm not," I say, and then, "I'm leaving."

I thought Cherry would be difficult to persuade into leaving but when she saw me she hooked her arm right through mine and said something about running all over the house looking for me and how she hopes it was because I was in that locked room upstair getting laid.

In the car she leans back, finger on the automated recline to push it into an-almost-lying-down position. "Fucking cops," she mutters. He eyes are closed, forehead gleaming. She's a party girl in sequins and patent leather. I don't know what I am.

She mutters a few more things about cops and I wonder if she's forgotten that my father is one. Probably not. Finally she tells me: "Hunter said his brother showed up to shut down the party!"

"No, shit?" I ask. Sometimes its nice to receive an answer without asking.

"Shit is right. Came right up to him—we were going upstairs to his room—tapped him on the shoulder and threatened to call some of his cop buddies to shut us down if we didn't do it ourselves."

"No shit?" I say again. "Do you want to get a donut?"

"Shit is right," Cherry nods vaguely, "I'd love a donut."

I haven't been getting much of what I want lately but maybe a donut is enough right now. The Tasty Pastry is still open, there are always high school kids working the counter on late summer nights because everyone thinks that high school kids never sleep. Maybe they're right, too. We definitely never sleep in the sight of a tasty pastry, saccharine and pink, my jaw aches at the thought of it.

I order a whole dozen of Boston crème at the counter. As it turns out there's no high schooler working a late shift; tonight it's a short man, stubby, with fat hands that stretch out to the whole size of the rubber glove. I wonder if he's been eating on the job. I don't blame him if he is.

He seems like a nice guy, tired, so even though him sort of mashes the corner of my donut box I still leave two bucks in the plastic tip jar. It's one of those tip jars obviously made by the workers, a washed out extra large cheese puff container with a handwritten TIPS sign in black sharpie. Not very aesthetic, but it serves its purpose well enough. In fact, it serves its purpose so well that the jar is almost full.

"Hey," I ask, eyeing the tip jar, "do you have a job application?"

The guy nods in a sort of slow motion way. "Yeah, but we ain't got any openings."

"I'll take one anyways, you know, you can keep it on file maybe." I've been looking for a job for ages.

"Maybe," the guy seems doubtful but he goes to get the application anyways, still in his slow motion manner.

When I go to sit down Cherry has already eaten three donuts. That's something I like about Cherry: she can snack on anything. She isn't one of those girls that never eats, and there are a lot of those. They take up whole tables in our cafeteria, which doesn't make a lot sense to me because if you're not eating then why are you in the cafeteria? Maybe they just like to look at the food but I feel like that'd only make you even hungrier.

I'm on my second donut, Cherry on her fifth, when this man comes barging in. He's in all black, a ski mask over his head, the lips sewn shut in a way that makes me think he never took home ec in high school. He's carrying this tiny gun, it's almost laughable how small it is, except it's not so laughable because he uses it to shoot the counter worker straight through the stomach. He even dies in slow motion.

Cherry screams and I think I might too only I can't hear myself. Maybe my ears are still ringing from the party, maybe they're ringing from the sound of the gunshot. I do know that I tumble over in my seat, my arms all stiff at my sides. I feel useless, feet heavy with the boots.

And then the ringing must have stopped because I hear the man with the tiny gun say: "Tell your father you're next if he doesn't get me what I want."

I think that's rather ambiguous, but who am I to judge a man with a gun in his hand?

And then, I suppose they have a job opening now.