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“Santa Baby”—Madonna
“Why is Mommy mad at you?” Lily asks me as we’re coloring in her princess coloring book on the way to the lake house. “Did you do something bad?”
“Yep.” It’s kind of pointless to lie to my sister at a time like this. She’s annoyingly perceptive.
“What did you do?” she asks, looking at me with wide eyes.
“I got drunk,” I whisper, secretly pleased that Mom will freak out that I told her. I’m already in the dog house—again—after Lindsey’s mom ratted me out for getting drunk in solidarity with Daria.
“What’s adrunk?” she asks, far too interested for her own good.
“It’s when you drink a lot of alcohol and then you act stupid and loud.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun to me,” she says, trying to figure out if I’m lying.
“Well, it wasn’t that much fun, but my friends were doing it, so I did too.”
She seems satisfied by that answer. For a few minutes, she colors with her tongue wedged into the corner of her mouth. Then she starts back up. “Did Lindsey get a drunk? I like her. If she gave me a drunk, I would take it.”
“No, it’s notadrunk, it’s just drunk. Like, getting sick,” I explain, trying not to laugh. “Getting drunk.”
“Oh, well, wasshegetting drunk?”
“No, just me and Daria.”
“I like her too. She’s pretty.” Even six-year-olds know what’s important when it comes to being liked. “Was that boy getting drunk?”
“No, sweetie, just me and Daria.”
Lily and I are sitting together in the back of Aunt Diana’s minivan, since I’ve had about enough of Mom. She totally flipped out when Lindsey’s mom called and told her about my midnight raid on her liquor cabinet and subsequent ‘abhorrent behavior.’ I think it’s all a bit of a joke, but Mom isn’t laughing. She even insisted on driving me to and from work yesterday, since I’m apparently not responsible enough to borrow her car now. I considered pointing out that I’ve never done anything irresponsible with the car, but it would’ve been a waste of breath.
So, I chose to ride with my aunt to her lake house, where we’ll be spending a week of the holiday break. And since Lily still thinks I’m cool despite Mom’s opinion, she wanted to ride with me. It’s actually kind of fun hanging out with her, even if her head is in a bizarre princess realm most of the time. I used to hang out with her a lot more, but this year I’ve had so much going on that I haven’t spent much time with her.
“Is that boy your boyfriend?” she asks as she studiously fills in a castle with a purple crayon.
I didn’t think I had to worry about Chase while I was gone, but here he is, popping up all over again. “No, he’s Lindsey’s boyfriend,” I tell my sister.
She thinks about this for a minute, concentrating on filing the castle flags—and the space around them—with gold. “You’re not very nice to him,” she says. “I bet Lindsey is nice to him.”
What the hell? Now even my little sister is on Lindsey’s side.
I think about what she said while I color a giant frog green, staying inside the lines like I always do. Maybe I wasn’t being very nice. I could have graciously accepted his gift. It just felt… I don’t know. Weird. Like I’m his mistress or something. But maybe he did just see something that reminded him of me. It’s kind of sweet, in a Chase London way. And I’m sure he doesn’t really think about money when he buys something, since he has like endless amounts of it.
I don’t know why I thought he was making fun of me. He was just being Chase. Thinking about it now, it seems like I reallywasacting crazy. Why would he make fun of me like that? Then again, why would he ask why I wasn’t his girlfriend? Isn’t that pretty obvious? I mean, he said he’d never break up with Lindsey, and she would nevereverbreak up with him. She always says she’s incomplete without him, that she needs him to make her whole.
“I bet Lindseyisnice to him,” I say after a while.
“That’s good,” Lily says, scrubbing the end of her pink crayon stub up the horse’s front legs. “You should be nice to him too. He’s nice.”
“How do you know?” I ask, stealing one of her crayons.
“Because I talked to him.”
“What? When?” I ask, startled at this news.
