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“Chris!” she shrieks as her body tips upside down. She thumps her fists against his back as he goes up the stairs with her.
“Luke, thanks, bro. I’ll bring her back soon,” Chris says as he leaves.
Ozy is rolling on the floor laughing when Luke kicks into a sprint after them.
“Murray, I’ll bury you alive.” But the humor in his voice makes us all laugh.
Another bottle later, we’re all by the pool. I’m so drunk, I slur enough words that it’s hard to understand me. None of us is very clear to be completely honest. Only Ella is sober. She is now wearing one of Chris’ t-shirts, and pants from Ozy, her hair still wet from when Chris threw her in the pool.
Chris and Ella have started a competition of who has the best hidden talent. Ella showed us some of her insane cheerleading skills and tumbled up and down the backyard. I walked the whole length of the backyard on a handstand. Ella turns to Ozy as I jump back on my feet.
“Rose, do that thing where you tell us all the ingredients in something!”
Lying face down on one of the loungers, Ozy lifts her head and looks Ella dead in the eyes before answering a plain and simple, “No.”
We all explode laughing except Ella.
“Come on! The guys have the muscles, show them you got the brain.”
“I don’t need to show them, they know I’m smarter than the three of them combinedandI can take them all down if I want to.”
“That sounds slightly impossible,” Ella retorts. “I’m pretty sure you’d fly away if Chris blows on you.”
Rose raises two fingers and lifts her thumb, imitating the universal sign for a gun. She pretends to shoot at Chris. “Big target, he’d be down in no time.”
“You can shoot guns?”
“Perfect aim,” my sister confirms in her calm raspy voice. I know she’s gone past-caring drunk or she would have never mentioned shooting guns.
“No fucking way,” Ella explodes. “That issocool, Rose. I want to see!”
On any normal night, Chris would have shut the idea down. He wouldn’t want Ozy to jump back into our past. Who knows what sort of PTSD she suffers from having shot her own brother? Who knows what will be brought back from her shooting sessions with Bianco?
But we’re drunk, we’re happy, and we’re not conscious of potential danger right now.
“We could use my parents’,” Chris suggests in a casual drunken voice as if this is the best idea ever. “They’ve got some sort of handgun in a safe in the subterranean garage. I think it’s a Smith something.”
His words are blurred by the alcohol in his blood system, his eyes heavily hooded by the shots of endorphins we’re all getting tonight by being together.
“They’ve got a 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P Shield Plus. It’s a handy little thing,” my sister replies.
“I’m sorrywhat?” Ella says with a huge smile on her face.
“I don’t want to know how you know that,” Chris adds.
“Your dad showed it to me in case I ever needed to defend you two babies against anything.”
Chris and I explode laughing until we realize she’s dead serious.
“That reaction was priceless,” Luke chuckles.
“Okay are we going to shoot shit or what?” Ella insists.
“You’re the reason kids keep dying in our country, El’s,” her brother tells her.
“Rose said she was good at it. I just wanted to see if it was true,” she pouts in return.
“Let’s do this,” I say as I get up from the stoned ground by the pool. “Show Ella your hidden talent, Ozy.”
