Page 103 of Catch a Kiwi
“Can’t walk to bloody Tauranga,” the fair kid said.
“Then why did you come here in the first place?” Summer asked. “Also, of course you can walk it.”
I needed to chuck them out, but I also needed to find out what was going on. I didn’t need to find out why it smelled like vomit, because there was only one reason for that. Vomit.
“We were helping,” the fair kid said. “Helping, uh …” He waved an arm. “Her.”
“Erica,” the dark kid said.
Right. I was back again. “Out,” I said.
“Mate,” the fair kid whined. The dark one just blinked at me, his hair sticking out at mad angles. They’d both clearly been asleep.
“Out,”I said. “You’re not helping. You’re just standing here. Call your parents. Call a friend. Walk it. Out.”
“Harsh,” the fair kid said, but they went, and the door slammed behind them. Two down.
I looked at Summer. “For a woman who keeps telling me how low-drama and average she is, you’ve made my life pretty interesting. But I reckon I’ll take it. Also, we didn’t talk about birth control. Remind me to bring that up later, because I don’t think once is going to be nearly enough.”
Weirdly, the color drained out of her face. She stared at me, then shook herself and said, “I need to go see what’s happening.”
She followed the noise—and the smell—into one of the formerly unused bedrooms, which would probably require fumigation, and I followed her. We found a girl being sick into the toilet like it wasn’t anything close to the first time, and Delilah on her knees, holding back the girl’s long dark hair. I waited until she was done, then said, “This would be why I said no parties.”
Delilah said, “I called the cops.”
I hadn’t thought there was any way this could get moreinteresting, in the wrong sense of the word, but that was one. “Why?”
“She was completely out of it,” Delilah said. “That’s why I brought her back here. Give me a break. I heard you, OK? We’d only been at the bar maybe an hour, and it was only about ten. The rest of us were playing darts, but she was talking to this other guy. Older guy. Hot, but kind of like Darryl Harshbarger from the trailer park, you know?”
Summer said, “Well, yeah, Darryl.”
The girl said, “Uggghh,” dropped the toilet seat, and laid her cheek down on it as she moaned, “I’m so sick.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” Summer wet a couple of facecloths, crouched down in her pretty dress and pretty shoes, wiped the girl’s mouth, then folded the other cloth and pressed it to her forehead. “You’re going to be all right. We’ve got you.”
Delilah said, “She was stumbling around, kind of floppy, like she was seriously about to pass out, so I went over there to check and the Darryl-type guy said she’d had too much to drink and he’d take her home, soIsaid, no,I’dtake her home, and he said, ‘What the fuck is it to you?’ andIsaid, ‘She’s my friend, that’s what’—well, not exactly, but you know, girl code—and then this guy Colin—where is he, by the way? He said he had to get home, and I said you’d pay for an Uber, Roman, because he’s broke and hedidhelp—came over to say he’d come with me, even though hewasdrunk, and then this other guy, called something weird like Baz, said he’d come too. Nobody else was helping, so what was I supposed to do? She weighs about forty pounds more than me—sorry, Erica—andIcouldn’t have carried her or even pulled her out of an Uber. I could have called you, of course, but it seems to me that would’ve been averybad idea. Aren’t you glad I didn’t?”
“Yes,” I said.
Delilah said, “I thought you’d see it that way. The boys sort of half-carried her back here between them, and I stuckher in a bedroom to sleep it off and went and made tea for them, because that’s what you do in this country, right? Make tea? But when I came down again, they were asleep in the other bedroom, so I figured, hey, they’re not causing any trouble. It’s not a party if people are just sleeping! So I went to bed, too, but then Erica—I think Colin has a crush on her, which was why he helped—anyway, she woke up about an hour ago, and she’s been sick ever since.Reallysick.” Which was when Erica banged the toilet lid up and the retching started again, with Summer holding back her hair this time. When it was over and Summer was repeating the facecloth routine, Delilah said, “The thing is—she doesn’t remember any of it, and looking back, she didn’t have time to get that drunk. She wasn’t drunk at all before the bar, and we weren’t there that long. So I thought of roofies, right? I mean, from what I’ve read, because I wasn’t old enough to drink in bars in Seattle. I did some drinking at parties—with friends, not assholes, so stop looking like that. I was a senior in high school! But Iammodestly aware of the dangers of modern life. So I called the cops.”
The faint, two-toned sound of a siren outside, and Summer said calmly, “You should go meet them, Roman, and bring them in here. You’re better at seeming in charge than I am.”
“Beginning to doubt that I’m better at actually being in charge, though,” I said.
“Ha,” Summer said. “Erica probably does need to go to hospital for a blood test or whatever they do, though, and to get rehydrated. Did you ring her parents, Delilah?”
“No,” Delilah said. “She was too sick, and besides, I didn’t want to get her in trouble. She barfed in the bed, too, by the way, and there’s some stuff on the floor. I would’ve cleaned up, but, you know, I was helping her. Plus, gross. I tried to wake the boys up to do it, but?—”
“OK,” Summer said. “I’ll deal with that. We’ll see what the cops say, but you did right. Oh, Erica, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.” Erica had raised a red, tear-stained face, and a more miserable sight you couldn’t imagine. “You’re the witness,” Summer told Delilah, “so you’re going to need to talk to them. Meanwhile, I’m going to start cleaning this up. We’re here another night, and anyway, Roman’s not paying for anything extra if I can help it.”
“What about the boys?” Delilah asked.
“Roman and I threw them out,” Summer said.
“But I told them Roman would pay for an Uber!” Delilah said.
“Then they’ve just learned one of life’s important lessons,” Summer said as the doorbell rang. “Don’t drink too much if you don’t have a way to get home.”
