Page 58 of Where It Begins

Skye

The stomach issues from this whole nightmare are going to be legendary. My hands are shaking as I climb into the driver’s seat and turn the engine over. It isn’t until I’ve pulled out onto the street that Violet speaks.

“Can I say something now?”

Every time she’s tried to speak I’ve told her it had to wait until we were in the car. “I need you to be honest with me.”

“Last night I came back to Sid’s after the emergency Mathlete’s meeting in which both Toby and Michael had full on meltdowns that included hyperventilating, which was fun, and the house was full of Buck’s friends. And apparently they call him that because his front teeth are missing. I think it’s supposed to be some kind of joke. Anyway, he was wasted and so were all his idiot friends. I mean, I guess a few of them probably weren’t idiots, but the booze definitely impacted the level of stupidity going on last night. It was a shitshow.”

“The red plastic cups and the horrible number of condoms made that pretty clear,” I grind out.

“I’ve never witnessed so much exhibitionism in my life.”

“Oh my God. Your innocence is gone,” I lament.

“Maybe we should stop and get me a milkshake. I don’t know that driving while having this conversation is the best idea,” Violet says.

I try to strangle the steering wheel. “Did anything happen between you and Miller? He wasnaked.”

She points to the right and I pull into the drive thru line up. There are four cars ahead of us.

“When I put Buck to bed last night he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. But I imagine he gets pretty hot with all that fuzz he’s sporting.”

“Why did you put him to bed? And what were you doing in his bed in the first place?” My voice is too loud. A teenage couple entering the restaurant stop to stare for a second. I roll up my window.

“Can you stop yelling? I’m two feet away. I get that you’re freaking out, but I feel like maybe the volume doesn’t need to be so high.” Violet pushes her glasses up her nose.

I drop my volume to a reasonable level. “I just need some answers, Violet.”

“I know. I’m trying to explain. Like I said, Buck was a mess. He started talking a bunch of nonsense and ended up throwing up all over the hallway. It was disgusting. I had to clean it up. And then he spent another twenty minutes in the bathroom regurgitating everything he’d put in his stomach, which was excessive and repulsive, but at least that stuff was flushable.”

“Move the story forward, Violet.”

“Right. Yeah. Anyway, I had to get all these people out of the house, which took freaking ages. Buck passed out in the bathroom for a while and then I finally got him into his bed, which was a feat because he’s huge and I’m me.” She points to herself.

We pull up to the drive thru and Violet orders half the menu. I pay for the obscene amount of food I’m sure she’ll never finish and then wait as the line of cars moves forward at what feels like a snail's pace.

“So I get him into bed and I make sure he’s lying on his side, because that’s what you’re supposed to do with intoxicated people.”

“How do you know that’s what you’re supposed to do?”

“I learned it in health class, maybe? Or when I took that Red Cross course? Anyway, drunk people aren’t supposed to sleep on their backs because they could asphyxiate on their own vomit. And while the whole party thing was horrible to come home to, I think a slightly trashed house is highly preferable to something like that happening. But Buck kept rolling over onto his back. So I kept having to roll him back onto his side. Which means I had to stay awake until, like, six in the morning, monitoring him and making sure he didn’t die. He owes me so big.” She crosses her arms and waits as we pull forward and the drive-thru kid passes over three enormous bags.

I pull over and park. “So, nothing happened between you and Miller?”

Violet wrinkles her nose. “You mean other than me cleaning up his vomit and making sure he made it through the night?” She opens the first bag and pulls out a breakfast tray of pancakes. “Man, I'm hungry.”

“He was naked.”

“Can we not keep bringing that up? Buck’s dangler is the last thing I want to think about when I’m about to eat a maple syrup dipped sausage.” She spears a sausage link with a fork.

“So all you did was make sure he was okay? That’s it?” I’m still gripping the wheel so tightly my knuckles are white.

“That’s it?” Violet stops with the fork half an inch from her mouth. “I had to prod a hundred teenage hornballs out of the house and the yard, clean up the mess he made in the hallway, and stayed up until six in the morning to make sure he didn’t die. I feel like ‘that’s it’ is downplaying how kickass of a stepsister I’m gonna be.” She takes a hearty bite of sausage link while glaring at me.

“So nothing sexual happened?” I ask.

“What?” Violet flails and her sausage link goes flying, as do her pancakes. The syrup flips over and lands on her leg, then slides down her shin and hits the floor. A pancake lands on the dashboard and another lands on the center console. “Oh my God! Ew! No!” she gags dramatically. “Seriously, mom? Did you miss the part where he hurled all over the hallway? Or the part where I’m vying for top spot as stepsister of the fucking millennium? You’re dating his freaking dad, who might end up being my stepdad. There is a less than zero percent chance I would ever entertain that scenario. Also, he’s not even remotely my type. Nothing against hockey players, but they all seem to be relentless horndogs and my energy is currently funneled into getting into a great college, not fumbling my way through lackluster sexual experiences with dude-bros.” She looks down at her lap. “Jesus. Why am I covered in pancakes and syrup?”

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