July 19, 1995
Dear Diary,
Sorry about the handwriting. The room is doing a thing. We’ll get to that.
So tonight was the big bonfire on the public beach—the BIG one, with kids from all over and major sound from a whole boom box system so you can hear Boyz II Men until your ears fall off.
Kate and I almost didn’t go because those things are always such a Tessa-fest, but Peter and Eli were going, so it was like a thing and we went.
And had fun!! Despite the fact that Peter never even glanced at me all night but was nose deep into some girl named Whitney who was up from Miami where I hope she returns and soon.
(Tessa called her Whitless and I love her for that.)
Anyway. Brooke and Lauren showed up. They are a couple of girls who also come in the summers (from New Jersey—with insane accents). They are a lot of fun and a little bit (a lot) wild, and Brooke had a thermos. A pretty pink thermos that did NOT contain hot chocolate.
Vodka. And tonic. Apparently.
I took a sip. Okay, fine. I took more than one sip. Maybe…six? Kate did take one and swished it around like mouthwash and, when no one was looking, she spit it out and made a face like she’d licked a battery, which honestly is the funniest thing I have seen her do all summer.
It is possible that I had seven sips. I lost count.
So, for the record, vodka is SNEAKY. It tastes like nothing. Like fizzy sweet water. (That might be the tonic.) And then approximately fifteen minutes later you are…laughing. And feeling a little unstoppable.
So I took one look at Peter and…Kate stepped in and did the stopping. I probably owe her my life, and tomorrow, when I’m not loopy, I will thank her.
Because I was going to tell him that I am prettier than Whitless, but Kate grabbed my arm and said, in her quiet Kate sane and sober voice, “Vivien Lawson, you are not doing that,” and she walked me down the beach in the other direction, away from Peter and Whitney and the boom box, and she would not let go of my arm until we were halfway home.
She saved my life. I am not being dramatic. She saved my whole life.
Halfway up the dune path I started laughing about it and once I started, I could not stop, and then Kate started laughing because I was laughing, and we were holding onto each other to stay upright and we were already giggling like idiots when we came around the corner of the porch and, shockeroo, Officer Maggie was waiting on the porch.
Listening to us giggle our fool heads off.
Since I’ve never had more than a stolen sip of wine, I don’t know if I “sobered up” but I sure got serious. I tried to walk normally. I tried VERY hard for normalcy. But after seven—OKAY EIGHT—sips of Brooke’s non-hot-chocolate-thermos? Walking was like advanced calculus.
I swayed. A little.
Mom did not say anything for a long time. She uses silence like a weapon and this one terrified me. She lifted that eyebrow, the one that has been making people confess things since 1981. Then she said, very calmly, “Vivien. Come sit down.”
And then she gave me the lecture—the Maggie Lawson Karma Special. In a nutshell, “Do bad things and bad things will happen to you.”
She laid it out while I sat there praying I would not throw up on the porch.
Honestly? It wasn’t even bad. She knows I am not going to be a wild one, not now and not in college. She just wanted me to know that she KNEW, and that she will ALWAYS know, because she is Maggie and she has eyes in places where eyes should not be allowed.
And now the room is definitely moving. In circles. I love Kate. I love this summer. And, yes, as much as I try not to and insist this is the last summer I’ll feel this way, I love Peter, too. Who’s probably kissing Whitless right now.
Maybe next summer. Maybe once I’m in college. Maybe he’ll kiss me.
That could be the vodka talking.
Love,
Viv