Chapter 9
THE FIELD PARTY
Milkshake sloooooots
Me: Please tell me y’all are out tonight
Emma Donarski: you know it
Emma Donarski: Waldron boys’ farm.
We have alcohol … take an Uber!!
It was like Emma had read my mind. I wanted nothing more than to get drunk and forget this emotionally exhausting night. I called an Uber and left the Caddy in the bar parking lot, not even caring about how I would get back here tomorrow.
The Uber took me down the one-lane hometown highway until we turned onto the dirt road that led to the Waldron boys’ farm. I lowered the window without asking as we rolled closer to the sound of voices and the smell of bonfire smoke.
“This all right?” the driver, a plump middle-aged woman with a kind face, asked.
“Perfect. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Be safe, honey.”
It was a clear, cobalt night dotted with stars.
The bonfire crackled in the middle of the field, sending plumes of smoke into the vast sky.
I recognized a few of the distant faces, kids I grew up with whose names were forever seared in my mind.
I hadn’t seen some of them in years. Maybe they remembered me, maybe they didn’t.
I wondered how many of them had heard I’d come out, and what they thought about it, and whether I cared.
Anxiety nipped at my stomach, taking me back to the feelings I’d had when I’d first set foot in Alabama last weekend.
I thought of Uncle George walking into a space like this one—a heteronormative space, filled with the people he’d grown up with, where everyone was assumed to be straight.
The kind of space where he would have to compartmentalize his life.
The kind of space where Hatch couldn’t follow—even if he had wanted to.
How had Uncle George done it for so many years? How had he withheld such an intrinsic part of himself, especially when it affected the person he loved most? I imagined trying to do so and felt my windpipe instantly clog. The whole sky couldn’t hold enough air for me.
I am gay, I am here, I am gay, I am here …
“Louisa!” someone shouted, breaking through my fog. A moment later, Candor knocked into me with the force of a small cannon. Emma was right behind her, practically tackling both of us to the ground.
“Oof,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“Louisa Ebeneeza!” Emma shouted. “You made it!”
“Welcome to the party!” Candor said loudly. “It’s not our party but it’s a fun party!”
Their eyes were gleaming and unfocused. I hadn’t seen them drunk in a while, not since last summer when we’d snuck off with a case of Mr. Donarski’s beer.
“Hi, you two,” I laughed, grateful to be pulled out of my heavy thoughts.
I threw my arms around their shoulders and squeezed. “Are you having fun?”
“We been drankin’,” Emma said.
“Drankin’!” Candor repeated.
Another silhouette approached us, and I exhaled tiredly, already knowing who it would be. I didn’t have the energy to deal with this girl tonight. All I wanted was the comfort of my old friends and the pull of a bottle to help me forget Uncle George.
“Well,” Aubrey said, “look who it is. Nice of you to show up this time.” She gave me a pointed look, as if to remind everyone that I hadn’t shown up for last weekend’s party. Unlike Emma and Candor, she sounded perfectly sober, or she was at least doing a good job of hiding her alcohol.
Her dig about me showing up put a spark of hot anger back in my blood, which was a welcome change from the melancholy I’d been feeling a moment ago.
I squeezed my arms tighter around my friends and met Aubrey’s glare with one of my own.
“Lucky me, running into you two days in a row,” I said sardonically.
“Do you have to follow my friends everywhere?”
Emma wriggled out of my hold and tapped me on the nose like a midcentury nanny. “Louisa ’Beneeza,” she said, hiccupping, “be nice.”
“Yeah, Scrooge, be nice,” Aubrey said with a smirk. She turned to Emma and Candor. “They just started passing the moonshine around, if you still wanted some?”
“Yes!” my friends said in unison, and without further ado, Candor grabbed my hand and tugged me along behind them.
We reached the bonfire just as one of the Waldron boys started playing a fresh song on his guitar. There were more people here than I’d realized, and I became acutely aware of many sets of eyes on me as I found a place to squeeze in with my friends. Without meaning to, I leaned closer into Candor.
“It’s mostly Rustin Prep kids,” Candor whispered, sensing my anxiety. “A few County High people, too. They’re all nice, I promise.”
And they did seem nice. “Hi, Louisa,” a few of my old classmates said, while some nodded and others simply stared like they were trying to place me from a dream. I noticed a few telltale whispers and side-eyes, but people mostly left me alone.
If anything, they seemed more intrigued by my proximity to Aubrey.
It was clear that her presence rippled through the crowd like a breeze you could feel on your skin.
People watched her with stars in their eyes, wanting desperately to be noticed, to be seen, to become part of her sparkling orbit.
Candor and Emma seemed thrilled by the secondhand shine.
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, because it’s not like Aubrey had done anything to earn this attention.
People were just enchanted by the fact that she was Coach Calhoun’s daughter.
“Hi, Aubrey,” said a big, jocky guy with long sideburns.
I recognized him immediately: Asa Waldron, the middle brother.
He’d once tricked me into making a dirty joke on the playground when we were eight years old.
I’d repeated it to my grandmother and had my mouth scrubbed with Palmolive.
Asa may have gotten older, taller, and better looking, but I couldn’t look at him without tasting dish soap.
Asa handed Aubrey a bottle of Ole Smoky moonshine. “Heard you were lookin’ for this,” he said pompously, like he was handing over the holy grail.
Aubrey’s eyes danced as she took the bottle from him. “You heard right. Thank you.” She gestured to Emma and Candor, but not me. “Mind to get us some chasers?”
“Comin’ right up,” Asa grinned, stepping away.
As soon as his back was turned, Emma and Candor collapsed into giggles. “Oh my god,” Candor said giddily, “he’s got it bad for you.”
Aubrey didn’t reply. The flirtatious smile vanished from her face, and she became all business as she shoved the bottle at Emma and started riffling through her purse.
“I don’t need a chaser,” I said, impatient to taste the blackberry moonshine. I reached for the bottle, but Aubrey smacked my hand away.
“Ow!” I yelped, cradling my stinging hand.
“We’re doing this properly,” she said, pulling rubber shot glasses from her purse.
“You carry shot glasses in your purse?”
Aubrey sighed like I was truly testing her patience. “As my mother says, a lady should always be prepared.”
“A lady,” I repeated, snorting. “God, you’re like a fucking cotillion class.”
Aubrey smiled in a faux-sweet way. “I have some wet wipes, too, if you want to clean out that filthy mouth of yours?”
“Sure, as long as I can borrow your stick, too?”
Aubrey frowned. “What stick?”
I gestured behind her. “You know, the one up your ass?”
“Y’all, enough,” Emma pleaded, grabbing our hands. “We’ve been all”—she hiccupped—“excited for you to meet each other”—another hiccup—“but now you’re just”—hiccup—“angry lil puppies that make me want to cry.”
“Me too,” Candor said drunkenly, rocking on her heels. “My bes’ friends hate each other and it’s so sad.”
It was the first time I’d heard Candor or Emma extend the term best friend to someone other than me.
Aubrey must have registered it, because she shot me a triumphant look that seemed to say See?
I couldn’t look back at her. As childish as it was, my feelings were hurt.
I felt left out and left behind. What would have happened if I had never moved away from Rustin?
Would there have been no need for Aubrey’s presence in the friend group?
Or would she have become my friend, too?
“Can we just drink our moonshine?” Emma pleaded.
Aubrey nodded and poured three shots with a steady hand. She handed one to Candor, one to Emma, and the last one to me.
“Aren’t you—?” I started to ask.
“I’m not drinking,” she said firmly.
I blinked. She didn’t drink, but she still brought three shot glasses? Was that so she could feel part of the ritual, or had she anticipated that I might be there? And why did that make me feel strange?
“Cheers!” Emma shouted, clinking our glasses together. She shot hers back while Candor took hers in two small pulls. Aubrey looked expectantly at me, so I downed mine and handed the shot glass back to her with a mumbled thank-you.
“You’re welcome,” she said without looking at me. She pulled a paper towel from her purse and dried the lip of the shot glass before tucking it away.
We fell into a better rhythm after that.
Aubrey and I weren’t exactly nice, but it seemed we had reached an unspoken agreement to leave each other alone.
Besides, she was too caught up with Asa.
He had returned with Coca-Colas for each of us and was now stuck to Aubrey like tree sap.
Emma and Candor couldn’t stop giggling about it, both of them talking to Asa with fluttery eyes and sparkling smiles.
I felt like I was on the outside looking in, not only because I no longer understood their in-jokes about school, but also because I couldn’t relate to mooning over a boy like that.
It made me ache for the comfort of the Frisky Cricket, even after the difficult night I’d had earlier.
“Louisa Wade,” Asa said eventually, turning toward me like a spotlight. “Long time no see.”
My heart started pounding. I held steady and gave him a curt nod. “Hey, Asa.”
“Rumor is you like girls now,” he said with a leering grin.