Wrecked Read Free Page A

and wade into the undertow, looking out onto the choppy green water, before the other one even showed up. It was usually too late to actually swim. But most years getting that first piece of the beach on the day we arrived was a part of starting things off.
    “You mean, you’ll unpack the whole car?” I asked Jack.
    “Yeah.” I watched his face, trying to figure out the trick.
    “Okay,” I said finally.
    When I got back, we ate dinner, and after that Jack wandered through my door, listening to his iPod. My room had twin beds with ugly flowered curtains that matched the bedspreads, and a fake bamboo chair. I was on my cell phone, lying on the floor with my feet up on one bed. Jack did the same next to me. Not knowing what else to do, I said to Ellen, who was planning to come down three days later, “So, this is weird. Jackjust came into my room and, like, made himself comfortable. He doesn’t even have his laptop with him or anything.”
    He didn’t so much as blink, and with his music on I couldn’t even be sure he’d heard me. When I hung up with Ellen a few minutes later, Jack said, “Do you like Straw Man Proposal?”
    I rolled my eyes. “You know I’ve never heard of them.”
    “Listen to this,” he said instead of telling me what a moron I was. And he leaned over to plug his earphones into my ears.
    I listened. It wasn’t bad.

2
    SOMEHOW ME AND ELLEN AND SETH AND LISA AND JASON AND these two other guys and this one other girl wearing a hot pink jean jacket end up in Wayne’s basement playing pool. Which is fun, especially since I’m sort of good at it, and Sleev-eth and I are on the same team, and he’s good too. Three swigs of the Jack got me way drunk for a few hours, but now I think I’m sobered up. For a while there I thought I was going to puke, but Ellen walked me twice around the entire house, even all around the second floor.
    “Walking off too much alcohol doesn’t exactly count as partying,” she said when we passed some of those red-markered signs.
    “Yeah, but we’re not supposed to be here,” I moaned. “The second floor! Wayne will be soooo mad.”
    “Wayne is soooo stoned right now he wouldn’t be able to tell the second floor from the fifteenth,” Ellen told me. “Now, keep walking.”
    “Do you think I’m going to pass out?” I was sort of hopeful. I’d never passed out before.
    “Nah,” she said. “If I thought you were that far gone, I’d throw you in the shower.” That probably got me sober faster than anything.
    “You’re the best, El,” I told her.
    “Ugh,” she said. “You are not a cute drunk.”
    But now I’m fine, and Ellen is having a hard time holding her pool cue. She had four beers on top of three shots of Jack Daniel’s, all in the last hour and a half And right as I’m realizing that I also realize our curfews are way over.
    “Oh my God,” I say, scratching my shot.
    “What’s wrong?” Sleev-eth asks. He’s finishing another peppermint patty. I think I’ve seen him eat four tonight. And he’s not even a little bit fat.
    “Ellen, we have to go.” I stand up and hand off my pool cue to Jason. “I’m in such deep shit.”
    “About time,” Ellen says to Jason and the others. “She never does Anna-thing wrong.” It’s hard to believe she can do her word thing so drunk. Then again, Anna-thing is an old one.
    “You have to go now?” Seth sounds bummed, which is nice.
    “Just stay,” Lisa goes. “You’re already late anyway.”
    “You don’t know my dad,” I tell her.
    “You’re not driving,” Jason warns Ellen.
    “I am,” I say, pulling the keys out of my back pocket. My key ring is a teeny, tiny glow-in-the-dark planet Earth. If you sit inthe pitch black with it, it’s got all the greens and blues and whites and the shapes of the continents and everything. Ellen gave it to me the day I got my learner’s permit. “Now you’ve got the world at your fingertips,” she’d said.
    “Bye,” I tell everybody. Seth