I was brushing my teeth at around 2 or 3 in the morning of the first day of January at Rachel’s house. She had just thrown one of the best parties I’ve been to and I was trying to scrub the taste of Lone Star out of my mouth. A girl was sitting on the toilet next to me taking a piss and another girl was on the floor behind me, leaning into the bathtub and puking her guts out. I looked like a wreck in the mirror with sunken dark eyes and a green hunting cap a little crooked on my head. It was the end of a year and the end of the night and I tried to think about everything that happened to me since last January.
Adrienne finished school in December 2007 at the end of the first semester of her senior year. I’ve known her since she was about 12 but I’ve only known her as the person she is now for a year or two. I got to know her pretty well after spending school lunch breaks with her in damp garages and Whole Foods. At the beginning of 2008, I’d see her every once in a while at shows or parties. She got in a scooter wreck that summer and got really hurt.
I turned in my application to Amy’s Ice Creams some time in March. I got the job on the spot and started my first job where I wasn’t paid in cash and I knew exactly how much I would make twice a month. I thought the job was pretty stressful and I thought about quitting. I spent my 18th birthday mopping the floor and defrosting a freezer. A month later I got a tattoo of a Dr Pepper bottle scooping an ice cream cone. A month after that, a girl I dated in the 8th grade became my coworker.
That summer, I bought a moped and helped Katie Menowsky move from Stafford to the ‘Trose, Houston. She actually moved across the street from Amy’s so she gave me a key and told me I could spend the night after work so I don’t get mugged on my moped or hit by a car. My entire summer life was a backpack filled with 2 sets of clothes and a sleeping bag bungee-tied in a milkcrate on the back of my bike. I spent my tip money on Santeria candles at a Mexican dollar store. Morgan left the city to go to college in Arkansas. Ailleen moved out. Leah went to Austin. I told my boss that I quit and was gonna ride my moped all day, every day, all over the city. I came back a week later to raise some money so I could get a tattoo of a jar of fireflies. My moped broke, was fixed, then I crashed it into a girl on a scooter, and then I took it to a scooter shop where the mechanic was dating the girl I crashed into.
In the fall I was briefly a member of Black Congress. Rachel, a girl I knew in the 5th grade, became my friend again. I found out where she lived and I spent a few nights on her couch. She didn’t mind at all. Well at least that’s what she told me.
For the entire month of December and I had the entire house to myself. I fell off my moped again. Leah came back to visit and I watched her listen to a stolen copy of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and manually shift gears in her car. I was banned from House of Pies so I changed my diner of choice to 59 Diner where I fell in love with a waitress with short hair and a bad tattoo.
When I finished brushing my teeth, I went into the living room to lay my sleeping bag on the couch. I rinsed out my toothbrush for one last time in the kitchen sink before I put it back in my backpack and was drying it off with my shirt sleeve when I saw peeing-girl, who was next to me in the bathroom, walk pass the kitchen entrance. I stepped out into the living room, stepped over a boy sleeping on the floor, and put my toothbrush in the front compartment of my backpack. Then I whispered to peeing-girl, “Your ride stopped by when she was out buying cigarettes, but they already left, if that makes you feel any better.”
She whispered back in a sad, drunken voice. “How is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“They stopped by from another party to pick you up instead of just ditching you. It means they didn’t forget.”
“Oh,” she said. Then she told me she thought about calling a cab to go home but I told her that the guys I knew at the party are more than willing to drop her off at home because she lives on the way. She told me she’d feel kinda guilty that someone else would have to drive her home but then I reminded her about the time she picked me up from a bowling alley and dropped me off at a friend’s house once so it adds up. Then she told me that I was sweet and then she left.
