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Alison pours the rest of her first-ever Cosmopolitan down her throat. At sleepovers with the girls, they usually stick to cheap vodka shoplifted from the grocery store, wine bottles looted from someone’s parents that wouldn’t be missed. Fancy bar drinks are so much better, and she has Cece to thank for this discovery, among others.
She turns to watch Cece at the pool table. The douchey frat guys are gaping over the way her skinny jeans look as she bends over to take a shot. They’re distracted. They don’t realize she knows all the angles. She’s about to run the table on them.
Alison grins. She’s learning a lot about guys this summer. Mostly that they’re easy marks.
Cece leans over, effortlessly lining up her final series of shots. She glances up when she feels Alison watching. Her lips curve into a wolfish smile. She winks.
There are three frat bros, one of whom has a super annoyed looking girlfriend staring daggers at Cece. No wonder. She has tragic mousy brown hair. Anyone with so little self respect deserves whatever they get.
“Hey,” Alison says, filling her voice with conspiratorial concern. “Is that guy over there your boyfriend?” She points to the hulking dude, with his bare ankles and Italian leather loafers.
“Why?” Spoken like a woman who’s already suspicious.
“It’s just -” Alison spins a hint of hesitation into it, long enough to make it sound like she doesn’t want to continue, if it weren’t for her strong sense of sisterly solidarity. “He asked me to blow him in the bathroom.”
“He did what?”
Mousy hair storms over and slaps Brock or Chase or whatever his name is across the face. She grabs a mostly full glass of beer off the bar and tosses it at his head. He ducks, and the glass hits someone behind him, who turns around with an angry look on his face and shoves Hulking Guy in the chest.
Cece materializes by her side. “Shall we?”
They stroll out arm in arm, Mousy’s purse hanging off Alison’s shoulder, all the cash from the wallets of three other patrons tucked in Cece’s back pocket.
“You drive,” Cece declares, tossing Ali the car keys.
Alison doesn’t especially want to remind her that she’s only fourteen. She slides into the driver’s seat and pretends she knows exactly what she’s doing.
She manages to turn the engine on and find the gas, but she presses it too hard and the car lurches forward so fast it startles her into slamming on the brakes.
Cece lounges in the passenger seat, her hands behind her head. “Go ahead. Punch it.”
They roar out of the parking lot, Alison steering them wildly onto the main road. Instantly, she sees red and blue flashing lights in the rearview.
Oh god, her mom is going to kill her.
Cece bangs her hands on the dashboard.
“Go!” she yells. “What are you afraid of?”
Alison floors it. It’s pretty much a straight shot back to their beach house, but the road is dark and her heart is pounding and the speedometer is ticking past ninety-five.
She can’t hear the sirens anymore as she skids into the driveway, fishtailing to a stop on the grass.
Cece laughs delightedly, clapping her hands.
There’s no sign of the cop.
Alison is shaking like a leaf and laughing, too.
“We just broke about fifty laws!”
Cece waves her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t count if you don’t get caught.”
Alison catches a glimpse of her hair in the side mirror. It looks how she feels - wild and badass and totally free. It’s like Cece is the world’s coolest fortune teller, here to show Alison what her future looks like. Which is to say, gorgeous and exhilarating and completely on her own terms.
She watches Cece retouch her lipstick. Tonight she’s wearing a red so dark it’s almost purple. It looks like a bruise, but it works.
Alison leans over and kisses her. Or tries to. Cece whips her body away from her like she’s been burned.
“Eww!”
Ali does her best to play it off. She shrugs like it doesn’t matter. Fights down the acid swell of shame in her stomach.
“I wanted to see how that color would look on me.”
“Then ask to borrow it next time,” Cece says, her voice sharp.
Out of nowhere, she remembers her dad calling Byron Montgomery a pansy for teaching Art History.
Ali must not be doing a good enough job acting, or maybe Cece can read her mind. She’s like that sometimes. It’s as if they’ve known each other their whole lives instead of just a couple of months.
“Hey,” Cece says, softening her tone. “You know I love you, right? You’re like my little sister, Ali. And sisters don’t try to stick their tongues down each others throats.”
Cece never passes up a chance to do something crazy or outrageous. If she thinks two girls making out is gross, so does Alison. Case closed.
“Fine,” Alison says, forcing herself to roll her eyes. “God. I had make up envy. I’m not a lez.”
Cece ruffles her hair. “Seriously, Ali. Think of me as your big sister.”
“A big sister would let me borrow her damn lipstick.”
Cece takes a hair tie and wraps one of her stolen fifties around the tube, then flips it back towards Alison as she gets out of the car. She struts off towards the house without looking back.
Alison waits until the last swish of Cece’s floral print top is out of sight.
She wipes the back of her hand angrily across her eyes.
She’s not a baby.
She’s not going to cry.
She walks unsteadily back to her room and locks the door.
She throws the lipstick in the trash.