Work Text:
You’re always having firsts. First anti-homecoming. First business negotiation. First affair with a guy over twenty-five (Connor can go to hell, as it turns out). First year of high school without the semi-stable structures of Jason and Lyla, Jason and Tim, Tim and you having anything to do with each other.
Maybe that last one is not so surprising. Maybe every tragedy in your life is predictable, and it’s only you who expects things to go differently.
You, who make your own tragedies more often than not.
(Smash was the first guy you hooked up with who actually hated Tim.)
(It was Tim the first time, of course. You were both thirteen. The back of Billy's pickup seemed as good a place as anywhere.)
You are older than Tim, younger than Lyla Garrity. You share a birthday, actually, with Bradley Cole, who used to bully you in kindergarten—until Tim mashed his nose, at least.
You are enterprising. You are smarter than Mindy, which is why you tell yourself that you can use her tricks without becoming her. You are entitled to a little fun, and that, at least, is not a first.
You are entitled to information about the Riggins family, by virtue of—oh, now that’s a phrase. There’s no virtue to be found between the Collettes and Rigginses, and you know it.
(The back of Billy's pickup seemed as good a place as anywhere could be. You both cried. You thought you’d never sleep again, like sleep belonged to the children you’d just stopped being. You wanted to go home, but somehow you couldn’t leave each other.)
You have your classy flyers and your undeniable kegs and the great empty land with nothing to do on it but wreak havoc. You’re pretty sure Billy Riggins would sleep with you if he had the chance, but you’re not scared of him.
(You woke under a bank of white cloud and pale light, finding that sleep hadn’t been lost to you after all. Tim lay still beside you, the sweat cold on his skin, holding both of your hands in his.)
“Why are you even doing this?” Mindy asks, for what feels like the five hundredth time. It’s not a moral judgment, because it’s Mindy. She’s just annoyed. Poking.
Your answer is something flippant about how you might as well make some money off your stripper sister, since she’s always shedding dollars like snakeskin. It all flies off your tongue before you pause to remember your words can hurt.
The real answer has more to do with Jason in rigid plastic, Tim with shaking hands and empty eyes, than it does with kegs and Billy.
Tim seemed like he was going to drink himself to death, and then he just stopped drinking.
You felt your whole world turn inside out, and then you remembered nobody cared enough about you to notice.
You all have to do something.
There’s always a chance you’ll get it right for the first time.