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"I can't breathe--"
It's the first thing James hears when he taps the green icon to answer his phone. He didn't look to see who was calling, but the rough hour plus the voice, plus the message doesn't leave much for him to figure out.
"Well, you're speaking," James says, pointing out the obvious.
There's an echoing sound. Then,"Fuck you." Then a gurgle-splat that makes James cringe as his lower molars wash with saliva, just in case his body decides to vomit, too, in either safety or sympathy.
"Tash?" James asks slowly. "There wouldn't happen to be a toilet seat jamming your windpipe just now, would there?"
"Uh?" Shuffle. Shoes on tile. Maybe knees. The phone beeps through a menu of options and settles on speaker. "This is... oh my god."
James yanks the hearing aid from his ear. "Is the damn ceiling tiled? How many stalls are in that place?"
Steve, who is in the kitchen chopping celery, stops and gives James a look.
"Women's bathrooms." James holds his phone briefly to his chest. "Women's to men's, and the ratio of places to sit..." He shakes his head. "I will never understand."
Steve makes a face like he's trying not to laugh.
"Yeah, you shut up." James waves Steve back to work, then puts his sister back up to his ear. "Now, what's going on?"
"If you rent so many lanes, you're allowed to bring your own food. You know the rules are always different at different places..."
"Context would be great." James is ready to rest his head on the table. Eleven o'clock is still early for a Friday night party, even though it may be considered late for other activities, like making freezeable soup. He didn't quite catch where Tasha was headed when she slipped out the door closer to the actual dinner hour.
"The 90s are back to haunt me," Tasha slurs. There's another spitting sound. "Gave me an address. Didn't say it was a fucking bowling alley."
"They still have those?" James chooses to place his forehead on the back of his prosthetic hand. Bowling alleys. Hadn't they fallen by the wayside? Like phone booths? And Gumball machines?
"Yeah. With glowy carpet."
"Ok..." James tries to process just what his sister is telling him. "Wow. I hope they've at least cleaned the bathrooms since we went to so-and-so's birthday party in 1997."
"Eh." Tasha clears her throat. "Smells like girl soap. The lotion kind. You know, where the decanters breed mold where all the people touch them?"
"That's a lovely thought," James replies. "Why do I suddenly have the feeling you're deflecting?"
"I'm puking." And there's another horrible sound to prove it.
"Hey, you called me," James reminds her, "Not the other way around."
"I've just had a lot, ok?"
"And you wanted me to remind you that you are more than two years solidly under legal?"
"It was vodka punch. It was good. It tasted like gummi worms." Tasha's voice catches. James isn't sure if she's being sick again, or about to cry.
"You sure they used a legit mixer?" No beverage at a theme party could ever taste good. No coed would ever spend the money on it, let alone the time. "KoolAid packets? Or Hawaiian Fruit Punch? The kind that comes in little plastic barrels?"
"I don't know." There's a hitch, then a hock, and a spit. "There was cake and Doritos and a disco ball. And some guy came up to talk to me and he squeezed my boob and he was laughing. I was laughing. I was having a good time--"
Tasha cuts herself off to be properly sick.
James waits out the retches, wondering if there's more to spill, or if her story's let loose along with her gut.
"Do you still have all your clothes?" James hates that it's a regular question, but maybe it'll help them both keep on track.
"Um, no..."
"What'd you do?" James waits to hear the horrors.
"I don't know where I put my hoodie, and they took my shoes when I first came in...?" Tasha's tone has gone scared now. Tired, and a bit gurgly still, but the edge has that waver, that wonder if she's in trouble. James hasn't heard it in a while.
"Ok, that's ok," James nearly laughs in relief. "No, uh, missing delicates?"
"No," Tasha answers quickly. "I just, I, uh... Jamie..."
"I know."
They'd been sent to a lot of events since they'd been colocated in the group home. Their workers did their best with free vouchers for theme parks and baseball games and reimbursements for whatever the current rage was on each child's birthday. It hadn't been as good as it sounded. There was a lot of lumping, co-partying with other kids in the system they'd never met. Crowded venues. Not enough supervision to go around.
And they took advantage of it. James figured out how to reverse-engineer claw machines, showed off for younger kids, then forced them to trade away their food vouchers and roller coaster tickets for the stupid stuffed prizes he won en mass. Tasha, memorably, had jogged down the midway at the same amusement park, hot pretzel in one hand, ice cream in the other, and ended up with the bathroom as her final destination, finger down her throat, and James working pull-ups so as to see her over the top of the stall door, hence introducing him to the inequities of gendered toilets.
Tasha'd been, oh, twelve, maybe, when they'd been at a quintuple birthday bash at the local bowling alley. It was for a younger kid from their house, all James remembers about him now was a penchant for eating glue, and, of course, being the nexus of the debacle to follow. It was a baby party. They were not allowed to bring their own food, and the kitchen staff produced such awful replicas of pizza and cake that James began to wonder what would happen if one took a screwdriver to the machine that dispensed pokemon stickers. Tasha was nowhere to be found, until it was time to leave, and James found a brick holding open an alarmed door just a crack. He'd pushed it wide, enjoying the satisfying creak, until the silhouettes in the corner of the room split apart and he could see David Bandino, their next-door-neighbor, who had no reason to be at the party anyway, pulling his hand out of Tasha's training bra.
James had cussed him out, grabbed him by the back of his stupid mullet, and thought better of socking him on the jaw. Words like 'school shooter' and 'keep an eye' had already been thrown around regarding his black jeans and grown-out hair and the headphones tucked into his backpack. James let David leave first, threatened into next week. Then he took Tasha and held her close. Her face was wet up one side, like David had licked her or something. James dried her off, talked her down, probably too harshly, about getting hurt or sick or pregnant. Tasha started to cry. James squeezed her, and they left.
Tasha'd probably put out, James knew. He hated she was getting into that shit. But an older boy, with her forced into a corner? Too much. He was a fucking high schooler, laying down rules to keep his kid sister safe. But everybody else was choking down gritty frosting for whatever-his-name-is.
James lets go of past grievances, and he wonders what the guy's name is, the one who chatted Tasha up earlier this evening. He wonders if he's older. He probably is; for some reason, it seems that guys are...not more responsible, by far, but more logical, perhaps, when it comes to drinking? James isn't sure the status of Tasha's fake ID, but it seems to him that passing the security guard is much more of a girls' problem. As if he needs another thing to worry about.
"Do you want me to come get you?" James finally asks, Tasha's spitting and nose-sniffling finally having tapered off to regular, if a little shaky, breathing.
"I don't know," she whispers. "I don't want to go back out there."
"I can send Steve," James offers.
"To do what now?" Steve shuts the cabinet under the sink with his foot, then lines the carrots up on the edge of the cutting board. "And are you still talking about, like, facilities?"
"I can hear him talking to you," Tasha says in a gaspy voice. "What's he saying?"
"He's making chicken noodle," James explains. "Well, he's making celery, onion, and carrot."
"It's called the holy trinity," Steve corrects.
James rolls his eyes. Then he says pointedly to Tasha, "If he uses elbow macaroni like we have in the pantry, he can have it ready tonight."
"Ahem, this is freezer soup, for next week, when summer classes start and nobody cooks dinner--"
James waves his hand. "That's what off-brand hot pockets are for."
"I'm not feeling great," Tasha murmurs, "I don't need anything."
"Your choice," James says. "But I'm coming to get you." He stands up and looks for his shoes, which seem to be the only ones still on the rack by the door; Steve's and Tasha's have suffered the effects of an avalanche of some sort and have taken over half the hallway. James thinks of pointing it out to Steve, but instead he points at the stove and says, "Cook."
"Really, Jamie," Tasha groans. "Home. Something to help me sleep. Maybe get this vodka-popcorn smell off me..."
"If you don't want it when we get home, you can have soup for breakfast," James says, lifting his tone into the realm of cheerful, more for irony than anything else. He has to be the big brother. The protector. He fixes these things. It's just his nature by this point.
"...Fine..." Tasha lets out a breath that rattles James's ears again. It seems to be attitude this time, rather than something more severe.
James snags the tissue box from the living room and holds it under his arm like a box of chocolates. Just in case she needs wiping up. Then he takes Steve's keys. "I'm coming now," he says.
"Don't hang up, ok?" It comes out rushed and breathless. James can practically hear Tasha's cheeks burn. "I mean, just... stay?"
"Yeah," James shuts the apartment door behind him. "Do one thing for me, though, ok?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Maybe take the phone off speaker? I like the sound of you better when it's not coming from the bottom of a well."
Tasha laughs. Coughs. Gags.
Then there's a series of beeps. "Fine."