“Hey, Daniel!” William called. He held up two more bottles. City lights slid down the glass. “It’s time!” He gave Christina a nod. She pulled a roll of electrical tape from the plastic bag, unpeeled a long piece with a horrible sticky-scratchy noise, and began wrapping the tape around the bottle and William’s hand. It looked to Melissa like an impatient doctor binding a fractured wrist. Once the first bottle was securely fastened to William’s right hand, she started on the left.
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Now?”
Daniel looked hurt. “Fabes, you love Edward Fortyhands!”
“Oh my God, I can’t with you. I hate Edward Fortyhands. You must be thinking of the movie version of me.”
Her phone buzzed in her back pocket.
“No, listen,” Daniel said, “I didn’t explain it right, but there isn’t really a movie version of you, there’s just you, you’re the same, but sometimes the script goes in a different direction.”
“Go play,” she said, turning her back and heading for the far corner of the roof. “Have fun.”
Cloaked in darkness, Melissa faced west toward Washington Square Park. Her view was blocked, but she still thought she could make out the flat top of the NYU library, a massive twelve-story cube. Electrical tape crinkled behind her as Christina bound Daniel’s bottles to his hands and said something to make the boys laugh. Melissa shook her head and stood on tiptoe, straining to find a clear line of sight across the landscape of rooftops that rose and fell as if stacked by a hyper child. Phrases like “move-in day” and “welcome week” and “bursar’s office” ran through her head in a pleasant litany of College Melissa vocab. With a pang of anticipation, she opened Epheme.Ash:Hey girl, how’s life on the road?SewWhat:Meh.Ash:That’s not a very *DIYfashion365* attitude.SewWhat:Trip’s good, car’s unreal. Weird night is all.Ash:Anything I can do?SewWhat:I really shouldn’t be talking about this with you of all people.Ash:I’m here for you. Anything. You know that.SewWhat:When you went to college, were you still dating anybody from home?Ash:Wow, this is taking our relationship to a whole new level.SewWhat:You said ANYTHING, lol.Ash:Yes. I had a girlfriend from high school. Amanda, haha.SewWhat:Ash and Amanda. Nice.Ash:We lasted till fall break.SewWhat:What happened?Ash:You don’t realize it until you get to college, but the person you’re becoming starts taking up all your energy, and the person you used to be feels like a copy of a copy, all out of focus. So if you stay together with somebody from home, you both end up trying to love these fuzzy images of each other. TL;DR: love fades.SewWhat:Wow. Real talk.Ash:I’m obviously biased since I think you should be focusing on other things but I would suggest breaking up with him now to avoid a lot more pain later.SewWhat:Okay. Moving on.Ash:What are you wearing?SewWhat:Too dark to show you.Ash:It’s called a flash, babe.SewWhat:Haha touché. No pic for you.
Behind her, William screamed, “I already have to pee so bad!”
Edward Fortyhands had but one rule: the bottles stayed taped to your hands until you finished them both. Of course it was extremely difficult to unzip your pants, or even pull them down, using huge, ungainly forty-ounce bottles instead of human fingers. Therefore competitors had to hold it until the alcohol was gone.
Finishing eighty ounces of malt liquor in a timely fashion was basically impossible.
It was a stupid game.
William and Daniel loved it. They talked strategy when they weren’t even playing, as if it were a complex puzzle that required creative thinking to master. She glanced over her shoulder. The light seemed unbalanced, spilling across William and Christina in equal measure but relegating Daniel to the shadows. All she could see was the glinting of his bottle-hands.
The beat from William’s phone went staticky as the streaming station lost its connection. Christina switched the music to something ragged and abrasive. At this, Daniel emerged from the shadows. He threw his head back and howled at the sky and took a long swig. Christina squealed—a noise that Melissa had never once heard her make—and William let loose with a howl of his own.
She turned back to her phone.Ash:My turn to ask you something.SewWhat:It’s only fair.Ash:Is this road trip of yours gonna take you near Albuquerque?SewWhat:Not sure yet.Ash:Because we could meet up.SewWhat:Now who’s taking it to the next level?Ash:I’m serious. I’ve got business out here for a month or two, a bunch of houses I’m flipping. It would be amazing to see you.SewWhat:It would be amazing to see you too, it just might be hard to get away.Ash:You’re a beautiful talented genius. You can do anything.
Across the avenue, a light went on in a spacious corner apartment. The décor was immaculate. Melissa watched a woman glide to a wrought-iron wine rack. Soon that’ll be me, she thought. She felt like she could float across the gap between buildings and soar, slingshot around the spire of the Empire State Building and land in Washington Square Park with her future already plotted. The lights of Manhattan brightened in welcome, blinking a message solely for her.
The boys raced to a dead-heat finish, heads tilted back, cheap malt liquor streaming down the shirts Melissa had chosen for them. Daniel was shifting his weight from side to side, crashing against invisible walls. William stood with his legs crossed like a little kid.
“Come on come on come on,” Daniel said as Melissa clawed at the tape around his hands while Christina freed William.
Melissa felt a nail bend back and hissed.
“My eyes are turning yellow,” William said, swaying like a breeze-shaken sapling. “Are my eyes yellow?”
“That was solid work,” Daniel said. “Personal bests.” He was slurring less than William, but his face had undergone a Drunk Daniel
