Hooked. Liz Fichera

it. But then a smile slowly built across my face when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Biker Guy stopped on the side of the road, the front tire of his motorcycle still spewing gray smoke. He was giving us the finger. For some reason, I thrust my hand out the window and returned the gesture, maybe because I was mad at him for challenging Seth, mad at the whole world for simply existing or just relieved that we’d never see Biker Guy again.

      Mostly I was glad no one had wound up in the hospital.

      My head was spinning and my lips were feeling rubbery when someone at Zack Fisher’s party mentioned something about Coach Lannon.

      My ears began to function, even though Gwyneth Riordan was sitting in my lap, grinding against my crotch. She had been saying something about renting a houseboat at Lake Havasu for spring break. “We just need your parents’ credit card for the deposit,” she said after getting me so hot that I would have gladly stolen all of Dad’s credit cards and given them to her.

      Three of my teammates from the Lone Butte High School golf team and their girlfriends were crashed around a glass table in Zack’s backyard next to the swimming pool. Music blared from hidden speakers in the corners of the patio, and the pool lights cast a wavy glow across everyone’s faces. I had to blink a few times to focus.

      “Coach said he was going to make a big change to the team on Monday,” Zack yelled over the music as he chugged from his beer can. The table was littered with gold-and-silver cans and empty bags of potato chips. Zack crushed his can underneath his foot and tossed it with the empties. “Didn’t say what, though. But that’s what I heard.”

      Zack was an okay dude, but he was always hearing things; most of the time he got it wrong.

      “Who said that? Who said he was making a change?” I leaned forward, pushing Gwyneth’s legs to one side, struggling to stop seeing double. Gwyneth pouted, but golf was one of the few things at school that mattered to me. The team had struggled last year, and this year we expected to do better. We had to. Every varsity team at Lone Butte except ours had won a state championship—football, basketball, wrestling, even fencing. Who fences?! Anyway, we wanted our trophy in the glass case at the front of the school with all the others. And Principal Graser wasn’t exactly shy about pointing out its absence at assemblies.

      “Walesa said so. He overheard Coach talking to another teacher during gym class.”

      “When?” Seth asked, sitting straighter.

      “Friday morning,” Zack said.

      “When will he tell us?” My lips sputtered as I tried to release a strand of Gwyneth’s blond hair from the side of my mouth.

      “Monday after school, I think,” Zack said. “Maybe he’s made some changes to the schedule. Maybe we’re in more tournaments this year or something.” His shoulders shrugged like it was probably nothing major.

      I leaned back against my chair. I turned to Seth, who also gave me a shoulder shrug as if to say, Hey, it’s no big deal. And then he smirked and nodded toward Zack. Consider the source, he mouthed.

      Gwyneth turned herself around in my lap, eager for more attention. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her glossy lips against mine. She tasted like candy. Her hair cascaded over my shoulder, invading my nostrils with strawberry.

      My nose wrinkled. It felt as if I could suffocate from the sweetness in her hair, but I pulled her closer, searching for her tongue with mine. She wanted me, and I guessed I wanted her, too.

      Tomorrow I wouldn’t remember a single thing anyway.

      * * *

      Saturday night, all available bussers and waitresses at the Wild Horse Restaurant, along with a gray-haired guy on a sad-sounding wooden flute, sang a Native American birthday song to Mom for her fortieth birthday, even though she’d begged everybody not to. The song seemed better suited to a funeral than a birthday. No one in my family understood the lyrics either, the words sounding more like grunts and heavy exhales.

      Dad grinned uncomfortably at the six-person wait team who’d tended our table all evening, clearing dozens of white porcelain plates and soup bowls, filling crystal water goblets whenever they drained only a fraction, scraping crumbs from the linen tablecloth with razor-blade knives. My younger sister, Riley, and I sank lower in our chairs while everyone else in the packed restaurant interrupted their five-course dinners of grilled venison and mackerel salads and turned to stare at our round table smack-dab in the middle of the floor. The only thing missing was a strobe light pulsating above us as we watched the presentation of a six-layer, custom-made mesquite-honey mousse cake. It was pure torture.

      I tried to tune out the misery by picturing the cheeseburger and fries that Riley and I would scarf down as soon as we got home and ditched Mom and Dad for the nearest Burger King. The sooner this nightmare dinner was over, the better.

      Mom beamed at her cake, pressed her hands against the base of her neck where her birthday present rested, mouthed I love you to Dad and then blew out the half-dozen candles in the middle of the cake. “Thank you for not ruining this gorgeous cake with forty candles,” she told the waitress, a thin woman with black hair and matching eyes. Her twisted bun was pulled back so tightly that it raised her smooth cheekbones. Like the rest of the restaurant staff, she wore black pants and a long-sleeved white shirt. The only color she sported was a teal-blue silk sash threaded through her belt loops. The real colors, the menu boasted, should unfold on your plates and through the restaurant windows where you can see uninterrupted desert all the way to the Estrella Mountains.

      Riley had laughed when I’d read it aloud to her with a haughty English accent, and Mom had frowned from across the table, but, you had to admit, it sounded cheesy.

      The waitress cut the cake in four equally huge slices and placed each slice on a microscopically small plate even though the only one who’d eat it was Mom. As the waitress cut each piece, she handed the plate to a younger girl, the same one who’d kept dropping things all night—the rolls from the bread basket, the extra soup spoon Dad requested, ice cubes from the water pitcher that crashed down into our glasses whenever she poured. I wondered why our waitress didn’t simply banish her someplace else. She was definitely not waitress material. Even I could see that, hungover or not.

      The girl’s eyes remained lowered as she used both hands to deliver a dessert plate to each of us. Everything proceeded smoothly until she delivered the last piece.

      Mine.

      Her eyes rose and flickered at me as she moved alongside my right elbow, brushing against it.

      I was still majorly numb from Zack’s party, so I barely noticed—until the piece of birthday cake that I didn’t want, in a fancy restaurant with my parents where I didn’t want to be, eating weird food that I hated, fell off the edge of my white plate like a brown avalanche and plopped straight into my lap.

      “Oh, god!” the girl gasped. The plate dropped to the floor and shattered. Her hands flew to her mouth.

      I leaped out of my chair, but it was too late. “Shit!” I said as the gooey mess rolled off me in a solid, heavy lump. In the confusion, my wooden chair crashed backward like a gunshot, reverberating inside my head.

      A lady screamed behind me.

      I glared down at the girl, angry and more than a little embarrassed. “What is your problem?”

      The girl’s black eyes widened. “I am so sorry.” She reached for a linen napkin on the table and tried to blotch out the chocolate stain on my pant leg but succeeded only in spreading it. And making me a million times more uncomfortable as her hands reached dangerously close to my crotch.

      My breathing quickened. I could hear it whizzing through my teeth as I continued to glare at the girl.

      No doubt every head in the restaurant had turned to watch the entertainment as the room grew silent, except for harps and flutes, playing through hidden speakers, that sounded just like the mind-numbing music played in the girls’ yoga classes at school.

      “Settle down,