“I really can’t,” Zal said, and added the truth in lie’s clothing — or vice versa, hard to say, since it had never been put to the test — that Hendricks had told him to use for almost anything he didn’t want to do: “I have a lot of health issues. Who knows what can happen?”
“Who told you that? Your father?” Asiya glared.
Zal shrugged.
“How old is this dude?” Zach muttered, disgusted, motioning to his little glass for more. He was taking what he called “shots” of the champagne, apparently another way to drink.
“It’s really not bad, if you just have a little! Just a taste! It tastes almost like. . soda!” Asiya insisted.
“I’ve tasted it,” one of the triplets whispered, conspiratorially. “I wasn’t supposed to. But I did. I didn’t get drunk. But it did taste like soda.”
“You did?” another triplet gasped. The other one was sleeping on her lap.
“Look,” Asiya said, pushing a glass with about half an inch of golden bubbling liquid in it. “That’s barely anything. Trust me, Zal. I promise nothing will happen to you, and if it does — it won’t! — I will personally take you to the hospital and sit up all night and help you write your will and everything! Zal, I’m joking. . Zal, do it for Willa! It’s her fucking birthday!”
She had said the magic words — along with the one unmagic one, of course—do it for Willa. He wondered if she could tell. She must. But he had been so discreet. He looked at Willa, who was blushing a bit, smiling that almost farm-animal smile of hers, an oblivious-to-life’s-problems gentle easy smile.
Asiya, aware of his shift, went on: “It’s really rude not to partake on someone’s birthday. Look at silly Willie: she’s more than halfway through a bottle. And if you don’t think she has health issues, you must already be drunk!”
She was likely already drunk.
He looked at Willa, who was looking down, smiling at her palms.
“Willa, would it make you happy if I drank? Are you unhappy that I am not?” Zal, hoarse-throated suddenly, croaked.
Willa did not look up. “Well, I’d love it if you did. You don’t have to—”
“Wills!” Asiya shouted.
“—but, yes, I would be very happy if you did. Just that little bit.”
Zal looked down, nodding. She had asked something from him. His love interest’s sister, his real love interest. Or was she? Was she that other thing they always talked about, the crush? What did he want from her? He wanted to hold her hand. What else? He wanted to be buried in her. What did he mean by that exactly? He wanted to be nestled against her bosom. In what way? Like a child, he thought. Like a lover, he thought again. She confused him to no end.
He took the glass out of Asiya’s hand without glancing at her overjoyed, laughing eyes. He looked at Willa the whole time as he took the glass and drank it in one big gulp.
It felt indeed like a cross between soda and fire. It bubbled in him familiarly but also made him burn. Soon Asiya had refilled his glass and he was, as Hendricks had warned, wanting more and more and more.
He saw himself homeless on the street, lying in a puddle of his own piss, an empty bottle in one hand, rats crawling in the other.
But at the same time, he saw Willa, he swore, look at him adoringly, like he was her hero, her champagne-chugging knight. Clearly consuming something, possibly in an unhealthy manner, was the way to his princess’s mammoth heart.
His head was a mess, and as the night wore on, the world before him started to rebeclass="underline" it began to sway and tilt and spin, and all he could hear was Asiya’s rapid-fire whispery hisses, Willa’s soft giggles, an occasional pipe from a triplet, and something obscene from Zachary. “No more,” he remembered Asiya saying at some point, when he tried to reach out for a new bottle, feeling very ill but somehow wanting to know more about the feeling, feeling drawn to this feeling of nothing and everything all at once.
“Am I dying, Asiya?” he remembered asking.
Before he heard her answer, he fell into what he assumed was death.
It was just twenty minutes later when he awoke, but it seemed like hours. The triplets were gone. Zachary was asleep on the corner couch. Asiya was cleaning up. Willa was sitting up in her bed, fresh-faced as ever, staring happily at the carnage from her birthday.
The room was no longer in motion, but Zal still did not feel like himself.
“Asiya, what did you do to me?” he muttered. “When does it go away?”
“Soon,” she kept saying, “soon.”
Soon was not coming.
He began to grow irritated. “Asiya, I don’t think you care about me. I don’t think you care about caring for me, like you said.”
She sighed and continued cleaning.
“Asiya, I mean it.”
Willa giggled to herself, still cradling that bottle-baby, he noted in astonishment.
Zal turned to her. “You know what she cares about really? What I’ve discovered? She cares about the opposite of what you must care about! She cares only about not-eating; she loves not-food — air with a side of air and a cup of air!” He sat back, satisfied with himself.
“Zal!” Asiya snapped. “What the hell?”
“I guess you are different from other humans,” Zal went on. “You don’t have to eat. You only have to drink! And you call us freaks!”
“I never called you a freak!”
“Well, we are! But you are a worse one!”
“How dare you—” Her voice was quaking and rising all at once, in a way he had never heard.
But he just couldn’t stop all the bubbling fire in his head. “You look terrible, not eating ever! Look at Willa: she eats, and you call her a freak! Well, she looks like a person, not a stick figure! She looks like she enjoys her life! You should really—”
“She’s the one that’s not gonna make it, Zal!” And suddenly she was gone, and all that was left of her was the sound she had made in the basement: gasps, gasps that he knew were part attack, part sob.
He did not see where she went. He did not care to follow.
His eyes instead turned to Willa.
Willa’s eyes were huge, looking right at him, as if he had suddenly transformed before her. Into what, who knew: monster, prince, specter, perhaps truly himself. She seemed the least drunk of all of them, embracing that almost empty bottle against her chest, but her eyes showed definite shock.
It was the first time she had ever registered a man talking positively about her appearance.
Clearly she did not have much interaction with men these days, but in the past she had been only an object of ridicule, disdain, horror, and disgust, whether unspoken or not.
Was he serious? Did she really look better than her sister to him? Was it just the alcohol? Was he actually ridiculing her? Did he — could he — was there any chance he liked her?
“What have I done?” he said, kneeling by her bed a few moments later. “I am so sorry. Did I ruin your birthday?”
“Oh, no,” Willa said. “You in many ways made it. . a very good one.”
“Can I. .” He paused, ashamed. “No, I can’t.”
“Go on,” Willa said, so softly.