The Empty Room by Lauren B. Davis

annoying, merely tolerated younger sister. The week before, when she admitted to the willowy Crystal that she liked Danny, Crystal had smirked, stretched out her impossibly long legs and said, “I wouldn’t get my hopes up; he likes the model type, not some kid with her nose always stuck in the middle of a dusty old book.” Until that moment, Colleen hadn’t given much thought, one way or the other, to whether she was “the model type,” nor to the idea that reading was in any way unattractive. Now, watching Crystal drape her thin arm so casually across Frank Boyden’s shoulder (Frank being the most sought-after boy in school, with his long black hair and blue eyes), it seemed she peered through a kind of glass separation, a sort of bell jar, like the one Sylvia Plath, whom Colleen had recently discovered, talked about. She felt dangerously close to weepy.
    “You want some?” asked Brad Rogers, known to his friends as the Barbarian. He had brought a selection of bottles to the kitchen from the Gibsons’ liquor cabinet. Brown ones and green ones and clear ones. He poured himself half a glass of brown liquid. “Whisky,” he said. “Makes everything better.” He took a drink and shivered, smacked his lips and said, “Aaaaahhhh.”
    “Give me one,” said Crystal, stepping in front of Colleen. “Vodka. Danny,” she called over her shoulder, “you have any orange juice?”
    The kitchen was returning to its normal, inanimate state as Dannyswitched the various appliances off. “Yeah, sure, but don’t drink all that. My parents will have a fit.”
    He picked up the phone and set it down again, silencing it in mid-ring. Strains of “Honky Tonk Women” came from the living room. Crystal slid to Brad’s side and took her glass.
    “Aren’t you having any?” she asked Colleen, and then grinned with her perfect rosy lips and her perfect straight white teeth. “You’re just a kid really, aren’t you?”
    For the first time, Colleen wasn’t entirely sure Crystal was really her friend, or even that Crystal liked her. She suspected she might be the sort of sidekick the pretty girls only kept around to make themselves look better by comparison.
    Colleen picked up a glass and poured herself some whisky, and then, just for good measure, she poured a little from the green bottle, which she recognized as crème de menthe, into the glass as well. She was quite sure the minty taste would make the whisky go down easier.
    “Bottoms up,” she said, which is what her father said.
    “Really?” Crystal shrugged, and turned to get her orange juice.
    The liquor burned going down and for a moment Colleen was afraid it was going to come right back up, but it didn’t. She coughed a little, but no more. It tasted like minty fire and ice; sweet, but also smoky and earthy. The possibility that it held hidden properties and purposes flashed through her mind. It seared her tongue and the inside of her cheeks. The liquids were not completely blended and a little bright green lingered on the side of the glass like amagic fairy potion. She drank more, and that’s when it happened. She heard, or rather felt, a tiny, but clearly audible click, and when she looked around her at the people she thought she knew, she understood all the things she hadn’t understood before, including that she was perfect and pretty and just as smart as anyone else. The kitchen took on a warm, sunny glow, and everyone looked so friendly.
    “I don’t know if I’d mix like that,” said Brad, with something in his voice that Colleen understood to be awe.
    “It’s perfect. I’ll have some more,” she said, and she did. She laughed at Brad with his pimply skin and John Lennon glasses. She saw how hard he was trying to fit in, too, just like her. Even Crystal, with her thick blond hair that fell all the way to her waist and her superior air, standing there with her chest stuck practically in Frank Boyden’s face—Colleen understood she was afraid no one