“Help me, Terrence,” Max said.
Terrence followed him down into the cave where the moonshine was kept. So with the help of Terrence, Max brought up a wooden box with ten mason jars filled to the rim with hooch. I helped pass them out.
“Is this what I think it is?” the director asked.
“Wait, what do you think it is?” Max asked.
Dylan grabbed his, unscrewed the lid, and took a whiff. “Whoa, that will put hair on your chest.”
“Who cares?” I said. “I’m already gross.”
“No, you’re not,” Owen said.
“Funny, she’s being complimented on her looks by a blind man,” Freddy said, taking a swig of his drink.
“Hey, I’m not blind, I just can’t see.”
“That’s the definition of a blind man.”
We all drank—and drank, and ate, and ate. Laughed and told jokes. Max went back down with Freddy and carried up more mason jars full of moonshine.
“Do you want any?” I asked the bus driver.
“No, I’m driving,” he said, shaking his head.
“More for us,” Mr. Edman said, toasting to himself.
“This is good stuff,” Dylan said, drinking and then crunching on a handful of Doritos.
“Yeah, it is,” Max said, putting two crates down on the ground.
“Pass it over,” Owen said, slurring his words.
Terrence grabbed one and brought it over to him. “Here you go, man,” he said, unscrewing the lid.
“Thanks, man.”
We were eating so much junk food that my mom would be disappointed. She didn’t need to know about the alcohol. She would be so angry.
I was learning how everyone acted when drunk.
Me: sleepy drunk.
Terrence: stupid drunk.
Freddy: flirty drunk.
Owen: smart-ass drunk.
Max: happy drunk.
Bus driver: designated driver.
Tyson: gassy drunk.
Dylan: sick drunk.
Director Edman: angry drunk.
We were like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except not—there were eight dwarfs.
I found a corner of the room and snuggled up with a blanket I found. It smelled of urine, but I didn’t really care. It was cold.
“It’s snowing,” said Tyson as he made his way back into the cave after relieving himself behind a patch of bushes.
“Snowing. Snowing. Snowing,” Freddy sang as he danced around the cave, spilling moonshine all over his shirt.
Dylan picked up his camera and filmed.
I got up and looked outside. Max and Terrence followed me and danced in the midst of the snow.
“Come on, guys, it’s so fantastic,” Freddy yelled.
Everyone went out. Even Owen, but he held on to the outside cave wall.
“Today we celebrate our Independence Day,” Terrence yelled, raising his arm and his glass of moonshine.
“That’s a great line. Remind me to use that line for a movie one day,” the director said, clinking jars with his.
“Only if I can have credit.”
“Of course.”
The bus driver found a pair of binoculars on the bus and was using them to search for Griffin Flat. It was still smoky.
“Can I take a look?” Freddy asked.
“Sure,” he said, handing them to him.
Freddy looked and moved closer to the edge.
“Watch your step,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said.
BOOM.
“What was that?” I asked, tripping on a rock and falling to the ground.
BOOM.
“Yeah, what was that?” he asked. “Oh, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Freddy offered his hand and helped me up off the ground. He smiled. I smiled. This would be the point in the movie where the hero and heroine kissed. Instead, this is the point in the story when I write, The hero walks away, leaving the heroine with dirt on her butt.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
“Fireworks?” Owen said.
“Well, it sure is pretty,” I said, picking the tiny rocks out of my palm.
“But I wish they would have used different colors than red,” Freddy said.
We all stood on the edge of Crow Mountain watching red fireworks light up the sky as it snowed.
“We need some music,” Terrence said, dancing to the music in his head.
“I can make that happen,” Max said, and ran back toward the cave.
We followed him and took the binoculars with us.
Max flipped through his collection of vinyl. He took a record out of its sleeve and placed it on the record player and set the needle: “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire”[69] by the Ink Spots.
It was slow. Eerie. Matched perfectly with the constant fireworks rumbling in the distance.
Freddy and I danced in the middle of the room. Until we started making out, and Owen started to cry, and Dylan threw up, and the director grabbed his bullhorn and threw it at the record player, which knocked it off the table and stopped the music.
“What did we do? What did we do?” the director screamed at Dylan.
“What the hell,” Max said, going after the director.
I had never seen Max that angry. He swung at the director, but the director met his fist and twisted. I swear he broke Max’s hand. The scream that came out of Max’s mouth was on par with a horror movie where the girl runs in the direction of the guy with the chain saw.
The “party” was over by then. Though the moonshine was still being consumed.
We stayed inside; it was still snowing, though the snow was gray and it smelled nasty, like something rotting. It had been over an hour since we filmed, and fireworks were still going off.
Everyone was in their own corner, like a boxing match. The high of being drunk was starting to fade a little. The director wasn’t as angry and Dylan wasn’t as sick, though it helped that he’d stopped drinking. We mostly had. We mostly wanted real food. A hot meal. The junk food was good in theory—not in execution. Terrence and Owen were discussing, really arguing over, sports.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Any sport that can end in a zero-zero tie is not a sport—it’s a playdate,” Terrence said about the game of soccer.
“And the NFL is just stupid,” Owen said.
“Oh, please, Lawrence Taylor could kick your ass.”
“Yeah, he probably could.”
They laughed. And that subject was done with.
Tyson and I were playing tic-tac-toe.
“This is just like that movie,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I have a headache.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Like they said, unwinnable,” he said.
“They didn’t say unwinnable. You can win at tic-tac-toe if you catch the other team off guard,” I said.
“Do you have any aspirin?” Dylan asked, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples.
I shook my head. “I can ask Max. This is his cave, so he might.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, leaning over.
Max sat against the wall with Owen, who looked sick too. Max was coughing and coughing, like he’d smoked too many packs.
“Max, are you okay?” I asked.
“Screw you,” he said.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he said, coughing.
He was pale and looked like hell.
“We’ve got to get off this mountain,” I said. “We need real food and water and probably a lot of coffee.”
“Not before we film your death scene,” the director said, looking at me. “You’ve got to die.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
This was what winning the contest was all about. My walk-on role. The role where I died. It’s easy to pretend to be sick, but when you were really feeling sick, it was much harder. Tyson helped me with my makeup, actually messing it up with a little bit of moonshine. When he wasn’t getting it in my eye and possibly burning my retinas, he was making me paler than I already was. He messed with my hair and threw dirt on my clothes. He was probably experiencing pleasure in all of this. He was no longer throwing up, and though he looked like death warmed over, he had a smile on his face.
69
“I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” is a pop song written by Bennie Benjamin, Eddie Durham, Sol Marcus, and Eddie Seiler in 1938. First recorded by Harlan Leonard and His Rockets and later covered by many artists such as The Ink Spots, who are well-known for teaming up with Ella Fitzgerald. In 1941, The Ink Spots (Bill Kenny, Deek Watson, Charlie Fuqua, and Hoppy Jones) recorded the song and it hit #4 on the US pop chart.