Loud dance music goes through the air and into the veins of the party goers. The thudding of the 808s beating in time with the heartbeats from the teenagers. Heavy breathing, laughing, and talking can be heard in different parts of the house. The smell of alcohol and sweat waft through the air with a sense of determination, like it belongs there. Bitter beer dances around the tongues of the high schoolers as they do shotguns. Every sip makes the cheap snacks and chips taste like they are gourmet meals. With the room so packed, the breath from another person can be felt on the necks of those around them. Foriegn body parts graze each other both on accident and on purpose. In the corners, lips move in time with the music and feet help couples rush off to explore both bedrooms and each other. Everyone is dancing or socializing. At least everyone except for Maya. She’s currently sitting down on the couch listening to a cacophony of noises and seeing an eruption of different colors smudged together around her. Her head is hurting and she feels nauseous.
Maya had a little too much to drink. After a night of partying and drinking with her friends, she starts to really feel the effects. Drinking unknown mixtures from plastic red cups and dancing on counters finally caught up with her. Mixing brown and white liquor with beer probably wasn’t the best idea. Her head is swimming and it feels as if her brain is doing laps in a pool. Maya’s stomach starts to do gymnastics and she wonders if her body is trying to compete in the Olympics. As she lowers her head into her hands, her curls create a barrier in between her and the mash of moving figures she believes are people. With a jolt of realization, Maya reaches for her phone to look at the time. Her right hand feels around touching her pockets, her bra, the crotch of the boy next to her, and the sofa between her legs. Someone must see her looking, because the next thing Maya does is feel a phone being put in her hand. She remembers that Gwen took her phone when it became clear that drunk texting an ex was on the agenda for the night. A picture of her and her friends smiling mocks her as she sees the time on the screen. It was 4 a.m. and her mom would be waking up in an hour to do whatever mom’s woke up early for. “Shit!”
She gets up abruptly from the couch and staggers out of the front door. Her friends stop her before she reaches her car and they call a cab instead. None of them are sober enough to drive her home. Maya stops and falls to her knees on the plush lawn. The brisk air makes her feel every bit of her toxicity. The bile wells up from the deep recesses of the hell inside of her, ready to escape the confines of her stomach. She feels her tongue get extra wet and her stomach turn. With a fierce gag and a few tears, she throws up. Her hair is being held away from her face by someone, hopefully Gwen or Rachel, but Maya can’t focus on anything but getting rid of the alcohol that is currently poisoning her body. She cannot wait until she can get home to her own bed and sleep away the inevitable hangover she is sure to have. When the cab arrives, Maya is guided to the back seat and the cab driver is given money along with an address.
In the cab, the lights from the street blur together and the sounds from the party fade away. The further they drive, the less light Maya sees. At this time of night, the people from this neighborhood are most likely in bed. Hopefully her parents will be too. Looking around at her surroundings, Maya sees that this cab is almost as cozy as a home. The temperature is perfect and there are pictures of kids lining the dashboard in front of the passenger’s seat. The kids look so innocent and joyous, as if they don’t have a care in the world. Maya chuckles under her breath. “Idiots.” The driver turns her head around to look at her fare. “Did you say something dear?”. “No,” Maya says, “just thinking out loud.” The driver looks back at the road, but eyes Maya in the rear view mirror. She then turns the music on to smooth jazz and loses herself to the horn player. The interior of Maya’s ride smelled of vanilla and reminded her of baking cookies with her mom on weekends. As a smile drifts across her face, her stomach starts to churn. Maya hastily smacks the partition in front of her to get the driver’s attention. Without hesitation, the driver pulls over, jumps out of the taxi, and swings the back door open. Maya tumbles out onto the lawn of some stranger and expels both the content of her stomach and any thoughts of food she once had. The driver snickers to herself and hands Maya a napkin. “Must have been a wild night, huh?” Maya just groans and pulls herself back in the taxi. She closes her eyes and just tries to focus on not throwing up again. When they finally reach her house, she throws the cab driver whatever loose cash she has in her purse as a tip. She looks at the big house she grew up in with a fondness as the cab drives away. She’s really going to miss it when she goes off to college. Maya decides that it is definitely time to go inside before she passes out on the front lawn and her parents find her in a puddle of puke.
Maya walks up the driveway to her house. After all of the drinks she had, she can’t fathom scaling the house to get to her bedroom window. She stumbles to the right and falls face-first into her yard. While giggling to herself, she gets up slowly and searches her bag for her house keys. She trips over her own feet and slams into the door. “Shh, you’ll wake them,” she chastises herself. When she can’t find the keys in her bag, she sloppily curses and falls against the door. She remembers that her parents keep a spare key outside of the house, but they move it every once in a while so it won’t be found right away. She gathers rocks and shuffles through bushes to find the hide-a-key. She eventually finds it in the gutter above the porch and attempts to stick the key in the lock. She misses various times before she opens the door in triumph.
Then there is a flash of light and her stomach starts hurting again. All she can hear is ringing. The pain in her abdomen grows increasingly more sharp. This is worse than period cramps. There’s a weird taste in her mouth that she can’t quite place, did she throw up again? She falls to her knees and doubles over. Her intestines feel as if they are twisting and knotting up. A warm liquid escapes her lips as her body completely hits the floor. “What the hell did I drink to mess up my stomach this badly?” Maya thinks to herself, “I’ll never drink again.”
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Clint and Ruby sleep peacefully knowing that their children are safe in their beds. Ruby stirs as she hears something on the front lawn. She jolts awake and grabs her husband by the arm, there has to be something wrong. Clint jerks himself out of her hand. “Honey, I think someone is trying to break into the house,” Ruby insists. Clint rolls over, disregarding his wife’s concern.
Ruby grabs her phone and gets up to check out the noises. She walks out of her bedroom and towards the source of the sounds. From the balcony outside of her room she can see shadows around the front entrance. There is a loud bang on the door like someone is trying to use their body to force it open. She looks back at her husband in the bed and he doesn’t move a millimeter. Ruby scowls and thinks about how useless her husband actually is. Then a thought thrusts itself into her mind and she tries to silently scurry to her son’s room. When she opens the door, she sees her sweet boy sleeping soundly. His projector night light shows stars and throws different colors on the wall like waves, with purples turning into yellows and blues turning into pinks. The solar system model over his desk makes her smile as she thinks about the immature laugh he does every time anyone says Uranus. His quiet snores drift up to the glow-in-the-dark stars that are scattered across his ceiling. A little bit of drool rolls out of his mouth and across his sun-kissed skin to his pillow. Ruby lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding in and relaxes a bit. She closes the door and moves towards her daughter’s room, but the bushes outside jostle roughly. Instead, she descends the stairs while dialing 911.
"911, what are you reporting?"
"My house is getting robbed right now."
" We are sending officers your way. Are you armed?"
"Not yet, I have a gun in my office"
When she gets to the bottom of the stairs, the noises sound like they are near the roof. Ruby shuffles to the office as someone is trying unsuccessfully to open the door. She grabs the .38 revolver from the desk drawer and scurries back towards the intruder quietly.
"Do they know you’re there?" says the dispatcher.
"No, I don’t think so," Ruby whispers.
"OK, OK, stay quiet, OK? Keep yourself safe."
The door opens and Ruby lets off a shot. After discharging the gun, she falls to the ground in triumph. Tears start falling from her eyes, blurring her vision. She closes them.
"I heard shots, what happened?" the dispatcher asks.
"I had to shoot him. He came after me, but I’m safe now,"
The intruder is heard moaning in the background. The footsteps from her husband in the bedroom stomp in time with the beating of Ruby’s adrenaline filled heart. There are sirens in the background.
"Did the person that you shot, did he leave?" the dispatcher asks.
"No, he’s on the ground. He’s hurt,"
Ruby’s mind goes blank and thoughts drift off into the recesses of her mind. She can hear the footsteps getting faster and her husband shouting. She is glad that he cares now that she has taken care of the threat. Their lives were in danger and she saved them. Then she hears what her husband is saying and her heart stops.
“Maya! No! What happened?”
Ruby looks over at the scene and sees her 17-year-old daughter laying on the ground clutching her abdomen. A pool of blood starts to gather around her body, Clint is trying to keep Maya awake, because the sirens are so close, Ruby throws the gun off to the side and rushes to her daughter’s side. She can see her beautiful brown skin slowly losing its lustrous amber color in favor of something more pale and sickly. Clint pushes her away and gives her a piercing glare; Ruby falls to the ground and puts her face in her hands.
The police and EMT’s arrive. The emergency workers rush in with their lifesaving equipment to find Clint attempting to revive Maya as she lay lifeless on the floor and Ruby on her knees holding her daughter’s hand to her face. Officers ask what happened and they cannot get a clear story from either parent, just sobs and blame. “Baby, I love you so much, please! Please…Oh my God!” Ruby pleads to Maya’s body. The EMT’s rush the teenager off to the hospital alone.
One cop takes Clint into the kitchen for questioning and another takes Ruby into the office. The rest of the officers surveying the scene look around and see a pair of eyes at the top of the stairs. They attempt to coax the figure down the stairs. A little boy with a half flattened afro emerges from the shadows with tears in his eyes. One leg of his pajama pants is rolled up to his knee and he is whimpering. The cops pull him aside to calm him down and see what he saw.