and Grace were sitting with Taylor. Taylor wouldn’t shut up, but everyone was being fairly polite because it was her birthday and they wanted to be invited next year.
“Hey, what’s up?” Jonathon smiled at Kaitlyn.
“Nothing much,” she answered gratefully. There was an awkward silence, and Kaitlyn suddenly remembered that she had to call her parents. She got up and excused herself to go to the bathroom — she didn’t want people to hear her make the call.
“Oh, I’ll come with you,” Jessica said brightly.
“Oh, okay, great!” Now she’d have to phone in front of Jessica. Kaitlyn was self-conscious as she made the call.
When they got back to the table, Aiko was recording Tristan and Kageki. They’d managed to convince the waitress to give them crayons, and were melting them in one of the table candles.
“There … is so much blood,” Tristan said, sticking a red crayon into the candle and letting it drip around the edges. “Are you scared?” he whispered dramatically, sticking his face directly into Aiko’s camera. “What’s the yellow for?” he asked in his normal voice, turning to Kageki. Kageki was sticking the yellow crayon in the candle.
“Sun.”
“Kageki, this is a horror film! You can’t have sun in a horror film.”
“Maybe there’s sun in Japanese horror films,” Julian suggested.
“No! There is no sun in horror films. Period!” Tristan said.
“This movie has sun,” Kageki said decisively.
“It’s like Disney,” sighed Tristan, shrugging his shoulders and grabbing the blue crayon. “This is bluebirds, ’kay?” He stuck the crayon into the candle.
Anna kicked him under the table. “The waitress is coming back!”
Tristan quickly blew out the candle and Kageki stuffed it under his napkin. Both of them turned and beamed at the waitress.
“Her boobs are really big,” Grace whispered to Anna.
“Yeah, I think I’m going to be sick,” Anna whispered back. “Do you think she realizes that the only reason she has such big boobs is because she’s fat?”
“No. She looks pretty proud of them.”
“I think Julian likes them,” Grace giggled. Tristan overheard and glared at her.
As the waitress was about to leave with their orders, Tristan asked if they could have their picture taken with her.
“Alexandra, come on,” Tristan said, grinning. Grace took the picture, trying not to laugh. As soon as the waitress left, everyone started passing Grace’s camera around.
“Wow, her boobies are huge!” Taylor giggled. “I love how you two are sort of presenting them with your arms.”
“This so better go on Facebook,” laughed Delilah. Kaitlyn laughed with them, happy that she was a lot smaller than the waitress.
“Thank goodness,” Delilah said dramatically as the food began to arrive. “I am starving.”
They passed the food around and began trading. Aiko, Ella, Sophia, and Leon passed around four drinks and a tray of shooters.
“Can I take your salad? I’ll give you my chicken and dinner roll,” Alexandra asked Julian.
“Uh, sure.” Julian was surprised.
“You can have half of my fries, too,” Tristan offered.
“Hey, aren’t you guys going to be hungry?” Julian asked, taking his second shot from Aiko.
“Nope,” they both replied. Tristan moved Julian’s salad to Alexandra’s plate and dumped over half of his fries in the empty space.
“Anybody want my fries?” Jessica asked. There was a chorus of “nos,” so Jessica picked up her water glass and dumped half of it on her fries.
“What did you do that for?” Kaitlyn asked in astonishment.
“It’s this new trick I learned. Now that the fries are wet, I can’t eat them.”
Kaitlyn looked at the fries sadly.
“No, you sure can’t. But it’s such a waste of fries …”
“What, would you rather that they went in someone’s body, clogging up their arteries?” Jessica asked indignantly.
“No, I guess not.” Kaitlyn began eating her wrap, but she wasn’t as hungry as usual. Alexandra was dissecting her salad. She shoved Julian’s salad to the side so that it didn’t contaminate hers (it had salad dressing already mixed in). She began spearing bits of her salad and dipping it lightly into the small dish of dressing. Kaitlyn caught herself staring.
“Do you want some?” Jonathon asked Kaitlyn, pointing at the shot beside him.
“Um, no thank you.”
Jonathon laughed. “Come on. Just try a sip. It tastes like juice.”
Kaitlyn took a tiny sip. Surprised, she passed it back. “It does taste like juice.”
“You didn’t even have a teaspoon’s worth. Wimp.” Kaitlyn blushed. “Look at Julian!” Jonathon pointed up the table with his knife. “I think he’s on his fifth already.”
Kaitlyn looked up the table. Aiko was handing a very happy Julian a green shot, and Anna was explaining why hard alcohol was so much better than beer, because beer was really just empty calories. Taylor was telling everyone how much she liked lava lamps, because you could see the layers. Keiko said she wouldn’t drink a lamp.
“You’re drinking a bug!” Taylor exclaimed.
“A grasshopper’s a bug?” Keiko asked, lifting up her drink and eying it suspiciously. Kaitlyn finished her dinner silently, then sat there drinking her sprite.
“Wow, you were hungry,” Jessica said.
“What? Oh, no, not really,” Kaitlyn said, waking up out of her reverie.
“Oh … it’s just you finished your whole plate!”
Kaitlyn looked down at her plate and then around the table at the other half-full plates. She was embarrassed, so she crumpled up some napkins and put them on her plate, hoping that no one else would notice that she had finished her whole dinner. Tristan and Kageki were watching Julian drink shots. Many shots.
As they stood outside of Earls, everybody began dividing up according to their bus routes and car pools. Kaitlyn phoned her parents. Delilah’s ears perked up.
“Are your parents picking you up?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Kaitlyn wondered if there was anything wrong with that.
“Oh,
