else seemed to notice. The main event of the evening being over, kids returned to the record player and some were starting to dance. Steve, slightly wobbly, was trying to feel up some girl in a corner and she was giggling. Barbara was trying to stop people taking any more beers and asking anybody who’d listen how she was going to explain the missing bottle of vodka to her parents.
I kept watching Lee-Anne. She tried talking to somebody now and then, trying to laugh and pretend nothing was wrong, but I could tell. The colours were just dripping out of her, leaving her ashen, beyond pale. She tried to stand up but couldn’t make it and fell back into the chair. A couple of buttons popped open on her shirt. She fumbled with them, trying to get her fingers to work. She gave up. Maybe ten minutes went by before her head lolled back. Lee-Anne just lay there, her left breast showing through the opening in her blouse. The girl was gone, long gone. Passed out cold. Steve, unmistakably snozzled himself, must have had some sort of internal boob radar.
“Titties!” He cried and stumbled over to Lee-Anne’s prone form.
“Oh God,” whimpered Barbara, “What’s wrong with her?”
“What’d ya thick?” Steve replied. “She can’t liquor her handle.” His hand moved forward in the general direction of Sleeping Beauty’s breast. Barbara slapped his hand away.
“Piss off! You’re such a pig! Somebody help me with her.”
A couple of girls went over and tried to rouse Lee-Anne. There wasn’t a chance in Hell she was coming around any time soon. Stevie-boy threw his arms around two of the other boys and, from the sound of the snickers, made some rather crude remarks. The girls got Lee-Anne’s blouse done up again but the Leader of the Pack was down for the count. The girls wandered off and left her, half disgusted, and half admiring her nerve. I just watched. Nobody made any particular motions to include me in the little groups that were forming, but I didn’t mind. At least the evening’s entertainment hadn’t been at my expense. I just hung around, taking the occasional sip from my Labatt’s bottle and watched Lee-Anne.
The more I watched, the more concerned I got. She was so colourless she was practically transparent. Her eyes had sunk back into her skull and she was motionless. I saw a bubble form on her lips and as she breathed it sucked back in again. A little saliva dripped out of the corner of her mouth. Ah shit, I thought, she’s going to puke.
Now, I did not want to be anywhere near our Legless Leader when this event occurred. I have a weak stomach. The second I even hear anybody making even a gagging noise, it’s a race to the bathroom. I stood up, planning to walk inconspicuously onto the patio.
As I strolled past the bean bag chair I glanced down at Lee-Anne. Her head was thrown way back, her mouth open. I could actually see inside her mouth. There were bits of creamy coloured stuff in there. I could hear her breathing. I hadn’t been able to hear it over the sound of the music when I was sitting across the room, but now close to her, I could. It wasn’t good. She was gurgling.
I did some baby-sitting for a little girl who had seizures. Her mother told me right off that if she ever took a seizure she could vomit and I had to make sure she was lying face down so she wouldn’t choke on the stuff. The little kid had never vomited under my care and for this I was profoundly grateful. Unfortunately, it looked as if the information was not going to be wasted.
“Barbara,” I called, “I think we’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
“I think Lee-Anne’s sick.”
“She’s not sick, she’s just passed out. Leave her alone.”
Ah, double shit. I’d like to say the thought to just leave her there to her fate didn’t even cross my mind, but it did. I wanted to just shrug my shoulders and be uninvolved. I hadn’t even been hanging with this group for a month yet, and my status was still way too tenuous to be drawing any undue attention. I still had time to blend. Lee-Anne gurgled again. More bubbles. Triple shit.
I knelt down beside the chair, put one leg up on the beanbag to steady myself and the other leg on the floor. I drew a big breath. I heard someone call out.
“Rose, Jesus, what the fuck are you doing!?”
I grappled with Lee-Anne’s inert form, hoping I would not soon be covered in bits of undigested macaroni and cheese. I held my breath. I hauled her over my leg.
Lee-Anne spewed.
The vodka ran out of her much the same way it had run it, a solid stream. A stream? Hell. This was a river, and in the river was contained, like so much flotsam, the remains of Lee-Anne’s dinner. It looked like macaroni and cheese, with Spam.
“Oh, gross!”
“What the fuck......!”
“My mother’s new carpet!” wailed Barbara.
The carpet, I must admit, did look spectacularly revolting. Even more revolting than pale blue shag carpeting usually looks.
“She was choking,” I said.
“You couldn’t get a bucket first?!? What are you, nuts?! Jesus, I’m gonna get killed,” said Barbara.
Lee-Anne seemed to be finished spouting vodka now and moaned. Her hands went up to her face and tried to wipe away the last of the vomit.
“Rose, you have to clean this up!”
And you know, I might have cleaned it up, if she hadn’t ordered me. I surely would have helped her clean it up. But I just didn’t want to be told to clean it up, as though I personally had puked.
“Barbara, I am not going to clean up Lee-Anne’s barf. It’s your house, you clean it up. I didn’t barf on your carpet! She did! Christ, she could have died!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’re such a fucking drama queen! Clean it up!” Barbara stamped her foot. She actually stamped her foot.
“Fush off,” said Lee-Anne, to no one in particular.
“No,” I said, to Barbara.
Well, I figured right then and there that I had worn out my welcome with my companions of recent weeks.
“Get out,” said Barbara, “You bitch, get out! Nobody wants you here.” And as no one spoke up to deny this, I assumed it to be true.
So, leaving them to clean up, I went home. And yes, I cried. But it was as much out of a sense of terrible injustice as hurt.
I saw Lee-Anne hanging around outside our school a couple of days later. She skipped out of her school a lot and would stand around chain smoking in our parking lot. I never could figure out why that was better than staying at the Catholic school. I half expected her to say thanks, or at least acknowledge what had happened. It was just the two of us, after all, with no one else to hear.
She stared at me.
“I hear you made me puke the other night.”
“You were choking,” I said.
“Lighten up, for Christ sake.” She snorted out a cloud of smoke.
For
