“But I wanna poke the fish!” I said again.
“TMI!” Samantha called out as she walked away from us quickly.
“Not here!” Mayra’s voice sounded a lot like a dog snarling.
I really, really wanted to poke the fish, but she had a good enough grip on my hand. I decided to kiss the fish instead. My lips pressed against her shoulder and then started downwards.
“Ugh!” Mayra grabbed both of my hands and held them down to my sides as she pushed me away from her a bit. Her touch made my skin tingle, but when I looked down to where we were connected, everything was still blurry. I was also getting really dizzy all of a sudden. I looked up at her face, and her eyes were shifting around and around.
My stomach lurched a bit, and my head really began to swim.
“Mayra,” I whispered, “I don’t feel so good.”
“Joe, Sean!” Mayra called out. “Help me get Matthew back to my car.”
Arms went around my waist, and I was yanked forward by the two guys. They dragged me across the sand, following Mayra’s footsteps until we reached the Porsche. I kept telling them I was fine to walk, but the words came out all garbled.
“Walking is not that hard,” I told Joe as he propped me up against the hood.
“You’re a fucking mess.” Sean chuckled. “And your shirt smells like a fucking frat house. I cut Scott off, but I didn’t even think to watch out for Matthew.”
“Just get him in the car.” Mayra sighed. “I need to get him home.”
I struggled to poke at the fish shape as they piled me in and buckled the seatbelt. Joe tossed my used-to-be-gray shirt, now covered in red splotches, onto
my lap. I ended up falling a little to the side with my head on the window, which at least let me touch the fish-shaped mark in the car’s interior.
Mayra got in the driver’s side and started up the engine. It was a lot louder than I remembered, and I jumped a little as it roared to life. Shaking my head, I tried to sit up a little straighter, but everything I looked at was still spinning around in circles.
I wasn’t too bad off until we started moving.
As a kid, I remembered my mom telling me to look out the window toward the horizon if I was feeling carsick, but that didn’t help in the slightest now. It actually made the queasy feeling in my stomach worse. It didn’t get any better when I tried to focus on something inside the car, either. It felt like there was something bubbling around in my gut, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it home.
“Mayra, pull over!”
“Ah, shit!” she cried out. She pulled off to the side while I undid my seatbelt and yanked open the door. I dropped to the ground just before I heaved onto the edge of the road.
Even though I was shivering, I felt hot and was pretty sure I must have a fever or something. Could I have caught a bug from someone at the party? Mayra was next to me as I threw up once more.
“I think I’m sick,” I said softly.
“No kidding.” Mayra’s voice was deadpan.
“Do I feel hot?” I asked. “I think I might have a fever.”
“You don’t have a fever,” Mayra said. “You’re drunk.”
“Drunk?” I asked with incredulity. “I don’t drink.”
“Well, you did tonight,” she said with a sigh. “What did you think was in that punch?”
“Um…punch?” I said. My head was still spinning, and I couldn’t make it stop. “Hawaiians?”
I wanted to laugh, but my gut hurt too much.
“And then some,” Mayra replied. “It had an entire bottle of Everclear in it.”
“What’s that?”