**Forty-Four Days Before**
“COOSA LIQUORS’ entire business model is built around selling cigarettes to minors and alcohol to adults.” Alaska kept glancing at me with unsettling frequency as she drove, especially since we were navigating a narrow, hilly road south of the school, headed for Coosa Liquors. It was Saturday, our last day of real vacation. “Which is great if you only need cigarettes. But we need booze. And they card for booze. And my ID’s not going to cut it. But I’ll flirt my way through.” She made a sudden, unannounced left turn, pulling onto a road that dropped steeply down a hill with fields on either side. She gripped the steering wheel tightly as we sped up, braking only at the last moment before we reached the bottom. There, standing amidst a collection of old, rusty buildings, was a plywood gas station with a faded sign on the roof: COOSA LIQUORS: WE CATER TO YOUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS.
Alaska went in alone and emerged five minutes later, weighed down by two paper bags stuffed with contraband: three cartons of cigarettes, five bottles of wine, and a fifth of vodka for the Colonel. On the way back, Alaska asked, “You like knock-knock jokes?”
“Knock-knock jokes?” I replied. “You mean like, ‘Knock knock…’”
“Who’s there?” Alaska responded.
“Who.”
“Who Who?”
“What are you, an owl?” I finished. Lame.
“That was brilliant,” Alaska said. “I have one. You start.”
“Okay. Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” Alaska asked.
I looked at her blankly. About a minute later, I got it and laughed. “My mom told me that joke when I was six. It’s still funny.”
So, I was completely taken aback when she showed up sobbing at Room 43, just as I was finishing my final paper for English. She slumped onto the couch, each breath a mix of whimper and cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said, heaving. Snot dripped down her chin. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She picked up a Kleenex from the coffee table and wiped her face.
“I don’t…” she started, and then a sob came like a tidal wave, so loud and childlike it frightened me. I got up, sat down beside her, and wrapped my arm around her. She turned away, burying her head in the couch. “I don’t understand why I mess everything up,” she said.
“What, like with Marya? Maybe you were just scared.”
“Scared isn’t a good excuse!” she yelled into the couch. “Scared is the excuse everyone always uses!” I didn’t know who “everyone” was or when “always” was, and despite my desire to understand her vague complaints, her indirectness was becoming frustrating.
“Why are you upset about this now?”
“It’s not just that. It’s everything. But I told the Colonel last night.” She sniffled but seemed to have moved past the sobs. “While you were sleeping in the car. And he said he’d never let me out of his sight during pranks. That he couldn’t trust me on my own. And I don’t blame him. I don’t even trust me.”
“It took courage to tell him,” I said.
“I have courage, just not when it counts. Will you—um,” she said, sitting up and moving toward me, and I raised my arm as she collapsed into my skinny chest and cried. I felt sorry for her, but she had brought this on herself. She didn’t have to rat.
“I don’t want to upset you, but maybe you should tell us why you told on Marya. Were you scared of going home or something?”
She pulled away from me and gave me a Look of Doom that would have made the Eagle proud. I felt like she hated me or my question, or both. She then looked away, out the window toward the soccer field, and said, “There’s no home.”
“Well, you have a family,” I tried to clarify. She had talked about her mom just that morning. How could the girl who told a joke three hours ago now be a sobbing mess?
Still staring at me, she said, “I try not to be scared, you know. But I still mess everything up. I still fuck up.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s okay.” I didn’t even know what she was talking about anymore. It was all so vague.
“Don’t you know who you love, Pudge? You love the girl who makes you laugh, shows you porn, and drinks wine with you. You don’t love the crazy, sullen bitch.”
And, truth be told, there was something to that.
