Elizabeth

Dylan West flicked his lighter with one hand and lifted the half gallon jug to his lips with the other. The flame, stubby and stubborn, wavered in the wind but stayed true. Dylan swished. He spit. Grain alcohol met the source and ignited in a churning fireball. He whooped beneath singed eyelashes. When he sucked in a spastic gulp, I imagined the air tasted like hamburgers the way my father always favored them, charred so far past recognition it was as if they had never lived at all. ###
“Here,” Dylan said, passing me the water-cooler-turned-hooch-hauler emblazoned with Marlboro insignia. I’d first taken it out of the storage shed in my backyard when Dylan told me he needed a discreet container for the bottle of Everclear he’d stolen from the package store. Nobody would miss the cooler. It was a throwback from the days when my mom had salvaged Marlboro Miles from the packs dad left as reminders of where he’d been: his recliner in front of the TV, the garage, his nightstand. She must have known the end was near because she sent away for the red jug right before dad gave up his habit. Marlboro Miles catalogs turned into postcards from Omaha Steaks. Now dad burns his lungs on barbecue. ###
I leaned back and poured a shot of grain from the plastic spout into my mouth. I waved off the lighter Dylan offered, the shake of my head turning from polite refusal to a potential case of whiplash when the liquid hit the back of my throat and took off in separate directions up my sinuses and down my gullet. “Dammit!” I shouted. My foot sought invisible flames to stamp out, but the thigh-high cast and my already compromised sense of balance reminded me not to be theatrical. “Not for nothing, Dylan, but literally breathing fire seems kind of superfluous once you taste this stuff.” ###
“I don’t even know what that means,” Dylan said. His voice was like a hand ruffling my hair. It was at once protective and taunting. I was the little dictionary he kept in his pocket but never opened. I was happy enough just to feel him against me. ###
“It means you’re crazy,” I spelled out. “It means you go too far. It means you’re not going to smell anything or taste anything soon.” ###
“You sound like my father.” He would have said ‘mother’ if he’d had one. “Come on, you’re smarter than that. You know what they say about people who lose certain senses, right? It makes the other ones stronger. Maybe now I’ll really be able to feel.” ###
“I know,” I said. And I did know. Not from my own frame of reference, but from Dylan’s. I’d been part of his life for so long that I could see things the way he did. I could attune to the same sounds. I could taste him and I wanted him to taste me. ###
“I would do it again,” he said after a while. ###
“Oh, no you won’t!” I reached for the lighter on the wooden fence post behind him but he swiped it away first, laughing. “Not that,” he said. “I meant I’d run from the cops. Actually, I’d go even faster the second time around. I’d fucking fly.” ###
I made a small sound of acknowledgement. It burned my throat. Dylan looked over at me. I thought I saw the white tip of an eyelash flake off. ###
“You know what’s the craziest thing of all?” I asked him. “Your father doesn’t blame you and neither does mine. They both think it was the police. And the school. Everyone’s responsible but you. They’re going to sue.” ###
“And what do you think?” ###
“I blame you,” I said. “But I don’t think it was your fault.” ###
I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to move closer. I tried, but my leg ached too much, each nerve ending blazing as the grain coursed through on its way back to my heart. If I thought it would dull the pain, I was wrong. ###
There was rustling on the path behind me then. My mother’s footfalls pounded dried leaves into the ground. “There you are!” she shouted. She wore a shapeless black dress, black hose, and black pumps. There was dirt on the heels. “What are you doing out here? You shouldn’t be alone right now. Besides, it’s time to go.” She grabbed my crutches from their perch against the fence and handed them to me. “Mr. West is waiting for you in the…” ###
She faltered suddenly, and when she did, the silence shattered everything. Even her voice broke. “He’s waiting for you in the hearse,” she said. ###
I turned to Dylan, looking for an excuse. But the only thing left was the Marlboro jug. It had sloshed, bottom heavy, when Dylan first filled it with firewater three days before. Now it was empty, the last remnants turning to burning sugar in my bloodstream. My eyes blurred and I had the strange thought that I could fill the cooler anew, this time with tears.