Read Online Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen by Gretchen de la O - Free Book Online

drink?” her
voice echoed from the other room.
    “ Um, how about a Diet
Coke?” It didn’t register with me until she poked her head out to
me and gave me the ‘are you really that
stupid’ look.
    “ WTF Wilson, I’m not
talking about that type of drink. Get with it now.” She rolled her eyes and
disappeared again. I heard bottles clang together and shuffle
against the shelving.
    “ Will you come in here and
help me? I’ve only got two hands.”
    “ Sorry.” I rushed into the
room. I expected it to be a pantry. Boy was I wrong. It was a mini
liquor store. The only thing it was missing was the cash register.
It was the size of a bedroom. The wall had shelves filled with all
different types of alcohol. The back of the room had two huge glass
door refrigerators filled with different types of beer and wines.
Between them, rack after rack of dark wine and to my left, the hard
liquor mixtures and potion bottles. Anything we wanted under the
sun lived in that room. I wondered how many down and outs or
alcoholics would have thought they had died and gone to heaven. I
noticed Cindy already had tequila and vodka cradled in her arms.
She wasn’t just thinking of snagging a couple of beers and catching
a slight buzz, she was determined to party hard tonight and worry
about the leftovers later.
    She poked her chin towards the other
side of the room. “Grab the cranberry juice on the third shelf and
the margarita mix below that. I like the strawberry
one.”
    “ Won’t your dad notice it
missing?” Maybe it was a naïve question, but one I felt obligated
to ask.
    “ Hello, don’t worry. He
doesn’t even come in here. Besides, we’ll make sure the kitchen
staff restocks the missing bottles before we leave. So when you’re
done playing the innocent goodie two shoes friend, put that down in
the kitchen and grab some more. I’ve gotta make calls to all of my
seasonal friends.” She pulled a dark brown bottle off of the
shelf.
    Seasonal friends? What the
hell was a seasonal friend? I didn’t know
such things existed. I was curious to know the definition of a
seasonal friend. I could only imagine it would read something like
this.
    sea-son-al friend:
[ see-zuh-nl frend ] A person who fulfills the needy voids of ostentatious
people who travel to Aspen in the winter months for binge-drinking
and snow skiing.
    It makes me wonder what adjective she
put before my friendship.
    I had pulled the last couple of
bottles from the “liquor store” and turned to walk out when I ran
into Nick. The bottles squished my chest and his arms swung around
me.
    “ Oh, Ouch! What the—” I
stopped.
    “ Sorry. You okay? I didn’t
mean to stand in your way. I was coming in to find Cindy. This is
usually her first stop when she gets here.” He backed up and
grabbed the bottles from my arms.
    “ She went to call some of
her friends.” I wrapped my arms around my chest and slid my hands
into my armpits. I was hoping the sharp pains and numbness would
subside.
    He walked towards the boatload of
booze we had piled on the counter. “Oh yeah, she wants to rage
tonight. Let me guess, her dad left her a note, again.”
    “ Yeah.” I was always good
at keeping conversations interesting.
    “ Seasonal friend calls
right?” He put the bottles down.
    “ What’s with that; seasonal
friends? It sounds so…detached.”
    “ It’s how she
compartmentalizes her life. She doesn’t have to invest in her
seasonals. They all do it. It’s different here.”
    “ What’s up with you then?
You’re so different from her.”
    “ I don’t know how different
we really are. She has her agendas and I have mine.” He walked over
to the refrigerator and pulled it open looking at the contents. It
seemed ridiculous to stand with the door wide open, when the entire
front was made of glass.
    “ You seem so much more down
to earth than her. She always has reasons for what she does;
never—just because.” He handed me a Coke.
    “ We all have skeletons