The Chocolate Money by Ashley Prentice Norton Read Free Book Online Page B

slice your wrists, make sure you know what you are doing. There is nothing more pathetic than ending up in the hospital because you didn’t do your homework.
    Babs is pro-suicide. Has no patience for depressed people.
If you can’t get out of bed, just bag it altogether.
No patience for the very old either. Too many of them linger. Pooping in diapers, sporting ugly bruises and nasty brown spots on their papery skin.
    If she sees a burn mark on my wrist, she will think it is a childish attempt to off myself. So I push the lit cigarette into the flesh just above my right anklebone. No blood. Just a round, red tattoo. Babs will never be able to strip me of this.
    It hurts, but not really.

6. The Hangover-Brunch Cruise Party
April 1980
    A PRIL OF THAT YEAR , the affair is still going on, but there’s something different about it. Mack comes to the aparthouse less often. Babs is alternately restless and bored. When she’s had enough, she decides to throw a party.
    Babs’s parties are a big deal. Everyone wants to get invited. There’s always a theme and you have to dress accordingly. The key is getting all the details right. Even more important than who you invite.
    Babs calls this one the Hangover-Brunch Cruise Party. Since Babs doesn’t drink, she’s never hung over. But she isn’t against other people drinking. She says most people she knows are completely boring unless they drink. Sober, they are too worried about what other people think. Are not
fearless,
like she is. I’m not fearless either. Babs is excited for the day I start drinking for real. The way Babs thinks about drinking is kind of hard to explain, but I get it. Babs has rules for herself, and rules for everyone else.
    Babs would never be caught dead taking a cruise. They are middle-class tacky. Brunch is a whole other level of disgusting. Breakfast and lunch
at the same time.
Going back as often as you want for more, wielding tongs at those steaming serve-yourself stations. Waiting for a “chef” wearing a paper hat and rubber gloves to hack off slices of ham from a communal slab. The whole thing is on par with rats feeding in the dumpster at the IHOP.
    But all this is fodder for a
damn good time.
Hangovers before a party, a cruise without a boat, brunch before bed. An alternative universe where Babs is in charge.
    Babs is always in charge of my universe, of course, but in the months that lead up to the party, things are much easier for me. I get to help Babs get ready for the party. School is just something I do between our work.
    Each invitation to the Hangover-Brunch Cruise Party is an intricate package. Babs and I assemble all three hundred of them ourselves.
    Most nights we are up past two. I don’t mind missing out on sleep. I’m good at gluing and organizing. Can keep going while Babs takes smoke breaks.
    The first component is the actual invitation, which Babs has printed up on round cardboard coasters. The coasters are ringed with sketches of orange lifesavers that say
SS Babs.
The details of the event are printed inside the ring of the lifesavers:
     
Go Overboard with Me
At a Hangover-Brunch Cruise
100 East Lake Shore Drive
7:00 P.M.
Saturday, May 17
Dress: Naughty Nautical
     
    The second item we include is a clear Lucite cube filled with a viscous blue liquid. It transforms into crashing waves if you shake it. We glue to the top of each cube a little plastic cruise ship and tiny plastic people lying facedown, as if they have fallen into the sea. Then we add to the package a shot glass for each invitee, with DRINK UP, THROW UP, SHOW UP printed on it in the same font as the invite. Finally, minibottles of rum, scotch, and vodka. A pouch of Hawaiian Punch mix and one of Tang as mixers. Drinks of choice for tacky people?
    The RSVP cards are touristy it’s-better-in-the-Bahamas-type postcards, stamped and addressed to Babs. There are three reply options:
     
———Will rally
———Still passed out, have to pass
———Party