From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt

Author:Jill Eisenstadt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2017-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

Already ten-thirty and nothing. No touch, not even a look. Alex had done better at school. And doesn’t it humiliate him to be losing his second game of darts to Timmy? She could kill herself for caring and kill her mother for all those ridiculous “under the mistletoe” hints. Boys don’t think that way, Ma, don’t you know?

She sits at a table, watching the game, clasping a swizzle stick between pinky and thumb. If it bends in the middle, that means luck. If it doesn’t, well, what if it doesn’t? Forget it.

“Go on,” says a voice. Peg’s hoarse voice from behind her. “Let’s see, you gonna get lucky or what?”

As Alex turns to say hi, three candy canes drop in her lap.

“Merry Christmas!” Peg’s nose is running. “Let’s drive out to Howard Beach and check out those mega nativity sets.”

“Aren’t you gonna ask how I am first?”

“I can see—you’re overtired, depressed, slightly drunk, and glad there’s me,” Peg says, messing up Alex’s hair. “So there.” She marches over to the dart game, where she kisses Timmy’s forehead and demands to be introduced to “the handsome stranger.” That makes Alex happy.

“Alex’s friend,” Timmy said, letting loose a dart aimed for nowhere. He’s lucky it lands in a plant and lucky Sloane’s bartending and likes that kind of shit.

“Watch it, Ray!” Sloane howls. “Some nice ass around here that we don’t wanna puncture!”

Peg spins on the heel of her boot, and Alex thinks she’s going to yell something back. But she only gives Sloane a dirty look, mutters “Smack,” and then checks out Joe.

“Alex’s friend? So, when did this happen?”

Not waiting for an answer, she skips back over to the table and sits down.

“He’s got such shiny hair,” she whispers. “But he can’t play darts for shit.”

“It’s not what you think. He’ll probably hit on you. It’s really not what you think.”

Peg just laughs. “I don’t think. You think. That’s how come you got a scholarship. But it’s vacation, and you’re supposed to stop thinking already. Start partying.”

“I partied a lot up there,” Alex tells her. “I partied a lot last night.” She rolls up her pants to show off the mysterious gash, really just a scrape.

“I’d like to scrape Sloane’s face off,” Peg says so loudly that Timmy turns and nods. His sad eyes look yellowish.

“I was thinkin the same thing,” he says. “I was thinkin how him and Bean used to hold me down, breathe in my face till I guessed what they ate. I was just tellin Joe that.”

Timmy’s got this amazing memory but seems to remember mostly things worth forgetting.

“I can’t believe your mother let you out on Christmas Eve,” Peg says to him. She’s wincing, trying to untangle a large, yellow knot of hair.

“I’m nineteen.”

“So, last year you were eighteen.”

“Good math.”

“So last year you weren’t out.”

“Good memory.”

“I quit smoking pot.”

“Did not.”

“Did too. Well, sort of.”

“Last year,” Timmy says, by now standing over the table, “I was working. No, that was New Year’s. Last year, oh yeah, I got bombed and fell asleep at midnight Mass.

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