The one thing I can remember truly clearly about that night is that the ice on the driveway was brown. It’s weird, because when you think of winter, you think of fluffy white snow, or black ice, but you never think of ugly smeared-shit brown ice that covers driveways.
The ice was so very disgusting that it looked like mud, which, incidentally, is the reason I almost went flying the second I stepped out of the passenger seat of Kate’s truck. Death being narrowly avoided so far, we continued to try our chances on the walkway from the driveway to Katie’s house.
I still have no idea how they do that, Katie and Kate. They walk around together and hang out with the same people occasionally, and their names being almost the same doesn’t drive them completely insane. I think I’d change my name.
The walkway. We started on it, and the ice was worse than on the driveway, but we made quick work of it, barreling through like rhinos, mostly with the same amount of finesse.
The house was big, and they only rented part of it. We walked in to a couple of murmured "hi"’s from the men sitting around in front of the tv.
My clothes rustled and I thought a light wind had blown through, but no, that was just Katie, hugging me hello.
God, she was skinny.
She had on this silly Marilyn Monroe dress, only it was bright red instead of white. She spun around and asked if we liked it.
I forced my mouth to smile, but I think it came out as more of a grimace, and my happy birthday was less than half-hearted.
As if she’d notice.
We sat on the sofa awkwardly and made our introductions to her roommates.
Scum, I thought. Scummy scum fuckers.
It was five of us, all sitting around weirdly for about half an hour giving Katie birthday presents that she loved and dropped into the sofa, pledging she would find them later.
Like she would even remember that she dropped them.
We started the movie. At about the forty-five minute mark, Katie leaned her head on my shoulder and the hand she held a piece of chicken in drooped. I looked down at her and shuffled her shoulder a bit, waking her. Her boyfriend swore up and down that he’d told her to go to bed earlier the night before. She was just really tired.
Liar.
Kate and I looked at each other. Nothing we could do. Besides, it was her birthday.