Viola

A silver tablecloth, like an astronaut blanket, was half off the table. Kept on by bottles and cans, a dozen wounded soldiers, my money. The floor a ball pit of red and blue and green, Solo after Solo after Solo. There was no walking, there was only wading. Streamers hanging on the lamps, on the counter, sad neon boas. And goddammit, a whole frozen pizza—cooked—was in the sink, water dripping on the pepperoni. I was so hungry. I didn't care.

"God almighty." Luke was just seeing it, the wasteland, the battlefield. "What in the fucking world."

"Gerri," I informed. "And her fucking crew. Used this place for their goddamn frivolities, they asked us, we OK'd it."

"I didn't OK this shit," he said.

She could play me, like her violin or whatever she was majoring in. She knew I wouldn't put up a fight. Or maybe she had just done shit like this so often that she legitimately thought I didn't care. She didn't have to work for much, and what she had to work for she didn't want. They needed a big apartment. She'd been over more than once. I'm a sucker for blonde hair, dark eyebrows. I'm a sucker, plain and simple.

Luke started picking the cups off the floor. "No," I told him, "stop."

"I can't live like this, dude. I gotta have this place fucking clean."

I nodded, because I knew. I called her, called Gerri. No answer. I called again. Again. And again. Again and again I called her, message after message, texted and barraged her with words until she had no choice but to call back. She hadn't even been to the party. She wasn't even there. She didn't know who was there, and she had to go practice her viola.

I remembered back to elementary school, when I wanted to join orchestra. The director measures all the kids' hands and that determined what you'd play. The bigger the hands, the bigger the instrument. The girls who played viola, they got made fun of. Kids are kids and kids are mean. But, still, a girl with large hands was never something we were taught to like. Gerri, she's not so great.