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“Hey, Judy,” she’d said, using the name that Jude—then known far and wide exclusively as Judith—only ever allowed Alice to call her, “you should try this before you go to English class.”

With her skirt zipped and her shirt tucked back into place, Alice produced the flask from her purse and passed it to Jude. Jude unscrewed the lid cautiously, taking a whiff of it. It burned her nostrils and she winced, passing it back.

“No thank you,” she said, shaking her dark head.

“Trust me.” Alice tipped her own head back and took a long pull from the flask before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Here. Your turn.”

Jude was dubious. The stuff smelled awful, and she didn’t even know what was in it. Her dad occasionally met other military guys for drinks and came home with alcohol on his breath, but Bea forbade any alcohol in the house, so Jude didn’t really have much experience with it. She put the metal flask to her lips and took the tiniest, most hesitant sip she could manage.

She gagged. “God, what is this?”

Alice laughed wickedly, pushing the flask back to her. “Have a bit more. It’s whiskey.”

“It tastes like fire. Like burned oil and wood.” She took another drink to see if she’d been mistaken the first time, but she quickly discovered that she hadn’t. “I hate it.”

Alice laughed again. “Well, my dad didn’t have any more of the other kind. He got a bottle for Christmas that tasted like vanilla and spices and it was amazing, but this is just some cheap stuff.”

“I don’t know why people like this.” Jude turned back to the mirror, looking at her reflection as Alice took another swig and then passed her the flask again.

“Take one more drink—a real one,” Alice implored. “And then let me know after English class how you feel, okay? I can guarantee if you have a good bit of it sloshing around in your belly, you’ll get through old Norwood’s Shakespeare discussion and have a much better time in her class. That’s a promise.”

Jude considered this for a moment because Alice hadn’t really led her astray in any other way. She’d taught her all about what teenage boys looked like naked (Jude tried not to flash back on what a prepubescent Chester had looked like without his pants on--the memories still made her shudder), how to sneak through a bedroom window without breaking the screen on the window so that your parents would never find out, and how to lie to your teachers about menstrual cramps so that you could sneak off campus for a quick cigarette or a milkshake. So why would Alice lie to her now? She accepted the flask and took another drink, a real mouthful this time.

And true to Alice’s word, a warm, fuzzy feeling had overtaken Jude during English class. As the rest of her classmates discussedA Midsummer Night’s Dreamand took notes while Mrs. Norwood walked around the room, pointing at the things she’d written on the chalkboard with a long pointer stick, Jude floated in a happy haze. She’d looked out the windows at the way the birds landed in the branches of the trees, and she’d doodled her own name intertwined with James Dean’s. The whole hour passed in this easy, light way, and when Jude walked through the hall afterwards with her books in her arms, she saw everything in a new light. The floors were shinier, the sounds of teenagers talking sounded more melodic to her ears, and the boys even looked a bit cuter. She smiled at people whose gazes she normally avoided, and when she found Alice, she could tell by the look on her friend’s face that she was amused by something Jude was doing.

“What?” Jude had asked, confused. She tossed her head and met Alice’s eye. “Why are you laughing?”

“You’re tipsy,” Alice had responded. “How do you feel?”

Jude motioned for the flask. “Let me have a little more.”

“More?” Alice lifted an eyebrow as she looked around the parking lot where they were standing. “Okay, you wild child. Here you go.”

And so it had begun.

The phone rings now in the late afternoon, and Jude startles. Alice and her flask and her flaming hair slip from Jude's mind as she flips her wrist over to glance at her watch. She jumps to her feet and rushes to the phone.

“Hello?”

“Jude? It’s Frankie.”

A rush of mortification fills Jude with horror. “The girls.”

“They’re waiting for you,” Frankie says, “but I’m all done here for the day. Would you like me to drop them home? Everyone else has already been picked up.”

“Frankie,” Jude says, looking at the glass on the table that’s less than half-full. She’s working her way to the bottom of drink number two, and she can feel the looseness in her limbs. The world around her is fluid. “I am so, so sorry. You have no idea. I was making dinner, and time just got away from me. I would never?—“

“Jude, it’s fine,” Frankie assures her, sounding a little miffed. “I’ll just drop them by on my way home. No harm, no foul. We’ll see you in about fifteen minutes.”

Jude hangs up and looks at the watch on her wrist again. She’s not driving, and the girls will come home and play for a bit as she finishes dinner, so she decides to top off her drink. Just one more time. If she hasn’t hit the bottom of the glass yet, then even if she refills it, it’s still only her second drink, right?

She reaches for the vodka and turns it around, looking at the label as she does. As always, it reminds her of Alice and the bottles they’d pilfered from Mr. Kamp’s liquor cabinet. This brand had become their safe choice, and so, even as an adult, Jude gravitates towards it, with the familiar colors and font on the label. She tops off her glass and then adds just a splash of orange juice, mixing it quickly with a long spoon intended for iced tea. She’d gotten the spoons as a wedding gift, though she rarely—if ever—used them for anything except stirring up a cocktail.

Jude sinks back into her seat at the table with a sigh, thinking again of Alice and the way she’d been amused the first few times Jude had gotten drunk and thrown up. There had been the time they’d climbed up Mount Lee in Griffith Park, north of the Mulholland Highway in Hollywood, and drank as the giant spotlights came on behind each letter. Jude had eventually lain in the dirty patches of grass, staring up at the night sky as she laughed and laughed, and after the laughter made her stomach hurt, she rolled onto her side and vomited. This had been a story that was oft repeated between the two girls, and when Jude eventually learned to control her drinking and find her limit, she would roll her eyes at the memory, chastising her former self for not being able to hold her liquor.

In fact, it had been the last night of her friendship with Alice that had really made her feel like an uninformed novice. They’d taken Alice’s car, as usual, and her father’s alcohol, as usual, and driven to some place where they could drink and talk. They were listening to the radio in the car beneath a streetlight, passing a bottle back and forth as they wondered what the future would bring (Jude wanted to go to college to get away from her stepmother; Alice wanted to go to Vegas and become a showgirl who wore red lipstick to the grocery store and took a different lover every week).

“You’d wear stage makeup to buygroceries?” Jude asked, watching Alice twist the rearview mirror towards herself and fluff her hair as she looked at her own reflection.