Page 22 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)
THE HATTERY
Add the finishing touch to any outfit with a hat from Bravetown’s Hattery. Ride off into the sunset with one of our ready-to-wear models or experience true tradition with a bespoke hat made just for you while you watch the masters at work.
N OAH
While the cast parties tended to unravel into a drunken stupor, they usually started out fun enough.
People crowded into the living room and kitchen.
Zuri, who wasn’t part of the cast but had come with Sinan, brought homemade pizza rolls, while Lucas showed up with three dozen bags of chips that were just beyond their expiry date, warning people not to ask questions.
Austin sat in the corner with his headphones on and his laptop open, supplying the room with a mix of background music and sing-along hits.
And Richard, who had shown up in a sequined blazer and his white hair styled in a high quiff, brought out some trivia cards. He turned the sofa into his personal game show, where both winners and losers got drunk.
Most of us circled the sofa, waiting for the show to start .
“No, I’m on her team, I’ll just sit over here,” Sanny shouted over the chatter, pointing at his sister.
Esra perched on the sofa, rubbing her hands together, completely focused on Richard and his quizmaster cards. Her tank top proclaimed “born yesterday” in big pink letters.
“All teams must sit together for group rounds,” Richard said and waved Sanny to the other side of the L-shaped sofa.
Five people would already be a tight squeeze on there, but seven made it look like a tin of sardines.
“We need one more person.” Richard pointed at Sanny, Zuri and Esra’s corner of the sofa.
No wonder people didn’t want to be on a trivia team with someone who was born yesterday …
“Noah!” Sinan waved me over before I could pretend to be too busy sipping my beer.
“No, thanks,” I replied and turned to find someone or something to turn my attention to instead. Vivi, who’d been watching next to me, just pointedly held up a hand as a sign not to talk to her.
“Noah, I love you. I respect you. But you get your butt over here so we can start,” Zuri yelled, already hyped up on the sugary concoction in her cup.
Sanny laughed and planted a kiss on his fiancée’s cheek, while she aggressively patted the three inches of sofa beside her.
“Fine. One sec.” I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge to switch to once I’d finished my beer, before I resigned myself to my fate.
It took some shuffling. Zuri ended up snuggling into Sanny’s lap, and I was wedged between him and Esra.
Her knee bounced against mine, her whole body vibrating.
She didn’t even spare me a glance or make a snarky comment about my water.
Instead, her knuckles were turning white from gripping the red claxon squeaker for our team.
“Is she okay?”
“No, she’s insane,” Sanny snorted, earning himself a slap on the chest from Zuri, “but yes, she’s fine.”
“First round,” Richard announced. “Each correct answer earns you a round of shots for the team. The shots will remain on the table in front of you. First team to collect four rounds wins. If a team gets an answer wrong, the opposing team has the chance to answer and steal a round of shots from the first team. Any questions?” People stayed silent or shook their heads, so Richard continued: “The category for this round: History.”
“Shit,” Esra muttered under her breath. Her knee bounced faster.
The first question was something about the Civil War and Esra honked her signal before Richard had fully ended the sentence.
She bounced up and down on the sofa when the first round of shots appeared in front of us.
She was just as fast with the second question, about something called the Silk Road.
The third question was about the California Gold Rush, and Lucas hit the green squeaker at the other end of the sofa– maybe half a second before Esra squeezed the red one. The other team got that question.
Esra glared at that round of shots in front of the other team as if it was a personal affront.
“Next question,” Richard announced. “Blue jeans as we know them today were patented in the 1870s by—”
The green team’s horn squeaked, Heather jumping off the sofa. “Levi Strauss! Levi’s jeans! ”
“That wasn’t the question, but correct, blue jeans as we know them were patented by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, but why are they called blue jeans? The red team has the question and the opportunity to steal a round of shots.” Richard pointed his cards at us.
Before I had the chance to come up with a theory, Esra replied: “ Bleu de Gênes was the French name for a sturdy blue fabric made in Genoa. The name later developed into the anglicized ‘blue jeans’.”
“That is… correct!” Richard announced in his best show-host voice. He pulled four shots from the green team and set them down with our existing eight. “Red team only needs one more correct answer to win the first round.”
“How do you even know that?” I asked. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Vivi had gotten that answer right, because she could go on and on about fashion and makeup. She had a personal hand in all the costumes in the park. Esra, however, wore sparkly, borderline-offensive clothing.
“Had a lot of inside time as a kid.” She shrugged as if that explained it, when it just left the question why a little girl would spend her time learning about the history of blue jeans instead of playing with dolls or watching TV.
“We’re going all the way back in time with this one. The point goes to the first team to correctly quote and name an ancient Greek philosopher.”
Esra jumped up and squeaked our horn hard enough for it to make a strangled airy sound.
“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my parents; make him my partner in my…”
Richard was hanging on to her every word as she clutched the squeaker to her chest. The rest of the room had fallen silent, too, people pausing mid-drink and staring at Esra as she went on.
I turned to Sanny, who was noiselessly giggling, hiding his face behind Zuri’s shoulder.
“Hippocratic oath,” he whispered when he caught me staring.
“She’s known the whole thing by heart forever.
It was a cute party trick as a little kid.
It became less impressive when she got older, so she added the Greek original, and then after my accident, even sign language. ” He rolled his eyes. “Show-off.”
“Hippocrates of Kos.” Esra ended her monologue with a deep sigh and collapsed back on to the sofa.
After a moment of stunned silence, people started clapping. Richard blinked from Esra to his cards and back. He’d met his trivia match. “I don’t think we’ll need to google that to verify.” He cleared his throat. “Red team wins the question and the first round of trivia.”
More shots appeared in front of us. Richard explained that every player had to drink their rounds of shots. Anyone who tapped out was out of the game. When only three players were left, there would be a lightning round finale.
“All right, I’m out.” I pushed the shots back across the table.
“Are you drinking water?” Esra narrowed her eyes at my bottle, having already downed one of her shots and only now registering her surroundings. “If you don’t drink, you’re out of the game. ”
“I haven’t been in the game, princess.” I wrenched the claxon from her hand. Her fingernails had left deep dents in the rubber ball at the end of the horn, and it refilled with air with a pathetic hiss.
“Oops.” She flexed her hand. “I can let you answer some questions if you want.”
“How generous. You’d let the rest of your team participate?”
“Don’t drag me into this. Esra’s brain is paying for my shots.” Sinan clanked an empty glass down on the table. “I’m okay being eye candy.”
“If you want to answer some questions, answer some questions.” Esra threw another shot back, voice growing agitated. “You didn’t exactly reach for the squeaker.”
“I just don’t drink,” I said before this thing could spiral into a much bigger argument than it was worth, “so, I’m out of the game.”
I climbed across Sanny’s legs and took my water bottle back to the kitchen, where I grabbed one of Lucas’s bags of chips.
Those definitely weren’t healthy, and the expiration date didn’t help, but I needed a moment of feeling normal.
I knew I shouldn’t have played. The sour feeling in the pit of my stomach was too familiar.
Jealousy. I’d graduated high school by the skin of my teeth.
After my mom got sick, I went through a lot, and that included getting wasted and skipping school.
I cleaned up my act, but I’d never had much of a chance to make up for those years.
I just had to keep moving. I wrote off books and classrooms, just like I wrote off getting drunk and making stupid choices, and I rarely felt like I missed out on anything.
“You good?” Sanny followed me into the kitchen within a few minutes and grabbed the bag of chips from my hands with a furrowed brow. “Never mind. Clearly, you aren’t.”
“I hate trivia,” I replied.
“You just have to sit back and let Ez answer all the questions for you. She used to spend days in bed reading encyclopedias. I tried to convert her to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , all right? But she said comics weren’t stimulating enough. What six-year-old uses the word ‘stimulating’?”
“What six-year-old spends days reading encyclopedias?”
“Exactly my point,” he yelled, some of those shots clearly coming through in his slurred words. “Anyway. Are we still on for painting tomorrow?”
“Sure. If you think you won’t be too hungover.” I chuckled.