The Lake and the PartyThey’d never seen him so drunk, him being used to his glass of red wine per meal, nothing less, nothing more, never been a man of excess in his life. All his life he’d kept himself straight for the sake of his work, his family, and his education, his greatest passion now that he’d traded in his sports career for the aforementioned work and family.
Tonight, though, was a night for celebration. They’d delayed their the departure for their lake vacation just to attend the yearly political festival, which this time around took place in their city. The debates of the morning and afternoon had led into a party fizzing with excitement: attendance at an all-time high, acclaimed masters and thrilled up-and-comers alternated in the musical lineup. “This round’s on me,” one colleague had said, slamming a handful of lire on the bar counter; then another, then another, as his wife danced and his daughter sat at a picnic table, half asleep. The musicians followed each other onstage, the August heat persisted as the moon crossed the sky, released by hundreds of moving bodies. By the time the last grappa was offered, the instruments were being packed, and the bodies were trudging through the dark to the makeshift parking lot.
He followed them, wife and daughter at his side. When he got to the cars, though, he realised that with no lights and his state of mind he could not tell which car belonged to him. They crossed the park a few times before they gave up and sat on the grass, reasoning that it would be easier to find his car when not surrounded by similar-looking ones. They waited for the vehicles to pour out; the parking lot thinned out, but in the dark they all looked too much alike, and even with less of them around he was in no shape to try and open all of them one by one. Over an hour passed. When the second-to-last car departed, only his was left, off in the corner, excavated like bones from a dig site.
He sat at the wheel: his daughter was too young to drive, and his wife’s license was long-expired. “With so little traffic, it’ll take us an hour to get to the lake.”
“We should go home,” his daughter said. “It’s much closer. We can go in the morning, the lake can wait.”
“Nonsense. Our bags are packed. We’ll waste one day of vacation if we wait.”
So they left for the lake. His hands and mind were surprisingly steady, never swerving or missing a signal. He seemed more secure in his driving than he’d been on his feet, probably something to do with his past as a rally racer, or maybe with the knowledge that if he tripped and fell he'd be the only one to get hurt, but if he crashed it would be a bad time for all three of them if not more people. The headlights cut into the darkness, road empty. His wife slept; his daughter's tension kept her awake.
They got to the lake with no accidents, unloaded their luggage and set up their tent as soon as the sun came up. The only moment worthy of note, throughout the whole journey, was when he stopped the car on the side of the road, rested his forearm on the car, and vomited what seemed like every drop of liquid in his body. Then, phlegmatic, he wiped his mouth with a checkered handkerchief and climbed back into the car.
DollyEven the most oppositional-defiant among us did not start out hating the new headmaster. We had better things to do than care about the school administration, such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, or, for a few brave ones, coke and ketamine. The new headmaster had not yet had the chance to put an end to our tradition of bringing four-Euro bottles of champagne to school around the holidays and refrigerating them on the windowsill, so we were holding our judgement until then.
One of our classmates had nicknamed herself Dolly. She had some sort of growth disorder that to the untrained eye looked like she was unusually short with a big nose and mouth, but when it was time to do PE she sat on a bench in her crop top and fur coat and watched us exercise. She had explained to a friend, who had been allowed to spread the word, that her heart-to-rib-cage size ratio was troublesome, and exerting herself could cause her to have some sort of attack.
The new headmaster, as it turned out, was revealing herself to be quite strict. We had to stop going to the vending machines during Religion class, which we were allowed to skip thanks to a document signed by our parents, because she would patrol the halls like she had nothing better to do in hopes of catching us and giving us detention. A friend of mine decided to start crafting lies about the bathrooms in an increasingly large radius being broken to test how far her gullibility went; from the behaviour mark he got at the end of the semester, we deduced ‘not far at all’.
On the day we decided to hate the headmaster for good, Dolly had decided to try playing a ball game with us and see how it would go. She was allowed to stand by the edge of the field in her high-heeled boots and fur coat and acrylics and we stood at her sides in a big circle, and we passed a ball to each other and to her, and she could leave if she had any trouble. So we played for a while, and her heart bravely held on. The reason she had to leave the game, eventually, was not related to any internal organ, but to a failed catch that broke her nail. It was more gruesome than you’d think, blood slowly dripping down her hand, soaked up with a napkin just before it stained her nice coat. Her big pretty face all scrunched up.
Someone took her to the infirmary. An hour later you could see dried blood on her gauzed finger, the ice pack in her hand did a poor job of hiding it. It so happened that the period after PE was Religion, and Dolly went to the bathroom more out of boredom than for any physiological reason. In the hallway, she ran into the headmaster, who took a long look at her bloodied bandages and said, “What are you wearing? Cover yourself up. I’ll see your stomach if you shrug. And never wear heels like that again.” So poor wounded Dolly had her hoodie zipped up for the rest of the day, and we all decided we truly hated the new headmaster.
