You Got a Problem with Schnapps? Part One
YOU GOT SOMETHING AGAINST SCHNAPPS? Chapter One
by
Linda Seton
This is
in answer to the "The Smallville Crayola Challenge." It also can be used as a
workplace/school game where you have to find all 120 colors.
PG-13 for
underage consumption of schnapps
"So, who do you think is the
sexiest guy in all of Smallville?"
Chloe struggles to remember the name
of the girl in the dandelion-patterned pajamas asking the question. It has to be
Allie, Chloe reasons because the other redhead is Yvonne. Amber, Amber, Cerise,
Yvonne, Allie. It has to be Allie. Or maybe an Amber?
The other four
girls offer up names of classmates and Chloe watches them each in turn trying to
remember their names. A swirl of cotton candy pinks and sky blues, this evening
is quickly becoming some weird anthropological experiment for Chloe. She knows
this is definitely her first and last sleepover.
Their hostess Lana
avoids answering the sexy question, "Oh, I don't know."
Yvonne smiles in
cat-ate-canary-style. "Lex Luthor."
A collective giggle rises from the
room and Chloe has to ask. "So, why does he win the title?"
Lana bites
her lip as five heads swivel around to face Chloe.
"I'm not trying to be
rude. I'm just curious. The tabloids in Metropolis do call him "Sexy
Lexy"...
Chloe's ramblings are cut off by a fresh onslaught of giggles.
She sighs. She had been a good sport up until now. She had actually allowed one
of the Ambers to paint her nails a combination of Atomic Tangerine and Vivid
Tangerine to "get the best tangerine". Chloe had never known that having spot-on
tangerine was a real issue but Amber had been so conscientious that had she
almost felt like tipping her. "Sexy Lexy. That's great." Cerise
squeaks.
"So, why?" Chloe presses.
Lana in her robin egg blue
shorty pajamas tries to be the peacemaker. "You know Chloe. The investigative
reporter has to have an answer."
"He's really rich." Yvonne
explains.
"He can buy you stuff," the other Amber continues the
thought.
"And a great dresser. All those black trench coats and vivid
violet shirts." Cerise offers.
"He doesn't have any hair so you never
have to worry about him losing it." This from the nail-painting Amber who leans
back from Allie's hand.
"He is bald but he has great cars." Rolling over
on her back, Allie blows on her newly purple-pizzazzed nails.
"Come on,
you have to admit that he's sexy." Yvonne smiles at Lana.
"Oh, he's very
nice."
All eyes turn to Chloe. "Well, there's the whole right or wrong
thing which..." Everyone just seems confused so Chloe counters. "What about
Lionel Luthor? He's really, really rich and he has a full head of brown
hair."
"Eww, he's old. And his hair is kinda gray." Amber wrinkles her
nose.
"Just five minutes ago you were talking about Sean Connery being
sexy and he's a lot older than Lionel Luthor." Chloe feels a vein throbbing
beside her eye. 'Death by sleepover' is the stray thought that meanders through
her brain.
"You think Lionel Luthor is sexy?" Nail-painting Amber asks
with just a note of betrayal in her voice.
"No, I'm just trying to figure
out criteria."
"No fathers are sexy." Yvonne clarifies as she re-applies
her wild strawberry lip gloss.
Chloe digs another almond out of the snack
bowl in front of her. "How about Clark Kent's father?"
"Yum." Cerise
smiles.
"Gold hair, tan skin and lots of muscle." Amber sighs. "I can
close my eyes and see him in the hayloft with a straw dangling from the corner
of his mouth."
The girls resume giggling as Chloe fights down a sigh.
These girls don't want to have sex they want to have a well-lit TV commercial.
Chloe suddenly wishes that she was in the middle of a commercial -- the one
where the kid who can't go to sleep at a slumber party is taken home by his
dad.
Chloe resumes foraging for almonds and peanuts.
"Those are
really fattening," Nail-painting Amber whispers to Chloe as she almost
scoldingly shakes a bottle of Razzle Dazzle Rose in her direction.
Chloe
puts the closest thing to real food she's likely to have this evening back in
the bowl. She had been under the impression that food was involved in a
sleepover. A big cheese pizza, maybe? There had been some cut up vegetables,
raisins, dried apricots and one lone granny smith apple that Chloe had eaten all
on her own. Now there was this stray bowl of unsalted, butterfree popcorn with
about a dozen nuts in it.
Her stomach growls and everyone in the room
turns to her. "Sorry."
Lana's forehead wrinkles. "Are you hungry,
Chloe?"
"I'm fine. Just all the laughing. You should hear my stomach
during ANNIE HALL."
Whatever muddled pop music that had been playing
comes to a stop and Chloe shifts a little under the silent scrutiny of the
girls. "What are we listening to next?" She asks hopefully.
"My turn to
pick." Allie crawls over to the CD player and shuffles through some discs. "This
is fun."
"Mellow Yellow" begins to play and Chloe actually smiles. Based
on everything else that had assaulted her ears that evening the song is
wonderful.
Just as Chloe starts to relax, Yvonne shouts, "Closet
raid!"
All the girls, except Chloe and Lana, beeline for the closet.
"What?"
"Sleepover tradition. They get to rummage through your
closet and try on your clothes."
Chloe cautiously trails Lana over to the
closet where the other girls are burrowing. A carnation pink sweater set becomes
the oohing center of attention.
Chloe hangs back and studies the clothes.
Lana Lang�s closet looks like a really muted rainbow going from peach to
periwinkle. There�s not a single blue or red or yellow. Everything is a pastel.
She wonders what it says about a person when they don�t own a single primary
color?
Something catches Chloe's attention in the closet and she lifts
out a sort of brick red sweater.
Lana laughs, �That�s Nell�s. It must
have gotten mixed in when I did laundry.� She takes the item from Chloe and
hangs it on the door.
Chloe looks down at her slippers. Bright colors
are exiled in the world of Lana Lang. It�s a wonder that Chloe in her royal
purple man-style pajamas hadn�t been sent home by now. Having never been to a
sleepover, Chloe had bought pajamas from a vintage clothing place in Metropolis.
She had been trying for an old-movie-Kate-Hepburn-look but now mostly just looks
out of place. All the girls loiter in stretchy knits with a pink flamingo here
and a fuzzy wuzzy brown bear there.
Chloe tries to shake the image of
some paunchy mass-market clothing maker sitting alone in his office trying to
dream up the most babified prints for women to wear. She dismisses the thought
before a Britney Spears� tune ends up stuck in her head.
"Look what I
found." Cerise emerges from the closet with a tiny little cadet blue skirt set
with jacket and beret. "Lana still has her Blue Bell uniform."
The get-up
is passed from girl to girl. Chloe marvels at all the badges and green clovers
on the jacket.
"Were you ever a Blue Bell, Chloe?" Lana asks.
"For
about a week. I never even got the hat or a shamrock."
"What
happened?"
"I asked too many questions. After all, what's so magical
about a Magic Mint cookie."
"Lana!" One of the horde calls and Lana
races over to her.
The word mint has triggered a stray thought in
Chloe's brain. She unpockets a new roll of Blizzard Blue mints which are so
strong they always kill her tastebuds and her appetite. She takes two as she
eases over to the cluster of girls.
Cerise shows off the newly unearthed
Banana Mania boardgame. "I loved this game when I was little."
The other
girls chime in. Even Lana seems interested so Chloe leans closer. On the cover
is a strange little yellow orange monkey scratching his head over all the random
pieces of fruits and vegetables floating around him.
"What do you have to
do?" Chloe asks.
"You have to navigate your monkey through the tropical
rain forest until you find the banana cave." Cerise smiles as she takes the
game.
"Cave?" Chloe questions.
"You roll dice and you move your
monkey and then you have to answer general knowledge questions." Allie
nods.
"Like what you have to do to get bananas to grow in
caves?"
"No. Stuff like 'Who was the first President of the United
States?" Amber explains. "If you answer it correctly then you get a piece of
fruit or a vegetable."
"Like an eggplant or a plum or something. But your
monkey can't eat them so you have to trade with other animals like Mr. Beaver."
The less sane Amber laughs as she flips over the jungle green box to read the
back..
"But a monkey is a herbivore. Of course he can eat eggplants or
plums. And why is there a beaver and a monkey in the same eco-system?" Chloe
once again asks.
The girls all just look at her.
"Okay, trading
with other animals. Then what?"
"Well, you just play until you answer
enough questions and earn enough points to get to the cave." Yvonne
shrugs.
"And my favorite thing, sometimes you win magic fruit like the
laser lemon or the electric lime and then you can take other people's stuff from
them." Allie completes the rules description.
"You mean if you answer a
hard question you get better food?"
"No, it's not merit based, Chloe"
Lana explains. "It's to help the less skilled have a shot."
Chloe just
groans. "We aren't going to play, are we?"
Almost like someone on stage,
Allie looks around as if searching for any possible intruder and then whispers
to the other girls. "I brought a surprise." She retrieves her denim bag from
near the door and comes up with a strange looking orange bottle. "My parents
tossed this out."
The �this� in question is an almost completely full,
almost gallon-sized bottle of melon schnapps.
"If Nell catches us we're
dead." Lana murmurs.
Chloe frowns. "Schnapps?"
"You got something
against schnapps?" Amber demands.
Chloe shakes her head.
"You're
supposed to mix schnapps with stuff. You're not supposed to just drink it. Do
you have any cranberry juice?" Allie asks.
"No, but there's Kool-Aid in
the refrigerator." Lana scurries from the room leaving Chloe to fend for
herself.
Nail-painting Amber closes in and studies one of Chloe's hands.
"Maybe we could do a touch-up? Some Neon Carrot or maybe some Outrageous
Orange." The girl grins and Chloe suddenly remembers that article she had read
about fetishism and serial murder.
Before Chloe can respond to the girl,
Lana returns with cups and a pitcher of yellow green Kool-Aid.
"What
flavor is that? Cerise asks.
"Whatever flavor "Screamin' Green" happens
to be."
Lana distributes cups and Allie begins to dispense the schnapps.
Each offered cup gets about eight ounces of liquor and is topped off with a shot
of Kool-Aid.
All the girls hesitate and study the sort of sea green
concoction in the cup. Then everyone looks to Chloe.
"All right." She
lifts the cup to her lips and takes a swallow. She lowers the cup and she
smiles. "It's great."
Encouraged, the other girls take healthy gulps of
their drinks. Eye-watering, coughing, gagging sounds commence.
"This is
awful," Lana gasps.
Feeling very commercial-like Chloe holds up her
mints. "Kills your sense of taste."
The girls attack as a group and take
mints.
After a few relieved moments of silence, Amber looks down into
the cup. "I think I want some more."
"Me too," the second Amber
mutters.
Lana and her chums daintily sip at their drinks.
Chloe
looks on and then takes a huge swig from her glass. "I'm not going to be the
only one sober."
Time seems to both expand and contract. Chloe suddenly
finds herself laughing at something. She is not exactly sure what triggered the
laugh attack and she grows very quiet. The other girls' voices fade out as Chloe
removes her slipper and begins to pull at a thread that runs along the sole.
Something brushes against her now bare foot and a startled Chloe looks down to
find Amber with a couple of bottles of nail polish.
"How about Magenta?
Or maybe Hot Magenta? Or we could mix them." Amber fights with one of the bottle
lids.
Chloe shrugs and turns her attention to the other girls. Tears
stream down Lana's face as she laughs uncontrollably.
"You look
mauvelous!" Yvonne half-shouts and the others laugh deliriously.
Oh, yes,
Chloe had been laughing at that too. Like an hour ago.
Amber jostles her
leg and Chloe shifts her attention back to the girl. The bottle of nail polish
is open and Amber's face glows an unhealthy olive green.
"Maybe you
shouldn't mix Isopropyl Alcohol with schnapps." Chloe's voice sounds strange to
her own ears. Strange but still pretty smart.
Then suddenly Cerise is
viciously tickling her and chanting "tickle me pink, p - i - n - k." The other
girls are similarly occupied.
Chloe rolls to her feet. "I have to go to
the bathroom."
She fights for balance as she veers toward the bathroom.
She struggles with the antique brass knob before managing to get the door
open.
The light comes on automatically and Chloe hiccups in surprise as
she closes the door. She finds the Caribbean green walls oddly peaceful and
leans back. After a moment of rest she moves to the mirror and studies the green
yellow Kool-Aid moustache on her face. She turns on the tap and twice fumbles
the large cake of Mountain Meadow soap before finally getting some lather.
Sobering a little she manages to scrub the stain away.
High pitched
giggling filters through the door and Chloe struggles over to the tiny bathroom
window. Pushing it open, she leans out and is rewarded with a glimpse of indigo
sky and a breath of cool air.
The girls are more frightening drunk than
sober and all Chloe really wants is to be at home. She studies the gentle slope
of the roof leading to a bordering tree. If she were sober, escape would be no
problem.
"Pillow fight!" Allie shouts and Chloe makes her decision. She
opens the vanity drawer and finds a tube of lipstick. She tries to write on the
bathroom mirror but the Sunglow shade proves to be too light. She digs deeper in
the drawer and comes up with Lana's secret stash. "Lana's really a Radical Red
girl." Chloe smiles as she scrawls "Bloody Mary" on the mirror.
After
admiring her work for a moment, Chloe scrambles up onto the toilet and out the
window.
