But looks can be deceiving, because she knows five languages, three of which are dead, and once spent an entire evening explaining the economics of the late Roman Empire to me.
“I’ve got plenty of virtue,” she says. “Victoria’s got plenty. Margaret, I dunno. Thalia, God knows you’ve got more than enough and could probably stand to offload a little.”
“What’s Thalia offloading?” Margaret asks, sitting again.
“My virtue,” I say, maintaining a perfectly straight face. “I was thinking of dumping it in the river down by the old railroad bridge, since Harper thinks I’ve got too much.”
Margaret laughs and takes another drink from her gin and tonic.
“Well, I think you should dump your virtue whenever you want and into whatever receptacle, so long as everyone involved is an enthusiastically consenting adult,” she says. “And don’t forget to be safe.”
The four of us have been friends since we were freshman and roommates since we were sophomores, so by now, the fact that I’m still a virgin is a running joke. It’s not like I have some strong attachment to my virginity, I just happen to still have it.
“Allllll right, the scores are tallied up!” the trivia host says over the speaker.
All four of us sit bolt upright, hanging onto every word, especially Harper. After all, this was her idea of a fun twenty-first birthday party — some people do twenty-one shots and get blitzed, she’s had considerably less than that and is determined to utterly destroy the trivia night competition.
“Turns out you all aren’t up to snuff on your virtues,” the guy goes on. “Last week the drink round question was the seven deadly sins, and let me tell you, those teams…”
“You’re running trivia night, you’re not a stand-up,” Harper mutters. “Get to the question.”
“Down, girl,” Victoria says, patting her arm.
“I’m just saying.”
“Anyway, there’s no coin toss tonight because only one team managed to name all seven heavenly virtues!”
Harper punches me excitedly in the shoulder. Victoria bounces her palms on the table.
“Tell us,” Margaret hisses.
I’d say that my friends can be a little competitive and intense, but I’m also leaning over the table, both hands clenched into fists, waiting to see if we won even though I’m ninety percent sure we did.
“And those are, of course, Patience, Charity, Chastity, Kindness, Humility, Diligence —"
“Yessssss,” hisses Margaret.
“—and a virtue that nobody here tonight is celebrating, Temperance!”
That gets a mild laugh from the various tables around the bar.
“Congrats to the winners of tonight’s drink round, Tequila Mockingbird! The bartender will be around with your shots in just a few minutes. The next round starts in ten.”
“Shots?” I ask the table, frowning. “Can’t I just get another whiskey ginger? What’s it a shot of? What if I don’t want a shot, can I —”
“You could go ask someone who knows,” Harper says. “Or you could have some fun and do a shot with us.”
“No peer pressuring,” Margaret admonishes her.
“Yeah, no peer pressuring,” I add, laughing.
“I wasn’t peer pressuring,” Harper protests, picking up her own glass. I think it’s her third drink, but since it’s finally her twenty-first birthday — she skipped the third grade, so she’s a year younger than the rest of us — no judgement from me.
“Are you kidding? That was a textbook example of peer pressure,” Victoria adds in.
“No, a textbook example would be, like, hey kid, have some marijuana because all the cool kids are doing it and also your friends are doing marijuana, and you won’t be fun if you don’t do drugs,” Harper says. “I didn’t say that, I just said shots are fun.”
The three of us all give her separate quizzical looks.
“Is everything you know about drugs from D.A.R.E. in the fifth grade?” Margaret finally asks.
Harper shrugs dramatically and finishes off her drink while Victoria catches Margaret’s eye and simply nods.
“Right,” Margaret says. “Anyway, don’t — oh, wow.”
I follow her gaze over Harper’s shoulder.
Wow is right, because the curly-haired, no-nonsense, tattooed female bartender is standing there, holding a tray with four shots on it.
They’re not regular-sized shots. They’re in those tall shot glasses.
And they are bright blue.
“Here you go,” she says, stepping forward and depositing the glasses on the table in front of us. Margaret moves our pencils and answer sheets out of the way. “Four Smurfs’ Vacations. Enjoy!”
Just like that, she’s gone. Delicately, Victoria picks up a shot glass.
“No!” Harper says, waving one hand. “We have to do it together!”
“I’m just smelling it,” Victoria says, laughing at Harper. “I think it’s… coconut rum and blue curacao?”
“It’s something blue for sure,” I say, picking up a shot glass as well and watching the liquid suspiciously, wondering if this is a good idea.
On one hand, I don’t really do shots. I’m a total lightweight, and it only takes a couple of drinks before I’m that embarrassing girl who’s vomiting in someone’s bushes while sobbing that squirrels are too precious for this world.