Val The Vessel

7 / Adult Kool-Aid

Fox news plays at a low volume on the seventy-two inch display mounted high above the simmering fireplace. I'm half asleep and half tipsy. My bare legs are sprawled out on the coaxing living room sofa beneath loose black pajama shorts. Andrea is resting on the other side of the sofa, bundled up to her neck in cotton blankets like a sleepy caterpillar in its cocoon.

My body's sleep is out of it's cycle thanks to my horrible job at the night club. When I wasn't napping in the daytime, I was shaking my ass off hours past midnight so it's no wonder as to why my eyelids are weighing down. Pressured not to knock out from sleep deprivation and chardonnay, I whip out my phone and slide my thumb across its smudged screen. Instagram's colorful icon urges me to tap it open. A few scrolls, and I'm on my cousin's homepage.

Andrea García

I mash a thumb over her most recent photo. She looks young, only a year older than I am. Her lengthy black hair is combed straight, with loose edges swirling across her forehead in a wavy design. Bright hazel eyes stare back at me. Her smooth skin is a creamy peach, clear of acne and scars.

"Why do you look like an edgy thot in this photo?" I joke, raising my phone for Andrea to see.

She realizes what I'm referring to and groans with an embarrassed smile spreading across her flushed face. "Bitch, I was finna delete that one. Why you stalkin' my insta?"

I suddenly remember why I had disabled notifications from Andrea's feed. She always deletes the genuine photos that people can crack jokes on and replaces them with these pretentious, heavily edited ones instead. "Aye Val, you ain't like... cross-faded are you? Cuz the way you was actin' earlier today—"

"No, I'm not on drugs. Don't worry."

Andrea giggles, revealing her pink and cyan braces. She's a biracial beauty like me. Her father and mine are of the same heritage, but our moms are afro dominican—which creates this crazy loophole where it's okay for us to say the 'N-word' somehow. Andrea had never gotten very close to her biological mom. I brought up the topic once before and she implied that her mom was a 'Magic City stripper'. I'm still unsure if that was a joke or not. It's almost poetic considering how I was recently fired from my stripper job last night.

"Hey can I ask you somethin'?" Andrea blurts out. "Do you think the world was better with the heroes?"

I'm confused as to what motivated her question. Then it hits me. Panning at the bottom half of the television screen are the words:

General Assembly may consider House Bill 632. Protestors plan massive rally outside of capital

It's likely another irrational law that the villains are pushing to enforce on humanity. I turn to Andrea who is eagerly awaiting my answer. "I mean, it's not like I was even alive back when the heroes were still around. You and I were born about five years too late."

I dwell on my own response. Andrea and I are less than a year apart in age, but we hadn't met until we were in grade school because our dads had a lot of unresolved issues with each other back then.

"Do you believe in God?"

I keep my eyes downcast. This is one of Andrea's trigger questions. I'll be sure to answer her as passively as I can—with another question. "Do you?"

I already know her answer, but prepare to listen nevertheless. This is Andrea's only opportunity to vent just a fraction of the anger she keeps bottled inside. She gnaws on the inner flesh of her cheek before speaking.

"You remember when my dad passed three years ago? It was the anniversary of the day the heroes died off. Plus my mom had moved outta the house within that same year, so that combined shit probably ate him up."

There's a necessary awkward silence before either of us speak a word to the other. Andrea snickers. "I ain't never seen my dad hurt, like ever. He seemed so happy before all this chaos. He wasn't this total fuck-up that everybody else remembers him being. I really miss that guy. Every day."

She waits to see if I understand. I don't follow her, at least not entirely. Andrea wipes her running makeup and sits up from the sofa. "If there is a God, then he's punishing us. All of us. It's the only thing that makes any damn sense."

I shake my head. "Don't say things like that Andy—"

Andrea hunches towards me, her teary hazel eyes a blink away from mine. "Or what? What could possibly be worse than this? Huh, Val?"

I swallow the lump in my throat, feeling sick to my stomach.

"We lost. Nobody's gonna save us. The villains are fucking psychopaths, but they're powerful too. That's literally the only difference between us and them. Just a bunch of niggas with powers. You have any idea how many dumbasses have gotten murk't, proposing ideas to defy them? This planned protest is just another means to poke sticks into the monster's eye. Only this time, it's gonna be a bloodbath."

Andrea steps away from me, turns around, and saunters out of the room with her second face melting down to her chin. Maybe she's right. Nobody is going to save us. If it hasn't already happened, twenty-six years after the heroes died off, then nobody is going save us now.

I grab my near-empty glass of adult kool-aid to sip. Sometimes the pure sensation of the rim between my lips combined with the musky fragrance is enough to calm my nerves. It feels nice to forget about last night and how awful it was. Andrea is good for that. She and I find clever ways to distract the other from problems that make us want to end it all. But what did that villain mean when he wrote me that note? I mean, it's not like I'm some dumbass. He's obviously the only person who could have sent my car back to me with all my personal belongings inside. Looking back, he was pretty strange. No villain would go out of their way to do what he did for me. Maybe he's crushing on me or something?

"Haha... right..."

Had this happened to me during my high school days, I might have wet my panties. I used to be a fangirl for supers and villains, but that was before I felt the weight of the peril we were in after God's angels fell.