My Cardboard Balcony

The Taste of Noir by Belinda Roddie Has anybody here sipped the red wine from the tree stump in the middle of no man's land? I hear it tastes sweet, like embalming oil, and makes you feel weak in your knees just before you fall asleep. One girl brought a skin back full of the stuff and watched seven men sink into disarray after the first few swallows. Then, she took all the money they had and rode their horses back to town, vines in her hair and a grape seed stuck in her teeth. If you bend down real slow and put your lips on the split wood, the wine rises up like lava. That little volcano will swell you up with all its earthly sacrifices, reminding you through the deluge that what laughs loses breath, what grows tall shrinks, and even the merriest of drinkers all turn to booze-speckled dust in the end.

My algebra class was just before my world history class, and I was getting antsy. Not just because algebra was a royal pain, and we were working on trigonometry and I never did well at trigonometry, which meant I was doomed when it came to pre-calc next year and I was heavily debating dropping math entirely after clawing through this class. No, it was also because next class, I would be sitting next to Gina Thomas again, and I would feel my heart attempt to escape the ivory cage of my chest for the entire fifty minute period.