Page 5 of The Pinkie Pact

And that was the hard part, the part I couldn't quite figure out. I still wanted to have fun. It was college. I still desperately wanted to go out, and I knew DC had so much to offer.

"I don't want to do that," I finally said.

"Me neither," she agreed.

We both put away a few more handfuls of cereal as we thought, the sound of a siren drowning out everything else for a moment. As the wailing faded into the distance, a seed of an idea formed in my half-baked brain.

"What about..."

She glanced up at me, her face full of anticipation. "What?"

"What if we still go out and everything but always stick to a certain number of drinks?"

She looked disappointed, and I felt kind of stupid. But then her face lit up again. "So like hold each other accountable every time we go out?"

"Yeah. Something like that. Just keep it to—oh, I don't know—two drinks?"

"Four drinks," she said, bargaining like you would expect from a senator's daughter.

I laughed out loud. "Three drinks?"

"Deal."

"But wealwayshave to do it," I said. "And we have to make each other do it."

"Agreed." She nodded. "And what about drugs? I don't want to give up my cannabis. But I can give up my precious joints and switch back to myodorlessvape pen." She did air quotes around odorless, making me laugh again.

"Okay. So pot's fine," I agreed, "but not during the weekdays when we have class. Only weekends and nights."

"Okay. But nothing else. No other drugs," Kara said, her voice determined. "And how will we keep track of how many drinks we've had? You know, keep each other honest?"

We were both lost in concentration, then Kara suddenly jumped up to go to her dresser, returning with a handful of thin little friendship-like bracelets.

"Here." She tossed three at me. "So we wear them on one wrist then move them to the other with each drink?"

I thought about it for a second. "I like it in theory. But when I'm drinking, I might forget which arm I'm switching to, you know?"

She stared off into space while playing with her three bracelets. "We could have a motto. Like left to right. Left to right. And we'll get better at it."

I liked it. I had no idea if it'd actually work, if we both had the willpower to do it. And then another idea hit me. "Maybe before we go out, we should each write something on our hand, like a reminder to look at."

"You mean like if you fuck up again, your parents will disown you and send you to jail? Oh, and your mom might lose her re-election bid and the whole country and then the entire world will go down the shitter?"

Oh, my freaking God. This girl cracked me up. "You're under just a little pressure, I see."

She rolled her eyes at me. "No kidding, right? What about you?"

"I think I'll write 'home' on my hand as my reminder because the last thing in the world I want is to be stuck in Sac-town living with my parents and my idiot twin brothers for the rest of my life."

Kara dropped her mega-watt smile at me. "That doesn't soundallthat bad. It is California, after all."

"I'd rather keep 3,000 miles between me and my brothers."

After laughing, she chugged some more water. "So what do you say? Should we shake on it?"

I stood up and crossed the room to her bed. "You know what? How about a pinkie promise like a couple of eight-year-olds?"

She pursed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. "We need more than a promise. We need... I know. A pact."

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