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us.
    “You, too!” we yelled, and then, trying not to sprint, we walked fast down the street, not really looking at each other, sort of holding our breath. Julie kind of did a walk-run, and once we were a few blocks away, she said, “Oh my God, we are so good !”
    “I can’t believe how easy that was,” I said, and we headed for the nearest coffee shop. We went straight to the ladies’ room where miraculously we got Julie unzipped by rubbing some of my cantaloupe lip gloss on her zipper. Why didn’t I think of that in the dressing room?

4
    She Tinks Shés .the Queen of England
    On October 20, Mom’s forty-seventh birthday, she wanted to go to this really fancy restaurant, Café des Artistes. The waiters were all old men who had slicked-back hair and wore full tuxedos, and there were things on the menu like duck with raspberry sauce. Mom ordered a Stoli on the rocks and asked Ellie if she’d like to have her first drink, even though she was only seventeen. The drinking age in New York was eighteen, but it was in the news a lot that they might change it to nineteen or twenty-one. In New York City you could be fourteen and people thought you were eighteen. At least Julie and I could pass for being older; we hardly ever got carded. I thought it couldn’t possibly really be Ellie’s first drink, but she never told me anything, and since she hardly ever went out out, like to clubs with her friends or anything, maybe it was. I couldn’t even count how many times I’d tried it. One time with my old friends Kristin and Olivia, we shared a bottle of red wine at Kristin’s house and by mistake spilled most of it all over Kristin’s Spanish textbook. Whenever we had Spanish after that, I could smell the red wine, ’cause I sat behind her. When Julie and I went to see Fried X, I tried a madras (which is orange and cranberry juice with vodka). It was so good!
    “Why don’t you have a fuzzy navel?” Dad suggested, and smirked like he knew one of us was gonna ask, “What’s that?”
    “What’s that?” Ellie said.
    “Just try it,” Dad said. “I think you’ll like it.”
    When the waiter came back, Ellie said, “A fuzzy navel, please,” and then he looked at me.
    “A Tom Collins,” I said, and Mom shot Dad a look.
    “Julie, when did you have a Tom Collins?” Dad said.
    “Never,” I lied, putting on my best innocent face. Then Ellie got really mad.
    “Hey! I didn’t get to have a drink when I was fourteen !” she said, emphasizing my age, probably to get me in trouble. “That’s so unfair!” The waiter was trying not to smile and kept looking from Mom to Dad. I was kind of surprised he didn’t ask us for ID. I guess he figured ’cause we were with our parents, it was okay.
    “What do you care?” I asked her.
    Ellie crossed her arms over her chest and got all huffy. “I can’t believe it. It’s so unbelievably not fair!” she said again, ignoring me.
    “Well,” Mom said cheerfully, “sometimes life is not fair.” It annoyed me when parents said things like that. Like, “When you’re the mother, you can decide.” Great , I always thought, that’ll be in about a million years, so how does that help me now?
    As much as I hated Ellie sometimes, I kind of understood why she had a look on her face like she wanted to kill us all. Still, I was psyched about my Tom Collins—it was kind of like a lemonade with alcohol. My parents probably thought it was my first drink. Ha ha. Ellie cheered up when her fuzzy navel came with a blue paper umbrella, a plastic sword, and a maraschino cherry. Mine came with only a cherry, which I let her have ’cause she loves maraschino cherries and I hate them. She let me try a sip of her fuzzy navel. Totally yummy. It had a delicious thick syrupy peachy taste that went straight to my chest, and I got a warm fizzy feeling. I wished I’d ordered a fuzzy navel, too.
    The whole night turned out pretty okay until we were leaving the restaurant and Dad was getting the