What is there to tell?

Four girls sitting cross-legged in a circle
on a wooden patio floor with an empty
beer bottle spinning in the center,
glass mouth slowing to point at the girl
whose truth will be whispered behind
smooth, shaking hands or a dare will be calculated
between the other three. Arched eyebrows
and sly smiles, giggles bubbling in their throats
like a shaken soda can. Will she have to call
Bobby? Eat a jalapeno pepper? Parade down
the driveway with her clothes on backwards,
squawking and flapping her arms? What will
they have her do, what secret will she disclose
and make them swear on their mothers' lives
not to tell a soul, to keep their mouths locked
like a safe? It is Souza's fourteenth birthday.
Pink balloons tacked to the rafters, black
streamers sweeping from the ceiling, under
and over each other as fingers look when locked.
The bottle's mouth slid into Souza's bare toe
and stopped. "Truth," all the girls squealed
at once, staring at her like prey in a fire pit.
She sucked on the inside of her bottom lip,
sucked her gut in until she could feel ribs,
sucked the truth in through her fingertips,
her heels, the base of her skull, the odored
sweating between her legs. The sliding
glass door opened and Souza's mother
pranced in like an unsteady gazelle
with a case of beer in one hand
and a bottle of cheap vodka in the other.
"Let's get this party started, girls,"
she slurred between hiccups and a long
blonde mane flipping in her eyes
from the wind, the hot Hawaiian air.
The three girls looked from one to the other,
absolute glee, absolute fear. "Your mom
is so cool, Souza." "She's not gonna tell
my parents, is she?" "Eww, what does vodka
taste like?" "I don't know," Souza said,
her hands in her lap, eyes following
a large gecko to the edge of the patio's rim.

To be continued...