“You heard me right. The rats are alcoholics. They’re genetic alcoholics. Their parents were alcoholics, and their grandparents and their great-grandparents. These poor slobs stay drunk all the time. See how sluggish they are?”
“You mean you feed them alcohol?” Paula asked skeptically.
“They feed themselves alcohol. The desire is bred into them. See those bottles?” Erika pointed at a row of four glass bottles, hung upside down across the far end of the cage. “See that guy going over to drink? He’ll choose the one at the far end. There—see? I told you. They all choose that one. I have to refill it a couple of times a day. Know what’s in it?”
“It’s not water?”
“It’s half water, half vodka. The bottle next to it is twenty-five percent vodka. They’ll go to that one if the end one is empty. The third bottle contains ten percent vodka, and the fourth is pure water. If there’s anything in the other bottles, they won’t touch the water. What they have there is a self-service bar, and they operate it themselves.”
“What about the ones in this cage?” Paula asked, indicating the one on the second tier. “They seem livelier. Are they alcoholics, too?”
“Watch and see,” Erika said. The two girls sat silent for a moment, intent on the performance of the animals. Then Erika asked, “Well?”
“They’re drinking from the water bottle. That is, unless you’ve changed the order.”
“No, that’s straight water, all right. This is my control group. They can’t stand alcohol. I think they’d die of thirst before they’d take a swig of half-and-half. What I’m proving, Paula”—Erika’s eyes were shining with excitement—“is that the tendency toward alcoholism is not only genetically inherited, but it’s a chronic disorder.”
“You mean somebody with an alcoholic father or mother has a better chance of being alcoholic than the average person and will stay an alcoholic forever?” Paula frowned, trying to understand. “I thought that had already been proven. Didn’t Mr. Carncross say something about it in class?”
“Yes,” Erika said, “well, part of it. This experiment reinforces the theory that alcoholism is hereditary, but he said researchers question the idea that alcoholism is a chronic disorder that can only be treated with lifelong abstinence. They believe that for alcoholics, relapse is not inevitable. But groups like Alcoholics Anonymous teach that alcoholism is a disease and that alcoholics will always relapse if they have the opportunity.
“So I’m challenging the researchers. My theory is that the compulsive desire for alcohol is not psychological, but physical. It’s in the genes. You can pass it down from generation to generation, like curly hair or brown eyes, and it’s a permanent and chronic disease. That’s what I’m proving with my experiment.”
“But how—” Paula began.
“I ran through a lot of rats the month I started,” Erika told her. “I had them in a cage with my bottles, and almost all of them drank the water, but there were a couple who liked the water with the ten percent vodka. I put those in a separate cage and bred them, and out of a couple of litters there were a few who liked the ten percent stuff and a couple who went for the twenty-five percent. I got rid of the water drinkers and bred the heavier drinkers to each other. I kept doing that until—behold—my alcoholic generation!”
Erica went on, “Then I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to rehabilitate them. This part’s the key. I divided the alcoholic rats into three groups. One group I kept as alcoholics. The second group I forced to quit drinking cold turkey by only giving them water with no other choice. The third group I forced to quit, but once they had been drink-free for a number of months, I introduced the choice between water or alcohol by giving them two separate bottles—they all went right back to the alcohol.”
“That’s incredible,” Paula said.
“Exactly!” Erika gestured toward the second cage. “Those are the descendants of the nondrinkers. I’ve kept records on all of them. And those two sectioned cages are for breeding. I’m so excited about it, Paula—the way it’s all working out—it’s revolutionary! It’ll blow their minds!”
“How do you think Mr. Carncross will take it?” Paula asked. “Won’t he be annoyed if you prove the stuff he’s been telling us in class is wrong?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Erika said. “He’s a pretty cool guy. Besides, that’s what the field of science is all about—breaking through old beliefs and proving new things. That’s why it’s so challenging, and why it means so much to me to win that scholarship.”
“You’ll win it,” Paula said with certainty. “How could you not?”
“I’ve got to admit, that’s what I think, too. And you can see why I can’t risk the health of these guys by keeping them out in a cold garage?”
“Of course!”
“Though with the amount of booze this one batch gulps down, they probably wouldn’t feel the cold.” Erika burst into laughter, and Paula laughed with her, caught up by the contagious excitement.
Erika’s eyes, behind the thick lenses of her glasses, were sparkling, and her narrow face was aglow with accomplishment. Looking at her across the stack of cages, Paula thought with surprise, She’s kind of pretty!
It was the first time, during all the years of their friendship, that this thought had occurred to her.
“Hey, Maddie, it’s nice you could make it,” Peter Grange said sarcastically. “I’ve been sitting here waiting for you for a good twenty minutes. You’re lucky I didn’t pick up somebody else and take off on you.”
“Don’t call me ‘Maddie’. You know I hate that nickname.” Madison Ellis dumped her backpack in through the car’s open window on the passenger’s side. “I told you I had to talk to Ms. Stark awhile. You didn’t have to wait if you didn’t want to.”
“I thought that dumb club only met on Mondays,” Peter grumbled. “That’s what Kristy keeps telling us. But you seem to be involved in it twenty-four hours a day.”
Madison pulled the car door open and got in, shoving her backpack onto the floor of the car.
“She’s right, the meetings are only once a week,” she said. “You can’t do everything during those, though. Like tomorrow, we’re going door-to-door selling raffle tickets to benefit the school athletic fund. The homecoming queen does the drawing, you know, so it’s only a couple of weeks away. That’s what I had to talk to Irene about. I’m in charge of assigning the girls to their districts.”
“You’d better not assign Kristy to one,” Peter told her. “She’s in enough trouble at home without taking off for a whole day on the weekend. You should talk to her, Madison. She’s acting weird lately. I think she’s lost it.”
Madison pulled the door closed and leaned back, smiling at him.
“I did talk to her,” she said. “I congratulated her. I think she’s great, sticking up for herself the way she is. Frankly, I didn’t think she had it in her.”
“She’s nuts,” Peter said. “What does she think she’s going to accomplish, anyway? So she abandons ship every Monday afternoon—she’ll just end up grounded every weekend. She’s not gaining anything except keeping our parents riled up all the time, and her chores are doubled on Tuesdays, and it makes Mom a worried wreck wondering what Eric’s doing with nobody around to watch him.”
“You or Niles could watch him,” Madison suggested.
“No way.” Peter gave the key a vicious twist and started the engine. “Basketball season’s just around the corner, and we’ll be practicing. Besides, babysitting is a girl’s job, and all of Kristy’s bitching about it isn’t going to change that. She’s making a big show out of this independence thing, but she won’t last. Tomorrow, there’s this birthday party she wants to go to, and Dad’s not going to let her. A few more rounds of that kind of thing, and she’s going to back down.”
“I’m sorry she won’t be going to Holly’s party,” Madison said. “We’ll miss her.”
“What do you mean—‘we’?” Peter turned to look at her with surprise.
“You’re not going to that party.”
“Of course I am,” Madison told him, equally surprised. “I got the invitation over a week ago. I told you about it, Pete; it’s a slumber party for Holly’s seventeenth birthday. It’s going to be fun.”
“You didn’t tell me it was on a Saturday.”
“Yes, I did,” Madison said. “You just didn’t listen. You’re never interested in hearing about anything I’m doing unless you’re part of it. This is just an all-girls’ night with the Daughters of Eve. I wish Kristy were going to be there.”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” Peter said, “because you’re not going to be there either. We’re going to the movies just like we always do on Saturdays. That’s our date night—or are you too busy being a ‘Daughter of Eve’ to remember that?”
“I didn’t think it mattered all that much,” Madison said. “Geez, Pete, a movie’s a movie. We can go tonight instead, can’t we? What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that I don’t want to go tonight,” Peter said. “I have other things I want to do tonight.”
“Like what?”
“Like—I don’t know. Like going bowling with the guys, maybe.”
“You made that up just now.”
“So what if I did? Is it any different for me to want to go bowling than for you to want to go to a slumber party?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Madison said. “The party’s a one-time thing, and the bowling can be anytime. What’s with you anyway, Peter? You’re really bothering me.”
“Look who’s talking!” Peter exclaimed angrily. “It’s you who’s doing the bothering, Maddie, and I’m not going to take it. We’re supposed to be a couple. What do you think that means? That I sit around on Saturday night and watch sitcoms with my parents while you’re out giggling with a bunch of girlfriends?”
“I thought it meant we cared about each other,” Madison said. “I thought we were supposed to relate to each other, not own each other. I do my best to make you happy, Pete—”
“Like shit, you do!” Peter exploded. “You put out just about as much effort as an ice cube. It’s a joke. All the guys at school would give their right arms to change places with me. ‘There’s lucky Pete, out with the hottest-looking chick in town. Man, he must really be getting some, huh?’ Yeah, right!”
“I didn’t mean ‘make you happy’ that way,” Madison said coldly. “I told you from the beginning that I wasn’t going that far with anyone yet. I have a modeling career ahead of me, and I’m not going to take any chances screwing it up.”
“Come on, it’s not like you’ll get pregnant,” Peter said. “There are tons of ways to prevent it.”
“Yeah, I know. And I’ve picked the best way. The only one that’s absolutely foolproof.” Her voice shook slightly. “If that’s all you want, then you’ve wasted six months of your precious time, because you’re not getting it. There are girls in the world who will give you what you want under pressure, but I’m not one of them. If you don’t want to go out with me on those terms, then say so.”
There was a moment of silence. When Peter spoke again his voice was tight and controlled. “Are you going out with me Saturday night?”
“I told you, no. I’m going to Holly’s party. We can go out tonight instead.”
“No way.”
“Then maybe you’d better let me out of the car,” Madison said. “I don’t think there’s anything else we need to talk about. Besides, you’ll need the rest of the day to figure out a new plan.”
“That’s cool.” Peter gave the wheel a twist and brought the car over to the side of the road, where the tires grated against the curbing for a ten-foot stretch before the vehicle came to a stop. He turned to glare at the girl beside him. His handsome face was dark with fury.
“I suppose you expect me to come around and open the door for you, Your Majesty?”
“I think I can handle it.” Madison reached down to gather up her backpack. “Have a wonderful time at the movie. Bring a blanket to snuggle with at the theater.”
As usual, she’d managed to get in the final word, slamming the door before any further retort could be made. In outraged frustration, Peter sat gripping the steering wheel as he watched her walk away with her long, model’s stride, her legs flashing straight and slim beneath the provocative flare of her short skirt. After several paces she gave her head a toss, flipping the long, blond hair across her shoulders in a gesture that sent Peter jerking backward as though the shining strands had struck him in the face.
“Bitch,” he whispered under his breath. “Bring a blanket, huh? I sure as hell think I can manage a new date.”
He had driven only three blocks farther when he saw a heavyset figure plodding along the sidewalk and slowed the car to pick up Laura Snow.
“Mom and Dad, I have something I want to talk to you about,” Tammy said. “I’ve done something I guess was pretty dumb.”
“Dumb how, Tam?” Mr. Carncross raised his eyes from the pile of student papers he was grading to focus his attention on his daughter.
In the chair across from him, his wife was engrossed in proofreading a manuscript. She, too, glanced up, quickly alert to the note of distress in the girl’s voice.
“What is it, honey?” she asked.
“It’s dumb because I didn’t think it out. I just did it on impulse.” Tammy drew a deep breath. “Brace yourselves—you’ll never believe this. I dropped out of Daughters of Eve.”
“You’re right, I’ll never believe it,” her mother responded. “What happened? That club’s been a huge part of your life for the past two years.”
“That’s why it’s so dumb. I don’t know what happened.” Tammy laughed nervously. “I was sitting there during the initiation ceremony when all of a sudden I got this—this really weird picture—in my mind. It was so real that at first I thought I was actually seeing it, but, of course, I wasn’t. It was just my mind doing one of those things it does sometimes. But it scared me. I got up and ran out.
“The next day I wrote Erika a note and told her I was resigning.”
“And now you’re sorry?” her father asked.
“All my best friends are in Daughters of Eve,” Tammy said miserably. “Now I’m an outsider. I hadn’t realized before how tightly we were all connected to each other.”
“Surely the mere fact that you’ve dropped out of a club won’t cause you to lose the friendship of the girls,” Mrs. Carncross said reasonably. “There’s a lot of life beyond the activities of a club. You’re still Tammy, even if you’re no longer a member of Daughters of Eve.”
“Holly Underwood is having her birthday party tomorrow,” Tammy said. “I wasn’t invited.”
“You can’t read into that, dear,” her mother said. “Nobody can include everybody she knows every time she gives a party. Holly’s a junior, isn’t she? She’s not even in your class.”
“But everybody else is going, even the new girls. Kristy Grange and Jane Rheardon are only sophomores.” Tammy fought to keep her voice steady. “Even Laura Snow was invited. You can’t understand why that’s a big deal, Mom, because you’ve never met Laura, but Dad can tell you. She isn’t the type of girl who gets asked to many parties.”
“I’m afraid you’re right there,” Mr. Carncross said. “I have Laura in my second-period general science class. She’s a bit overweight, and kids can be pretty cruel sometimes.”
“It’s worse than that,” Tammy said. “She’s sort of—pathetic—you know? She’s got that ‘please, somebody, like me’ look all the time. There’s no way Holly would even have considered inviting her to anything last year, but now that she’s part of the sisterhood, she’s included in everything.”
“How did she get into the sisterhood if she’s that unappealing?” Mrs. Carncross asked. “Members have to be voted in, don’t they, like in a sorority? In fact, it is a sort of sorority, isn’t it, when it comes to that?”
“We don’t think of it that way,” Ta
mmy said defensively. “It’s a club.”
“But you do vote on members?”
“Yes,” Tammy admitted.
“So how did this Laura get invited to join?”
“Irene—Ms. Stark—our adviser wanted her,” Tammy said. “We all discussed it, and Irene explained that Laura is the kind of girl who needs sisters who can help her feel better about herself. Daughters of Eve isn’t just for beauty queens.”
“That’s a nice idea,” Mrs. Carncross said slowly. “Ms. Stark is a new sponsor, isn’t she? You girls must think a lot of her to respect her views so much.”
“Everybody worships Irene,” Tammy said.
“Why do you feel that way?” her father asked her.
“You know what she’s like, Dad. You’ve met her.”
“Of course, at faculty meetings, but I don’t really feel like I know her,” Mr. Carncross said. “The principal seems impressed with her teaching ability. Actually, I’ve found her pretty aloof and standoffish. I’ve heard several students express the same opinion.”
“I bet they were boys. They don’t know her the way the girls do,” Tammy told him. “Irene’s never aloof with us. Everybody thinks of her as sort of an older sister.”
“Like Marnie?” her father suggested.
“No, not exactly. Irene is—I can’t describe it. Even the girls who voted against Laura felt guilty for doing it and were sort of glad when she made it in.”
“What did Irene have to say about your resignation?” Mrs. Carncross asked.
“She said she was sorry and that she wished I’d reconsider. Ann told me that when Erika announced I was resigning, Irene said to table it for a while and see if I’d change my mind.”
“Well, now that you’ve reconsidered, what do you think?”
“I don’t know.” Tammy regarded her parents helplessly. “That day at the meeting the feeling was so strong. And then, afterward, when Irene came up to speak to me—I had to get out, something awful was going to happen! But nothing has. Everybody seems to be having a good time just like always. I think back now, and I don’t see how I could have reacted the way I did over something that was just a picture in my mind.”