Toothpaste splattered the mirror. I brushed the vomit taste off my tongue. I had hurled after riding a rollercoaster with a corkscrew turn.
My cousin Taylor entered the bathroom. He smelled like his coconut tanning oil. His white T-shirt unevenly bunched over his thick right shoulder, bulked up from years of playing tennis. He stepped out of his mesh shorts, down to his boxers. He hip-bumped me to the side of the sink.
Aunt Beth had moved to Florida so Taylor could train year-round. He got to the point athletically where he could go pro. At the same time, he was academically where he could attend an Ivy League. A school had offered him a full-ride scholarship and he was leaving soon.
Taylor picked up his contacts’ case from the counter. He unscrewed the quarter-sized capsules. The letter L was embossed on one cap and the letter R on the other.
I imagined sticking slivers of plastic on my eyeballs. I was afraid the contact might roll behind my socket and stick to my brain. How would I get it out? And I couldn’t handle the idea of pinching off that invisible lens. The contact might peel my eye’s flimsy mucus membrane with it. What if I scratched my iris and forever distorted my vision?
With one hand, Taylor pulled down the bottoms of both his eyelids. I retched. In the mirror, Taylor looked at my eyes behind my frames. He smirked and pressed his pointer and middle finger to his eyeballs.
Taylor blinked hard while holding the nearly invisible contacts on the ends of his fingers. He dunked them into their capsule and twisted the caps closed.
I spit.