Since I forgot to mention, Haven quite randomly spiked everyone’s drinks with vodka last chapter.  No, really, it was completely out of the blue and barely commented on.  Now they’re driving around in Haven’s car (yes, drunk driving) and acting drunk and drunk, drunk, drunk.

Hey, Ever, remember how your whole family was killed in a car accident?  Got anything to say on the dangers of driving drunk?  Nope, just going to carry merrily along with nary a consequence or second thought?

MY GOD, BOOK, YOU ARE MARKETED AT TEENAGERS, WHAT IS THIS FUCKING SHIT?

Absolutely nothing bad comes of this entire scene.

I want to set shit on fire.

Just…I just…ugh…

Also, apparently Ever’s psychic powers go away when she’s tipsy, so she keeps drinking even on into the next day. 

Dependence on alcohol can take many forms, and it’s not uncommon for that dependence to be (or at least start as) environmental.  Basically, you don’t have to have psychic powers in order to have something you think that alcohol can help you deal with.  It’s still incredibly damaging and painful and horrible to deal with your pain this way, and yet the book throws it in like it’s nothing.  It’s not entirely painting this as a ‘good,’ thing, but the handling of it is so bland and so fast that it’s also not given the proper amount of weight.  Instead of being a horror, it’s just this random thing that popped up.  It might as well be that stupid pink sweater she was flipping out over before.  It comes right the fuck out of nowhere and then barely gets so much as a comment.

Ever then decides to drive to school WHILE STILL DRUNK.  Her friends are shocked because she’s wearing something other than jeans and hoddie and acting all happy.  Apparently she’s not acting drunk, though.

Did you just have a checklist of bad habits to promote, book?

Halfway through the day her buzz starts to wear off (not that we can tell, since everything is summarized and skipped over) so she gets out her water bottle to drink more.  Stacia catches a photo of her to use as blackmail, thought it’s a fucking water bottle, so the picture is useless.  Her better point is that she can just lay a claim against Ever and the authorities can make her take a sobriety test, so I’m not sure what the point of the picture was.

I’m also not sure how Stacia knew she was drinking vodka in that water bottle.  Maybe Ever is acting drunker than she’s letting on.

“Well, for starters, I want you to quit bothering me,” she says, folding her arms across her chest, anchoring the evidence snugly under her armpit.

“But I don’t bother you,” I say; the words slightly slurred. “You bother me.”

“Au contraire.” She smiles looking me over, eyes scathing. “Just having to look at you day after day is a bother. A huge horrible bother.”

What kind of bullshit is this?  It’s like the author realized her bullies are senseless, so she tried to patch it up but just dug that hole deeper.

She tries to blackmail Ever using the excuse of a dress that got ruined in an earlier chapter.

“Since we both know you bought that dress at the outlet mall, on your way home from Palm Springs” I smile, remembering what I saw that day in the hall, I‟ll reimburse you for the cost of the dress, which, if memory serves, was eighty-five dollars. In which case, a hundred seems like a pretty generous deal, wouldn’t you say?”

Well, congratulations, Ever.  Now she can report you for stalking as well as underage drinking.

Fuck, why didn’t Stacia bring up “you know creepy invasive things about my life that could only be learned if you were following me around like a truly deranged stalker” as her reason for hating Ever?

Instead of being incredibly freaked out by this, Stacia shrugs it off and drinks vodka with Ever.  Because fuck this book, that’s why.

Something bad finally comes of all this, as Ever gets suspended when Stacia turns her in anyway.

All Ever thinks is “woohoo, now I’ve got three weeks to build up my tolerance so that I won’t be so obvious when I do this again.”

The problem here is…well, I can see the good idea in this.  I can see how a story about a psychic drowning her powers in vodka could make for some really, really good drama.  The problem is, that’s a whole book in itself.  That’s a fall that takes time to display, not just one instance of “oh, cool, drinking works, guess I’ll do that now.”  The drama comes from that being a struggle, not…whatever the hell this is.  It’s like she just tripped one day and fell into addiction.  This could have been excused if we’d spent more time with her powers and the problems they caused her, but her powers have been a footnote next to Damen.  There were whole chapters where she didn’t mention them at all, and that makes it really hard to excuse all this by just saying she was so desperate for an escape.  We can’t feel her desperation if we never saw her hardships.

This goes on until December 21^st, though we have no idea if this is the next day or weeks later.  Point is, this is the day Haven was having that party with Drina, only Ever seems to have forgotten.  Also, it’s winter solstice.  Then she randomly thinks of Damen and drinks herself into a stupor.

She wakes up with warm, fuzzy feels because Damen was there, and he left her a feather and a painting of someone running through a canyon.  For…some completely random, unstated reason, this makes her gather up her car keys and head out.  Where is she going?  Even she doesn’t know.  Why is she doing this?  Because fuck you, that’s why.

my feet are moving of their own accord, and all I can do is just follow.

I bury my hands in my pockets, shivering against the cold, as I stumble along, with no idea where I’m going, no destination in mind, it’s the same as how I got here, I’ll just know it when I see it.

Damn, could you be any lazier?  There’s not even an attempt to hide the authorial puppet strings.  She might as well paint “I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING” on the pages.

She ends up walking down some canyon when Miles calls her and tells her there’s a party going on, and it’s a bunch of Goths in a canyon doing…I don’t know, party stuff.  Ever figures that must be where the authorial god was sending her, so she says she’s almost there, assuming she doesn’t get lost in all this fog.  Miles says there’s no fog in his canyon, and then Drina shows up.  Dun dun dun.