Liquor was the hardest part for Sherri to keep straight. Sherri was no stranger to alcohol—nobody was in East Troy, or all of Wisconsin for that matter, because the Tavern League reigned supreme. The drinking age was eighteen, but even when she was underage, she could get served alcohol at a restaurant or bar if her parents were with her. And if they weren’t, she could always find someone’s older brother or sister who would buy. But Sherri’s parents hadn’t been drinkers, and she’d never been exposed to the highbrow stuff they served at the resort. She and Roberta used to drink super-sweet wine, like strawberry kiwi Mad Dog 20/20, or Boone’s Farm varieties called Tickle Pink and Country Kwencher. Sherri’s only exposure to hard alcohol included sneaking sips of her mother’s crème de menthe that she used to make grasshopper ice cream drinks on special occasions, or the scotch she’d chugged out of Roberta’s flask when she ran into her in the bathroom one day at school, upset because she hadn’t had enough time to finish an English quiz. “Go ahead, it’ll relax you,” Roberta had said. Later that day Sherri was so “relaxed” that she fell asleep in typing class. When she woke up, her mouth was dry and she had a black mark on her forehead from the typewriter ribbon, which was why Lynn Jenkins called Sherri “Ash Wednesday” straight up to graduation.

By senior year the kids in her class, many of whom had turned eighteen, would spend their lunch hours drinking Schlitz on tap at Denny’s Bar, an old saloon on the square just a few blocks from school. The place was rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Eugene Chafin, the universally despised East Troy native who’d run for president as a representative of the Prohibition Party. They’d return for their afternoon classes smelling like the bleacher section of a baseball stadium on a hot day, belching and running to the restroom all afternoon. In summer they drank in the “ETBT,” or the East Troy Beer Tent, to benefit the Lions Club, and they’d go to a farm out on County Trunk D, where they rolled kegs out to the edge of the cornfield so the cops wouldn’t see them and partied all night.