Afterparty (23 page)

There it is. The thorn at the center of my beating heart of fear: that he will see me, and he won’t like what he sees.

“I changed my mind,” Siobhan says when I’ve followed her into the ladies’ room. She’s staring into the mirror behind the row of sleek stainless-steel sinks, twirling her bangs. “I made you and I could undo you in three minutes. Two online.”

“This makes no sense. You’re the one who didn’t want to go down with me! You said to keep quiet.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But that’s not why you kept quiet. You kept quiet because he’s a jerk and you’re chicken. And now, chicklet, you’re going down.”

I am thinking little pieces of thoughts: She’d never do this. I’m her only friend. How stupid would it be to wipe out your only friend? Except that Self-Destructive is her middle name. What am I doing with a best friend with Self-Destructive for a middle name?

“Don’t you think someone will remember
you’re
the one who made me up?”

Siobhan says, “Nope. I mean, Tweet-tweet. Who cares who started it?” She points at me. “Uh-oh. You didn’t tell him
anything
, did you? You are so screwed.”

I want to rip a sink out of the wall and throw it.

“I could just stop making you up and you’d be over,” she says. “Jesus. You didn’t figure out you have to tell him? Do I have to do everything?”

I have to force myself, my airless lungs and ashy mouth, to look irrationally calm and unrealistically in control of my life.

I say, “Why would you do that? I was doing what you
said
.”

“Not saying I
would
. Just saying I
could
. If I felt like it. You just tell him, then see how
in looooove
he is.”

I’m thinking, I’m five kinds of doomed.

I’m thinking, Who are you, and how is it I didn’t notice until now?

I say, “Sib, put down the iPhone. No evil texting. You sound like you’ve been smoking crack and watching
Mean Girls
.”

“You think I’m mean and evil?” She sounds worked up and insulted.

I’m thinking, All right, un-insult her fast, because her finger’s on the texting icon and she could wreck your life before you make it out of the ladies’ room.

“Sib,” I say. “You’re saying you could undo my life in under three minutes. What am I supposed to think?”

I’m thinking, fix this. Apologize. Turn cartwheels in the ladies’ room. Do anything you have to do to fix this. You can kill her later.

This is possibly the world’s worst ladies’ room situation that doesn’t have a mugger in it.

I say, “Remember me? Best friend and big-time sidekick?” Lie lie, flatter flatter. Except that until now, it was mostly, at
least intermittently, intensely and undeniably, somewhat true. “Unless we have some kind of a pact to be evil, and I don’t remember that one.”

I’m watching her face to see if she looks like a person who’s about to push “send” on an evil tweet.

She looks like a girl who is brushing her hair.

She says, “Fuck this. I have to go to Econ.”

My lungs start to fill. I should immediately join the UN and broker peace in Sudan, the Middle East, and Chechnya.

I have an extreme need for candy.

I want chocolate so much, I am willing to enter the small space where the vending machines are, off the student lounge, with Chelsea, whom I plan to ignore while scarfing down a Kit Kat bar.

“Aren’t you unexpectedly interesting,” she says, blocking the swinging door. “Running around school screaming. Classy.”

I say, “Excuse me.”

Chelsea extends her leg so the toe of her shoe is pressed against the wall opposite, like a railroad crossing gate by Tory Burch.

Ambush.

“Are you seriously trying to trap me here? Because I’m leaving.”

This is wishful thinking because Chelsea seems determined to establish that she can intimidate me.

“Nobody likes what you’re doing,” she says.

“So you decided to trap me here? That’s helpful.”

“How do you get off being this big, better-than-everyone holdout?” she barks. “First you won’t even go out because we’re
too boring for you. Then you’ll go out but you’re too good to
do
anything because you’re so devoted to this French guy—”

I interrupt, “That’s over.”

Chelsea has escalated from barking to snarling. “You can’t just lose your old boyfriend and take your best friend’s boyfriend like that.”

“That isn’t what happened!”

The glass door of the candy machine is slick against my back; I imagine myself sliding to the floor and crawling out under Chelsea’s leg.

“Please,” Chelsea says. “She was all giggly and unslutty with him. For her. Didn’t you notice that?”

“Are you seriously calling her a
slut
? What century do you come from?”

Chelsea scuffs the wall, planting her foot on the floor. She swings her backpack over her shoulder, and for a second, I think she’s going to smack me with it.

“Maybe you spent so long being vintage vanilla, you finally cracked,” she says. “Maybe you were a bitch all along. Who cares? But you should look at her because she’s not fine, and you’re all over school sucking his face. Who do you think you are?”

Am I walking around school sucking his face?

Maybe this is the one time in her life when Chelsea Hay has a point.

DYLAN SAYS, “ARE YOU OKAY?”

It’s only lunchtime and the day is stretching into a horror show, starring me.

He says, “You look like shit.”

“Oooookay . . .”

“Let me rephrase. You look extremely upset, not like shit.”

I say, “Semi-okay.” Then, in a semi-suicidal moment of confessional daring, I say, “I might need to talk to you before somebody else does.”

“Somebody else already did,” he says. “Sam said he heard I should watch out because you’re a backstabbing bitch. I am, once again, confused as fuck.” He is pulling me into him, which is both perfect and clear confirmation of Chelsea’s Emma-is-a-big-bitch-and-girl-code-violator hypothesis. “I hate high school.”

“
You
hate high school? Is Chelsea Hay ambushing you? Is
Sam Sherman running around telling everybody you kill puppies and pummel your best friend?”

Dylan says, “Want to walk out of here?”

“Physics. I’m barely getting a B in Physics. I can’t skip again.”

“After. Pancakes. I’ll buy.”

Only after school, the Griddle is closed, and nothing else will do. He says, “Or. We could go to my house.” Where, it turns out, I’m addicted to frequent, impulsive acts of extreme lust, and very good at imagining future acts involving more of the same.

When we’re about to get dressed, he says, “So we’re good, right? You’re okay with the crap at school.”

I roll over. “Yeah. Except for the part where I stole you from my best friend and destroyed her life and I’m a bitch, everything’s great.”

Dylan starts to rub my shoulders. “Who said that?”

“Everyone.”

Dylan gets the clothes and drops them in a heap at the end of the bed, dragging along the dog, who is chewing my shoe. He says, “Drop it, Lulu!”

Lulu ignores him.

He says, “So. It seems kind of churlish to talk about her. Now.”

“Churlish?”

“Inappropriate, crappy, bad . . .”

“I get it, Kahane. I know what ‘churlish’ means.”

“I was never with her like this.”

Oh.

I say, “She might have thought you were. With her like this.”

Dylan is looking away from me, putting on his pants. “Do you want to talk about this? Because I’m not proud of it.”

I say, “Just tell me why. How did it even happen?”

“Because it was a party,” he says, pulling my shoe out of Lulu’s mouth and handing it to me by its slightly chewed strap. “Because we were drunk and opportunity presented itself and it wasn’t supposed to mean anything. It sounds worse out loud. And then she was just there and it kept going.”

“I don’t even know what to say.” Or feel. If what he’s describing is a good thing or a bad thing, relative to something like, Oh, I was in love with her.

“I
said
I’m not proud of it. And for what it’s worth: Strick and Gart. She tells me nothing is happening. She lies to my face. Then, after I break up with her, she decides no, she’s breaking up with me, and she all but gives me a road map to—shit—she made it clear she knew I liked you, and it was okay with her. And now she’s
offended 
?”

“Sorry.”

“The only person I can stand besides you is Arif, and everyone makes such a big fucking deal over how we don’t kill each other, he thinks we ought to stage a fistfight at Convo.”

“Bye-bye, Georgetown.”

“Not letting that happen. He’s more on the bored side. I just want out. No more fakes, no more palm trees. I’m going East and I’m not coming back.”

“You’ll never see your family?”

“They picked Aiden. They can keep him.” The coldness of
this, of having a live mother just across the yard and walking away, is almost unbearable. He says, “What did I say?”

I think of my father and lamb stew. “Your mom. I can’t even imagine having one and tossing her. Sorry.”

Dylan says, “Emma. If they wanted me in their house, I would be living in their house. Okay? Can we stop there?”

I’m looking over at the stack of folded cloth napkins, all the clean, color-coded laundry, the cash in an envelope, and the grocery bag of fresh fruit.

Dylan clears his throat, but his voice remains choked and still harsh. “Seed, that was the maid, I’m on her list of chores. Not my mom.”

I am suddenly sadder for him. “Just me and Arif?”

Dylan stretches his arms over his head. “Sam Sherman before he thought you were Cruella de Vil. Mara. Kimmy’s horse. Kimmy. I’m not completely antisocial. I’ve been tested for that.”

“But not Siobhan?”

By now the sun is behind the pine trees in his backyard, and it’s suddenly chilly, and my father is texting about where I am and when I’m getting home.

He says, “No, you. It was always you.”

There is nothing in that moment—the lamplight in the room, the sound of Lulu thumping her tail on the bedspread, my fingers woven between his fingers, the smell of his hair and the tone of his voice—that isn’t imprinted on my heart, like the afterimage of a burst of light, under your eyelids when you close your eyes.

IN THE MORNING, AT SCHOOL,
Siobhan starts texting me as if nothing happened, as if I somehow forgot that she chased me around screaming the day before.

Siobhan:
Where were u after English? Are u Stepfording 24/7 now?

Me:
Licking my wounds.

Siobhan:
What wounds?

Me:
Seriously? Do you ever apologize for anything?

Siobhan:
I said I wouldn’t tell. Chill.

Me:
You melted down on me.

Siobhan:
When I melt down, you’ll know.

Me:
You’re not slightly sorry are you?

Siobhan:
Get over it. I’m slightly sorry. Is your boat all floaty now?

Siobhan:
At least I don’t cuddle with the enemy.

Siobhan:
What were u doing with Chelsea? Are u in the pony club now?

Me:
Right. She’s my bestest friend.

Me:
She cornered me by the candy. Weird but true. She thinks me being with Dylan sucks for you.

Siobhan:
WHAT????

Siobhan:
You’re making that up.

Me:
Swear to God. Go check. There’s a Tory Burch scuffmark three feet off the floor behind the door.

Siobhan:
Not buying this. Walking there now. That horse bitch feels sorry for me???

Siobhan:
There was a shoe on this wall!!!!!!! Did u do this?

Me:
Go roll somebody for a Tory Burch flat and go all CSI on it. It was Chelsea.

Siobhan:
U shd fuck him on the quad.

Me:
Not if you’re going to hit me in the ladies room.

Siobhan:
OK but you’re still a bimbo when u have a boyfriend.

Me:
Get me an Almond Joy.

Siobhan and I sit there in the student lounge eating our Almond Joys.

“I’m going to fix this,” she says. “Like people think I let you screw me over? I don’t think so.”

Chelsea looks over at us and shakes her head. Then Dylan shows up with Arif and Sam on an Orangina run, and I want to
crawl into a dark tunnel that leads away from Latimer and ends in my backyard.

A desire even more acute when Siobhan starts waving her arms at Dylan.

He looks understandably reluctant to come over, which makes sense given that she’s offered him nothing but grief since he’s been with me. But by the time he makes his way across the room, he has returned to big-time blankness.

“Hey,” he says to no one in particular.

Siobhan says, “Kiss her.”

Dylan and I start to splutter simultaneously.

Siobhan says, “You should listen to me. I’m doing you a favor.”

Dylan starts to say something, but Siobhan interrupts him. “Not a favor for you, jerk. Her. I don’t do favors for
you
.”

Arif says, “Do it.” And to Siobhan: “Assuming you’re not going to start screeching, which would be less of a favor.”

Siobhan says, “Fuck you.”

Dylan leans down and we establish that we can engage in a completely mechanical prolonged kiss with no feelings. It goes on and on, emotionless as Dylan’s face.

Arif clears his throat.

Siobhan says, “You’re lapsing into get-a-room.”

We come up for air, Dylan resting on the arm of my chair.

Chelsea and Lia walk back toward the door. The set point on their faces is contempt. Siobhan keeps smiling beatifically at them, offering the grand finale to our spectacle with a two-handed flip off, waving her forearms from the elbow.