Afterparty (8 page)

“No.”

This is supposed to make me feel good: moral victory.

It doesn’t.

My father looks at me with massive, unjustified relief at that one brief, honest syllable.

He says, in a much gentler voice, “Ems, is there anything you’d like to tell me about school? Which is the only place you’re going outside this house, by the way.”

“How long?”

“Until you’re forty. School, Ems. We’re moving into honor-your-father territory here. Now.”

“Please don’t slam me with the Ten Commandments. Please!”

“Now.”

“All right, but it isn’t pretty.”

But who wants to tell her father that she’s outside the mainstream of human interaction except for a scary best friend and a lunch table of boys weirdly attracted to the friend, given that she spends lunch abusing them and eating their chips?

And what would I say about Dylan? How when he says, “So, Emma, did Napoleon win?” as I hand him my notes, I want to fall over, preferably into his arms?

How it takes a great deal of restraint and jamming my fingernails into the palms of my hands to keep myself from pressing my face against his chest?

How Dylan says, “Thanks. You’ve saved me from watching the Battle of Waterloo on the History Channel.”

This is not a conversation my dad would appreciate.

I tell my dad the highly-edited-for-parental-consumption saga of Chelsea Hay.

He looks pained. “Is this Chelsea
bullying
you?”

I patiently explained this isn’t bullying, this is normal life at Latimer Day.

“High school is a hard time for a lot of kids,” he says.

I patiently explain that it is not a hard time for me because my best friend has my back and if he did anything to separate me from my best friend, I would no doubt curl up in a sad, depressed ball.

• • •

In homeroom, Siobhan won’t look at me.

“What?”

She does not look up.

“What?”

“Way to not return my texts last night,” she says.

“I was busy spending three hours getting yelled at and grounded.”

She twists to face me. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“You
didn’t
tell your dad we cut out, did you?”

“Of course not! School called him. I thought they weren’t supposed to do that.”

“Shit,” Siobhan says. “What’s the point of being attendance-
totally
-optional if they call home? Not that Nancy would care.”

“Well, he cared. A lot. I feel like swallowing ground glass.”

Siobhan clamps her hands over her ears. “Like I forced you to cut school and now you want to die a slow death—really? You sat in a hot tub and you didn’t go to Physics. Big fucking deal. You have no sense of proportion!”

It occurs to me, in what could be a complete making-excuses-and-deluding-myself moment (or
could
be a breakthrough of reasonable thought), that I
might
not have that great a sense of proportion.

Siobhan says, “I am so mad at your dad!”

“Keep your voice down.”

Siobhan yells, “Stop screaming at me!
I’m
not the one who made you want to swallow ground glass!
I’m
the one who wants you to have
fun
!”

She storms out of class in the direction of the hill, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket before she’s out of sight.

I start to get up, but I slam into Dylan, standing behind me
by Arif’s desk. A full body blow. He catches me as I’m bouncing off him, his hands on the back of my head and on my arm.

I just stand there, blushing, with a bruised head.

Arif, looking distractingly good even to someone who just got hit on the head, says to Dylan, “After you almost run her over, you might want to get her some ice.”

Dylan makes a face at him and takes my arm.

“I’m sorry if I almost ran you over,” he says, when I’m sitting in the deserted cafeteria looking like an idiot (across from the person to whom I least want to look like an idiot) with melting crushed ice, wrapped in napkins, on my forehead.

“It’s possible I almost ran
you
over.”

“Either way, I won this round,” he says. It almost feels buddy-like. Although buddy-like is so not what I have in mind.

There is a long silence as I try to mop up the rivulets of ice water running down my face. I keep repeating to myself, Do not act embarrassed. It will be so much more embarrassing if he knows you’re embarrassed. Make conversation. Talk.

I say, “I have a question for you. You’ve been at Latimer forever, right?”

“Since I was five. Nothing I can do to get out of it. I spent middle school desecrating the uniform, carried a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black around in my backpack, plus a roach clip instead of a tie tack, and I’m still here.”

Oh.

“How did that work?”

“They kept saying, ‘Mr. Kahane, do you
want
to attend Latimer?’
I kept saying, ‘No, I don’t.’ ” He shrugs, the palms of his hands flipping upward, almost as if he were reaching for me, except he isn’t. “Maybe they kept me here to spite me. That and my brother was Mr. Three Varsity Sports, most valuable asshole. They were probably hoping I’d develop team spirit and become a slimebag.”

“No sports?”

“Also no slime. And no school spirit.”

“So you would know,” I debate asking him and then I just ask him. “When you cut out of school, when do they call home?”

“They phoned home on you?”

“Not my best evening ever.”

He walks over to the ice machine and scoops up ice chips with a paper cup. He says, “At least this won’t leak.”

I realize my collar is soaked in front, sticking to my chin and dripping down the navy blue sweater that’s such plasticky synthetic, it’s virtually waterproof.

He says, “Did you sign out?”

“Sib signed me out.”

“If you sign yourself out, they don’t care.”

This makes no sense whatsoever, but is nevertheless very good to know.

He tilts his head. “So. Are you planning to stop attending? Are you and your evil twin planning to become full-time horse thieves?”

“Do you take a special interest in my life of crime?”

“Ballerina by day, felon by night. Sometimes I wonder if we’re on the same misguided path.”

“Still not a ballerina. And what path would that be?”

“Trying to get out of here.”

“I’m not!”

“Then you might want to rethink your life of crime.”

And then his hands are in my hair, pulling out a hairpin. He says, “Your bun is coming down.” He works his fingers from the nape of my neck up to the sides of my face, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to kiss me. He runs his fingers down my forearm from the elbow to the wrist, until his hands cover my hands.

He says, “Are you going to be okay?”

I nod. I bend my face toward him, my mouth toward his mouth.

He gets up and he walks out of the cafeteria, saluting me from the door.

I am in a state of did-that-just-happen, and what the hell, and I want him, and what was that? In a state of acute longing, sandbagged by something that has to be what temptation feels like, except that the object of temptation has left the building. And even if I were to succumb to that temptation, which I totally would, there’s no point because he’s not here to be tempted by.

Megan:
Some guy did what?

Me:
I know. I don’t want to see him again until I stop blushing. Which could take years. No idea what to make of it.

Megan:
Do you want me to ask Joe?

Joe is the boyfriend Megan only ever gets to see at mixers presided over by hypervigilant nuns. There is some chance that Joe is somewhat less perfect than he seems to be, given the extremely small amount of time they’ve actually spent in the same room.

Me:
NO!!!!!!

Megan:
You wanted him to right?

Me:
Still do.

Megan:
This is the guy you do the notes for?

Me:
Same guy.

Megan:
Why doesn’t he take his own notes? He’s not stupid right?

Me:
Not.

Megan:
You could always ask him.

Me:
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Megan:
Isn’t Siobhan supposed to be the world’s expert on men? Ask her.

Me:
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Megan:
You might need to breathe into a paper bag.

Me:
I’m going to pretend it never happened. Maybe I should just wear the bag over my head.

Me:
Even Siobhan’s starting to think our chance for normal human life around here is nil.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW IS
that Latimer mean girls have simmering feuds that boil over with infighting and constantly shifting alliances, meaning there’s always a popular suddenly left out, shunned, or tortured. And that this has an upside. For us.

It’s kind of terrible for everyone else.

Siobhan says, “What’s with these skanks? People are crying in the bathroom. It’s embarrassing to pee.”

The first popular reject we get is Kimmy.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” she says. “If I have to sit with that
god 
awful pack of bitches and watch them drip venom off their big, ugly
god 
awful canine incisors, I won’t be able to keep down this
god 
awful mystery meat.”

She says this loud enough for the godawful bitches two tables over to hear.

“You should be a poet, Kimmy,” Siobhan says.

Kimmy, too distraught over being shunned to notice much else, doesn’t even care if Siobhan is being sarcastic.

Mel Burke, passing our table, gapes. “Seriously, Kimmy?”

Kimmy locks eyes with Siobhan. “I don’t see how anyone can stand transferring into this
god 
awful place,” she says. “Were you someplace better? Has to have been. Were you at Spence?”

Siobhan says, “Eastside Episcopal. You can’t imagine how much better.”

This would be the crap school Siobhan hated.

“And Roedean,” Siobhan says. This would be the boarding school Siobhan says was a penitentiary. “In
England
. That wasn’t half bad. Except they play field hockey like a pack of crazed hyenas.”

Kimmy says, “I’m getting frozen yogurt. You want something?”

She walks past Chelsea, Mel, and Lia, who says, “Hey, Kim,” and is instantly shut down by a look from Mel so cold it could freeze Hell on impact.

I lean across the table toward Siobhan. I hiss, “Be nice. She’s going to cry.”

“She deserves to cry,” Siobhan says. “Where was she when we got here—making out with Chelsea?”

“She said hello in Physics. The first day.”

“I’m
soooo
impressed. Let’s kiss her feet.”

I’m thinking that if someone with Kimmy’s assets can land in Social Siberia, we are permanently consigned to the gulag. Kimmy has a
Teen Vogue
face; a horse that people carry on about like addled fan girls; and a pack of older brothers who like her well enough that after school, they yell, “Hey, Kimster, you and
your friends want a lift to Westwood?” Or wherever they’re going to carbo-load.

Also, having grown up in a house full of boys, Kimmy has a bunch of male buddies and looks perfectly comfortable climbing all over them, socking them, and showing them up in Physics. You get the feeling that Kimmy could watch boys light farts on fire and maintain her composure.

“You know,” Kimmy says, “my parents are going to a wedding in Houston and my brother, Kenny, is having a party Saturday.”

“Is that the water polo one?” Siobhan says.

“The soccer one. The water polo one is in college.”

“Maaaaybe,” Siobhan says. “Actually, very likely.”

“And it won’t be like one of those
god 
awful back-to-school keggers, either,” Kimmy says loudly for her not-that-distant audience.

Then she looks at me. I am holding up a french fry that is dripping ketchup onto my tray. There is no possibility whatsoever that my dad will agree to a high school party in a house with no parents home. This is in the you-can-go-when-pigs-fly range of not happening.

“Oh,
her
,” Siobhan says, glancing over. For a minute, I’m afraid that she’s dumping me for Kimmy. “No offense, Kimmy, but Emma doesn’t
do
high school parties. Em can’t
stand
immature boys.”

Which makes me sound a lot more interesting than saying my dad won’t let me go unless her mom, her dad, and a large contingent of precision-trained chaperones imported from Victorian England are swarming the place, and by the way, I’m grounded
forever, so even that won’t work. I give Siobhan a thank-you kick under the table.

“I
really
appreciate the invitation,” I say.

“You and Dylan Kahane,” Kimmy sighs. “Ever since his
god 
awful brother Aiden graduated, he hardly goes anywhere either.”

This is not, strictly speaking, true. I know this because now that I’m too embarrassed by the kiss that didn’t happen to talk to him directly, I’m stuck somewhere between straight-up Facebook-stalking Dylan and merely being very, very interested in everything he ever did, does, or will do.

He would appear to have spent the better part of the summer in resorts on the Mediterranean with Arif, who does a lot of waterskiing on an unidentified European lake, Dylan (literally) in tow, and eating dinner with twenty-seven other people somewhere that houses have extremely large dining rooms. Somewhere the women wear Chanel or hijabs. Or both.

There he is in London with an arm around Arif and his other arm around a woman wearing a dress so short the jacket she’s thrown over it falls below the hem. Dylan and Arif look quite pleased with themselves, and the girl looks to be ecstatic. There he is in Mexico with Sam Sherman, eating taquitos.

Lately, he is tagged all over Westwood with a recurring set of girls in UCLA sorority tees covered with interlocking triangles, one feeding him a Diddy Riese cookie. You can’t see who she is, only her arms, and hands, and manicure.