Aspen (9 page)

As we walk up, the heavy beat of a rap song emanates from inside Suzy’s house. My feet drag on the ground; the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach holds me back. I glance around, worried Katelyn is hiding in the trees, waiting to pop out at me, utterly pissed that I’m invading her world.

“High school kids have the worst fucking taste in music,” Kim groans, adjusting her hot pink nose ring.

“You
are
a high school kid,” Cass says.

“This is a façade.” She points to her face. “Inside I’m a sixty-year-old rap-hating hippie.”

“It’s a hot facade.” Cass smiles in the twilight and Kim blushes, her cheeks practically matching her nose ring.

My eyes skim the trees and shadows. Distracted, I hug my chest.

“Are you okay?” Kim touches my arm.

“We need an escape plan,” I say quickly. Kim and Cass look at me, surprised. “If this party sucks,” I try to say casually, forcing myself to relax, “let’s use a code word to leave.”

“Vagina,” Cass offers.

“How are we supposed to casually drop that into conversation?” Kim asks.

“Exactly. The code word can’t be something like beer or red plastic cup. It needs to be something we rarely say. Like the medical term for your lady bits. Vagina is perfect.”

“You say ‘vagina’ all the time,” Kim says.

“No. I think about vaginas all the time. I don’t usually talk about them.”

“I agree with Kim. The fact that we’re even here is weird enough,” I say. “We don’t need to be shouting about vaginas.”

“How about olives?” Kim says.

“Olives?” Cass rolls his eyes. “Vagina is so much better.”

“‘Olives’ is perfect. ‘I hate
olives
, don’t you?’ ‘Aspen, didn’t you have
olives
on your pizza tonight?’ See, plenty of excuses, but not a word people usually use in everyday conversation.”

“Perfect.” I smile, relieved.

“I still like plain old vagina better, but since we’ve said it a few times in this conversation, I’m satisfied.” Cass runs his hands through his long green-brown hair. “Can we really do this?”

“It’s our senior year. We’re getting drunk tonight.” Kim pats him on the back and links her arm through mine, pulling me toward Suzy’s house.

We walk to the backyard, three in a row. I fidget with my hair, tucking it behind my ears, untucking it, and then retucking it. Frustrated with myself, I pull it into a ponytail.

“Maybe this was a bad—” I begin to say, but I get cut off by a flailing Suzy, charging at us full steam, cigarette in hand.

“Oh, my GOD. You made it,” she slurs, spilling a bit of whatever’s in her red plastic cup on my sandals. “I’m so happy.” She hugs me, stumbling to the side.

“Isaac is still a little bummed he wasn’t invited.” I pat her back.

“Well, if he didn’t look like such a narc . . . ” Suzy wags her cigarette.

“You know Cass and Kim,” I say, helping Suzy balance, while trying to avoid getting burned.

“Sure.” Suzy extends the word for two syllables too long and then looks at me, leaning in too close to my face. Her breath smells like cigarettes, sugar and alcohol. “We need to capture this moment. You mind?” She hands Cass her phone to take a picture of us. Then Suzy pulls me into her side until we’re cheek to cheek, like we’ve been friends for years, and smiles. “Just don’t get the cigarette. My parents would kill me.”

“Say cheese.” Cass takes the picture. I’m not sure I’m actually smiling when it flashes. I might look like a deer in the headlights. That’s what this moment feels like.

“I’m totally gonna Instagram this.” She smiles down at the picture. “You guys don’t mind if I steal her for a while, right? I have to pee.”

“Can I come?” Cass asks. Suzy squints her eyes at him.

“You’re cute. I heard about you and Marcy Humphrey. She’s not the only girl with that talent.” And then she blows Cass a kiss. His eyes grow three sizes.

“We’re getting a drink,” Kim says, violently pulling him away from Suzy by the arm. And then it’s just Katelyn’s best friend and I.

Suzy squashes her cigarette out on the ground. I fidget with my hands, unsure of what to do, and she yanks on my shirt. “Come on. I need to piss like a race horse.”

Inside the house, Suzy stumbles toward the stairs. I glance around, checking out the living space. A long wooden table that seats about twenty fills a white dining room, where a gigantic chandelier with what look like real crystals hangs from the ceiling. Ninny and Toaster wouldn’t know what to do with all the open table space. White furniture decorates the living room. Silver candlesticks stand over the huge fireplace, and hanging above them is a framed professional photo of Suzy, her brother and her parents posed in a field of wildflowers, the whole family smiling widely. A shiny black baby grand piano sits in the corner, not a speck of dust on it.

Once we’re upstairs in Suzy’s room, she slams the door behind me.

“You have a bathroom in your room?” I ask. The room smells like flowery perfume and face powder.

“Make yourself at home.” Suzy checks her reflection in the mirror hanging over her large wooden dresser, fixing her lipstick, and proceeds to the bathroom. I wait for her to shut the door behind her, but she doesn’t. Suzy pulls down her pants and plops herself onto the toilet seat, making an “ahh” sound as she pees. “I had to break the seal,” she explains. “My bladder was about to explode.”

She sits with her pants around her ankles on the toilet as I walk around the room like a caged animal. It was easier to be outside at the party. I could hide on the fringe and pretend all this wasn’t really happening. But being in Suzy’s room is like entering the fifth dimension of popularity.

I look through the makeup sitting out on her dresser. She has every color of eye shadow in the rainbow. I pick up a pink lipstick and hold it to my face. Then I notice the picture stuffed into the corner of the mirror.

Katelyn sits next to Suzy, her head resting on Suzy’s shoulder, a smile on her face. Not a big smile, just a closed-mouthed one, the kind people who hate their teeth make. Katelyn’s knees are pulled up to her chest; she’s wearing dark jeans and a Boulder soccer shirt. Suzy’s leaning her head on Katelyn’s. They look like models from
Seventeen
magazine. Ninny’s never even shown me how to put on Chapstick. Unable to stop myself, I pick up the picture.

“She was beautiful.” Suzy rests her elbows on her bare knees as she sits on the toilet.

I nod, my eyes unable to move from the picture. Katelyn looks so alive.

“What was she like?” I ask. As I hold the picture, my stomach gets tight.

Suzy washes her hands and says, “She could be . . . I don’t know . . . like really fun. Like the best drunk of your life.” She dries them on one of the pristine white towels in the bathroom. She stumbles toward me and looks down at the picture in my hand. “That’s my favorite,” she says, pointing at their faces. “We both look hot in it.”

I nod, once again fixated on the girl in the picture. I try to see the fun.

“It’s still strange that I’ll never see her again.” Suzy sways to the side. “My parents keep saying that I’ll see her when I get to heaven. Do you believe in heaven?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think my parents are full of shit. They just want to make me feel better.”

“That’s probably true.”

She takes a sip out of her cup. “Katelyn’s not in heaven.”

“Was she a virgin?” I bite my lip, pissed I let the words slip. Suzy’s feet stop, but her body moves forward a bit, like she might fall over.

“What?”

“I just overheard some girls . . . ” I stumble over the words in my head. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, wait.” Suzy grabs my arm. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing.”

Just then the door flies open and Olivia Torres stumbles into Suzy’s room.

“There you are.” Olivia holds onto the door. Her long black hair falls over her shoulders, resting against the royal blue sleeveless shirt she’s wearing. Her brown eyes are glazed over as she looks at Suzy and then me. “What are you doing here?”

“Suzy invited me,” I say, quickly. My stomach turns in on itself as I stand in Suzy’s room with Katelyn’s two best friends.

“Oh,” Olivia says, still keeping herself steady on the doorknob. “I was coming to tell Suzy that we’re gonna do a shot for Katelyn.”

Suzy’s seriousness melts in an instant, and she says, “I love shots.”

“Katelyn loved shots.” Olivia’s voice wobbles and her bottom lip quivers, but her eyes don’t leave me. It’s almost like she can sense the guilt seeping out of my pores.

“Don’t start, Liv, or I’ll start.” Suzy meets her at the door, wrapping her arms around Olivia’s neck. They both start crying.

“I just can’t believe she’s not here,” Olivia says into Suzy’s shoulder.

I look down at the picture in my hand. Katelyn belongs here, with her pretty face and shiny hair and shots, with her best friends. Tears prickle my eyes and the picture in my hand starts to shake. When it falls to the ground, a word comes out of my mouth without me thinking.

“Olives.”

“What?” Olivia asks, through her tears.

“I had olives on my pizza tonight.”

“I love olives,” Suzy says, lifting her head off of Olivia’s shoulder.

And then I walk out of Suzy’s room, down her grand staircase, through the dining room with the huge chandelier, and out the back door, mumbling “olives” the entire time. I look for Cass and Kim in the crowd of people, but my vision blurs, mixing everyone together.

This is Katelyn’s party. For the first time, I actually try to find her in the crowd. She used to throw her head back and laugh whenever Jeremy Christman hit on her in chemistry.

“Aspen?” a voice says.

Are there stars on your panties? Because your ass is out of this world,
Jeremy would say. Katelyn would laugh and say that “panties” was her most-hated word.

“Aspen, you’re shaking.” Someone grabs my hand. My eyes snap into focus, and I choke back the tears collecting in them.

Ben Tyler stands in front of me.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, his eyes serious.

“Everyone keeps asking me that.” I pull my hand out of his.

“I’ll try to stop.”

“It’s nice coming from you,” I say, and instantly wish I could put the words back in my mouth.

Ben stuffs his hands in the pockets of his gray hooded sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?”

“You don’t think I should be here either?”

“No. Did someone say that to you?” Ben’s eyebrows pull tight. “I only meant a party like this seems a little pedestrian for a girl like you.”

“A girl like me?”

“That’s not what I mean. I just—” Ben runs his hands through his black hair. “What is wrong with me?”

I cover my mouth to stifle my giggles.

“Now you’re laughing at me.”

“Did you just use the word ‘pedestrian’?”

“You make me nervous,” he says.

“I make you nervous?”

“Did you just call me out for saying ‘pedestrian’?”

“I did,” I say.

“What’s wrong with that word?”

“Nothing.” I shrug. It was on our English vocabulary list this past week.

We stand, silent, both of us looking around Suzy’s yard, avoiding eye contact.

“Do you want some?” Ben holds out his red plastic cup, but before I can grab it, he pulls back. “What about herpes?”

“You wouldn’t dare.” I squint my eyes at him and snatch the cup, slugging down a huge gulp. “Beer?”

“I can get you something else.”

“No. I like beer.” I drink down the rest, fast. A bit drips down my chin, and Ben wipes it up with his sweatshirt. My eyes get wide as I realize: He just touched me. I hand him the cup and take a step back.

“I think I need to walk,” I say. When neither of us moves, I add, “You want to come?”

Ben looks over his shoulder at the group of guys standing on the lawn, laughing. I recognize Tom’s voice.

“I should probably . . . ” He glances back and forth between the guys and me, and then he says, “What the hell. A walk would be a nice change.” His tone is flat and I can’t tell if he really wants to come or if he’s just doing it because I had a minor freak-out moments ago. But as we head down Suzy’s driveway, away from the party, I find I don’t care.

I fill my lungs and push everything out. The nights are turning cold now. I look up through the trees to the cloudless sky. All the leaves are starting to change to yellow and orange. When I take a step into the street, Ben grabs my arm. “Where are you going?”

“To the middle of the street.”

He stares at me for a moment. “That’s not safe.”

“Life isn’t safe.” I pull my arm from Ben’s hand and go to lie down in the middle of the road. Getting a clear view of the sky, I make a wish on the first star I see.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight: I wish I had straight hair.
It’s the same wish I’ve had my whole life. I know it won’t come true, but that’s the thing with wishes. The whole point of wishes is to try to make the impossible possible.

Ben stands on the curb, the tips of his shoes hanging off the edge, like he’s deciding whether or not to jump. I spread my arms and legs out wide, making my body into a human star. Wind blows up the bell-bottoms of my jeans, chilling my legs.

“Isn’t it weird to think that everyone in the world is breathing the same air?” I roll my head to face Ben. He’s still perched on the side of the curb, looking down at his feet.

“That’s a lot of bad breath,” he says.

“The air the one thing the entire world touches.”

Ben lifts his leg out past the curb and dangles his foot over the street. He pauses, his shoe inches off the ground, and then, like he’s sick of fighting gravity, he steps towards me and lets himself fall.