Fresh Off the Boat (16 page)

“PAARRRTAYYYY!!!!”

We looked up to see one of Claude’s lacrosse teammates wearing a Burger King crown askew on his head. He was hoisting a case of beer in his arms. Following him were all the coolest people from Monty and Gros.

The party had finally begun.

You know how, in movies, parties are always filled with what looks like hundreds and hundreds of people (otherwise known as extras)? And everyone is dancing crazily and grinding in three-person lambada (the “forbidden” dance) sandwiches and hitting on each other? Well, this party was nothing like that. I didn’t know what to expect—maybe I’d seen too many
American Pie
movies and MTV
Spring Break
specials. I mean, I guess it was fun and all, but it was also—I don’t know, just not what I expected. There couldn’t have been more than forty people there. Mostly it was just a bunch of people sitting around, drinking. For hours, Isobel and I flitted around aimlessly watching some Monty and Gros
juniors flip quarters into shot glasses. One girl devised a drinking game wherein each person had to see who could hold a beer cap between their butt cheeks the longest, which was more entertaining than it sounds. And we had totally lost track of Freddie, whom we didn’t see all evening once he dropped us off.

Isobel and I were sitting by the side near the Jacuzzi watching people push each other into the pool (finally some action!) when I looked at my watch and couldn’t believe it was already a few minutes past eleven. Time flies when you’re watching Georgia Wilson pinch a Heineken bottle cap between her butt cheeks.

“I have to get home!” I told her. “You find Freddie, I just need to use the bathroom. Where do you think it is?”

I was a little worried about breaking my first-ever curfew, then remembered I was with Freddie, whom my parents utterly worshipped. I asked a couple of girls who were funneling beers in the kitchen where the bathroom was and they pointed upward. “Third door on the right. The ones on the first floor are all being used.” One of them cackled knowingly.

I had to fight through the entire Monty lacrosse team to get upstairs. Claude’s house was gargantuan. I was a little intimidated about being on the second floor, which was quiet and empty.

Following the girls’ directions, I tapped on the third door and tried the knob. “Is anyone there?” I asked. It was open, so I walked
in. I closed the door behind me, making certain the door was locked. Then I heard a strange noise emanating from behind the shower curtain. I pulled it back.

“Claude!”

He was slumped into the bathtub, legs dangling over the side. “Ehhh?” he asked, opening one eye. I had to admit, even in that state, he was still really cute.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, then felt foolish. It was his house—he could pass out anywhere he felt like.

“Hey, it’s V. Hi, Veeeeee,” he said, grinning.

“Hi,” I said, sitting on the edge of the tub. I’d hardly seen him the whole evening after Isobel and I arrived. He and Whitney disappeared for a while, then he was busy circulating. It was too hard to capture his attention.

I was kind of thrilled to finally be alone with him, even if he was barely conscious and smelled like a keg.

“Are you having fun?” he drawled.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a great party,” I told him, even if I’d been pretty bored the whole time.

“That’s great—that’s what I like to hear.” He sighed, nodding vigorously. His head snapped back suddenly and hit the faucet. “Ow! That hurt!”

“Ooops!” I said, and almost laughed. “Here, let me help,” I said, pulling his hand.

“Yeah, I should probably try to get out of here,” he said. “Good idea.”

I put an arm around his waist and felt his hot breath on my cheek. I’d dreamed about this moment many times, but never like this.

He leaned on my shoulder and rested his head in the crook of my neck. I led him to the door, but when I tried to open it, I found I had locked us in when I was being ultravigilant about privacy. The doorknob wouldn’t budge.

“Shit!” I said, rattling the door. “It’s stuck!” I told Claude.

“Thuck?” he repeated. “How can it be thuck?” He began to hiccup.

I began to pound on it. “Help! Help! Anyone! The door’s stuck!”

No one answered.
My cell phone!
I thought. I’ll just call Isobel. I fumbled in my bag to get it, but couldn’t find it. I must have left it at Isobel’s when I dumped out my makeover supplies. I was so impatient to get ready for the party, I hadn’t even noticed I’d left without it.

Claude crumpled against me, and I helped him sit on the closed toilet. He couldn’t hold himself upright, and he slid to the floor and dropped his head against the porcelain. Okay. Not a great visual. But, believe me, he was still cute.

“Vicenza…I need you…” he gurgled.

“Yes?” My heart began to beat faster.

“To hand me that wastebasket.”

I pushed it over to his side and he retched violently into it.

Ew.

When he threw up again, I felt guilty enough to try to hold his head up so he wouldn’t puke on himself. Kind of gross, but I felt bad for the guy.

The minutes ticked by. A couple of times, I got up and rapped on the door and bellowed, but the party was so loud no one heard me.

“I’m hot!” he suddenly announced. “God, I’m really hot! Isn’t it really hot in here!—”
hic
“Hey! I gotta—”
hic
“—take my clothes off!” He began to unbutton his shirt, bellowing that Nelly song.

“Uh—Claude—I don’t know if that’s such a…” I said, but it was too late. Somehow he’d found the energy to strip off his shirt and jeans, and had hopped back in the bathtub wearing nothing but his boxer shorts.

He reeled from side to side, fumbled with the faucet, and sent a blast of water from the shower head, with the curtain open. It was the kind of nozzle that you could take off the hook and spritz your body with, and he began to do just that, except he was spritzing water everywhere. The mirror. The sink. The Japanese prints on the wall.

I was suddenly anxious that he might cause some real damage or else slip, hit his head, and pass out.

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” I said, scrambling to switch off the water.

“Hee-hee, hee-hee,” he snickered, like a little boy. “This is fun!”

Just then, I heard Isobel’s voice from the hallway. “VICENZA??? ARE YOU IN THERE???”

“VICENZA, what’s going on?” That was Freddie.

“IZ! FREDDIE! HELP! I’M LOCKED IN!!!” I yelled, laughing, as Claude and I fought over the shower controls. “Stop it! You’re going to make me wet, too! Stop!” I grabbed the shower head away from him and mercifully switched off the water.

“What’s going on?” Isobel asked.

“The door—it’s locked somehow. We can’t get it open!” I yelled.

“We?”

I heard Freddie and Isobel arguing about the best course of action. Isobel wanted to kick down the door, but Freddie wanted to try and open it with a credit card. They finally stopped bickering and managed to jigger the door open from the other side. They burst in, just as Claude wrestled the shower head away from me, and we both fell backward in the tub.

“Mon dieu!”
Isobel exclaimed. We must have looked a sight—
Claude in his boxers, me utterly drenched.

“What’s going on?” Freddie asked, looking confused.

“Let go!” I told Claude, grabbing the shower head away from his hand.

“Nooo!” he screamed, taking it back.

“What the hell is going on?”

We both looked up and saw Whitney standing at the doorway between Freddie and Isobel.

Boy, did she not look happy.

Behind her was a crowd gathered in front of the bathroom because of all the commotion. Whitney’s face was so red, I could have sworn steam was pouring out of her nostrils. I’d never seen her so angry. Whitney was the queen of cool. She never lost her composure.

I grabbed the shower head and pushed Claude off me.

“Give it back, give it back!” he whined, meaning his new toy. Oh well. It was his house. I dropped it in the tub, and he picked it up with a happy smile on his face.

“Have you been in there with him the whole time?” Whitney demanded.

“Me? Yeah—we were locked in,” I explained, as Isobel helped me to my feet. I dripped fat wet drops on the tile. So much for my dry-clean-only dress. “It was an accident,” I told her, as Freddie handed me a towel.

“You don’t say,” she snapped.

“What’s your problem?” I asked her, still finding a lot of humor in the situation.

“The whole time? It was just the two of you?”

I didn’t even know what she was getting at. “Yeah, but it was all a mistake.”

“Don’t you EVER come near him again!” she screeched.

“Whatever,” I said, backing off.

She shoved her way past me and glared at Claude, who was sitting in a couple of inches of water, fumbling with the shower nozzle. “Get up! Get up! And for God’s sake, put some clothes on!” she barked.

Freddie and Isobel were still staring at me.

“Can we go?” I said. “It’s way past my curfew, and I am so dead. But first, I really have to find another bathroom.”

We closed the door behind us, just in time to hear Whitney scream.

Claude had just found the shower’s on switch again.

On the car ride home, everyone was silent. “We couldn’t find you for the longest time,” Isobel said. “We looked for you everywhere. And you did not answer your cell.”

“I didn’t have it on me,” I explained. “I think I might have left it at your house.”

“Yeah, we were really worried,” Freddie agreed. “So what did happen in there?”

“I told you guys. I was locked in! By accident!”

“Are you sure that’s all that happened?” Isobel asked.

“Of course! What do you mean?”

Freddie shrugged. It was only then I noticed that there was someone else in the car with us. “Hey, I’m V,” I said.

“I’m Tess,” she said. She was the girl in Freddie’s beauty pageant picture.
“Kamusta na?”

I said I was okay. I looked at my watch. It was past midnight! My parents would think I was dead or, worse, kidnapped.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SENT: Friday, November 20, 1:30 AM

SUBJECT: awesome party!

So, I just got back from Claude’s total kick-ass bash! I’m still soooo tired. It was a major rager with tons of people. Super fun! His house was like, gi-normous. I couldn’t even find the bathroom! Seriously, you wouldn’t believe it—people were like cannonballing off the roof into the pool and the police came to break it up, just like in the movies! But during the whole thing, Claude never left my side. He was so attentive, we spent most of the party together. It was SO romantic, he told me how much he needed me, and I held his head in my lap and everything.

Love,
V

15
Diane Sawyer Is Always Right

I
WALKED IN THE
door, fully expecting my parents to chew my ears off. Instead, the two of them were sitting on the couch with silly grins on their faces.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said, hoping I had wiped off all traces of lipstick and mascara at Isobel’s, where I had changed out of my party clothes.

“Vicenza!” Mom smiled. She stood up and gave me a hug.

“I’m sorry I’m so late.”

“It’s okay.”

“It is?”

“Didn’t you get any of our messages?” Dad asked.

“No…um, and I would have called but I didn’t have my cell on me. Freddie’s car stalled on the freeway. He called Triple-A but no one came for hours…” I babbled. Freddie and I had agreed we would both blame car troubles for missing curfew.

“We know. Tita Connie called and told us,” she said. Good old Freddie.

“So you weren’t worried?” I asked suspiciously.

“No, no. Freddie’s a good boy.”

This was so unlike my parents. Even with Freddie involved, I couldn’t believe how mellow they were acting. Where was the lecture? The yelling? My parents had sat me down for five hours when I came home from the mall with a second piercing in my left ear. Dad had threatened to cut off my allowance forever, and Mom had said she had never been so disappointed. They both questioned what kind of evil influence “America was exerting on our daughter.” Just because I had gotten a second hole in my ear! It was a moot point since it got infected and I had to take the earring out. And here I was, walking in after my curfew the first time I had ever been out on a Friday night and they were cool with it? What was going on? Had they been replaced by aliens?

Mom was beet red and couldn’t stop laughing. Dad was practically beaming. The two of them were acting seriously strange.

“Mom, are you drunk?” I asked.

“A little…a little. Daddy made some margaritas.” Mom giggled.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. My parents never drank. Mom was practically allergic—every time she had a sip of wine her face turned purple.

“Should we tell her?” Dad asked.

“Why not? She’ll find out soon enough.” Mom laughed.

“What?”

The two of them turned.

“WE WON THE LOTTERY!!”

“WHAT?”

“We won! Look, look!” Mom said, waving a piece of paper in the air. “We found it in the mailbox when Daddy finally got it open!”

“We did?” I didn’t know what to think. I was seized by wild, irrational joy mingled with anxiety. Had we really won? Or were my parents simply out of their minds? It seemed too good to be true. But then Dad was so firm in his belief that one day things would work out for us, I was tempted to believe him. Why would my parents play such a cruel joke on me like this? My heart began to flutter wildly. Were all our problems with money truly over?

Dad began shouting. “I
told
you! I
told
you!”

“Dad’s numbers went through? Did we really win?” I asked, my voice squeaking. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I couldn’t breathe. We won LOTTO??? This was crazy.

“No! No! The numbers, no! But, yes! We won! Here, look!” Mom thrust an envelope in my hand.

“‘You may be a winner!’” I read aloud, my fingers shaking. It
was a letter from the Publishers Clearing House, saying Mr. Jose Rizal Arambullo may have already won the grand prize of twenty-five million dollars in the annual sweepstakes. It almost made sense, since Dad certainly subscribed to a lot of their magazines. But as I continued to read the fine print, I began to realize my parents had made a
colossal
mistake. A disgustingly stupid, pathetic, moronic, absurd, only-an-immigrant-could-make-it mistake.