The List (22 page)

“Asshole needs to sit left of the President,” Justin says.

Jennifer stands up, her legs unsteady, and trades seats with a boy sitting next to Matthew Goulding. Like a seasoned poker player, Matthew studies his hand stoically with a ball cap lowered over his brow.

He is Margo’s longtime crush. Or at least, he had been when Jennifer was still in the loop. She thinks back, cycling through the gossip and whispers from the last four years. Have they ever hooked up?

No, she doesn’t think so.

They play a few rounds. With each new hand, Jennifer has to give her best two cards to the President. And the President gives her his two worst cards. It is designed to be almost impossible to rise up from the very bottom.

Jennifer plays dumb about the valued cards in her hand. From the little she’s picked up, she knows that aces and twos are the cards to have. But instead, she inches her chair close to
Matthew and flashes him her whole hand, letting him pick through whatever it is he wants.

Jennifer can hear the party going on in other rooms: video games being played by boys, girls arguing over the music, the sliding glass door leading to the deck opening and closing. But she is content to stay right where she is.

An hour goes by, and Jennifer has lost every round. She has the most cards of all the players. Not that she minds. The last time Matthew won, he’d given her a two card, which was the most valuable. Plus, she’s got a nice buzz going.

Ted, another senior who is playing with them, is clearly drunk. He’s spilled his beer twice, and during the last hand he leaned back too far. His chair tipped out from underneath him, and his head cracked against the wooden hutch. Ted didn’t seem hurt, though. He couldn’t stop laughing.

After Matthew wins again, he says, “Okay. This is getting boring,” in a friendly way, and hands her a leftover two card. For the rest of the round, he helps Jennifer. They become a little team. She shows him her cards, and he points or nods at the ones she is to throw down. She keeps watching, hoping Margo will walk in and see them there. The others around her still win, but Jennifer manages to come in second to last.

“I didn’t lose!”

“Congrats.” Matthew rises to his feet. “You’re now Vice Asshole.”

Jennifer glumly watches him go.

Justin says, “We need more beers.” He says it and looks at Jennifer. “Vice Asshole gets the beers.” He points to a door inside the kitchen. “There’s a fridge in the basement.”

“I know that,” Jennifer mutters.

She squeezes past the other card players at the table and goes into the kitchen. As she does, she catches sight of Matthew outside on the deck through the glass door. Matthew hops up on the corner of the table. He is smiling, talking to Margo.

Each step down into the dark, cool basement falls with a thud. There are laundry machines, Mr. Gable’s tools, and an old yellow refrigerator that Margo’s family put down here when they had their kitchen redone. Jennifer and Margo used to play school in the basement, but the teaching charts and fake tests are gone from the walls.

She opens the fridge and tries to figure out how best to carry the most cans back upstairs. The basement door opens and shuts.

“Hey,” Ted slurs. He holds the banister as he descends the stairs slowly, calculating each step.

“Hi.”

Ted walks up behind her and perches his arm up on the open refrigerator door. “You getting beers?”

“That’s my job!” she says, immediately regretting the cheeriness in her voice. People are not supposed to like the job of Vice Asshole.

“Here,” Ted says, like an offer to help her. But instead of taking the cans, he guides Jennifer toward the washing machine. The fridge door shuts, leaving them in darkness.

Ted closes his sleepy eyes before he leans in, and it takes a bit of adjusting, but his mouth lands over hers. It is wet and warm and slightly sour. His arms go around her waist and he pulls her against him.

Jennifer closes her eyes. It is her first kiss. She knows Ted is
wasted, but it’s okay. This was a boy who, last year, threw a hot dog at her. And now, he is kissing her.

And if Ted will kiss her, maybe other boys will be interested in her, too.

Her kissing gets suddenly more inspired. She thinks of the things she’s seen on television, the way women run their fingers through a guy’s hair, so she does that. Ted seems into it, kissing her hard and fast, his nostrils pumping out hot air, muscles tightening.

The basement door opens and then closes. And then opens again. Each time, a wedge of light finds them.

Jennifer knows whoever is looking can see her and Ted. She brings her arms up around his shoulders, parts her legs as much as her pencil skirt will allow and lets Ted’s leg slide in between hers. Interlock.

A boy laughs. It sounds like Justin. He says, pretty loud, to the people upstairs. “Whoa! Ted
must
be wasted. He’s making out with Jennifer Briggis!”

Ted peels his lips off of Jennifer. “Shut up, dickhead,” he calls out. But not in a way like he’s angry. Like he thinks it’s funny.

The door slams shut again, and they are finally back in the darkness. “Don’t listen to him,” he says, and pushes her hair back. “I’m not that drunk. Seriously.”

She looks up at him, searching his glassy, watery eyes for a glimmer of truth. And when she doesn’t find it, she closes her eyes and keeps on kissing him.

argo and her friends only smoke when they drink. They never buy the packs themselves, just bum them from real smokers. Still, Margo knows she shouldn’t do it. Honestly, she is
this close
to a full-blown addiction.

But after her fight with Jennifer, it is all she wants. She goes outside onto her deck and smokes four in a row all by herself. Well … mostly she lets them burn down in her fingers, only taking a drag every few minutes.

She is too mad, her chest squeezed far too tight, to inhale.

A replay loops in her mind, the moment of going upstairs and finding Jennifer rummaging through her things. Paranoia sets in, and her hands shake, the smoke wiggling up to the sky in a frantic curl. How long had Jennifer been in her bedroom? What had she been after? What had she hoped to find?

And then it hits her.

Jennifer had been looking for the Mount Washington embossing stamp.

Finding the stamp would be Jennifer’s ultimate vindication. She’d walk downstairs with it over her head for all Margo’s friends to see. It would practically guarantee that Jennifer would be voted homecoming queen. And, as a bonus, Margo would spend her senior year friendless and alone, the way Jennifer had as a freshman. Karma, full circle.

Is that what she deserved?

Obviously Jennifer thought she was a horrible person. But Margo can’t believe that Jennifer really, truly, thought she’d been the one who wrote the list. Maybe it was crazy for Margo to think otherwise, after everything that’s happened, but Jennifer should know her better than that.

The glass door behind her slides open. Margo turns and sees Matthew.

He pauses, half-outside, half-inside. “Hey. I came out to get some air. But … you look like you want to be alone.”

“It’s fine,” she says, turning back to the yard. She thinks about putting her cigarette out, because she knows Matthew doesn’t like smoke, but it seems fruitless at this point. Everyone already seems to think the worst of her anyway.

Still, Margo is glad for his interruption, eager to think about something other than Jennifer. But that’s exactly who Matthew brings up.

“Jennifer Briggis depresses me big-time,” he says, hopping up on the patio table. “I’ve never seen a person try so hard to be liked.”

I’m the same way,
Margo thinks, staring off into the dark, “At least half the people here tonight think I put Jennifer on the list. They think I made it.”

“Yeah,” he says, swinging his legs. “I know.”

Matthew’s confirmation makes Margo go wobbly. She grips the deck railing to steady herself. “Jennifer thinks I did it. I guess I can’t blame her.” Her eyes well up, and everything goes blurry. “She has every reason to hate me.” Margo spins around and looks at Matthew. “I was terrible to her.”

It is the first time she’s said it, without a caveat, excuse, or blaming someone else. She begins to cry.

Matthew climbs off the table and stands next to her. “You okay?”

She wipes her face on the sleeve of her cardigan. “You must think I’m an idiot, crying over this stuff.”

To her relief, Matthew shakes his head. “I don’t. Actually, I’m proud of you for saying your piece to Dana and Rachel about the whole ‘Vote Queen Jennifer’ thing.” He rubs her shoulder. “For the record, I think it’s a terrible idea, too.”

“Dana and Rachel have their hearts in the right place,” Margo says. But her own heart? She’s not exactly sure.

“I guess. But it’s crazy to me that Jennifer’s going along with it.”

“Of course she is. She wants to feel beautiful. Every girl inside my house does. That’s why we all get so wrapped up in the list, in homecoming.” It sounds like Margo is sticking up for Jennifer, but really she’s defending herself. For caring about the list, for being upset that she might not get to be homecoming queen.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Matthew says. “You girls want
everyone else
to think you’re beautiful.”

She says, “Maybe,” though it is definitely true. It just sounds so pathetic.

“I don’t think you made the list, Margo. If that makes you feel better.”

“It does.” Another couple tears fall. Margo blushes. “I’d better get back inside.” Margo grinds out her cigarette into the wood and looks at him. “Can you tell I’ve been crying?”

Matthew reaches out and touches her cheek, catching her last tear on the tip of his finger. “No.”

“Thank you for saying that, and for listening to me.” She heads for the patio door, her heart racing.

“I’ll dance with you tomorrow night, even if you don’t win,” he calls after her.

A dance with the boy she’s loved forever. It is wonderful to look forward to something that has nothing to do with the list or being homecoming queen, something that has no guilt or sadness attached to it.

It is only good.

The party starts to break up around midnight. Every time Margo has made a lap for trash, she has kept an eye out for Jennifer. Not to apologize, exactly. Because, when it comes down to it, Jennifer shouldn’t have been in her room. But she’d maybe smile or something small like that, to make things a little more civil. But she hasn’t seen her for hours.

Dana and Rachel help her clean up. The three friends are in the kitchen, rinsing out empty beer cans and putting them in the recycling bags, when the basement door creaks open. Jennifer and Ted emerge from the darkness.

The curls in Jennifer’s hair have mostly uncoiled and it is mussed in the back. Ted is red-faced and squints at the light. “Shit,” he sighs, and quickly stumbles off.

Dana, Rachel, and Margo avoid looking at each other.

“What time is it?” Jennifer says, and then makes a weird swallowing noise.

“Um, it’s after midnight,” Dana says. “How long were you guys down there?”

“I gotta go.” Jennifer tries to take a step, but it looks as if she can’t decide which foot to put forward, and she sort of wobbles unsteadily on her boot heels and doesn’t move forward at all.

Margo gets a heavy feeling inside, just like the Punchy Punch, thick and syrupy.

“You can’t drive,” Dana says. “Where’d Ted go?”

Rachel looks out the window. “Um, I think he just left.”

“What a jerk,” Dana says, quickly wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “I’ll take you home, Jennifer. You can leave your car here and come get it tomorrow. You ready, Rachel?”

“Ready. We’ll see you tomorrow morning, Margo. Thanks for everything.”

Jennifer teeters past Margo without making eye contact. “Yeah. Thanks. For everything.”