Afterparty (11 page)

So, all right, I want pink streaks.

I study some more. I outline two chapters of the truly awful AP European History book and email the fruits of my industrious guiltfest to Dylan.

My dad is eating on the patio. Mutt and Jeff are circling the table, having figured out that we have better food at our house than they get at their house.

I say, “May I come outside?”

My dad pulls out the other chair. I am actually choked up. It would probably be better if I’d felt some shred of guilt last night so I wouldn’t be hit with it so hard right now.

My dad is playing an ancient, scratchy recording of guys from Nova Scotia singing sad, monotonous folk songs. I do not complain. Instead, I get him more coffee.

I plow through the most incomprehensible unit of French poetry I’ve ever seen, which is pretty damned incomprehensible
given that I speak French. I take even more notes. For hours. I think, How reckless can I be, sitting at my desk making insanely perfect notes?

The compass says,
You’re kidding, right?

My dad brings me a sandwich. I thank him like crazy. I do not act like a resentful person who is grounded until snow falls on the Hollywood sign. (Hint: Snow never falls on the Hollywood sign.)

Megan texts:
Are you okay? The secret is secret?

Me:
No lightning bolts. No toads. No boils. No killing of the firstborn child.

Megan:
You’re my hero. You didn’t get drunk right?

Me:
You sound like your mother

Megan:
Kill me now. I wish I had a magic portal.

I am almost making it through the weekend. I think. When Dylan texts:
You weren’t lying about notes with footnotes.

First text since the cafeteria.

It’s so much easier to pretend that nothing happened in writing without my voice, or face, or weird choppy breathing to give me away.

Me:
You’re welcome.

Dylan:
You’re thanked. OCD outline very handy. Amazed you have time for footnotes and bad parties.

Me:
Don’t remind me how bad. Wait. How do you even know?

Dylan:
Hard to picture you baked. Curled up with a joint outlining sidebars. Being entertained by Roy.

Me:
My household is devoid of joints and entertainment.

Dylan:
I cd come by with magic tricks.

And your lips.

Me:
Hard to picture you pulling a bunny out of a top hat. Is that where you got this number?

Because it’s Siobhan’s prepaid, the one I’m not supposed to have, the cheap untraceable kind that normal people don’t have.

Dylan:
Got it from your partner in crime.

Me:
Disappointing. I was hoping for a rabbit.

Dylan:
Maybe I should go for it. Beef up my resume for Georgetown.

Me:
I thought you didn’t care about such things.

Dylan:
Crap. Slacker image shot to hell by bunnies.

Me:
You must be one genius slacker to pass. You’re never there.

Dylan:
Excuse me Seed. I’m beating my bro’s GPA by .2 and he was top ten. Hell I cd be valedictorian if I’d off Arif and Mara. And maybe Lissi.

Meaning that, basically, Dylan is getting better grades with my notes than I am. And is a lot more into school than I gave him credit for.

He’s an ad for the benefits of constant cutting.

My dad would so not like this. The best grades ever, yes; the sticking his thumb in Latimer’s eye while getting the best grades ever, no.

My dad calls and I slide the phone under my pillow.

I return to the home life of Emma the Good.

I fold all my clean clothes before going to bed early. I get up in the morning. I eat a waffle. I look out at the ocean past Sunset, past Century City. As we drive down the hill, I read my notes for a French poetry quiz.

Me:
Do you get the French?

Siobhan:
Sorta.

Me:
OK first break outside the caf.

Sib:
It’s just a bunch of shit about Algeria.

Me:
I might need more details.

Sib:
OK but it’s stupid.

My dad says, “Are you texting Siobhan from this car? You’re supposed to be using that phone for emergencies only.”

(As of this morning, I have my actual phone back because he’s concerned that if there’s a natural disaster, I’ll need it when foraging for freeze-dried snack packs.)

“It’s about French. See for yourself. Me:
Do you get the French?
Siobhan:
Sorta.
Me:
OK first break outside the caf—
”

“Do you think that qualifies as an emergency?” The car slams to a stop in front of Latimer in urgent punctuation.

“I thought the point was no recreational texting. This is
far
from recreational.”

All I can think about is how ridiculous my life is, tap-dancing around texting my friend in preparation for a quiz on a French poem about the oppression of colonial Algeria in blank verse. How the ridiculousness of my life is what’s going on in this car, not how I’m pursuing happiness under the cover of night.

Twenty-seven weeks to Afterparty.

There’s not a chance in hell I’m bailing on this pact.

“NO WAY,” KIMMY SAYS TO
me when I’m sitting with Siobhan in the caf on Monday. “You won’t come to my parties but you go to
Warner’s
?”

Chelsea says, “Poor Emily. You should try to get yourself invited someplace a few steps up from Warner’s. Maybe a crack house.”

Chelsea turns on her heel before I can deliver a comeback.

Then Arif and Dylan stop at our table, presumably not to admire our so-called salads, studded with dried-out sprouts.

Arif says, “I heard you ladies had an issue with your GPS.”

“Please,” Siobhan says. “One L.A. party is as bad as the next.”

Dylan sighs. “It hurts me to argue with anyone slamming L.A., but even here, Roy stands out.”

I say, “Come on, it was bad, but it’s not like we caught leprosy. He didn’t have any problem drawing a crowd.”

“Such as you two,” Dylan says.

“Play nice,” Arif says. “And for the record, there were arrests last Christmas.”

Dylan says, “Yeah, some stoner ran over a reindeer.”

“It was a bush,” Arif says. “There were several bushes. Trimmed in the shape of reindeer. Very festive.”

“There was a car-versus-reindeer-bush collision in Roy Warner’s front yard?”

Three of us laugh. Siobhan walks away.

“Why do you even talk to them?” she says when I catch up to her. “One more person messes with me about that freaking party, as if I couldn’t
tell
it was a loser party—”

“They were trying to be helpful.”

“You think that was
helpful 
? And Chelsea sneering at me was
helpful 
? Because, surprise, it wasn’t helpful. When we hit Mulholland on Saturday, we’ll see who’s helpful.”

Megan:
Roy Warner is famous. Girls at St. Bernadette know who he is. Guinness World Record for weed consumption. Joe says avoid him.

Me:
Now you tell me.

Megan:
Where’s the next one?

Me:
I can’t believe you’re encouraging me.

Megan:
Sacrificing you on the altar of vicarious thrills.

Me:
Someplace more glam. Now that I survived my starter party.

*  *  *

My dad, not incomprehensibly, is reluctant to let me out of his sight. But it’s been two weeks, and it’s Saturday, and he’s not immune to the allure of the girly. He knows I want it, and he knows he can’t exactly share a girly salon moment with me. So Nancy offering to take Siobhan and me to Beverly Hills for manicures seals the deal.

“Just no zebra stripes,” he says after I more or less beg to go.

“Leopard spots with rhinestones on the cuticles.”

“Nothing that glows in the dark.”

“Dad! You’re taking all the fun out of it!”

“I’m very unhappy with you, Ems,” he says. “You might have to go with that clear pink one.”

“No! You wouldn’t make me do that, right?”

“Never. Go have a nice time.”

“And I swear you won’t hate it. Too much.”

He smiles and pats my shoulder on my way out the door. “And Marisol is chaperoning later?”

“She’s going to tuck us into bed.”

• • •

Clearish pink nail polish isn’t even on the table. Literally.

Nancy—who’s in on the pink-streaked hair and the party where I plan to wear it—is well known at Lumiere, where we take our scraggly fingernails. She has a long, serious talk with her manicure artist about which of their more glittery colors my nails ought to be. We go for something called Bold Aqua Ice.

I start counting the bottles of polish that contain blue, or
contain sparkles, or are some variant of Day-Glo whenever the subject of deceit comes roaring back into my head.

Siobhan picks silver. Nancy says, “I know better than to tell
you
what to do.”

Siobhan says, “You’ve got that right.”

I find myself wondering if Fabienne and I would be getting manicures together, if she’d be weighing in on my nail color.

Then I go: Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. Until I stop it. Because maybe some people can do that and just keep having a normal day, but I’m not one of them. I’m not even close to being one of them.

“Are you listening to me?” Siobhan asks in a voice suggesting that she’s on the verge of snapping fingers in my face.

I say, “Sorry, I’m obsessing about nail color. Nancy was right, right?”

“Like if she told you to get some crap color, I wouldn’t say anything? Em? You look like you’re going to cry. You must really hate aqua. Come on, what?”

“All right, I was thinking about my mom. You and Nancy . . .”

Siobhan puts her arms around me. “That sucks.”

When our nails dry, we walk down Little Santa Monica half draped around each other, eating cupcakes from Sprinkles, while the foot reflexology person at Lumiere goes to town on Nancy.

We spend the rest of the afternoon putting pink streaks in my hair with William watching from Switzerland. His roommate, Gunther, who wakes up and shuffles across the screen in
drawstring pajama bottoms, says, “Are those real girls? When does she take the robe off?”

William yells at him in German. I tell him he’s a pig in French.

Siobhan says, “I’m done with you.
Ciao,
William. Get some sleep.”

William says, “
Ciao
, Sibi,” and closes his eyes.

Four hours later, we’re ready to go.

THE HOUSE HAS A DRIVEWAY
that plunges off Mulholland, as if in enticement to drive off solid land into the city lights. It requires a leap of faith to cross the threshold. Marisol drops us off at the edge of the precipice, and we walk down toward a sprawling house shining with white light below.

There are kids everywhere, food everywhere, music everywhere, drinks everywhere. I have clicked my heels three times and here we are in Party Oz, not even in the same world as Roy Warner and his slow-motion friends.

“Nice birthday party, right?” Siobhan says.

She takes my hand and we wind through the main hall toward the back of the house, to a deck that surrounds a long, rectangular pool, illuminated through the blue-green water. Where a bunch of guys from Latimer football are decimating a ten-foot table of refreshments. These are guys I talk to every day at lunch, and here we are, and there’s even a food theme
(although with classier food), and the only thing I can think of to do is eat.

I can barely make eye contact, or smile, or chew.

Ian Heath, who has a girl I don’t know under his arm, literally drops her as he turns to Siobhan, who’s in a tight green dress that matches her eyes, and he says, “Whoa,” and he touches her hair.

Siobhan, so quickly that I almost miss it, whispers, “Watch this.” Then she puts her hands on his butt and draws him toward her. If Siobhan had a list, Ian Heath would be a straight shot to all the check marks a person could possibly need.

I stand there behind her, half hidden. I don’t know where to look or what to say when he kisses her, partly a hello kiss, partly something else.

I grab what looks to be a tiny éclair and stuff it into my mouth.

Across the pool, Sam Sherman is talking with Mara, whose hair is now electric blue.
She
can carry on normal conversation with a guy in party world—even if Sam is wearing a school hoodie, drinking beer out of a can, and looks as if he wandered into the wrong event.

I scoop more éclairs onto my napkin.

Everyone is here. Arif is here, eating skewered fruit. I grab a bottle of microbrewery beer out of a tub of ice and drink it very, very quickly.

I say, “Hey, Arif.”

“Hey.”

I say, “So you know Strick? Who is he, by the way?”

“Over there,” Arif says. “Aspiring biker.”

There is actually a kid with a pack of cigarettes tucked into the short sleeve of his T-shirt, with hair combed back like classic James Dean.

I say, “Holy shit.”

Arif says, “You drink. You swear. You attend dreadful birthday parties. Your prognosis for fitting in just improved astronomically.”

We stand there, watching Sam try to drag Mara in the direction of the food and abandon her in favor of eating his way across the table toward goblets filled with what might be chili.

“Bar mitzvah redux,” Sam says. “All we need is DJ Jim and his seizure lights.”

I ask Arif, “So where’s your boy?” Because here I am in Nancy’s pale pink dress and earrings that twine through my earlobes like gold ropes.

“Dylan only hangs at UCLA,” Sam says. “He’s been otherwise engaged all year.”