Afterparty (24 page)

“
Nobody
feels sorry for me,” Siobhan says.

Sam keeps shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “And from this fascinating piece of guerrilla theater, we take away—?”

I am still reeling from the non-kiss kiss. Still, I’m pretty sure I’m no longer the stealth bitch who leveled Siobhan; I’m now just some theatrical form of weird.

Dylan says, “Can we go now?”

“Oh, you’re excused,” Siobhan says.

I follow him out—no holding open of the door, no hand-holding, no PDA of any kind—into the quad and up onto the hill.

I say, “That was maybe the most awkward moment of my life.”

I say, “I think she was trying to be nice.”

He says, “Don’t bet on it.”

Dylan:
I’m making up for before. Issuing formal invitation. Very romantic.

Me:
By text?

Dylan:
This is as formal as I get. Valentine’s Day. Are you in?

Me:
Duh.

Me:
I’m going to facetime you right now. I want details and sappiness.

Dylan:
I’m not that sappy

Me:
Try

Dylan:
Cheesy cupid decorations and an open bar with pink mixed drinks?

Me:
Yes please!

This Valentine’s Day party is a producer’s insanely over-the-top annual extravaganza, complete with his revolving girlfriends
and exciting gown malfunctions. To which said producer always asks Dylan’s parents to bring Dylan, as he’s the same age as his kid. When they were little, it gave his kid something to do, other than watch assorted women run into the house for more denture cream to hold up their dresses.

“You should know up front, I’m embarrassed to take you,” Dylan says.

“Thanks a lot. I can see why you left that out of the formal invitation.”

“That came out wrong. You don’t know what my parents are like until you’ve seen them in action.”

“What is it they do?”

“You have a dad who cares if you drink all your milk. I’m not sure you’re going to get this.” He just looks at me, and even on the tiny screen of my phone, I get that whatever it is, it’s not a fun topic. “Are you sure you don’t mind going anyway?”

Dylan and Valentine’s Day and a lavish, over-the-top extravaganza complete with drama yet such a large contingent of parents and so-called responsible adults (blasted out of their minds) in attendance that my dad couldn’t possibly say no—how sure can a person be?

And instantly, without thought or analysis, I want to tell Siobhan. That’s my first impulse. All these weeks of crazy and I still want best friendship without the complications.

I want the impossible.

Me:
Physics?

Siobhan:
Don’t you have to sit at boy toy’s feet day and night?

Me:
Screwdrivers. Cheetos. Electrical fields. Come on.

We’re in Siobhan’s dining room, trying to figure out our lab reports. Nancy rolls her suitcase by on her way to the airport.

She says, “That school is screwing up your lives but good. Why don’t you ladies take a break and have some fun?”

Words that would wither and die on my dad’s lips.

Siobhan eats a Cheeto and doesn’t look up until Nancy is out the front door.

I say, “Are you ever going to talk to her again? It’s been a while.”

“I’m just keeping her guessing. It results in lots of shopping. I need all new shoes.”

“I just want a Valentine’s Day dress. A perfect red one.”

“Not vintage.”

“Yes, vintage. Like Old Hollywood, maybe?”

“Jesus. I’m coming with, or you’re going to end up looking like a drag queen.”

On Saturday, we head down Melrose and up La Brea.

She says, “If you still think you’re going to Afterparty vintage, think again.”

We’re shopping, we’re having fun, we’re picking out each other’s clothes and making scathing comments about bad dresses that we rifle through. She threatens to shoplift an extremely large bag (but doesn’t) just to freak me out.

I feel as if I’ve got my friend back.

As if.

Now, if I can just hold it together long enough to talk to Dylan about one or two things and he goes, “Meh, that’s not so bad,” everything will be perfect.

Right.

Seventy-three days before Afterparty, and I’m delusional.

I TRY TO TELL HIM,
I swear I do, but Dylan’s not in one of his better moods.

Aiden is in town for their cousin’s wedding, and Dylan can’t avoid him. This is their first cousin Bess, from Aiden’s class at Latimer, marrying her supervisor from her summer investment banking internship due to the fact that she’s slightly pregnant. Half their class is in L.A. for this, whooping it up all over town.

Dylan offers up tidbits from Kahane familyland. “We had to spend hours at Wilshire Boulevard Temple draped around pillars for the wedding pictures. I had to
gaze
at Aiden. The photographer demanded gazing. I had to put my arm around my dad and look son-like. I could feel him cringe.”

“It’ll be over soon,” I say, touching his face. “I’ll make you heart-shaped cookies.”

“Thanks. You’re a credit to your—what are seeds?—your phylum? Your genus? Your gender?”

We’re sitting, fully clothed, on his bed, supposedly studying.

I say, “I’m not that much of a credit to anything. Maybe we should talk—”

“No, we should eat. Want to order pizza? My mom has taken to cooking for the Scottish prince. There’s only so much charred sea bass a person can take.”

“Blackened sea bass? Like with a pepper crust?”

“You don’t get large-scale family dysfunction, do you? She burns it, we eat it.”

“Excuse me, I get—”

He pushes me onto the pillow. We don’t study.

• • •

After school, Siobhan and I search for antique stockings with seams down the back to go with my (vintage) dress, which turn out to be the Holy Grail of vintage shopping.

Siobhan is texting Strick, who has some form of the flu. “I don’t care if he has to OD on cough syrup. We’re clubbing on Valentine’s. You aren’t the only person with the perfect dress.”

“You didn’t take me shopping for your perfect dress?”

“Nancy,” Siobhan says. “I have to throw her a bone once in a while.”

I wonder if my mom liked vintage. If she would have liked it on me. Or if she would have been so rational about teen girl attire that vintage wouldn’t have had to be my fallback when my dad rejected any garment associated with modern fashion.

Within seconds, I am deep into the realm of Stop It, Stop It,
Stop It, with Siobhan snapping her fingers six inches from my face and telling me not to sulk.

“I hate to burst your little bubble,” she says, “but this Valentine’s Day party you’re going to: lame. A bunch of Hollywood burnouts with Botox.
Burton
got invited.”

“There are going to be kids there.”

“Kids who get dragged there. Do you know how cool the Strip is going to be on Valentine’s Day? Think: Lame. Awesome. Lame. Awesome. Obviously you and the labradoodle should come with us to Awesome.”

“Me and you and Strick and Dylan and three IDs?”

“You could be Birgitta from Malmo. I got her ID in Barbados. And who the hell knows about Strick? I might have to round up Wade.”

“Wade?”

“Or whoever. It’s me. It isn’t going to be a problem,” Siobhan says. “You just don’t want to go with me, do you?”

“It’s not that.”

“It’s
completely
that. I can read you. You’re going to an octogenarian yawnfest instead of doing something that actually might be fun? And why is that?”

She is looking at me with the angry, hooded eyes of those Australian toads that squirt poison at their enemies.

I say, “I’ll ask Dylan. All right?”

I won’t ask Dylan.

“Cause widdle Emma can’t make up her own mind,” she says. “You should listen to me. You won’t survive five minutes in the
real world without me. You’d be fucked if I didn’t have your back, and you don’t even get it! Go to your lame party! I don’t even care!”

I pull into her driveway and she slams the car door on her way out.

I am in a state of damn-what-just-happened? Because whatever it was, it’s not good.

TWO DAYS AND THEN I
hear from her.

Siobhan:
You have to get over here.

Me:
Why?

Siobhan:
Just do it. Tell DrLaz a friend in need is a friend indeed. Tell him you have to borrow my earrings. Get over here.

Me:
Why?

Siobhan:
Tell him I’m jumping out the window if you don’t talk me down.

Me:
Is something actually wrong?

Siobhan:
Get over here

Siobhan:
I mean it.

My dad is in the living room, reading a journal and drinking brandy. It’s like a scene out of the Analyst’s Home Companion;
all we need is a black lab and an artsy mom who makes jewelry or hooks rugs or something. I’m wearing jeans and a pajama top and a Latimer hoodie and Bert and Ernie slippers. I figure, how can anybody dressed like this possibly be up to no good?

I say, “I need to go over to Siobhan’s for a little while.”

He looks at his watch.

I say, “I know, but she sounds upset and it’s not like she calls me over there in the middle of the night all the time.”

“If anything is going on that you can’t handle, you’ll call me. No secrets if it’s dangerous.”

I say, “I know. I will. Thank you.”

“And Ems, midnight.”

“Midnight.”

But as it turns out, there
is
something over there I can’t handle. Although phoning home isn’t an option.

At first I’m not sure who it is in there with her, submerged to their chins, their heads seeming to bob, disembodied, on the frothy surface of the Jacuzzi, steam rising off the foam, obscuring their faces. I can’t tell if he and Siobhan are wearing anything, but they seem to have achieved a level of coziness that makes you wonder why a third person, such as me, would even be invited.

Siobhan says, “Hey! This is my friend.” She reaches out of the steaming water to throw a bathing suit at me.

The guy says, “Hey, Siobhan’s friend!” He sounds friendly but slightly stoned. I recognize his voice immediately. Then I recognize him. His torso rises from the water, his elbows splayed back over the fieldstone rim of the Jacuzzi.

The profile and the brow. Jesus, the guy from the beach club, still gorgeous in the dark.

It is completely clear he has no idea who I am.

Siobhan says to him, “You’re quite the piece of work, aren’t you?”

He says, “That I am.” He sounds quite taken with this idea.

“How drunk were you at that beach club, anyway?” Siobhan says. “You assaulted this girl outside the ladies’ room. Your tongue has been in this girl’s mouth.”

The profile becomes even more beautiful when all the other details blur into shadow. “Oh. You! Polka dots, right?”

The dress.

I say, “Siobhan—” Because I want him not to remember. I want the whole thing not to have happened. I want to not know him and for him not to know me.

She says, “International Girl of Intrigue, meet Mystery Man.”

“Amélie!” I say. I don’t want the whole idiot episode to come roaring back with me—and a name anyone in L.A. knows as me—in it.

He says, “Amélie? Pretty. I’d ask you if you’re French, but your footwear . . .”

I say, “Seriously, Sib? What are you doing?”

“Oh yeah,
Amélie
,” she says. “Get in here. Or do you want me to call up you-know-who and make it a foursome?”

“No!”

“You-know-
who
?” the guy whines. “Don’t you like me?”

I say, “Siobhan, could I talk to you for a minute?”

She reaches behind her and I see her phone, and she’s waving it above the water. “You’re such a buzzkill baby! Don’t you want to have fun? Because I’m phoning! Nope, not yet. Yes, I’m phoning right now. Not yet. Yesssss I am! You weren’t such a buzzkill in the summer, were you? You didn’t care who you kissed!”

“Whom,” I say.

“Fuck you!” Siobhan yells.

“No, she’s right, ‘whom.’& ” Beach Club Boy is at least highly grammatical.

I say, “I’m leaving.”

She says, “No. You’re not. I know, why don’t I call up your asshole boyfriend
and
Jean-Luc. Then all five of us can chat about it. But wait, I’ll be the only person in here who hasn’t had a tongue down your throat. I feel so sad and left out.”

The guy says, “You could put your tongue down her throat, Sibby. I don’t mind.”

This is the point when I know—Good Emma, Bad Emma, Emma with any sense knows—it is the moment to walk back into the house, say good-night to Marisol, and go home. Because even if she calls my bluff, Dylan showing up with me on my way out is so much better than Dylan showing up with me sitting in a Jacuzzi with drunk Siobhan and drunker Beach Club Boy, and I still don’t know if they’re wearing anything. She could just be strapless.

It is
not
the moment to step out of the Bert-and-Ernie slippers and into the too-tight swimsuit. But what if I can placate her? What if I can give just the smallest bit, what if I just sit in
the Jacuzzi like we have a hundred times since summer, and she doesn’t call him up, and he doesn’t find out everything about me two hours before Valentine’s Day, and that’s the end of it?

I climb into the water, slowly.

I immerse myself completely. I come up looking at the stars glittering through the blue-black sky and the rusty half-moon, the steam rising all around me off the roiling water, and the gorgeousness of Siobhan and the boy. And then his hand is on my shoulder, only he’s kissing Siobhan, and then he turns to me and I am,
I swear
, pulling away, I am recoiling, I’m thinking, get up, get out, abort, stop, don’t. I’m climbing out, my shoulders are out of the water, but he kisses me. His lips feel unnaturally cold as my body steeps in the hot water, pummeled by the jets. Cold but compelling.