Afterparty (27 page)

“You keep repeating yourself. You’re boring me to death. It was a
game
. Man of Mystery and International Girl of Intrigue.”

“How far back did you plan this?”

“You are so paranoid,” Siobhan sighs. “And Dylan is a jerk. Who cares if you kissed some guy you didn’t even know?”

“You were supposed to have my back, not stab me in it!”

“Well, this blows, doesn’t it?” she says “You totally fuck up by not telling your stupid boyfriend what you said you were going to tell him, so why not blame your best friend?” She pulls some tall, dry grass out by the roots. “Are you just going to hide out back here forever or what?”

She reaches down. She says, “Come on, missy. Two weeks in time-out is plenty.”

It’s not completely clear who she thinks was in time-out, her or me.

“Crap,” Siobhan says, sitting down. “Bad Emma, bad Emma. Are you happy now? You have to cut it out.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d go away.”

And it gets worse. I stop at the caf for a root beer to wash down the awful pizza, and there’s Dylan, getting fries. He is as blank as a chunk of white ice, and as warm.

I say, “Hey.”

He says nothing.

Siobhan, sitting by the window with frozen yogurt, says, “Give it up, Kahane. Talk to the girl.”

Dylan takes the fries, slaps down a couple of dollars at the cash register, and leaves. He never once looks at me.

In English, I glance at Arif, who hasn’t said a word to me either, and he is not even slightly smiling back.

I say, “I don’t want to embarrass you, but aren’t you talking to me either?”

There’s a long pause during which he appears to be deciding if the degree of his not talking to me includes not answering direct questions. He says, “I know there are two sides to every story, but—”

“You can stop there. There’s one side, and FYI, it’s not my side. I don’t even
have
a side.”

“Really.” It’s as if Dylan has been tutoring him on expressionlessness. I figure, if I can push Arif over the edge to less-than-polite, I really have strayed beyond the bounds of the civilized world.

“Oh yeah, I’m Satan. It’s in my genes.”

“Don’t say that,” he says. Very sharply. “There are very few unforgivable things.”

I wonder how many of them I’ve managed to land on.

I text Dylan. “I get it. I can’t get any sorrier. You can stop now.”

He doesn’t reply.

At the food bank, Megan says, “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

She says, “It really is a shame Jews don’t have confession. Because you need absolution, and you need it fast.”

“How would I even know what Jews do and don’t have? My dad doesn’t even think I’m good enough to get any higher than a temple basement.”

I leave her there. Or try to. She trails me back into the powdered milk.

She says, “You know what delusional depressive thinking that is, right?”

“That’s me. Sad and delusional.”

“You know what I mean. There are pills for this.”

“My boyfriend dumped me because I suck. This isn’t a mental disorder.”

Megan sighs, “Your dad doesn’t want you upstairs because your dad is a raging atheist.”

“What?”

“My mom says. Although my mom thinks Cardinal Mahony is a secret atheist. Why don’t you just take him at face value that he doesn’t want to impose religion on you? Not because he doesn’t think you’re good enough. Aren’t you supposed to
want
to impose religion on people who aren’t good enough?”

“I think Dylan might have noticed that I wasn’t good enough.”

“This is classic depressed thinking,” Megan says.

I wave her away and duck deeper into the back of the food supply.

This time, it’s Rabbi Pam who finds me behind the cheese.

“Come on,” she says, “let’s go upstairs.” I freeze for a second,
and she says, “I understand that your dad doesn’t want you within ten miles of a prayer. I promise I’ll respect that.”

So there I am in Rabbi Pam’s office. Just barely inside the door of Rabbi Pam’s office. She is gazing at me with a whole poor-motherless-girl-let-me-make-you-a-sandwich look, which is alarming. Also, there isn’t a single object in her office without a Star of David, a Hebrew letter, or a picture of a Torah on it. Even the plant pot has Hebrew lettering. The whole place freaks me out, possibly because I haven’t been allowed anywhere near anyplace like it for sixteen years.

She says, “Would you rather take a walk?”

I wouldn’t rather take a walk. I’d rather run out the door and get an In-N-Out burger. But I don’t want to insult her, so I follow her across the parking lot.

“You haven’t been your usual cheerful self for a while,” she says.

I’m somewhere between a state of kill-me-now and just wanting to talk to someone who doesn’t know me well enough to disapprove of me. And as long as I’ve got a person with a graduate degree in morality, no doubt a lot more familiar with the Word of God than I am, standing in the parking lot with me, and because I want to change the subject, I say, “What’s unforgivable in Judaism?”

She runs her hand through her hair. She says, “Not much, if you’re sorry and you try to fix it.” We are walking down toward Hollywood Boulevard. She says, “Do you want to get some soda? We got rid of the soda machines, and I’m craving a Coke.”

Which gives me hope that this might be an actual conversation and not just rabbinical probing for teen angst.

I say, “You want to go to In-N-Out?”

We head down the block. She looks a lot more like a normal person when you get her away from the ten-foot-tall religious symbols and the massive stacks of prayer books.

She says, “You do know that the holiest day of the year is about atonement and forgiveness? Which includes forgiving yourself.”

“Not that I’ve ever been in a temple for Yom Kippur, but yeah. ‘We have committed evil, we have acted abominable, we have totally gone astray.’& ”

A lady passing us on the sidewalk gives me a look as if I’m a guy with a sign that says the world is ending, with the biblical location of the chapter and verse to prove it.

“Close. Your dad’s not big on candy-coating, is he? But you don’t think you’ve personally gone totally astray, do you?” She gives me an appraising look, but “yes” isn’t the answer she’s going for, and who lies to a rabbi who’s taking her to In-N-Out? “Remember, ‘This is the gate of the Eternal. Enter into it, you who have fed the hungry’?”

I say, “Don’t even. It’s not like I can bag beans twice a week and that makes me a good person.”

Rabbi Pam says, “You don’t experience yourself as a good person?”

“Sometimes it feels like the world would be a better place if I’d stay in my closet.”

“Is that what was going on when you stopped coming a while back?” Even though I’m looking straight ahead, I can feel her eyes scanning my face.

“That wasn’t completely my choice.” In the spirit of total honesty because she’s a rabbi, even if she does want to be called Pam, I say, “Although probably my fault. Overboard in the breaking-of-rules department.”

“What kinds of rules are we talking about?” We are paused, standing just outside of a shoe repair shop with cracked leather handbags and old boots hanging in the window, and she’s half blocking my path, as if she can tell that the harder I’m trying to tell her the absolute truth, the more I want to run.

“Rules,” I say. “Honor your father. Tell the truth occasionally. Stop on red. Go on green. Thou shalt not murder.” Her facial expression suggests that hyperbole was a poor choice. “Not that I murdered anyone.”

Which is kind of a bad example, anyway, in the forgiving-yourself-because-you-tried-to-fix-things department. Because, seriously, how do you un-murder someone? How do you un-hurt people and undo months of unwise choices and take back conversations you wish you’d never had, but you had them, and now you’re stuck with them?

So what if you’ve tried to cobble things back together, made restitution, cleaned up your act, chatted with a friendly rabbi who’s racking her brain to make you feel better without any real understanding of what you’ve done?

“Maybe just asking the questions puts you on the right track,” Rabbi Pam says. She smiles, but her attempt at good cheer is betrayed by her eyes. “And there’s your conscience.”

My conscience is nothing to smile about.

Where was it when I needed it?

Then her cell phone rings, and she goes searching through her bag looking for it. I wave while she’s saying she’ll call back and nodding her head at me to stay.

I whisper, “It’s okay. You should talk to them,” and I run back toward the food bank before any exploration of my conscience can happen.

I finish my shift and I drive home and I dive into the closet.

Siobhan:
U and boy toy have a lot in common, u know that?

Siobhan:
Don’t you want to know what?

Siobhan:
All right I’ll tell u what. You both don’t ever forgive people.

Me:
Excuse me. You’re not sorry. You said so.

Siobhan:
Why should I have to be sorry for you to forgive me?

Me:
Excuse me????

Siobhan:
Not much on LOL these days are we?

Siobhan:
I’m sorry. R u happy now?

Me:
That was sincere.

Siobhan:
No I’m really sorry.

Siobhan:
R u coming over?

At school, Siobhan keeps pulling on my sleeve and I keep turning away.

In homeroom, she says, “You have to get your dad to give you Prozac or something. I’m not kidding. Because everything sucks, but you have to last until Afterparty or the whole year was pointless.”

There. Something Siobhan and Megan can agree on: my need for medication.

I say, “Thanks. Because lasting to Afterparty is my goal in life.”

“It’s not?”

I start counting the minuscule pleats in Miss Palmer’s skirt. I take notes on the morning announcements, which pertain mostly to carpool-line policies and other similarly compelling topics.

Before English starts, Siobhan is talking to William via her iPad. She is moaning, “I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored. I’m trapped in the smog belt, or the sunbelt, or whatever the hell belt this is, and you’re going to freaking Rome.”

William starts singing “Party All the Time” in German. He says, “Sibi, you should come.”

She says, “I wish.”

Then, to me, she says, “See.
We
should party all the time. Aren’t you bored yet?”

I never want to go to another party again, say, forever.

“Just one short walk to the Chateau Marmont, one giant step for mankind.” she says.

“I’m done.”

“You can be as severely deluded and mad at me as you want,” she says. “But if you think you’re getting back at me by eating pizza on a compost heap, guess what, you’re not. And if you think your asshole boyfriend is going to like you better if you mope for the rest of the year, he doesn’t notice.”

“Excuse me while I write this down.”

“There’s a Winston lacrosse party in the Palisades Saturday. Why don’t you cut back on Scrabble with daddy to six nights a week?”

“Party with degenerates. Perfect.”

“I’m not talking about Winston water polo.” Overblown sigh. “It’s not like I keep a rape kit in my car. But it’s a law of nature that Winston lacrosse is hot and has good parties. Even you know this. This
is
perfect.”

“I’m not up for it.”

“Do you want to get over this or not?” Siobhan says. “And if you don’t go with me, who are you gonna go with? Chelsea?”

I shrug like there’s no way in hell.

Eye-roll. “You’re just too perfect for me. Because I’m sure you stood up for me when Kahane talked trash about me. Which there’s no way he didn’t.” She crosses her hands over her mouth and raises her eyebrows in perfect “gotcha” position. “You must be the perfect friend.”

Well, there you have it. I’m now just as bad as she is in the friend-I’ve-got-your-back department. I suck, which I already knew.

She stalks off in the direction of the lounge. “I don’t even care!” she calls back. “Text me if you change your mind, and maybe you can come with me.”

• • •

In English, Arif leans forward and pokes me. It hurts.

I say, “What? Are you coming after me with a pitchfork now?”

Arif says, “Listen, are you planning to say something to him ever? Because he’s still leveled.”

Bullet to the heart, but I realize it’s a you-made-the-bullet-riddled-bed-now-lie-in-it kind of situation.

“The deal is, he’s not talking to me. His last communication was, ‘Go away.’ ”

“Really?”

“Yes, really! Did he not mention I’ve apologized fifty times? How sorry can I be? I’m telling his best friend I’m sorry—that’s how sorry.”

“What did you do to him, exactly?”

“Arif,” I say, “he talked to you about the other thing, right?”

Arif says, “What other thing?”

I can’t tell if he’s being tactful or if Dylan really isn’t talking to anyone about his dad, which makes me even sadder, and also a far worse person for putting him in a position of being alone with something that bad.

“Maybe ask him about the party.”

Now Arif is glaring straight at me. “Forgive me if I don’t take your advice at face value.”

I gather up my pad, my pen, and my entirely synthetic cardigan, and walk out.

And I think, all right, I can tell that Siobhan set me up, I’m not a complete idiot. But it’s not as if I’m Snow White and I get to reject the morally deficient as potential companions because I’m just so ethically superior. Maybe she and I are even more perfect for each other than I’d ever imagined, because look at me.

Me:
The Palisades. It’s on.

Siobhan:
I knew it.

Then I text Dylan my fifty-first apology.

THE COMPASS SAYS,
DON’T GO.

To which I reply: Go torture a nice, salvageable girl. Which (hint) would not be me.