Afterparty (35 page)

He says, “This is the one you’ve been studying with?”

I nod.

He says, “Ems, the boy was there. He saw what happened. You were drunk and in the middle of it.”

“I wasn’t that drunk.”

“You were
drinking
and in the middle of it. Either way, that poor girl was trying to push you off the roof. He was a few yards away. He saw. I’m staying with his version.”

“You have no idea—”

“I know you.”

“You don’t even. Weren’t you listening? I’ve been doing things all year. Pacts with Siobhan and all kinds of things.”

“You rode a horse down Mulholland,” he says. “It’s not the worst thing anybody ever did.”

I don’t even want to know how he knows that. “All I’ve done since we landed in this state is lie to you. That first day, at that beach club, I kissed some guy I didn’t even know.”

“In those terrible plastic sunglasses.”

I don’t know what I have to do to get him to see. “Everybody thought I had a secret boyfriend, and I made that up too.”

“Lots of girls have secrets from their parents,” he says. “It’s part of growing up.” You can just hear him saying this in a similarly clueless way to the clueless parents of his pathologically dishonest patients who kill cats.

“Stop making excuses for me! Stop believing I’m this
wonderful person who couldn’t possibly do anything wrong. Admit you’re disappointed.”

He says, “I know you.” As if this were definitive. “I believe you’re a wonderful person who did a lot of things wrong. As did I. That doesn’t make you a killer, or Fabienne, or—I regret I ever used this word with you—a disappointment.”

“Like you’re not disappointed? Please.”

“Of course I’m disappointed! You’ve been sneaking out of my house for six months. I should have listened when you said to chain you to the piano.”

“It’s not a joke! You should have listened when I said to let me go out. You should have trusted me.”

“
Not
the moment to tell me to trust you.”

“Sorry.”

He looks at me and he isn’t scowling, which is good under the circumstances. He says, “I think the boyfriend you
didn’t
make up is still in the courtyard.”

“No!”

“Do you want to ask him if he’d like to come in?”

“Seriously?”

He nods.

SIOBHAN WAKES UP.

Nobody thought that she would, but she does.

And when I see her, weeks later, battered and bandaged and hooked up to machines, when they let people in, I can’t help it, I love her again.

I see the green eyes, part open and a little crusty, and the ashy blond hair with roots badly in need of some attention, and her unmanicured fingernails, and I know how much she must hate this.

And then I think, I’m in complete denial. She wanted to kill me. This is bad.

“Way to screw up a pact,” she says.

I’m so thrown off, it’s difficult to form a sentence.

“Yeah, well, if I’d kept the pact, we’d both be dead.”

“That,” Siobhan says, looking around the hospital room, “was the
point
. The point was not to still be here and damn straight the
point was not for me to go to Austen-fucking-Riggs while you’re screwing some college geek. This is not how it was supposed to turn out.”

Austen Riggs is where kids who ventured over the line from out of control to mental cases went to get better. It’s where Courtney Garland went after she tried to gas herself with car exhaust in her father’s eight-car garage in October, and she got better. Second semester, she came back, transferred to Campbell Hall, and got onto the cheer squad.

Although it’s hard to imagine Siobhan cheering, no matter how mentally shored up.

She says, “It was a pact. You
said
you’d do it.”

The fact that I thought it was a joke when she first proposed this pact, the fact that I was so busy overlooking serious craziness and joking when I said, sure, we should do that if things don’t improve, that’s just what we should do, has evidently evaded her.

“Yeah, but on that roof, it had to be pretty obvious, even to you, that that wasn’t what I wanted.”

She is breathing so heavily and loudly, I’m afraid that the little jagged lines, the peaks and valleys of her monitor, will spell out “SOS” and bring forth frantic nurses and a crash cart. “What do you mean,
even
to me?”

I say, “You were kind of chemically impaired.”

“I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” she says, grasping my hand. Her fingers are dry and wiry. “I said what I wanted to do, and you came with me. Like always. I said ‘pact’ and you came. We had a pact.”

“Siobhan, did you not notice I was trying not to?”

Trying not to
what
? Kill, be killed, die together at the age of sixteen because of a misunderstanding,
what
?

I say, “People think you were trying to kill me.”

“What!”

“People think—”

“I heard you,” she says. “And that’s not what
people
think, is it? That’s what
you
think. Isn’t it? It is! It’s what you think!”

There it is. There is no answer that would work for both of us. But this is my answer. I say, “Yes. That’s what I think because that’s what happened. By the end, it was you pushing me.”

She pulls away, gazing past my head and toward the door, to the hospital corridor, past wheely racks hung with pouches of clear liquids, past surfaces of fresh flowers and unopened gift bags from Stella McCartney and Fred Segal. “Never mind,” she says. “I thought I could trust you, but obviously not.” She is playing with the ends of her bangs, twirling her hair, but will not look at me. “Well,
tant pis
!” she says.

“Siobhan, this is not a ‘tough shit’ kind of situation—”

“No. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we should be friends at all. If I can’t trust you, what’s the point?”

IT ISN’T THE ENDING I EXPECTED.

Standing on the roof in the rain, the colored lights of Hollywood Boulevard blurred in the sky, when I was absolutely certain that Siobhan was dead, and Dylan saw me do it, and that I was evil incarnate and not just some moderately bad good girl who screwed up.

It’s the ending that comes after the last scrap of the drama, when life goes on, and even though my life has holes in it where people used to be, I’m still here at the food bank, shelving cans of tuna and boxes of mac and cheese with Megan and Joe.

Also, I go upstairs.

Rabbi Pam says, “Finally! Come in.”

I slam the door to her office so hard, a book falls off her bookcase. Then I have a more generalized meltdown about the unfairness of certain key aspects of life. She doesn’t disagree or say that God will fix it or try to teach me how to crochet.

For this, I’m grateful.

I say, “So, am I part of this religion or not?”

She shrugs. She says, “I choose it for myself every day. And I suspect that you do, too. I could lend you some books.”

We are looking out her window toward downtown. Below, Mrs. Loman is patting an even older man on the shoulder as he sets off, shuffling, across the parking lot with his bag of food.

I say, “Yeah, books would be good.”

I am repairing the world, one grocery bag at a time.

And I haven’t told a lie in three weeks. That’s kind of good, right?

The compass says,
Three weeks. World’s record. You are so not out of the woods.

It’s a depressing thought, but does anyone ever get out of the woods? Was there supposed to be a moment of blinding clarity when the path through the thicket appeared, brightly illuminated, and Good, Bad, and Morally Neutral all sorted themselves out, slightly messy but completely unambiguous, like egg yolk and egg white and shell?

If so, I missed it.

So here I sit, deciding for myself. Emma the Tentative. Emma the Previously Unfamiliar with the Truth. Emma Who is Not Fabienne, Emma the Good Enough.

Megan says I’m inspirational.

Joe walked up to her front door and knocked and Megan announced she was going out to dinner and a movie, and drove off in Joe’s car to the Arclight, where they shared a giant Coca-Cola
and a vat of highly salted popcorn. Her parents stood there in the front hall in Los Feliz with their mouths hanging open. No one died.

It is difficult for me to extract even the smallest shred of inspiration from what I did.

I celebrated the High Holy Days in September. I dragged my dad to Beth Torah, which was weird. I fasted on Yom Kippur, which, if you’ve never been there, is a total bloodbath of everybody confessing an extensive list of sins in alphabetical order, forgiving other people, and asking God for forgiveness for nine hours straight. And here we are, three weeks later, and I still feel about as morally fit as roadkill.

The moral compass has been shrieking,
Honesty is the best policy! Nothing good happens on the Strip after midnight! Do not unhook your bra in the presence of others!
for years. And did I listen?

I try a do-it-yourself making-amends thing.

I tell Miss Roy I wasn’t sick a single time I told her I was sick and signed myself out, and she gives me a week of detention.

I tell Dylan the gruesome details of the Afterparty list and watch him cringe for forty-five minutes.

I tell Kimmy how I rode Loogs in the middle of the night, and he’s really a nice horse, and I’m sorry, and she says, “I know, but don’t tell Chelsea, or she’ll probably kill you.”

I feel somehow a lot more secure about my ability to cope if people try to kill me. I am still not that good at coping when they leave.

I miss Siobhan. This is no doubt sick, but I do.

As for Dylan, he insists he hasn’t left me. Generally, he is sitting across from me at the Griddle when he says this, wearing a Georgetown T-shirt. I am cutting twelfth-grade assembly and watching him eat a syrupy stack of red velvet pancakes, which apparently do not exist—at least not really good ones—in Washington, D.C., or the entire state of Maryland. He is reduced to IHOP back there.

He says, “Seed. We’re here. I miss you. Nothing has changed.”

I say, “Note the T-shirt.”

But when we are leaning against each other, walking around the corner at Sunset and Fairfax, back to our two cars, me heading to Latimer and him heading home to catch a shuttle to the airport, he says, “You have to have a little faith in people.” He is pushing against me and I push back. “You have to have a little faith in yourself.”

I put my arms around him and I rest my head against his chest. I hear his heart. And I think, Maybe I will.

Maybe I do.

First, thank you to my agent, Brenda Bowen, whose judgment, savvy, and expertise continue to inspire absolute trust, and whose literary sensibility remains awe-inspiring. More than I could have hoped for, and what I hoped for was pretty far over the top.

Huge thanks to
Afterparty
’s two editors—both brilliant, creative, and a joy to work with. Jen Klonsky, who first acquired my novels, is a whirlwind of enthusiasm and a master brainstormer, and I would probably never forgive her for leaving Simon Pulse if I didn’t love her so much. I was terrified at the concept of a new editor, but Patrick Price’s intellect, energy, and humor bowled me over. Patrick, I so value your ideas, your amazing eye for detail, and the way the manuscript has developed with your guidance. Plus it’s really fun to work with you.

Actually, there isn’t one person at Simon Pulse who hasn’t been wonderful. Bethany Buck, many hugs and thank you. Carolyn Swerdloff in marketing has been holding my hand and doing fabulous things above and beyond for the past two years, now with the help of the dynamic and sweet Emma Sector. Mara Anastas has been kind and darling. Paul Crichton is a truly generous magician, and Lydia Finn the most amazingly effective, proactive, and genuinely nice person. Jacket designer Jessica Handelman is inspired (and also prescient). Michelle Fadlalla, Venessa Carson, and Anthony Parisi have done all kinds of beyond great things right from the start. And Mary Marotta and Teresa Brumm, just wow. Both Nicoles, Ellul and Russo, have
been lovely, as has Courtney Sanks, and as for my local rep, Kelly Stidham—I am so lucky. (And, Dawn Ryan, I miss you.)

Many thanks to Professor Amir Hussain and to Rabbi Morley Finestein for sharing your wisdom with so much depth and sensitivity. I am deeply grateful for your help. Thanks also to my dear Mimi Roberts for help on the Montreal front; to Menachem Kaiser for his input on the use of the word “shiksa”; and to super-librarian and horse expert Leslie Chudnoff, who was kind enough not to laugh at me when Loogs acted more like a very large wheaten terrier than a horse. (If I did blow it, the fault is mine, of course, and not that of the experts who tried to save me from myself.)

Thank you, Alethea Allarey, for keeping me electronically connected, technologically semi-competent, and sometimes, also, sane.

To the L.A. branch of the Apocalypsies—thank you for taking me in. The half a clue I finally have, I got from you. And to the LAYAS, you rock. To my critique group, Alexis O’Neal, Caroline Arnold, Gretchen Woelffle, Nina Kidd, and Sherril Kushner for years of support and friendship and wisdom and input: thank you.

To my mom, Lillian Redisch, who is still cheerleading as avidly as when I was a six year old with a black-and-white marbled notebook and a pencil, and to my mother-in-law, Marilyn Stampler, and our dear friend, Jay Markoff, with all my books on permanent display on your coffee table, thanks.

Laura and Michael, you are phenomenally good storytellers in
your own right, and such sage advisers. Thanks. Laura, your notes saved me when I was stuck. I love you both so much. And as for Rick, you read every word of every draft, and offered smart, smart input and endless encouragement. Then there’s your complete willingness to share our house with new crews of characters for years at a time, and act as if it’s normal to have conversations about them as if they were real. I love you. I thank you. I appreciate you.