Afterparty (18 page)

I fall through the front door of the first open restaurant, a fancy Thai place. The bartender wants my ID. I say I’m waiting for my ride and there’s a weird guy outside. Lie, lie, lie, though no doubt there are weird guys lurking all over outside if you look for them. I call a cab and sit there wishing I were picking up take-out and not in the ridiculous situation of wanting to cheat with
my best friend’s boyfriend while watching her cheat on him with some Penn guy who kissed my neck, too.

And when I sneak home and fall into bed and see my phone lit up and roll over, it’s from Dylan and it says:
Sartre was wrong. They can and we should.

I lie there staring at the message in the dark, and I feel, in equal measure, jubilation and happiness-defying guilt.

Me:
Let’s.

NATURALLY, CHEATING BEING A FASCINATING
topic that captivates the entire population of Latimer and possibly all high schools everywhere, Monday is a fascinating day; Sib and I weren’t the only people we know to attend the blowout, while Dylan was off listening to Bach on some instrument other than what Bach intended with Mara and Sam and an empty seat.

Dylan is walking around his usual opaque self, only somewhat stormier around the edges. Arif looks straight through Siobhan in homeroom, so you have to figure he knows, and if he knows, then Dylan knows too.

“Fun,” Kimmy says, plopping down next to me in English. “A shitstorm.”

I don’t even pretend not to know what she’s talking about. I say, “Please. The guy was trying to chew
my
neck before I pushed him over. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Frank Gart!” she says. “He played soccer with my brother Kirby.” This girl has a never-ending supply of older brothers. “He’s in his fraternity at Penn. He should join Polysubstance Freaks Anonymous and call it a day.”

I say, “He put the moves on me, too, and it’s not like I was asking for it either.”

I’m thinking, There, see how loyal I am? Here I am, lying my head off to defend Siobhan from what appear to be completely true rumors of cheating.

Kimmy says, “Get real. Like anyone thinks you cheat on Jean-Luc? But Frank Gart is Frank Gart, and she’s her.”

“Kimmy, I was there, it never happened.”

“If I ever need an alibi, you’re my girl,” Kimmy says. “But no way were you there during the good parts.”

Not knowing that the only good part of the entire night was me lying in bed with Dylan’s text message.

We should.

At lunch, Siobhan is alone in the middle of the patio, and it’s like she’s Typhoid Mary.

She says, “I’m out of here.”

“Right now?”

“Mental health day.”

All right, I promised my dad, with no crossing of fingers, that I wasn’t going to keep taking off whenever I felt like it. But I look around at all that empty space. I say, “Hey, I’m all for mental health. You want to sign out?”

She says, “I’m just leaving.”

“Wait for me. I’m just going to the office to tell Miss Roy how sick I am.”

When I get back, Siobhan hasn’t moved from the center of the big empty space. We walk to the parking lot. She doesn’t say a word. I drive us over to Doheny and roll down the long driveway, parking under a canopy of trees by the garage, climbing out onto the warm hood of the car.

She says, “What a hypocrite!”

I feel as if I just got sucker-punched. I have to remind myself that she can’t read my text messages. “What?”

“Like he isn’t still texting that Montana bitch?”

“A bitch in Montana?” I don’t actually care. All I care about is that the text bitch isn’t
me
.

“A bitch
named
Montana,” she says. “Aiden’s ex. The one Dylan broke up with just before Kimmy’s party.”

Some days, there’s no news and if someone sends me a video of a dog that nods his head in time to jazz guitar, I watch it sixteen times. And other days, there’s too much news for a person to take in without sawing open the top of her head.

I say, “Dylan just broke up with his brother’s girlfriend?” (Which kind of makes the snide gossip fit together.)

“Before Kimmy’s party. I just
said
. So he gets shitfaced, and he
deigns
to show up somewhere people are having fun—not that
he
has fun, except for being with me.”

I keep nodding my head and trying to look sympathetic.

She says, “That’s it. I’m
so
done with Dylan Kahane. I need somebody cooler and not boring. Wrong brother. Think about it:
Aiden plays soccer at Saint Andrews. Prince William and Kate went to Saint Andrews. Dylan walks his smelly dog around the block in 90210.” She puts her index finger on her chin. “Hmmm. Hard choice.”

I say, “Maybe meet the guy before you get engaged.”

Siobhan says, “I did. I
told
you. Right after Nancy dragged me to L.A. last summer. The guy was everywhere. At Burton’s club; he plays tennis. Buff guy who doesn’t have some kind of a vendetta against team sports. Which, guess what, I play. Fuck Dylan.”

I say, “Even Kimmy says Aiden’s an asshole.”

“Can he help it if he attracts psycho clingers? Dylan scoops up the wreckage. To prove he’s
so
much better than Aiden. Never works out. So who’s the asshole?”

She shakes out her hair behind her, closing her eyes and shuddering a little, as if she’s trying to shed the last vestiges of Dylan.

“God,” she says. “You should see yourself. Like you feel
sorry
for him. I never said he wasn’t surprisingly nice. But you’re the one who liked him. I never even would have touched him if you hadn’t pointed him out. I need someone with more edge.”

It is impossible even to keep nodding my head after she says this.

The thing sandwiched between how nice he is and how he doesn’t have enough edge. The middle thing, the thing at the heart of everything.

She touched him because I pointed him out. Because I’m the one who liked him.

My desire to push her off the car is lost in my desire to go find Dylan.

• • •

But he finds me.

Because, in the realm where two negatives make a positive, where the girl code and common sense and what you expect is going to happen all float off past the horizon in the absence of gravity and reason, Siobhan has gift-wrapped him, tied him with a bow, and delivered him to me.

Dylan:
Hey Juliet.

Me:
Hey Kahane.

Me:
You ok?

Dylan:
I’ve been better

Me:
Sorry.

Dylan:
Not that I don’t enjoy all the updates about where Gart’s dick has been.

Dylan:
Shit

Dylan:
Do I sound surly?

Me:
You sound kind of unhinged.

Dylan:
Also stoned

Dylan:
So baked

Me:
If you’re somewhere with a bed, you should lie down on it.

A half hour later, my phone vibrates: Arif.

No phones at dinner.

I say, “Dad, it’s a kid from Physics. Would you mind?”

He says, “I bow to modern life.”

I run into my bedroom, out of range of the aroma of the flaky pie crust, and cheese, and dishes cooked from scratch without one single compromise to modern life.

“Did D.K. just text you?” Arif says.

In the background, Dylan is shouting, “Hang up the phone!”

This sounds a lot like a rhetorical question, but I say, “Yup.”

Arif sighs. “Did he make a fool of himself?’

“Sorta?”

In the background, Dylan again: “I’m still capable of hearing, asswipe.”

Arif says, “Shut up, D.K.”

I say, “Bye, maybe?”

There’s some sort of a scuffle and Arif says, “Emma. Come back in twenty-four hours. What’s the half-life of weed?”

I say, “Not covered in tenth-grade chemistry. And not a ton of personal experience.”

“Or it could be permanent brain damage,” Arif says.

• • •

It isn’t brain damage.

Three hours later—when I’m lying on my bed, obsessing about what’s going on—he’s back.

Dylan:
So. Apparently I texted in a state of incoherence.

Me:
Not that bad.

Dylan:
Just so you know, not my m.o.

Me:
Just so you know, I heard about you and the comp sci AP exam last yr. Baked and yet a 5.

Dylan:
Just so you know, that was comp sci. I’m not planning to do that for physics.

Dylan:
God my shirt smells like moldy weed

Me:
I hear there’s this thing called the washing machine.

Dylan:
I heard Romeo is old news

What?

Dylan:
Rolled up in a ball in Uganda nursing his wounds.

Me:
?

Dylan:
For once good timing.

What?

Me:
Rumors of Jean-Luc being eaten by leopards are greatly exaggerated.

Dylan:
I heard you left him bleeding in a ditch

Me:
Maybe?

Dylan:
Cutting to the chase. We should talk. You like the Griddle right? Siobhan says you do.

Dylan:
She says you grade men there.

She
grades men there.

Me:
I always enjoy a nice pancake after hacking people up.

Dylan:
So I heard. We should discuss your violent proclivities. Now that we’re in a mutual state of broken up.

Dylan:
Griddle at 7

Me:
Junior assembly vs pancakes?

Dylan:
Say pancakes

Siobhan:
Do it.

Me:
wtf?

Siobhan:
Don’t be a baby.

Me:
What did you just do?

Siobhan:
Whatever do u mean my pretty?

Me:
Do you know what just happened?

Siobhan:
He called me up to rant before his nanny took the phone away. That’s what.

Me:
Not enlightening.

Siobhan:
So I told him you and French face were over. No reason one of us shouldn’t get some use out of him.

Me:
You told him to take me to the Griddle! You told him I went after Jean-Luc with a machete! Does Kahane think I flew to Kampala and cut out the guy’s liver?

Siobhan:
OK Jean-Luc is doing some kind of medical shit in Uganda. And I said if I wasn’t geeky enough for him he should buy you pancakes.

Me:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Siobhan:
He’s just a check mark not a row of exclamations.

It is difficult to hate her for long.

Griddle.

Tomorrow.

Seven.

IT’S 7:05 AND I’M WALKING
toward the griddle. My car is parked in the lot behind Rite Aid on Fairfax, and I’m walking along, sucking on Tic Tacs. I am counting the squares in the sidewalk between the corner and the restaurant. I am attempting to calm down.

Dylan is sitting at an outside table, facing west. I’m walking toward him from behind. I have half a block to change my mind as long as he doesn’t turn around.

Although my mind has been made up since that first minimalist semi-smile.

I get to the table, and I lean down to him because apparently I’m incapable of seeing him without starting a slow descent into his arms. He turns to me, resting his hands on my shoulders. I smell his shampoo. Almonds.

“You came,” he says.

“You wanted me to, right?” In the spirit of not crawling into
his lap and moaning
Take me!
which I’m pretty sure boys don’t find that appealing.

He says, “Friends?”

There is something open-ended and inviting there, in that long, single syllable that suggests
maybe
something more than friends. And I’m thinking, take it. Even if he was your best friend’s boyfriend five minutes ago; even if she tossed him to you four minutes ago; even if he doesn’t know the first true thing about you: Take it.

I say, “Of course, friends.”

“Apologies for yesterday. Making fun of your breakup with that Canadian guy? F in commiseration.”

I say, “French,” completely without thinking. As if my not-thinking default position now is lying. And I think, He is being so nice, he is comforting me for something that never happened. This is bad.

“You’re not heading off to drink poison, are you, Jules?”

I say, “I’m fine! It was nothing.” God, he has no idea how much nothing. “Listen, Dylan—”

A waiter drops a pot of coffee on the table, takes our order, and disappears into the restaurant.

I say, “I’m sorry. This is nine ways complicated. You and Siobhan and the whole thing about the French guy—”

And I swear, I am absolutely on the verge of explaining that Jean-Luc never existed. I am sipping my coffee and trying to pull sentences out of the air that are true that I can nevertheless bear to say out loud to him, when he reaches across the table, and he
puts his index finger to my lips, and he says, “I don’t need explanations. I’ve got a handle on it. I know you don’t ever fool around except when Gart fell in your hair—”

“I did not fool around with Gart!”

He says, “I know. And I know you don’t like high school guys and I know your dad has warden-like tendencies.”

“Siobhan told you all that?”

“You overlook my powers of observation. Emma. I’ve been borrowing your notes and staring at you all year, and you never once gave a sign that you were interested. Everybody knows you go for older guys. And you don’t flirt. Not even close.”

“Maybe I just didn’t flirt with
you
. Given that you were with my
best friend
.”

“No. I’d know. Latimer’s a cesspool of gossip. So unless you’re secretly getting it on with Siobhan, we should probably do this.”