Hope and Other Punch Lines(20)
“He’s not interested anymore,” she slurred, her head hanging from the car window to gulp the fresh air like a dog. “I think he’s hooking up with Tash. Who can compete with her? No one, that’s who,” she said, and then she projectile vomited in one surprisingly graceful move. Most of it landed outside. The rest I cleaned with the same Clorox wipes that used to come in handy when I was Cat and Ramona and Kylie’s designated driver last year.
On the way home, I thought a lot about how even Julia, who has mastered the bored tone of the truly confident, who I doubt has ever once thought about how to hold her arms, who even throws up with perfect aim, can look at a girl like Tash and feel intimidated.
As I scroll, I tell myself to stay away from this stuff. My Saturday-morning online ritual of vicarious socializing has turned masochistic, not at all in keeping with my mission this summer. Seeing other people’s manufactured joy in glossy Technicolor, as addictive as that may be, tends to leave me feeling deflated.
It was sitting right here, with this same phone, in this exact same position, that I learned that Cat and I were no longer best friends.
It wasn’t a total surprise. My friends often cut class—they stopped asking me to join in because I always said no—but about halfway through junior year they stopped regularly texting me to meet up later. Because of Instagram, I knew exactly where they were: always some senior guy’s basement, always with their hands wrapped around red Solo cups, always with their eyes pink and their heads resting on the boys’ shoulders like they were something too heavy to carry alone. A burden shared. True, I didn’t love to party—I felt stupid even using that word as a verb instead of a noun—but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to tag along occasionally.
The outgrowing might have been mutual—I was as uninterested in their new activities as they were in the ones we used to do together and I still enjoyed (Netflix binges at Cat’s house, coffee at the Blue Cow Cafe)—but the decision to go our separate ways was not.
Did I do something to upset you? I once texted Cat around Christmastime because I was too scared to ask the question to her face. I waited a full day and a half for a response, the whole time sick to my stomach with worry, and when one finally came, all she said was Nope. Y?
I had wanted her to tell me Of course not. I wanted her to tell me that everything was fine. I wanted her to tell me that she and the girls hadn’t moved on. That’s what best friends are for: to convince you that all of the nastiest voices in your head are wrong.
Later that week, we were all hanging out at Cat’s house, and I was elated to find myself back there, after what seemed to be an inexplicable and long exile. This was about three months after the most recent Where Is Baby Hope Now? article and around the time a newspaper columnist pinned an entire war on me.
“What’s it like to be famous?” Ramona asked me, and I got the feeling she was purposely stirring up trouble. Cat and I rarely talked about the Baby Hope thing—partially because there was nothing to talk about; it had always been what it was—and also because until recently, it was our only disconnect. Her dad died on 9/11. My whole family, me included, lived. In some ways, you might even argue we profited from it, if you considered being recognized or seeing your face on a tote bag a benefit. (I didn’t, of course, but I could see how one would.)
“I’m not famous. Not really,” I said, and Cat shook her head at me, like that was the exact wrong thing to say. Back then, it felt like I was usually saying the exact wrong thing, as if it were an art form I had studied and recently mastered by practice alone.
I thought we had long ago figured out our dynamic. I had assumed that friendship was static, not fluid. Ramona was our leader, Kylie was our echo, and Cat was our soul. Looking back, I’m not sure what my designated role in our foursome was. I was the kidneys, maybe—loyal, a little too practical, a little too earnest. Definitely no need for two of them.
Still, I do know who I used to be to Cat: her other half, her best friend, the one who had been by her side so long our childhood memories were interchangeable.
And then, that Sunday, on a cold spring morning, after I had bought tangerine hair dye thinking that might be the answer, that my hair color would let me leap me over the divide that had sprouted up between me and my friends, I stared at my phone, and there it was, photographic evidence of what I’m sure I knew all along. A shared history doesn’t guarantee a shared future. My best friend was no longer my best friend.
On my screen was picture after picture of a wasted Cat and Ramona and Kylie in various configurations all at Victor Sarmiento’s party.
A happy threesome: big droopy, not even smug smiles, glazed eyes, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, a few taken with hands on hips, lips pursed, another with party-store mustaches on sticks. Cat’s hair was purple, Ramona’s pink, and Kylie aqua. Each picture was designed to scream We. Are. Having. So. Much. Fun. Here. Without. You.
When I had texted Cat earlier to ask what she was doing that night, she had written back: Have to babysit.
A three-word lie.
Cat knew about my secret accounts. They were her idea in the first place, the only way I could participate in any sort of online life without bringing out the trolls and the terrifying 9/11 conspiracy theorists. She was the one who had dubbed me absfabs35, set my location as Dubai, and taken a quick picture of the back of my head and set it as my profile.