Like a Love Story(75)
That’s how it started with Annabel. I brought her the stuff back, and she thanked me by getting me an Anna Sui choker as a gift. And I was like, how does this girl who wears the most boring clothes I’ve ever seen even know who the fiercest new underground designer is? And how did she pick such a badass choker for me? I think that’s when Annabel told me that she always loved my style, and that she wished she had the confidence to dress like me. I was so confused. I mean, I wished I had her body, and her perfect features, and her ease with the world, her ability to glide instead of stomp. But she was jealous of me? So we became friends. We shop together. We talk boys together. We’ve somehow gotten on the same cycle. We flip through the pages of French, American, Italian, and Japanese fashion magazines together. Sometimes we hang out with Annabel’s other girlfriends—Cindy, Verena, Briana (I know, they sound like supermodels, and they look like ’em too)—but I’ve realized that Annabel’s friendship with these girls is pretty surface. That the person she feels the closest to is me.
Annabel’s having a party, and about twenty seniors are here. The whole penthouse apartment is full of hormonal teenagers, most of them drunk on the fruit punch that Annabel made, then spiked with her parents’ vodka. “It’s top-shelf,” she told me. “So it won’t give you a hangover.” She convinced me to take a sip before the party started, “to loosen up.” The party is fun. That sip of fruit punch did loosen me up. Annabel made a super-fun playlist, and there’s a small dance floor in the kitchen. When Wilson Phillips’s “Hold On” comes on, Annabel and I belt it out together and dance. Our voices sound awful, but it’s so much fun. Then Cindy, Verena, and Briana join us and we’re like a girl group. Everyone watches us and claps when we’re done. Seriously, I don’t know how I got here. I always thought I hated girls, and now I’m group-hugging a bunch of them like they’re my long-lost sisters. The next song that comes on is Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and a group of the guys, including Saadi, decide they’re going to challenge our performance. They line up in a row and sing the lyrics to the song, screaming out all the references to Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe and Roy Cohn and Brigitte Bardot. I have a pang of missing Art. If Art were here, he’d whisper in my ear, “Do you think any of these meatheads even knows who Doris Day is? They probably think that’s just D-Day’s full name or something.” Art’s voice disappears from my head when Annabel whispers in my ear, “These guys are worse than the New Kids on the Block.”
“They certainly do not have the right stuff,” I say, and she laughs. That’s another thing I like about her. She’s generous with her laughter.
“Do you feel the punch?” she asks.
“I mean, a little bit, I think,” I say.
“Come on,” she says. “One more cup.”
“One more sip,” I counter.
“My sister told me that the best thing you can do before college starts is build up a tolerance to booze. Otherwise, you’ll get there and be way behind everyone else.” She scoops some punch into a clear plastic cup and hands it to me. Then she refills her own.
“I guess I was never planning on majoring in alcohol in college,” I say.
“Well, you can minor in it,” she says with a mischievous smile.
I smile as I sip the punch. I don’t know what being drunk feels like, but I’m just a little more vibrant, a little more alive, like I have a light on inside me illuminating me from within. I feel creative, inspired. I wonder whether vodka punch can replace ice cream as my inspiration food of choice, and which one has more calories. “I wish you’d let me make you over,” I tell Annabel. “You would look so fierce in, like, a body-hugging black dress with hot-pink slashes across it.”
She laughs. “I would need, like, five more cups of punch before I’d wear anything like that.”
“It’s not about that,” I say. “You know I heard that Madonna doesn’t even drink or do drugs or anything. And look at what she wears!”
“Judy,” she says, “I hate to break it to you, but I am so not Madonna.”
Almost on cue, “Vogue” comes through the speakers, and everyone just has to dance. I bet Art and Reza love this song. I think back to that drag ball Uncle Stephen took me and Art to ages ago. It all feels so far away. I practically scream all the lyrics out as I dance, and each time Madonna mentions the name of an old movie star, I have a flash of a Sunday movie night with Stephen and Art. I think of all the movies we’ve watched. Uncle Stephen and I still have movie nights, and Jimmy joins us sometimes. But it’s not the same without Art.
When the song ends, Cindy grabs the now-empty bottle of vodka and yells, “HEY, SUCKERS, LET’S PLAY SPIN THE BOTTLE!”
God, no. Please no. This will not end well.
Everyone else seems to love the idea and, in a flash, a bunch of dudes move furniture off the living room rug. A circle forms. Everyone agrees that as the hostess, Annabel should spin the bottle first and then we’ll go clockwise. Of course I sit next to Annabel, counterclockwise, so I’ll be the last to spin that stupid bottle. The game begins. Annabel spins first and it lands on Verena. And to my surprise, they giggle, go to the center of the circle, and kiss each other. What I discover as the game goes on is that girls can kiss boys, and boys can kiss girls, and girls can kiss girls. But boys can’t kiss boys. If a boy spins and it lands on another boy, they laugh, go, “Ewwwwww, gross” for a while, and then spin again. I’m so happy Art isn’t here right now. He’d definitely go into some diatribe about the homophobia of high school party games.