The Best Laid Plans(23)

“The part that makes me maddest,” she hisses when we’re out of earshot, “is how Chase and I were both equals in this bullshit. We had sex with each other. Together. But for some reason, I’m a slut. I’m a slut because I’ve had sex one time with one person.” She walks faster, not looking at me.

“You’re not a slut,” I say, because I feel like I need to say something.

“Well, obviously,” she snaps, turning her head to me. “That’s the whole fucking point.”

Andrew’s parents are having a date night in Burlington, so he’s decided to have a guys’ night—something with tacos, because guys seem to have an inexplicable obsession with them. It’s too risky to have a party, so tacos are a safe compromise. Cheese and ground beef aren’t illegal, even if they horrify our vegan parents to their core.

“I’m not coming,” I tell him when he invites me, but we both know I’ll end up there anyway. Still, I tell Andrew I’ll help him shop for supplies, so we find ourselves at Costco, piling gargantuan ingredients into our cart—whale-sized tubs of guacamole and sour cream and a jar of hot sauce that would outlast the apocalypse. The bag of shredded cheese we buy is legitimately bigger than I am. Andrew stands it up next to me to take a picture.

“Why did you invite Ryder?” I ask, jumping onto the front of the cart. I know Andrew hates Ryder as much as I do, and yet he always seems to be everywhere.

“Chase invited him,” Andrew says, pushing me and the bag of cheese down the aisle. “And I can’t just tell Ryder not to show up. Hey, ready for warp speed?” He starts running, pushing the cart faster, building momentum as we go. The aisles at Costco are about the size of city blocks, so there’s plenty of room. As we gain speed, he jumps onto the back. I scream and put a foot down to brake us before we crash into a ceiling-high stack of Chips Ahoy! cookies.

Once we’ve slowed down to a steady roll, I jump off the cart and move around to the back so I’m the one pushing. He jumps off and walks beside me.

“You were downstairs that night, right?” I say as we turn into the refrigerated aisle. We pause in front of the juice.

“What night?”

“My birthday.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“What happened when Danielle and I were still upstairs?” I don’t know why I haven’t thought to ask him before. “How did everybody find out about it? Chase must have said something, right?”

“Somebody could’ve seen Chase and Danielle go into the room together,” he offers.

“But then how did everybody know so fast?”

“Chase isn’t a bad guy,” he says. “If he said something, it was probably because he was excited, not because he was trying to embarrass her.”

I think again of the note Danielle got the other day, someone actually calling her a slut for losing her virginity to a guy she was into. Could Chase have written the note? It doesn’t seem like something he would do. Andrew is right—Chase might be dumb sometimes, but I don’t think he’s the kind of evil to shame a girl he slept with. The note could definitely be from Ryder. But why would Ryder go through the effort of disguising his handwriting if he was going to call her names today in person?

“Ryder called Danielle a slut today,” I tell Andrew. “To her face. How is that okay?”

He stops the cart so fast I bump into it. “It’s not okay. Fucking Ryder.”

“Yeah, but how does he always get away with shit like that?”

“Just wait until next year,” he says. “If someone acts like an asshole in college you can just stop hanging out with them. We just have to get out of high school and it’ll be better.” It’s the mantra we’ve been repeating to ourselves since high school began. I just hope it’s true.

“Hey, Collins, what does this look like to you?” Ryder lifts his taco in my direction.

“It looks like a taco,” I say, sprinkling some cheese onto my own and trying to ignore him. We’re standing at the kitchen counter, the spread of toppings laid out in front of us in various containers. Andrew is on the stool next to me, and Chase is across the counter with Edwin Chang and Ryder’s sidekick, Simon Terst, who might be even worse because he actually looks up to Ryder like he’s some kind of hero.

“Exactly,” Ryder says. “A taco. A muffin. A tuna sandwich.” He waggles his brows. “Get it?”

“No,” I say, my voice flat and sarcastic. “Explain it to me.”

Ryder tilts his head to the side, a smile frozen on his face, and I can see the cogs turning behind his eyes as he tries to figure out if I’m serious.

“She’s got it,” Andrew says.

“Hey, Terst.” Ryder ignores Andrew and turns toward Simon, holding his taco up to Simon’s nose. “Bet you’ve never been this close to a taco. How’s it smell?”

“Fuck you.” Simon swats Ryder’s hand away. “My life is an all-you-can-eat taco buffet.”

Ryder starts laughing at this, and not in the nice way. Simon is small and twitchy and is almost blind without his wire-rimmed glasses. Danielle started referring to him as the Rabbit back in sixth grade, and the nickname kinda stuck.

“Sure, man,” Chase says. “You’re drowning in tacos.”