Afterparty(14)

What if everyone knew about me? No palace in Bel Air, no Beemer, no horse, and my mom?

After school, I sit in Siobhan’s screening room, munching a day-old Taco Bell burrito, grateful as hell. She punches the remote and the screen fills with sheets of rain pounding the window of what looks to be a Parisian bedroom.

I say, “Bad French movie?”

She says, “I know. That one from yesterday? I watched the ending last night and they all said haute-pretentious things and then they got shot.”

“Thanks for finishing without me!” I say, not entirely upset that I don’t have to slog through any more haute-pretension. “You want to watch another Bogie and Bacall? Or Roman Holiday or something?”

“You just want to watch that old stuff for the clothes. Let’s get out of here.”

I look at my watch. “Dinner.”

“So what if you walk though the door five minutes late?” she says. “Is he going to scalp you?”

“That would be a yes. We won’t even have time to get dressed, and I’ll have to go home.”

“Come on!” she says. “Let’s play. You know you want to.”

“Why do I want to again?”

Siobhan sighs. “Because when these * boys figure out their dicks mean more to them than what freaking Chelsea thinks, they’re going to want to go out. With us. And when they do, you should know how to talk to a guy without fainting.”

“Sib!”

Two girls are going at it on screen, making alarming noises.

“Don’t be so literal.” She twirls the ends of her bangs. “By ‘dick,’ I don’t mean dick. You know what I mean.”

“The ‘go out’ part? We’ll have to drug my dad first.”

“Jailbreak!” Siobhan says.

I’m kidding, but I can tell she’s not.

She says, “I don’t even feel like playing dress-up. I’m so bored. Let’s just go.”

We leave for Century City dressed as ourselves, following the ritual consumption of champagne with Cheetos. (“It’s champagne,” Siobhan says. “It has an alcohol content of like zero point zero. And”—she holds up a Cheeto—“it’s not like we’re drinking on an empty stomach.”) This puts me, somewhat buzzed, in a well-preserved fifty-year-old swishy skirt and a beaded sweater and pink flats, and Siobhan in a mini and the black camisole and diamonds. We sit at the outside bar drinking tomato juice with celery sticks popping up over the rims of the glasses because, when we go dressed as ourselves, Siobhan’s fake ID is useless.

“Watch this,” she says. “New game. It’s called shock-the-dork.”

She walks over to two middle-aged guys who look a lot more clueless than the ones she usually likes going after. She waves a cigarette at them; they grope for their lighters, matches, whatever it takes to keep her happy. She’s all giggly and girly until one of them offers her another drink and she shrieks, “No! I will not meet you in your hotel room! I’m sixteen years old! What’s wrong with you!”

The men throw money on the bar to pay for their half-drunk drinks and sprint toward the escalator.

Siobhan turns back to where I’m sitting, on the verge of breaking my tomato juice glass with my bare hands by squeezing it so hard. I stare at the place where the two guys turned the corner and disappeared, and there is this moment of intense relief that there’s no sign that they were ever here.

I wonder if the shocked dork was supposed to be them or me.

Siobhan says, “Now I’m not bored. Are you bored?”

I take another sip of the fake Bloody Mary. I say, “I seriously don’t ever want to play this game again.”

Siobhan looks as if she’s going to say something, but then she doesn’t.

I say, “Is there some way you could get me a real one of these?”

Siobhan says, “No, but he could,” and walks off in the direction of a guy in a Cal T-shirt.

? ? ?

My dad says, “You’re late.”

Fourteen minutes late from an afternoon I wish had never happened.

I say, “It won’t happen again.”

My dad looks at me quizzically. This is never good. He says, “Ems, have you been drinking?”

I’m trying to set the table. A wineglass crashes into the salad bowl. The crystal rings for an eternity.

“Of course not!” I swear, all I’m thinking about is the virgin Bloody Mary with the celery stalk—not the champagne and not the real Bloody Mary and not the fact that I’ve been drinking.

My dad crosses his arms across his chest.

I feel my cheeks beginning to go red. “I had a glass of champagne.”

“You’ve taken to drinking and lying to me?” This in French, connoting a meltdown.

“Dad! No! I think of drinking as, you know, a bunch of kids getting smashed. I mean, we have wine at dinner.” I nod toward the uncorked burgundy on the dining room table as deferentially as humanly possible while buzzed and being yelled at. “It was a glass of champagne.”

“Siobhan’s parents served you alcohol?”

“No! We were just”—I grope for something credible and redeeming—“celebrating something.” Something parent-friendly. Something believable that nevertheless didn’t happen. “Siobhan raised her Econ grade to A. Her mom went . . .” I grope for a polite synonym for “apeshit” that isn’t also a synonym for “crazy,” a word he’s sensitive about.