Afterparty(19)

It doesn’t.

My father looks at me with massive, unjustified relief at that one brief, honest syllable.

He says, in a much gentler voice, “Ems, is there anything you’d like to tell me about school? Which is the only place you’re going outside this house, by the way.”

“How long?”

“Until you’re forty. School, Ems. We’re moving into honor-your-father territory here. Now.”

“Please don’t slam me with the Ten Commandments. Please!”

“Now.”

“All right, but it isn’t pretty.”

But who wants to tell her father that she’s outside the mainstream of human interaction except for a scary best friend and a lunch table of boys weirdly attracted to the friend, given that she spends lunch abusing them and eating their chips?

And what would I say about Dylan? How when he says, “So, Emma, did Napoleon win?” as I hand him my notes, I want to fall over, preferably into his arms?

How it takes a great deal of restraint and jamming my fingernails into the palms of my hands to keep myself from pressing my face against his chest?

How Dylan says, “Thanks. You’ve saved me from watching the Battle of Waterloo on the History Channel.”

This is not a conversation my dad would appreciate.

I tell my dad the highly-edited-for-parental-consumption saga of Chelsea Hay.

He looks pained. “Is this Chelsea bullying you?”

I patiently explained this isn’t bullying, this is normal life at Latimer Day.

“High school is a hard time for a lot of kids,” he says.

I patiently explain that it is not a hard time for me because my best friend has my back and if he did anything to separate me from my best friend, I would no doubt curl up in a sad, depressed ball.

? ? ?

In homeroom, Siobhan won’t look at me.

“What?”

She does not look up.

“What?”

“Way to not return my texts last night,” she says.

“I was busy spending three hours getting yelled at and grounded.”

She twists to face me. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t tell your dad we cut out, did you?”

“Of course not! School called him. I thought they weren’t supposed to do that.”

“Shit,” Siobhan says. “What’s the point of being attendance-totally-optional if they call home? Not that Nancy would care.”

“Well, he cared. A lot. I feel like swallowing ground glass.”

Siobhan clamps her hands over her ears. “Like I forced you to cut school and now you want to die a slow death—really? You sat in a hot tub and you didn’t go to Physics. Big f*cking deal. You have no sense of proportion!”

It occurs to me, in what could be a complete making-excuses-and-deluding-myself moment (or could be a breakthrough of reasonable thought), that I might not have that great a sense of proportion.

Siobhan says, “I am so mad at your dad!”

“Keep your voice down.”

Siobhan yells, “Stop screaming at me! I’m not the one who made you want to swallow ground glass! I’m the one who wants you to have fun!”

She storms out of class in the direction of the hill, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket before she’s out of sight.

I start to get up, but I slam into Dylan, standing behind me by Arif’s desk. A full body blow. He catches me as I’m bouncing off him, his hands on the back of my head and on my arm.

I just stand there, blushing, with a bruised head.

Arif, looking distractingly good even to someone who just got hit on the head, says to Dylan, “After you almost run her over, you might want to get her some ice.”

Dylan makes a face at him and takes my arm.

“I’m sorry if I almost ran you over,” he says, when I’m sitting in the deserted cafeteria looking like an idiot (across from the person to whom I least want to look like an idiot) with melting crushed ice, wrapped in napkins, on my forehead.

“It’s possible I almost ran you over.”

“Either way, I won this round,” he says. It almost feels buddy-like. Although buddy-like is so not what I have in mind.

There is a long silence as I try to mop up the rivulets of ice water running down my face. I keep repeating to myself, Do not act embarrassed. It will be so much more embarrassing if he knows you’re embarrassed. Make conversation. Talk.

I say, “I have a question for you. You’ve been at Latimer forever, right?”

“Since I was five. Nothing I can do to get out of it. I spent middle school desecrating the uniform, carried a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black around in my backpack, plus a roach clip instead of a tie tack, and I’m still here.”

Oh.

“How did that work?”

“They kept saying, ‘Mr. Kahane, do you want to attend Latimer?’ I kept saying, ‘No, I don’t.’?” He shrugs, the palms of his hands flipping upward, almost as if he were reaching for me, except he isn’t. “Maybe they kept me here to spite me. That and my brother was Mr. Three Varsity Sports, most valuable *. They were probably hoping I’d develop team spirit and become a slimebag.”

“No sports?”

“Also no slime. And no school spirit.”