Afterparty(23)

“Siobhan, are you all right? You might be getting a little bit hyper.”

“I’m psyched! I’m hyper-psyched! Have you got anything to drink? I might need something to calm down.”

“Iced tea. This is Chez Lazar House of Detention, remember? I can’t even have you over.”

“Jailbreak! Say you’ll do it! Say ‘pact’!”

“You dare me to go out this window?”

“I don’t dare you to do anything. A pact is something you want to do. Dares are stupid. Pacts are when you want it and you say ‘Screw it’ and do it. Don’t you want to have fun? We’ll work out all the details later. Say it.”

“Sib—”

“You should be more enthused!” she says. “You’re going to thank me later. This pact could save your life. There you are in college, getting it on with some total loser—”

“There’s something to look forward to.”

“After endless kissing, he whips off his clothes. Just when you’re about to jump into his naked arms, you get a good look at him and you pass out from shock. Oh no! You collapse! You hit your head on the corner of his desk on the way down, and you die a virgin.”

“This keeps getting better and better.”

“Be that way,” Siobhan says, “but you can’t keep up Emma the Good forever. This Afterparty list is the ultimate pact.”

“A pact to drug my dad’s tea?”

“Admit he’s asleep by eleven,” she says. “Picture this: You wait a whole year. You’re seventeen in this exact spot with cobwebs hanging off your body. Nice?”

I can see it. Me turning into Megan Donnelly only without the boyfriend (no tiny image of Joe waving from my iPhone), alone in my room Facebook-stalking Dylan, permanently grounded, playing Angry Birds for an entire year.

“You’re coming with,” Siobhan says. “And soon. This is for your own good.”

“Because my dad will never notice.”

“Out the window, missy,” Siobhan says. “Pact!”

“Sib—”

“Will you freaking say it?”

I’m so wound up, I’m on the verge of saying it, I almost say it, when there’s the horrifying sound of the front door opening.

My dad, having skipped out on his afternoon meeting at Albert Whitbread, no doubt to check up on me, is home. (Not that I get to moan about this in the don’t-you-trust-me vein of moaning, given that, obviously, he can’t.)

Siobhan says, “I was dropping off notes.”

Our sweaters, shoes, books, and remnants of a two-person, two-plate snack are all over my room. By the time she gathers up her stuff and leaves (quickly), my dad is pacing around, all but throwing things.

He says, “I take it being grounded didn’t suit?”

I don’t even know how to answer this. I mean, yes, but what would happen if I said yes. I stare down at my shoeless feet.

He says, “Look up. I cannot believe you’d do this. You were supposed to be home alone. You know that.”

He’s scanning the room as if it were strewn with AK-47s and the spoils of my most recent bank robbery. The Afterparty prep list is wadded up in plain sight in my wastebasket.

I say, “I know this looks bad—”

“Looks bad? How can I hope to keep you safe if I can’t trust you? Help me out here, Ems, because I’m mystified.”

“All right, this is really bad.”

He is so anguished when he looks at me, I want to hit myself on the head with a hammer. I’m back to watching my toes squirm.

He shakes his head. “Give me your phone.”

I feel around in my bag for the phone, terrified he’s going to find a way to read my deleted text messages and trashed email. I hand it over.

“I want your laptop and your iPod and everything that has a battery, a charger, or a plug except a reading lamp. I want your house keys and your keys to my car and the garage opener. And the credit card.”

“Geez, dad, do you want my shoes?”

He says, “Does this amuse you?” Oh God, in French. So I apologize in French, which is a lot more dramatic, involving regret and begging pardon and a certain amount of groveling.

He says, “You’ve become untrustworthy. Crying and apologizing aren’t going to make you trustworthy.”

Then he says something else with the word “disappointed” featured prominently: how disappointed he is, how disappointing I am, how painful and heartbreaking it is when your kid is so disappointing, and what do I have to say for myself?

I shake my head.

He says, “Then you’d better stay out of my sight while I cool down.”

I curl up on the floor of my closet, waiting for some kind of epiphany to propel me to a higher plane of consciousness, or at least for some state of being in which I don’t feel like total crap, but it’s hard to achieve spiritual enlightenment between a pile of unwashed leotards and the hems of vintage skirts.

The moral compass spends a full twelve hours chanting, Shame, shame, shame.

Me: What the hell? My best friend came over when I was grounded. People are rarely guillotined for this.

Compass: Decent human beings are rarely banished to their rooms because their dads can’t bear to look at them. Think about it.