Afterparty(28)

Three of us laugh. Siobhan walks away.

“Why do you even talk to them?” she says when I catch up to her. “One more person messes with me about that freaking party, as if I couldn’t tell it was a loser party—”

“They were trying to be helpful.”

“You think that was helpful?? And Chelsea sneering at me was helpful?? Because, surprise, it wasn’t helpful. When we hit Mulholland on Saturday, we’ll see who’s helpful.”

Megan: Roy Warner is famous. Girls at St. Bernadette know who he is. Guinness World Record for weed consumption. Joe says avoid him.

Me: Now you tell me.

Megan: Where’s the next one?

Me: I can’t believe you’re encouraging me.

Megan: Sacrificing you on the altar of vicarious thrills.

Me: Someplace more glam. Now that I survived my starter party.

*

My dad, not incomprehensibly, is reluctant to let me out of his sight. But it’s been two weeks, and it’s Saturday, and he’s not immune to the allure of the girly. He knows I want it, and he knows he can’t exactly share a girly salon moment with me. So Nancy offering to take Siobhan and me to Beverly Hills for manicures seals the deal.

“Just no zebra stripes,” he says after I more or less beg to go.

“Leopard spots with rhinestones on the cuticles.”

“Nothing that glows in the dark.”

“Dad! You’re taking all the fun out of it!”

“I’m very unhappy with you, Ems,” he says. “You might have to go with that clear pink one.”

“No! You wouldn’t make me do that, right?”

“Never. Go have a nice time.”

“And I swear you won’t hate it. Too much.”

He smiles and pats my shoulder on my way out the door. “And Marisol is chaperoning later?”

“She’s going to tuck us into bed.”

? ? ?

Clearish pink nail polish isn’t even on the table. Literally.

Nancy—who’s in on the pink-streaked hair and the party where I plan to wear it—is well known at Lumiere, where we take our scraggly fingernails. She has a long, serious talk with her manicure artist about which of their more glittery colors my nails ought to be. We go for something called Bold Aqua Ice.

I start counting the bottles of polish that contain blue, or contain sparkles, or are some variant of Day-Glo whenever the subject of deceit comes roaring back into my head.

Siobhan picks silver. Nancy says, “I know better than to tell you what to do.”

Siobhan says, “You’ve got that right.”

I find myself wondering if Fabienne and I would be getting manicures together, if she’d be weighing in on my nail color.

Then I go: Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. Until I stop it. Because maybe some people can do that and just keep having a normal day, but I’m not one of them. I’m not even close to being one of them.

“Are you listening to me?” Siobhan asks in a voice suggesting that she’s on the verge of snapping fingers in my face.

I say, “Sorry, I’m obsessing about nail color. Nancy was right, right?”

“Like if she told you to get some crap color, I wouldn’t say anything? Em? You look like you’re going to cry. You must really hate aqua. Come on, what?”

“All right, I was thinking about my mom. You and Nancy . . .”

Siobhan puts her arms around me. “That sucks.”

When our nails dry, we walk down Little Santa Monica half draped around each other, eating cupcakes from Sprinkles, while the foot reflexology person at Lumiere goes to town on Nancy.

We spend the rest of the afternoon putting pink streaks in my hair with William watching from Switzerland. His roommate, Gunther, who wakes up and shuffles across the screen in drawstring pajama bottoms, says, “Are those real girls? When does she take the robe off?”

William yells at him in German. I tell him he’s a pig in French.

Siobhan says, “I’m done with you. Ciao, William. Get some sleep.”

William says, “Ciao, Sibi,” and closes his eyes.

Four hours later, we’re ready to go.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


THE HOUSE HAS A DRIVEWAY that plunges off Mulholland, as if in enticement to drive off solid land into the city lights. It requires a leap of faith to cross the threshold. Marisol drops us off at the edge of the precipice, and we walk down toward a sprawling house shining with white light below.

There are kids everywhere, food everywhere, music everywhere, drinks everywhere. I have clicked my heels three times and here we are in Party Oz, not even in the same world as Roy Warner and his slow-motion friends.

“Nice birthday party, right?” Siobhan says.

She takes my hand and we wind through the main hall toward the back of the house, to a deck that surrounds a long, rectangular pool, illuminated through the blue-green water. Where a bunch of guys from Latimer football are decimating a ten-foot table of refreshments. These are guys I talk to every day at lunch, and here we are, and there’s even a food theme (although with classier food), and the only thing I can think of to do is eat.

I can barely make eye contact, or smile, or chew.

Ian Heath, who has a girl I don’t know under his arm, literally drops her as he turns to Siobhan, who’s in a tight green dress that matches her eyes, and he says, “Whoa,” and he touches her hair.