Afterparty(29)

Siobhan, so quickly that I almost miss it, whispers, “Watch this.” Then she puts her hands on his butt and draws him toward her. If Siobhan had a list, Ian Heath would be a straight shot to all the check marks a person could possibly need.

I stand there behind her, half hidden. I don’t know where to look or what to say when he kisses her, partly a hello kiss, partly something else.

I grab what looks to be a tiny éclair and stuff it into my mouth.

Across the pool, Sam Sherman is talking with Mara, whose hair is now electric blue. She can carry on normal conversation with a guy in party world—even if Sam is wearing a school hoodie, drinking beer out of a can, and looks as if he wandered into the wrong event.

I scoop more éclairs onto my napkin.

Everyone is here. Arif is here, eating skewered fruit. I grab a bottle of microbrewery beer out of a tub of ice and drink it very, very quickly.

I say, “Hey, Arif.”

“Hey.”

I say, “So you know Strick? Who is he, by the way?”

“Over there,” Arif says. “Aspiring biker.”

There is actually a kid with a pack of cigarettes tucked into the short sleeve of his T-shirt, with hair combed back like classic James Dean.

I say, “Holy shit.”

Arif says, “You drink. You swear. You attend dreadful birthday parties. Your prognosis for fitting in just improved astronomically.”

We stand there, watching Sam try to drag Mara in the direction of the food and abandon her in favor of eating his way across the table toward goblets filled with what might be chili.

“Bar mitzvah redux,” Sam says. “All we need is DJ Jim and his seizure lights.”

I ask Arif, “So where’s your boy?” Because here I am in Nancy’s pale pink dress and earrings that twine through my earlobes like gold ropes.

“Dylan only hangs at UCLA,” Sam says. “He’s been otherwise engaged all year.”

“And last year,” Arif says.

“Kahane is a dog,” Mel shouts over the music, loading up on more éclairs.

Lia says, “He’s an aspiring dog. He’s sniffing around after Aiden’s castoffs like a puppy is what I heard.”

Thank you, Lia Graham, for that arresting image. I’m so far gone, the only part of this I care about is that he’s going after somebody who isn’t me.

I go off in search of Siobhan, which is a challenge since more people are pouring in and Security isn’t doing much to stem the tide. There are kids standing up on the living room couches singing something unrelated to the piped-in music.

Siobhan is standing outside a bathroom off the industrial-sized kitchen. She says, “Did you get any check marks? I told you this would be good.”

“I drank, I talked to Sam and Arif, I ate éclairs. I think I can call it a night.”

Siobhan puts one finger on her chin. “Let me think. No. Drinking doesn’t even count. You already drink. Come on. I’m getting you a giant check mark.”

She pounds on the bathroom door with both hands.

She yells, “Come on! Share!”

The door opens. Two guys, one fiddling with white powder on the counter, the other snorting cocaine off the stainless steel soap dish.

I slam the door closed.

“What’s wrong with you! I’d have a mother if not for this shit!” I’m screaming at her over the music, holding the door closed until she pulls my hands off the doorknob and I turn around, running, and she follows me down the hall.

“Stop yelling!” she says. “You’re going a little crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!”

She pulls me into a vacant room lined with books, a tiny office, and she locks the door. She says, “Breathe! You’re flipping out.”

We sit on a love seat between bookshelves. She slips a party napkin out from under a drink on the desk and hands the napkin to me.

She says, “Here’s how it works. There’s drinking and there’s alcoholics. Not the same. Are you listening? And there’s heroin and everything else. Heroin is here, with maybe that synthetic shit you get at gas stations that kills you.” She waves her right arm, her hand cupped, her fingers curved upward, apparently to demonstrate the exact location of the heroin and the deadly gas station synthetic. “Coke and everything else is there.” There being her similarly cupped left hand. “Just because somebody likes to get amped occasionally—occasionally—doesn’t make her a burnout with holes in her septum.”

I say, “Shut up.”

“You should listen to me! I know what I’m talking about. That Just Say No assembly? Bullshit. That would make milk a gateway drug to crack.”

“That’s not that reassuring.”

She stands up and pulls on my wrists. “Get up. I shouldn’t have left you alone for so long. We’re going back out there and get you some check marks.”

This party is so overflowing with kids in various states of impairment, they don’t even notice someone being dragged toward the yard crying. Except for Chelsea, who says, “What’s the matter? Is baby all upset that everybody else has a boyfriend and everybody else is having a good time and everybody else gets it?”

Siobhan says, “Shut the f*ck up, Chelsea. How would you even know if Emma has a boyfriend? She has a boyfriend. A very serious boyfriend. She’s crying because watching all these immature bimbos grind makes her miss the real thing.”