Afterparty(32)

“What about Kimmy’s water polo brother? He’s at Stanford, you’d never have to see him again.”

“No!”

“You’re too picky. There has to be someone you could try out your training wheels on.”

And I’m thinking, What the hell. I’ve been mad about him since Day One, and if Siobhan has some sort of mysterious how-to for casting spells on boys, this would be the moment for her to dish up the instructions.

I hold my breath. I say, “Dylan Kahane seems kind of interesting.”

Siobhan frowns. “That’s random.”

“You don’t think he could like me?”This sounds a lot more heartfelt than intended.

Siobhan pantomimes silent screaming. “Kahane thinks he’s above doing high school girls, all right? He’s probably saving it for some artsy college bitch who writes incomprehensible poetry. You should lose it with some willing man-slut so then, when you get it on with a complicated, arrogant * like Kahane, you’ll know how things work.”

All I want in life is five minutes of romance with the complicated, so not arrogant Dylan Kahane. I don’t care how things work.

“And there’s his whole f*cked-up thing with Aiden.”

“Aiden?”

“The creep older brother. You need to pick out someone else.”

I want to know more. I want to ask five hundred questions. I want to shake her and demand to know why this not-uninteresting topic never came up before. Unfortunately, there’s a limit to how crazed and ridiculous I want to look in front of her on the boy front or I would have told her about Dylan way before now. But at first I was afraid that if I revealed the true extent of my geekiness with boys, she’d go find a cooler person to be friends with. And now it’s too late.

“You could have anyone you want,” she says.

Anyone except Dylan.

I say, “Am I missing something? Have you noticed guys following me around?”

“Because you don’t come on to them. You’re gorgeous.”

“Maybe I’m not that gorgeous.”

“You think I’m a gorgeous girl with an ugly-ass best friend to make me look better? And you’re the ugly-ass friend, so even if you put it out there, jerks are going to throw up in trash baskets? Because that’s not what’s going to happen.”

She pushes me toward the round mirror that hangs over her dresser. “Look at you,” she says. She runs her fingertips along my eyebrows, arching them a little. “I don’t see projectile vomit in your future.”

I say, “I’m sure Jean-Luc will be very happy I’m not cheating on him with jerks.”

Siobhan sighs, “I’m so bored. You want to go to Century City?”

No.

I say, “Could we just go shopping? And not mall shopping.”

We head down to Third Street, where I find a cream silk blouse that looks exactly like Ingrid Bergman’s in Casablanca at Party Like It’s 1949, and Siobhan tries on a cigarette girl outfit.

I say, “Does Ian smoke?”

“I am so over him,” Siobhan says. “I’m going out with Wade the Tennis Pro, and there’s nothing Nancy can do about it. Tonight. I told him to come get me and Nancy can just suck it up.”

Given my life experience, the concept of a parent sucking it up doesn’t compute.

And Nancy doesn’t.

When Sib and I get back to her house, Nancy is all but sitting in Wade’s lap on the living room couch, and one of her high heels is dangling from her toe.

Siobhan hurls her shopping bags toward them. Phillip Lim ankle boots fall out of their box and skid across the floor.

“He’s too old for you,” Nancy says in a weirdly level voice as Wade sprints back to his car.

I hear Siobhan screaming, “I can’t believe you!” when I’m upstairs in her room with a pillow on my head. “What kind of excuse is that? You let my boyfriend grope you for my own good? What’s wrong with you!”

“I don’t want to see you with one more boy past high school!” Nancy yells. “I mean it Siobhan! No grown-ups.”

“You’re supposed to be a grown-up?” Siobhan screams. “On what planet do grown-ups do this?”

I don’t hear what Nancy says next, but it involves a lot of shrieking.

“There you have it,” Siobhan says, yanking the pillow off my head. “My mother is officially the world’s richest trailer trash.”

“Sibby, Wade is a jerk! Wade has an old-person fetish. Wade is crap.”

“It’s not Wade,” she says, “it’s her sorry ass. She probably made a video of it for Burton.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You know what? Screw Wade! It’s you and me, babe. We’re spending the entire weekend partying like it’s 1949—you can wear the blouse, just without the top button. We’re going to Missy Roger’s thing on Friday and we’re going to Kimmy’s Saturday, and then we’re going to this thing at Strick’s beach house in Malibu Sunday.”

“Kimmy’s thing is this Saturday? Is there a continuous party over there?”

“Yeah. Late. I could pick you up on Sunset, like at Pink Taco.”

I say, “I can’t do it. I have a dinner with my father on Friday, and Saturday I’m keeping Megan company while the parents go to a fund-raiser.”