Afterparty(33)

“Is your dad, like, dating the Donnellys?” Siobhan is ranging back and forth across her room, swiveling in her desk chair and getting up again. “Can’t you ditch her? Ditch her.”

“We could hang out during the day Saturday, but I can’t get out of any of this. Come on. You know I want to go with you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Siobhan says. “A likely story. And you’re not coming to Malibu Sunday either, and why would that be?”

“Food bank, it’s my first day back. Inventory, and it lasts forever. And I have to do homework sometime.”

Siobhan is out of her chair, yelling. “I can’t believe you! You’d rather count jars of peanut butter than go out with me! I’m supposed to be your best friend and you don’t even care. It was supposed to be a pact. I can’t count on anyone!”

I’m watching to see if she’s joking, but there’s nothing resembling a joke here.

I say, “Sib, I’m sorry. You know you can count on me. I completely love you. But I have to keep my grades up or he’ll brick up my window.”

“Oh,” she says. Not even looking at me. “That’s right. You’re the good one and I’m the wild one. Except that—what was that? Right—you can count on me.”

At school, she will barely look at me, and all weekend, it’s as if she lost her phone, or my number, or any interest in talking to me.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


It’S NOT THAT I DON’T enjoy my weekend, I do, it’s just that with twenty-four weeks to Afterparty—my list composed of low-hanging fruit, ready to fall into my hand if I’d just reach out the window—it’s hard to be locked into good-girl propriety until Monday.

“You don’t think I’m a terrible person, do you?” I say to Megan, when our parents are gone and we’re alone at her dining room table, staring at stacks of college brochures she’s been accumulating since she killed her PSAT.

“Maybe you should check your texts—I was the one egging you on.” Megan sighs the sigh of doomed Rapunzel. “Think about it. I can’t even get that close to Joe at dances. The nuns will break his fingers if he slides them too far down my back.”

I say, “This might be weird, but what do you think about losing your virginity on purpose in advance?”

“In advance of what?”

“Real life. College. Not being the last one standing.”

“You mean like with anyone, just do it? You’re kidding, right?”

“Not a random stranger.”

Megan hands me her laptop. “Show him to me.”

I am so not ready for this.

I click onto Dylan’s Facebook page. His status is: “Not here, in preparation for not being here.”

“That’s a bit cryptic,” Megan says. “He’s not affected, is he?”

Megan starts clicking through his photos. “Are you sure he’s your type?” She keeps scrolling through, clicking, expanding, examining. “I admit he’s smoldering, but who’s that girl falling out of her dress? Is that in London? Wait, is she a hooker?”

“Is this your mother speaking?”

“Just shoot me,” she says absently. “Look at him. How tall is he, anyway? Does he only smile when drunk? He kind of smirks. He doesn’t smirk at you, does he? Is this the stupid one who uses your notes?”

“Megan! I’m not in love with some stupid guy who smirks at me, all right?”

Megan says, “You’re in love with him?”

Oh God.

“You should go for it,” Megan says. “You should go out with this guy.”

“He hasn’t asked me.”

“You should make him ask you.”

“Did you make Joe ask you?”

Megan shakes her head. “I have that so-near-yet-so-far unattainable pure thing going. He’d kill to get within a hundred yards of me.”

“This guy thinks I’m making mad love to an imaginary older guy from Paris. The ship has sailed on the pure thing.”

I sigh.

Megan sighs.

There’s something so lame about the two of us sitting here among the college brochures, having a purely theoretical conversation about boys.

I say, “You should invite Joe over.”

“Now?”

“Why not? I showed you mine, now show me yours.”

“A picture of yours!” Megan says. “Why don’t we ask yours over?”

“Maybe because yours would kill to come over—you just said so—whereas so-called mine doesn’t even kiss me when he has the chance.”

“You need to encourage him more,” Megan says.

I hand her her phone.

? ? ?

Joe, it turns out, is sitting with a bunch of guys, post–basketball game, at the Los Feliz House of Pies. Which is maybe five minutes from Megan’s house. Megan is somewhat terror-stricken, except she can’t stop grinning.

“I’m just born to be wild,” Megan says. “Which in my case has Joe sitting in my living room, eating Rice Krispies Treats. With a chaperone.”

“I could hide in your garage! You could completely be knocked up before Doctor, Doctor, and Doctor get to the dessert course.”