Afterparty(42)

None of which is actually going to happen unless I somehow get a tool for jimmying odometers.

My dad sits in the passenger seat while I demonstrate how well I can drive back and forth to school. Twice.

On the first day of second semester, I get my car a parking pass. I put it on the windshield, and I have a half hour of pure joy.

Until I see Dylan and it starts again.

He nods at me with perfect neutrality, the kind that makes you wonder if you’re supposed to say hello or just walk by.

I say, “Hey. How was Vail?”

I know how Vail was. Okay, it was like sticking pins in the back of my hand, but when I was in Lac des Sables texting Siobhan in Barbados, I sandwiched in asking how Dylan was. And she texted back: Complain complain complain.

He says, “Not great. Apparently I was so surly to Aiden, the prodigal son went back to college early.”

“Wow. Surliness of biblical proportion. Impressive.”

“Thank you. I aim to impress. Yours?”

“I filled in at the food bank at Beth Torah. I got battered by relatives I’m never going to see again in Canada. Oh! I got a car!”

“Welcome to L.A.” he says “You’ve gotta have a car. Don’t tell me. It’s a fancy French car with bulletproof windows.”

“It’s a fourteen-year-old Volvo.”

Dylan says, “That’s very proletarian of you.”

“I love that car. Don’t dis my car.”

No, no, no. I stop dead in the middle of reaching out to touch his arm. I can’t be reaching out and touching his arm.

I say, “I forgot something in my car, sorry,” and I walk away.

? ? ?

Siobhan says, “You wouldn’t think so to look at him, but Kahane is clingy.”

I don’t want to know, but I so want to know.

“How clingy is he?”

Second day back.

The compass says, This is getting creepy and your motives are highly suspect.

Me: Shut up.

We’re sitting in Siobhan’s Jacuzzi, which has the advantage that if I feel my face turning colors and freezing into a fake, horrified smile, I can slide under the hundred-degree water, simmer, and hide.

“I don’t know what shit his mommy did to him in Vail, but he wants to sit around and do homework together. He wants me to come with when he walks his dog. And it smells.”

I say, “I think that’s normal boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.”

“You think I’m not normal?? How would you know about normal boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, anyway? Let’s think. Oh. From me.”

I regroup quickly. “I think you’re not average. Seriously. Do you?”

“Why’s he even with me if he wants a dog-walking kind of girl? I mean, he totally wants me. So why is he all whining that I’m not walking his dog when I’m Skyping William, which is, news bulletin, a lot more interesting than walking a dog? Why is he all whining that I want to go to a party instead of listening to some sucky Bulgarian string quartet or some band that isn’t even signed yet?”

“What string quartet?”

“Why would that possibly matter? Do I care? That’s the point. I went to Disney Hall how many times last semester? It’s a new year! Could we have some reciprocity and go to a decent club or some kind of a party?”

“I thought the whole essence of his being is, he doesn’t do high school.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a high school party. It could be a college party. It could be any party that isn’t in Mara’s garage.”

I’m really trying hard here. “Maybe you’d like Mara’s garage.”

“I was already friendly to Lia-freaking-Graham and Paulina at the Lakers game. I am not going to torture myself listening to some hideous girl band with people who look down on me and I couldn’t care less about. Not happening.”

Trying, trying, trying. “Maybe they’re good.”

“He says they’re laughably horrible. He says you have to strain to keep a straight face. And he wants to play chess.”

“But you like to play chess.” Chess is the only activity Siobhan cops to liking with Burton. She likes creaming him.

“With a hundred-year-old man who’s too infirm to get out of his chair without hanging onto the armrests. Why are you fighting me on everything I say? Stop criticizing me! There’s nothing wrong with me!” She stretches out so that she’s floating on the surface. “Maybe I’m just not the traditional girlfriend.”

I give up. I slide under the water.

When I have to come up for air, she says, “He’s just going to have to get used to it.”

The jets turn off, and Siohan climbs out of the Jacuzzi to turn them back on. “And he wants to talk about you,” she says.

I say, “Sib! The welcome-back assembly is ending in ten minutes. I can’t miss Physics! Get dressed!”

Because if I said, “Huh?” or “What did he say?” or “Tell me every detail of this conversation immediately so I can I hang on every syllable, inflection, and pause,” I would have to hide underwater so long I might drown.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


I MANAGE TO AVOID DYLAN for the rest of the week. Greatly facilitated by the fact that his New Year’s resolution appears to be never to attend a full day of classes ever again.