Afterparty(45)

“Oh, damn.” Siobhan wipes beer off her leg, spins around, and heads toward a table dragged out of the house, the mahogany surface wrecked by liquid and cold bottles and a bowl of cracked ice with big silver tongs. There are half-full, giant-sized bags of corn chips and canned bean dip.

I stand there, drinking my drink.

When I look up, Siobhan is kissing the Penn guy. He has her leaned back as if they were dancing the tango, and he’s extricating a rose from her teeth with his tongue, only there’s no rose. Then he tilts her up and she leads him toward the house, toward the back door she came flying out of, flapping her arms.

I call, “Hey, Sib!”

He gnaws at her cheek as if he actually plans to eat her up.

I put my hand on her arm. “Sib, I have a headache and I think we should go home. Come on. I’ll get a cab.”

She says, “You want to go, go,” shaking off my hand.

“Siobhan. Are you sure you want to go inside?”

“There’s a freaking signed informed consent form in my bag, all right? I want to go inside.”

“Come on. Think about it.”

“Who are you, my slut-shaming sidekick? Go be Good Emma somewhere else.” And they stumble off.

I walk up to Larchmont, thinking, Here’s a real good choice, walk around in the dark in the middle of the night in a translucent blouse and slightly teetery knock-off Chanel shoes I can’t run in.

I fall through the front door of the first open restaurant, a fancy Thai place. The bartender wants my ID. I say I’m waiting for my ride and there’s a weird guy outside. Lie, lie, lie, though no doubt there are weird guys lurking all over outside if you look for them. I call a cab and sit there wishing I were picking up take-out and not in the ridiculous situation of wanting to cheat with my best friend’s boyfriend while watching her cheat on him with some Penn guy who kissed my neck, too.

And when I sneak home and fall into bed and see my phone lit up and roll over, it’s from Dylan and it says: Sartre was wrong. They can and we should.

I lie there staring at the message in the dark, and I feel, in equal measure, jubilation and happiness-defying guilt.

Me: Let’s.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


NATURALLY, CHEATING BEING A FASCINATING topic that captivates the entire population of Latimer and possibly all high schools everywhere, Monday is a fascinating day; Sib and I weren’t the only people we know to attend the blowout, while Dylan was off listening to Bach on some instrument other than what Bach intended with Mara and Sam and an empty seat.

Dylan is walking around his usual opaque self, only somewhat stormier around the edges. Arif looks straight through Siobhan in homeroom, so you have to figure he knows, and if he knows, then Dylan knows too.

“Fun,” Kimmy says, plopping down next to me in English. “A shitstorm.”

I don’t even pretend not to know what she’s talking about. I say, “Please. The guy was trying to chew my neck before I pushed him over. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Frank Gart!” she says. “He played soccer with my brother Kirby.” This girl has a never-ending supply of older brothers. “He’s in his fraternity at Penn. He should join Polysubstance Freaks Anonymous and call it a day.”

I say, “He put the moves on me, too, and it’s not like I was asking for it either.”

I’m thinking, There, see how loyal I am? Here I am, lying my head off to defend Siobhan from what appear to be completely true rumors of cheating.

Kimmy says, “Get real. Like anyone thinks you cheat on Jean-Luc? But Frank Gart is Frank Gart, and she’s her.”

“Kimmy, I was there, it never happened.”

“If I ever need an alibi, you’re my girl,” Kimmy says. “But no way were you there during the good parts.”

Not knowing that the only good part of the entire night was me lying in bed with Dylan’s text message.

We should.

At lunch, Siobhan is alone in the middle of the patio, and it’s like she’s Typhoid Mary.

She says, “I’m out of here.”

“Right now?”

“Mental health day.”

All right, I promised my dad, with no crossing of fingers, that I wasn’t going to keep taking off whenever I felt like it. But I look around at all that empty space. I say, “Hey, I’m all for mental health. You want to sign out?”

She says, “I’m just leaving.”

“Wait for me. I’m just going to the office to tell Miss Roy how sick I am.”

When I get back, Siobhan hasn’t moved from the center of the big empty space. We walk to the parking lot. She doesn’t say a word. I drive us over to Doheny and roll down the long driveway, parking under a canopy of trees by the garage, climbing out onto the warm hood of the car.

She says, “What a hypocrite!”

I feel as if I just got sucker-punched. I have to remind myself that she can’t read my text messages. “What?”

“Like he isn’t still texting that Montana bitch?”

“A bitch in Montana?” I don’t actually care. All I care about is that the text bitch isn’t me.

“A bitch named Montana,” she says. “Aiden’s ex. The one Dylan broke up with just before Kimmy’s party.”