Afterparty(5)

“I’ll bet you were,” she says. “Anybody can go as a guest. Barbeque Wednesday is turning into freak night. But who knew Latimer was slumming it too?”

I am standing there, counting the number of maroon balloons floating upward from the WELCOME BACK, LATIMER LIONS! banner. So much for a fresh start with boys in it, and maybe some friends who don’t remember me with knee socks covering unshaved legs through middle school.

A girl behind me says, “Who are you?”

I’m afraid that she’s talking to me, but she’s not.

The girl in the equestrian cat suit doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Here’s a tip,” she says. “This is Latimer Day. You might want to stop interrupting people like you do at Walmart, or wherever you got that cheap barrette. You might want to lose the tacky vintage thrift-store look and get over yourself.” She pats my arm. I want to hit her, but more than that, I want to not cry. “There, there. There’s always Halloween.”

I am not even fully enrolled yet, and it’s starting.

“And here’s a hint for you,” the voice behind me says to Equestrian Girl. “You might want to get some pants that fit so the cellulite in your butt doesn’t show. And you might want to bone up on cheapness, because, guess what, you dress like a hooker with a trust fund.”

The kid behind the counter is frozen in reverential awe and wonder.

The voice behind me asks, “So where’s the transfer photo place?”

I turn around, and there is Siobhan.

Only without the sarong or the bikini top or the necklace with the tiny diamonds. Without her index finger hooked through the belt loops of a guy’s pants.

She says, “Hey, sister-wife.”

She is blond and slouchy and tapping her foot. The sleeves of her jacket are pushed up almost to her elbows; her hair is coming out of the wood bead bracelet she is using for a rubber band; and her socks are pushed down to the rim of high-top sneakers that are not, strictly speaking, part of the uniform.

She doesn’t look messy; she looks perfect.

I wait for her to slink away in search of someone cooler, but she doesn’t. She stares down at my feet, in pointy black Mary Janes from the fifties and frilly white anklets that are, in fact, part of the uniform if you’re in K through 3.

I say, “Listen, at the beach, if that was your boyfriend—”

“Not. At this very moment”—she looks at her watch, which is wafer-thin and stainless steel and Swiss—“he’s probably playing two or three other girls in college somewhere. His loss.”

It feels more like my loss. I have been waiting for him to come jogging up from the gym in that old T-shirt, or brush against my entirely synthetic navy sweater in the hall.

I say, “Admit he was a really good kisser.”

“Ooooh yeah.”

We head into the exceptionally green quad that smells like freshly cut grass. We have linked arms. People heading in the opposite direction have to go around us.

“Thank God, another human,” she says, pressing her arm against my arm. “All the clone girls here have fruit-scent lip gloss and headbands. Jesus. It looks like they all just sucked on the same lollipop.”

“Headbands?”

“Exactly. Where were you when school started? I was in Africa. You’re not from here, right?”

As it turns out, she was in Africa because her mother, Nancy, and Nancy’s flavor-of-the-month husband, Burton Pratt, were carting Sibhoan around Zimbabwe on an arguably educational safari, and her mom doesn’t believe that school should interfere with pretty much anything.

“I’m from Montreal,” I say. “Kind of. I haven’t been there since I was five.”

“J’adore Montreal! You speak French, right?” We walk past the administration building, where we’re supposed to be, toward a wooden bench that backs onto a hedge of red hibiscus. “I hate it here,” she says. “I just got used to some crap school in New York and now my mom’s squeeze wants to be in Hollywood and I have to go to school with nasty clones in headbands.”

“He’s an actor?”

“He’s too old to be anything. But my mom used to live here. She says L.A. is boss. Boss. Who even says that?”

So far, this is the main thing we seem to have in common, our parents’ use of outdated vocabulary. That and the ability to speak French. And kiss the same boy.

I say, “I’m not too optimistic about Latimer’s bossness. But my dad says I catastrophize.”

“No way,” she says, tightening her grip. “This place is the cradle of catastrophic boredom. Look around.”

But some of us are not bored.

Some of us are saved from the scourge of catastrophic boredom.

By her.





CHAPTER THREE


THE QUAD EMPTIES SLOWLY. I have never seen so much blondness, or a school with students so unconcerned about getting to class on time.

I say, “Eventually, we’re going to have to do this.” I am likely the world’s expert on knowing what I have to do and doing it.

She says, “Yes, Mommy.” But we don’t get up.

Siobhan tears off a hibiscus flower and lodges it behind her ear, the side of her face shadowed with red petals. Then she takes the barrette, mother-of-pearl, from Montreal, out of my hair. Bangs in a state of droopy tendrils fall over my forehead and ears, leaving the ballerina bun moored at the nape of my neck.