Afterparty(50)

I say, “I’m not proud because he’s not real.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Why are you doing this?” I am determined not to raise my voice, not to shout or grab her. “What am I supposed to say to Dylan?”

“I know!” she says. “Why don’t you tell him you made Jean-Luc up? Now that you have a relationship.”

“Don’t you think I know I have to tell him? But if Jean-Luc becomes prime minister of France over the weekend, it’s going to make it a lot harder.”

“Get real. You’d better not tell him. I’m not going down over this. Just shut your mouth and hurry it up. He looks obsessed.”

“You told him I was in mad love with him! What did you think was going to happen?”

Siobhan shakes her head in a pantomime of disbelief and bug-eyed shock. “You were just supposed to make a check mark with him. I was done with him, and he was the only guy in North America you were willing to make check marks with.”

“That didn’t tell you something?”

It comes out with an edge, the sharp kind of edge that can cut right through your flesh, your friendship, to the breach in your friendship that left you with a somewhat gutted heart.

“Oh shit,” Siobhan says.

At first I think, no way, not going there. But I’ve already said it, I can’t take it back. “Yeah, it was kind of a problem.”

“So the whole time I was hooking up with him, you were hating on me and you didn’t tell me?”

“That’s putting it in the extreme.”

Sort of.

“You have murky depths,” she says.

But I’m thinking, No, it’s more on the clear and predictable, follow-the-arrows-to-the-exit side. That when your best friend is locked in romantic embrace with the man of your dreams, you might reconsider naming your firstborn child after her.

“Did widdle Megan know you hated me?” she asks in a baby voice, pursed lips and poison. “Does she hate me, too? I bet your daddy hated me.”

“Nobody hated you.”

“So nooooobody knew you were upset?”

“He’s a freaking psychiatrist. The man can tell when people are upset.”

“He has no idea when you’re upset! I couldn’t tell and I know you way better than he does.” Her voice is pressured and insistent. “I know you better than anyone, right?”

I say, “Of course you do.”

All I know is that I have to say it or she’ll lose it, and I have to fix it. I don’t even know if it’s true or false or all of the above.

I don’t seem to have fixed it all that well, either. Because when Dylan walks by, looking at me quizzically when he sees I’m standing with her, even though he’s seen me standing with her like this every day since my first day at Latimer, she pushes me toward him, yelling, “Hey, lovebird bitches, why don’t you go share some freaking worms?”

I stumble toward him and he catches me in flight.

Dylan says, “Jesus, Seed, what’s wrong with her?”

I look down, trying to figure out how to summarize the parts of this that don’t include Jean-Luc. Or how much I liked Dylan from way before I knew him well enough to like him that much, and how it killed me that he was with Siobhan. And how Siobhan is massively ticked off that I’m in girlfriend mode and not emotion-free checkmark collection mode.

There’s not a lot left over to tell him.

But when I look up again, he’s smiling at me. And without comment, I watch Siobhan and all that drama slouch away until she’s out of sight.

He says, “You going to History?”

“Can you live without my brilliant notes?”

“Your OCD notes? Maybe this once.” We are walking toward the path leading onto the hill. It is sunny, cold and clear, and you can smell the pine and eucalyptus from the edge of the quad. “Do you have gym shoes?”

Which seems like an odd question, as I kind of thought we were headed onto the hill to make out, as opposed to shooting hoops. But the fact is, I do. In the trunk of my car, with my earthquake preparedness kit full of packets of water-purifying chemicals, nutrition bars, and waterproof matches.

I say, “I’m prepared for everything.”

Everything involves driving west on Sunset and into a neighborhood where houses are far apart and hidden in foliage. At the end of a cul-de-sac, a hiking trail leads back into the hills, a dirt path that widens and narrows through canyons of wild grass and the occasional jolt of wildflowers.

Fifteen minutes up, there’s a clearing with some metal picnic tables and a view straight across to the ocean, turning slate blue as the afternoon darkens.

He says, “Hike much?”

“Franklin Canyon. Hollywood sign. Nothing major.”

We’re sitting on the picnic table closest to the edge, alone except for the occasional hiker with dog, and a woman with a cat on a leash that pauses, snarls at us, and continues up the hill.

“You’ve never been here?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Major make-out spot.”

“If you don’t mind attack cats.”

He says, “After dark, very few attack cats.”

“I take it you’ve been here after dark. Is this an invitation to ask questions, or are you just planning to torture me with curiosity?”