Afterparty(56)

I say, “Dylan, you don’t know him.”

“A problem easily solved by an introduction. He must have hated your French guy.”

“Why does my dad even have to know? We can meet late. I have a heavily used window.”

“Restaurants,” he says. “Movies. The LA Phil. The Bowl. They tend to be public events. Anything between the hours of eight and midnight. Afterparty. Siobhan said you were hot to go to Afterparty. Crown turd of Latimer shit, but maybe a seed from Saskatoon would find it amusing.”

“Too bad I don’t know anyone from Saskatoon you could go with.”

He ignores this. He says, “Well?”

When how wonderful this is hits me: Candy Land on a stick. “You want to? All that?”

Dylan says, “What I want to do, given that you can distinguish the brass from the strings, is go hear some music. Like normal people.”

“Like normal people with their parents’ season tickets. Have you noticed any normal people doing that around here?”

“I hope they crank up the drawbridge as soon as I leave the state,” Dylan says.

“I’m going to figure this out. You know I want to go, right?”

Dylan repeats, “Prove it.”

? ? ?

My dad says, “You want to study at a boy’s house?”

This was, I swear, not intended to produce cardiac arrest.

“He’s in orchestra. You might have seen him. Kind of geeky. Plays the violin.” (This is an accurate description of several guys in orchestra. Just not Dylan.) “I’d feel a lot better if I knew the family.”

“This isn’t the twentieth century! People don’t look over each other’s families like that anymore. And it’s weirdly creepy if I can’t do homework in Beverly Hills in the middle of the afternoon.”

My dad crosses his arms.

I say, “I guess I could study with Siobhan, but she doesn’t always focus.”

My dad is not immune to the allure of me studying with someone who isn’t Siobhan. “Would you be in his bedroom?”

I sound exactly like the self he wants to think I am, the one that would ask first—not the one that has already been at Dylan’s virtually every day I’m not at the food bank and who knows the code to the gate at the end of his driveway.

“This isn’t a rave in the Mojave Desert!” (True.) “This is homework.” (Partly true.) “And his mom works at home. She designs baby clothes.” (Completely true, not that I’ve ever seen her.) “All right,” he says. “Go be normal. I’m convinced. By all means, let’s avoid weird creepiness.” He throws up his hands, like a person who’s surrendering, but I can tell that it’s all right with him, which is good, given that I’m going to do it anyway.

As it turns out, I’m going to do a whole lot of things anyway.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


Siobhan: After school. My house. Physics. Makes no sense.

Me: Can’t after school. My house after dinner.

Siobhan: I know yr schedule. Yes u can.

Me: Dylan after school. Why not after dinner?

Siobhan: Physics demands screwdrivers. No screwdrivers chez Lazar.

Me: Come on. I’ll get cupcakes at Buttercake. 8:30?

Siobhan: This is shit.

Me: Come on.

Me: Are u still there?

Me: Siobhan?????????????

Me: This is ridiculous.

Me: Oh come on Me: OK bye.

She doesn’t show at school and she doesn’t return texts. And when I’m on a lawn chair behind Dylan’s guesthouse, sipping lemonade, barefoot in the weirdly hot winter afternoon, my left leg making a bridge from my chair to Dylan’s chair, she is not one of my top ten thoughts.

Dylan says, “What did you say to get here?”

“That you’re a eunuch.”

“Slumming with a eunuch? Great.”

“At least eunuchs were musical.”

“They were missing some important parts.”

I gaze back through the acres of backyard. “I don’t know that I’d call this slumming. You might be in the one percent.”

He says, “You know. Siobhan said you wanted to go slumming with a slobby high school boy.”

“She said I wanted to go slumming with you, and you were slobby?”

“Roughly. I’m paraphrasing.”

I put down the lemonade, willing myself to not snort it out through my nose or throw anything. “Why did you even want to be with me?”

He says, “You know I like you. You’re cute when you’re insulting.”

“That’s so insulting!”

“Was I cute?”

Maybe it’s that it’s so hot that roses are screwing up and blooming at the wrong time, and the backyard smells like summer. Or because the sole of my foot is touching his calf. Or because he reaches out, and after all that carrying-on to Siobhan that I want to be swept up in the romance of the moment, I am swept up in the romance of the moment. Or because when I trust that someone actually likes me and is not, in fact, about to slip a rufie into my lemonade, the ice cubes clinking against the inside of the glass sound like bells.

But thirty seconds later, I’m out of the chair and we’ve made it through the French doors, past the kitchen and into the bedroom, and my blouse is unbuttoned.