Afterparty(58)

Me: I told you. I’m working on it.

Dylan is waiting for me outside homeroom, leaning against the building. He hugs me and some male voice behind me goes “Aaaaaawwww” and I don’t even care.

Dylan says, “Have you recovered?”

“From what?”

He says, “Come here. I’ll jog your memory.”

We slide around the corner of the building where we engage in the best of the best of the best kiss.

When we walk into class, Dylan runs a finger between my shoulder blades. His face is cool and blank as always at school, but we might as well just tear off our clothes. That’s how obvious we are.

Siobhan says, “Jesus, Emma. Really?”

Between classes, she links arms with me. “You have to knock it off. Tell Mr. Goo-Goo-Ga-Ga to man up. Five more minutes of this and your whole backstory crumbles. The International Girl of Intrigue wouldn’t be going with a labradoodle.”

“He is not a labradoodle.”

“Maybe you have that effect on men. Reduced to licking, and panting, and wagging their widdle tails.” She starts to make loud slurping sounds, trailing me toward English.

Arif says, “It looks like you’re hungry for Emma’s cardigan.”

Siobhan glares at him but doesn’t stop.

I say, “Stop it. Right. Now.”

“Maybe she’s hungry for Emma,” Chelsea says. Lia giggles into her hands.

Dylan says, “Nice, Chelsea.” He sounds so caustic; if she were anyone else, she’d dissolve on the spot. But she just wriggles her hips into class.

Siobhan says, “Maybe you’re the one who needs to stop it. Maybe you need to put the public fondling on hold before people start strewing your path with barf.”

I grab Siobhan and pull her toward the lockers. I whisper, “But it’s all going according to your plan. What are you doing?”

“This wasn’t my plan.”

I whisper in her ear, “But I did it. Emma the Good is history.”

“You slept with my boyfriend?” she yells. We are visible and audible and no doubt highly entertaining.

“But you told me to!” I’m going for an emphatic whisper.

But she seems to be enjoying the scene she’s creating.

“You slept with my boyfriend! Who are you, my mother?” She has me by the wrist and for a moment I’m outside of myself, as if I’m not even here, as if I don’t feel her nails biting into my skin.

She glares at me, her eyes are slits, but what I notice are the blackened lashes and how tears are balling up in them as if they were Astroturf. She seems to be living in some alternate reality, and I can’t get her back.

“Let go of me. You all but bought me the condoms. Let go.”

“I told you to try out your learner’s permit on his tiny dick. I did not tell you to fall for him. I did not tell you to go all Dylan, I loooooove you, all I can think about is youuuuuuuu. I did not tell you to ignore a text for eighteen hours.”

“Is that what this is about? I didn’t return your text fast enough?”

And there I am, in front of everybody, running after her.

“I’m the one who set you up,” she says. “So you liked him first blah blah but it’s not like you did anything about it. Do you think you’d be with him if not for me?”

“Why are you doing this? I thought you’d be happy for me!”

“You were supposed to be my friend. Only now you’re too busy turning into Stepford Girlfriend, and guess what? It isn’t going to last. He finds out one bad thing about you, and you’re done.”

There it is. The thorn at the center of my beating heart of fear: that he will see me, and he won’t like what he sees.

“I changed my mind,” Siobhan says when I’ve followed her into the ladies’ room. She’s staring into the mirror behind the row of sleek stainless-steel sinks, twirling her bangs. “I made you and I could undo you in three minutes. Two online.”

“This makes no sense. You’re the one who didn’t want to go down with me! You said to keep quiet.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But that’s not why you kept quiet. You kept quiet because he’s a jerk and you’re chicken. And now, chicklet, you’re going down.”

I am thinking little pieces of thoughts: She’d never do this. I’m her only friend. How stupid would it be to wipe out your only friend? Except that Self-Destructive is her middle name. What am I doing with a best friend with Self-Destructive for a middle name?

“Don’t you think someone will remember you’re the one who made me up?”

Siobhan says, “Nope. I mean, Tweet-tweet. Who cares who started it?” She points at me. “Uh-oh. You didn’t tell him anything, did you? You are so screwed.”

I want to rip a sink out of the wall and throw it.

“I could just stop making you up and you’d be over,” she says. “Jesus. You didn’t figure out you have to tell him? Do I have to do everything?”

I have to force myself, my airless lungs and ashy mouth, to look irrationally calm and unrealistically in control of my life.

I say, “Why would you do that? I was doing what you said.”

“Not saying I would. Just saying I could. If I felt like it. You just tell him, then see how in looooove he is.”