Afterparty(62)

“I just want a Valentine’s Day dress. A perfect red one.”

“Not vintage.”

“Yes, vintage. Like Old Hollywood, maybe?”

“Jesus. I’m coming with, or you’re going to end up looking like a drag queen.”

On Saturday, we head down Melrose and up La Brea.

She says, “If you still think you’re going to Afterparty vintage, think again.”

We’re shopping, we’re having fun, we’re picking out each other’s clothes and making scathing comments about bad dresses that we rifle through. She threatens to shoplift an extremely large bag (but doesn’t) just to freak me out.

I feel as if I’ve got my friend back.

As if.

Now, if I can just hold it together long enough to talk to Dylan about one or two things and he goes, “Meh, that’s not so bad,” everything will be perfect.

Right.

Seventy-three days before Afterparty, and I’m delusional.





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


I TRY TO TELL HIM, I swear I do, but Dylan’s not in one of his better moods.

Aiden is in town for their cousin’s wedding, and Dylan can’t avoid him. This is their first cousin Bess, from Aiden’s class at Latimer, marrying her supervisor from her summer investment banking internship due to the fact that she’s slightly pregnant. Half their class is in L.A. for this, whooping it up all over town.

Dylan offers up tidbits from Kahane familyland. “We had to spend hours at Wilshire Boulevard Temple draped around pillars for the wedding pictures. I had to gaze at Aiden. The photographer demanded gazing. I had to put my arm around my dad and look son-like. I could feel him cringe.”

“It’ll be over soon,” I say, touching his face. “I’ll make you heart-shaped cookies.”

“Thanks. You’re a credit to your—what are seeds?—your phylum? Your genus? Your gender?”

We’re sitting, fully clothed, on his bed, supposedly studying.

I say, “I’m not that much of a credit to anything. Maybe we should talk—”

“No, we should eat. Want to order pizza? My mom has taken to cooking for the Scottish prince. There’s only so much charred sea bass a person can take.”

“Blackened sea bass? Like with a pepper crust?”

“You don’t get large-scale family dysfunction, do you? She burns it, we eat it.”

“Excuse me, I get—”

He pushes me onto the pillow. We don’t study.

? ? ?

After school, Siobhan and I search for antique stockings with seams down the back to go with my (vintage) dress, which turn out to be the Holy Grail of vintage shopping.

Siobhan is texting Strick, who has some form of the flu. “I don’t care if he has to OD on cough syrup. We’re clubbing on Valentine’s. You aren’t the only person with the perfect dress.”

“You didn’t take me shopping for your perfect dress?”

“Nancy,” Siobhan says. “I have to throw her a bone once in a while.”

I wonder if my mom liked vintage. If she would have liked it on me. Or if she would have been so rational about teen girl attire that vintage wouldn’t have had to be my fallback when my dad rejected any garment associated with modern fashion.

Within seconds, I am deep into the realm of Stop It, Stop It, Stop It, with Siobhan snapping her fingers six inches from my face and telling me not to sulk.

“I hate to burst your little bubble,” she says, “but this Valentine’s Day party you’re going to: lame. A bunch of Hollywood burnouts with Botox. Burton got invited.”

“There are going to be kids there.”

“Kids who get dragged there. Do you know how cool the Strip is going to be on Valentine’s Day? Think: Lame. Awesome. Lame. Awesome. Obviously you and the labradoodle should come with us to Awesome.”

“Me and you and Strick and Dylan and three IDs?”

“You could be Birgitta from Malmo. I got her ID in Barbados. And who the hell knows about Strick? I might have to round up Wade.”

“Wade?”

“Or whoever. It’s me. It isn’t going to be a problem,” Siobhan says. “You just don’t want to go with me, do you?”

“It’s not that.”

“It’s completely that. I can read you. You’re going to an octogenarian yawnfest instead of doing something that actually might be fun? And why is that?”

She is looking at me with the angry, hooded eyes of those Australian toads that squirt poison at their enemies.

I say, “I’ll ask Dylan. All right?”

I won’t ask Dylan.

“Cause widdle Emma can’t make up her own mind,” she says. “You should listen to me. You won’t survive five minutes in the real world without me. You’d be f*cked if I didn’t have your back, and you don’t even get it! Go to your lame party! I don’t even care!”

I pull into her driveway and she slams the car door on her way out.

I am in a state of damn-what-just-happened? Because whatever it was, it’s not good.





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR


TWO DAYS AND THEN I hear from her.

Siobhan: You have to get over here.