Afterparty(77)

She’s grabbing at me and I’m holding up my arms and she has me.

I can’t twist out of her grasp. When I try to pull away, it just gets tighter. Her mouth is all blurred lipstick and her pupils are so dilated, her irises have almost disappeared.

I say, “Shit, Siobhan, did you do flamethrowers back there?”

“Who told you I do flamethrowers?” she screams, her face six inches from my face.

“How high are you right now?”

“Flames don’t last that long,” she says. “Because. If they did. I wouldn’t feel like this. And I’m not the one obsessed with heroin, grasshopper, you are.”

Then she curls up in a ball, and she closes her eyes, and I can tell from her breathing that she’s asleep.

? ? ?

At school, on Monday, Dylan says, “Look what I brought you.”

Two slightly melted chunks of chocolate swan wing, which he procedes to feed me during break.

He says, “Does this satisfy your lust for sappiness, Seed?”

Arif says, “Do you two want privacy?” Only he says it with a soft i, and it sounds British and adorable.

“I’ll just drag her into the bushes for that,” Dylan says.

Arif slaps his hand to his forehead. “If you don’t stop trying to impress her with your feeble attempts at humor, she’s going to race back to her ex.”

“Thank you for not telling him about my so-called ex,” I say to Dylan when we’re walking to class, his hand at my waist, which Latimer has now banned as inappropriate intimate contact. We are no-public-displays-of-physical-affection-and-joy violators.

Dylan says, “Once again, reminding you that I’m not Aiden.”

“You are the model boyfriend.”

Dylan puts his hands to his throat and demonstrates strangling himself.

He does, however, spend the next two weeks demonstrating model boyfriend behavior.

I barely miss Siobhan.

Barely.

When I think about her, I am either so sad or so angry or such a confusing combination of sad and angry that I go into Stop It mode. I do a lot of counting.

She seems to get it. There are no texts and no IMs and no tripping me in the hall or hauling me into the bathroom for drama. Or maybe she’s too high to care.

I keep wondering why Nancy or even—half-blind as Siobhan says he is—Burton doesn’t notice. Because Siobhan arrives at Latimer high, and she leaves even higher. At least Marisol is chauffeuring her around.

The hair isn’t perfect, and then, in English, when Ms. Erskine says something typically, monumentally stupid (unless you actually think that Shakespeare was an early feminist and King Lear proves it, which it doesn’t), Siobhan laughs out loud. Very loud. Normally, she distracts herself during moments like this by chipping off her nail polish. I look over, and no nail polish.

She says, “Oh f*ck this,” and she runs out of the room.

I wait maybe three seconds to follow her, but I can’t find her.

? ? ?

Dylan says, “Drop it. She’s not your problem anymore.”

“Dylan, she’s constantly high!”

“Like you never noticed that before? Weren’t you at the same parties?”

I say, “This isn’t parties, this is school.”

He says, “You never noticed at school?”

“I didn’t notice at school because she was straight at school.”

After lunch, French tests get passed back and she’s sitting there with a red D. Which is essentially impossible to get unless you accidentally stumbled into the room when you were trying to find Russian II.

After orchestra practice, when I meet Dylan and Arif in the caf, Arif says, “You should have seen your friend in Econ. Not a pretty sight.”

I say, “What?”

Dylan says, “Her former friend.”

“Oral reports,” Arif says. “Ordinarily she’s a big fan of the free market. Eats socialists for lunch, actually. Today—hard to tell what she was even talking about.”

I remember telling my dad how we were staying up late making suits of armor out of tinfoil for our Joan of Arc oral report, the night we went out riding Loogie and Sir Galahad. Eons ago. A few months ago.

Dylan says, “You can’t fix her. You already tried.”

I say, “Not hard enough. Look at her.”

Dylan intones, “Once again sucked into the vortex of bullshit.”

Arif says, “D.K., get off her back! You know it’s the right thing to do.”

“Do you want to get frog-marched back to Convo, where someone wants to hear you ranting about the right thing to do?” Dylan says.

It’s like hanging out with ten-year-olds. Really smart ones, but still.

I say, “Did anyone ever mention that you guys don’t exactly bring out each other’s mature sides?”

Arif says, “All the time.”

Dylan says, “Never.”

“Prepare to be amazed by my extraordinary maturity come September,” Arif says.

I ask, “Why?”

They both look at me. They both look slightly stricken.

Arif says, “D.K.?” Then he says, “Maybe I’ll go polish my shoes and learn Greek.” Latimer doesn’t have Greek, and he’s wearing Adidas made of shiny cloth and suede. He picks up his backpack and gives Dylan a withering look.