Afterparty(81)

I say, “There was an assembly about it.”

Not that I attended. I snuck into the library because school is like an obstacle course. Siobhan is staring me down. Dylan I’m avoiding. Chelsea is snorting at me. And Arif keeps looking at me as if he pities me.

“Last year, the theme was Pimps and Ho’s!” He is apoplectic.

“Every high school in L.A. has had a Pimps ’n’ Ho’s afterparty. Except maybe Saint Bernadette. This year it’s Beyond the Grave. Do you like that better?”

“You know this how?”

Oh God.

“Common knowledge. Kids in K though 3 know. The secret location is what nobody knows.”

It’s at the Camden Hotel, a less-than-secret location so people can reserve rooms upstairs in advance, creating even more venues for bad behavior.

He makes me sit there while he shares more scraps of Afterparty lore from Miss P. He says, “I hope your friends aren’t planning to do this.”

Not that I have friends at school at the moment, but if I did, they would be planning to do this. Even though anyone caught selling, buying, or stashing tickets on campus is automatically punished in some unspecified way that shows up on your permanent record, everybody has one.

I ask Arif, “Are you going to this thing?”

“My mom tore open Palmer’s letter, and five minutes later, my father was taking me to a Dodger game that night. In San Diego.”

Walking past my locker, Siobhan says, “Just so you know. The limo is full.”

I say, “You knew that was never going to happen. Like I could jump into a limo and ride around town, and my dad would buy that I was studying at your house the night of Afterparty?”

She says, “I thought a lot of things were never going to happen. Like my formerly best friend wasn’t going to mistake me for a burnout.”

“That shit makes twelve-year-olds have heart attacks. I get to be concerned.”

“Your level of ignorance is awesome. Have fun sucking up to your dad while I’m at Afterparty. No all-girl dance at the Camden for you, young lady.”

“I’m going to be there,” I say. “Just really late.”

“Sure you are. Do we even still have pacts? Can I trust you for anything? Can I even count on you to do what you said?”

“I do what I say I’m going to do, Siobhan,” I say, “whether or not we’re BFF’s. So yes.”

God help me, I say yes.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN


THREE HOURS TO AFTERPARTY, AND my dad wants to play Scrabble. I think about hypnotists in old black-and-white movies who go, You are getting sleeeepy, very, very sleeeeeeeeeepy. As my dad keeps making word after word, I admire those hypnotists’ skills.

But eventually he yawns and I pad down the hall to my room in the buttoned-up blouse and prim skirt I’m about to change out of, a girl on the verge of uncorking her own damn magic genie lamp.

Here it is: absolute proof that even without Siobhan coaxing me out of the lamp and into the land of wrong decisions, I am perfectly capable of doing all manner of wrong things all by myself. And I don’t need some lame boyfriend by my side to go for it, either.

Capable of planning, prep, and execution.

I bought the dress on sale at Kitson, a filigreed silver skin with a skirt that flares just a little and stops dead mid-thigh. It isn’t vintage, but I still feel like a slightly glammed-up version of myself in it. The silver sandals were borrowed from Nancy a long time ago, very high, very glittery. I plan to return them, ignoring the drizzle and the mud just outside my window, and how delicate the tiny silver straps are, and how they need to go to the shoe hospital before I hit Sunset.

I have perfect makeup, the kind that shows.

I don’t care if the theme is Beyond the Grave, I’m not going as the Bride of Frankenstein. I bring a bloodred lipstick-liner pencil I can use to draw a couple of drops of blood on my chin if it turns out I’m the only girl there who can’t pass as a nonliving creature. I have a cheap umbrella that I plan to ditch as soon as I arrive. No coat because it doesn’t sound as if the Camden has a coat-check room or a concierge or a high level of sanitation, organization, or safety.

Which is kind of the point.

The taxi driver says, “The Camden?” as if I’m asking to be dropped off at the gates of Hell.

The Camden is built in the style of a make-believe Spanish castle, with giant wrought iron chandeliers, whitewashed walls, and a red tile roof with turrets. It got famous for splashy Hollywood trysts in the twenties and choked-on-barf rock star deaths fifty years later. All these events happened during parties in the dimly lit ballroom, which has balconies and staircases leading to derelict roof gardens, roped off but still in use.

There are celebrity trivia websites that document who blew whom on which Camden balcony. But now the Camden is mostly famous for not checking ID’s all that carefully and letting kids rent suites.

It’s a place where no one’s parents would even dream of going, but not a warehouse in a sketchy part of town where a kid could get mugged between the limo and the front door. And not too particular about hundreds of kids showing up half plowed as long as they can pay for corridors of seedy rococo suites: big musty beds with satin comforters, tufted club chairs missing buttons, and, weirdly, a couple of either feral cats or some guest’s hapless lost pets prowling the corridors.