Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

  “You are such a yokel sometimes,” Ashley said, but she was laughing.

  “I’d rather be a yokel than a European who doesn’t use toilet paper,” I said. I reached out and pressed the gold button on it experimentally. The thing made a fssshhhh sound and a stream of water arched out, like a water fountain, and I was done. I doubled over laughing, and that set off Olivia and Ashley, and then all three of us were just cackling like maniacs, like we’d totally lost our minds. For the rest of the day, all either one of them had to do was mouth fssshhhhhhh and I had to excuse myself.

  I was standing by the enormous fruit boat later that afternoon, picking all the strawberries out of the hollowed-out watermelon, when I looked up and suddenly Tulsa was right there beside me. “Hey, Polka Dots,” he said, gesturing to my bathing suit.

  “Um, hey,” I said, feeling embarrassed for some reason. Tulsa had that quality about him—the ability to make you feel lame just for being alive, by virtue of the fact that he was also alive and doing it so much better than everyone else. “What’s up?”

  Tulsa shrugged carelessly. “Having fun?” he asked.

  I swallowed. Be cool, I reminded myself. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s good.”

  “Tell me your name one more time, Polka Dots?”

  “Dana,” I said, swallowing, glancing across the yard to see if anyone was looking. Everybody else was splashing around in the pool. “Dana Cartwright.”

  “Dana Cartwright,” Tulsa repeated thoughtfully. “I’ve heard about you,” he said.

  “About me?” I blinked. “What’d you hear?”

  “That you’re the only one here worth watching.”

  I gaped. “Who said that?”

  Tulsa shrugged again, looking at me over the mouth of his beer bottle. “I have my sources.”

  I wasn’t buying. “You’re thinking of Olivia,” I said, but Tulsa shook his head.

  “I know about Olivia,” he said. “I’m talking about you.” He tipped his beer in my direction just like he had earlier. “Have fun, Polka Dots.”

  “I will,” I managed. “Thanks.”

  Tulsa strolled inside Guy’s house like he owned it. Everybody else was still splashing around in the pool. Trevor grabbed my ankle and tugged on it when I wandered over, making like he was going to pull me into the water and winking when I shrieked in spite of myself.

  “Get in already, Cartwright!” he chided cheerfully. “What are you, too good for such humble accommodations?”

  I snorted. “Better get out of the way,” I warned him, and cannonballed right into the deep end.

  “What’d Tulsa want?” Olivia asked later, once we’d climbed out of the pool and were wrapping Guy’s immaculately white towels around our waists. “I saw you guys talking before.”

  I smiled, scooping my wet hair up into a ponytail; as soon as you got out of the water it was unbearably hot again, like being fired from above in a giant kiln. “Oh, you know. Sweeping me off to his private villa. Making me his trophy bride.”

  Olivia laughed. “Obviously,” she said as we sat down on the low wall that surrounded the pool deck. “Really, though.”

  “He said—” I stopped for a moment, afraid of sounding ridiculous: like I was bragging or, worse, completely deluded. But it was only Olivia, wasn’t it? I could tell Olivia anything. “Don’t laugh, okay? But he told me he heard I’m the one here worth watching.”

  “He did?” Olivia raised her eyebrows, surprise painted all over her face. “Really?”

  “I know,” I said, laughing a little myself. The boys were still horsing around in the pool. “I told him he was probably confusing me with one of you, but—”

  “Was he, like, hitting on you?”

  “What? No,” I said, stung. “I mean—I don’t think so?” I frowned. Had Tulsa been hitting on me and I just hadn’t realized? I thought of what Kristin had said back at the beginning: I figured you must be super hot.

  “Listen.” Olivia grinned at me then, nudged me in the ribs. “If there’s any room at that villa . . .”

  “Of course,” I promised, smiling back at her. “I’ll get you a set of keys.”

  The four of us crowded onto the sofa when we got home that night, eating corn chips from the vending machine and watching one Fresh Prince rerun after another. The faint smell of chlorine hung in the air. “Can I play with your hair?” Kristin asked Ashley, reaching over and tugging on the ends of it to get her attention.

  Ashley rolled her eyes like somebody who got asked this question a lot. “Why?” she asked. “Because—”

  “Here,” Olivia intervened, sliding off the couch and settling on the carpet in front of Kristin. “Play with mine instead.” Then, peering up at her with a crooked smile, “I’m really sorry Tulsa didn’t get the chance to appreciate your wax job.”

  “His loss,” Kristin and I said at exactly the same time, and Kristin grinned.

  We hung out for a while longer, Kristin twisting Olivia’s hair into a complicated-looking braid crown, then turning and offering to do mine. “Sure,” I said, surprised and kind of flattered. “That’d be nice.”

  “Let’s make cookies,” Ashley said when Kristin was finished, tucking the last of the bobby pins into place.

  “I don’t think there’s anything in this whole apartment to make cookies with,” I pointed out. “There’s, like, protein powder and filtered water and that’s it.”

  “We’ll improvise,” Ash decided, which is how we wound up making the world’s most disgusting cookies with flour, Equal, Egg Beaters, and two packs of vending-machine M&M’s. We listened to a TLC CD on Charla’s boom box while they baked, making up a stupid dance to go along with it.

  “Until, like, last year I thought this song was about a guy named Jason Waterfalls,” I admitted, and Ashley laughed so hard she started wheezing and Olivia had to run into the bedroom and grab her inhaler. When Charla opened her bedroom door, I thought she was going to yell at us to pipe down and go to bed, but after watching us for a minute, she stretched her arms a little, like she was warming up. “Can I get in on this?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “You wanna learn this dance?” I asked.

  Charla nodded. “Is that okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, a slow grin spreading over my face. The timer on the oven dinged: the cookies were finished. “Of course.”

  It was fun as hell, being in charge of Charla for a change, turning the tables as she gamely let us boss her through the steps we’d already come up with. “Sharp movements!” I called out in a singsong voice, hands on my hips. “Remember to smile!”

  That stopped her, the dark arches of her eyebrows going up. “I’m sorry,” she said, lips pursed. “Are you impersonating me right now?”

  Ashley snorted; Olivia looked innocently away. “. . . No?” I said, but Charla only laughed.

  “Show me the turn one more time,” she said, and I did.

  It was after two in the morning by the time we called it a night, still giggling. I’d had fun today, I realized—not just with Olivia, but with everyone, Kristin and Ashley included. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be all along. I rinsed out the mixing bowl we’d used for the cookies, changed into my pajamas. I pushed open the bathroom door, and gasped—there was Olivia on the floor in front of the toilet, one hand holding her hair back as she puked.

  “Shit,” I said, taking a step back. “Sorry. Are you sick?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine,” she told me, wiping her mouth.

  I blinked, my sleepy brain slow to put things together. Then it clicked. “Oh, Olivia, no.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said immediately, sitting back against the wall next to the toilet paper holder. Her eyes were watery and bloodshot, her face flushed. “I’m not—stop, it’s not a big deal.”

  “Liv.” I felt my eyes fill with tears—I couldn’t help it. She’d never done this before, that I knew about; I wondered what else I didn’t know. I swallowed, pulled myself together. “Come on.”


  Olivia shook her head again. She looked more like herself now—or rather, she looked like Showbiz Olivia, putting up that cool facade. “It’s really fine. It’s just a one-time thing. I seriously think it’s just nerves or something.”

  I studied her, skeptical. There had been signs she was struggling, I admitted to myself now. The way she’d been picking at her food since we got here. The way her cheekbones had begun to jut. I’d told myself she was just stressed. I’d told myself we all had a lot of adjusting to do. “Are you sure it’s just one time?” I asked. “Like, I didn’t think it worked like that.”

  “Well, I work like that,” she said briskly. Then she softened. “Dana, I’m fine. I promise you this isn’t anything to freak out about. And I’d really appreciate you not telling anybody, okay?”

  Really appreciate? That was a Showbiz Olivia turn of phrase if ever I’d heard one. I hesitated. I wasn’t exactly sure how to play this—I didn’t want to scare her, or make her feel attacked or like I was going to rat on her. But I also wanted to make sure she was okay. It felt like I should be doing more than just making sure Olivia ate her dinner. Like maybe our arrangement wasn’t working after all. “Okay,” I said finally. “But Liv—”

  “You know what I was thinking about at Guy’s today?” Olivia asked me then, leaning her head back against the green-tiled wall. “Mel Dunbar’s birthday party.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, cackling and then clapping a hand over my mouth, not wanting Kristin or Ashley to overhear us. Mel Dunbar had been the most popular girl in our seventh-grade class a hundred years ago. Her thirteenth birthday was a town over at her dad and stepmom’s house, which boasted an aboveground pool that looked constantly on the verge of collapse. I’d been eating my weight in barbecue potato chips when I’d spotted Olivia signaling me wildly from an upstairs window: she’d gotten her period for the first time ever, and neither one of us was prepared. We went on a reconnaissance mission into Mrs. Dunbar’s vanity, where we found no tampons but enough prescription painkillers to take down a large animal. Eventually we’d improvised with a wad of toilet paper, but Olivia was convinced everyone was going to find out, so I created a diversion by falling into the pool and faking a charley horse until her mom could come pick us up. “That was truly my finest best-friend hour, it’s true.” I looked at her now. I wasn’t ready to just let this go. “I wish you’d told me,” I said finally.

  “Dana.” She shrugged, tracing the pattern in the floor tile with one finger. “I’m saying, there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Okay,” I said, not quite believing her. “But, like, if there was. It’s just me. I’m not going to give you a hard time, or judge you, or whatever. I didn’t even know what a bidet was, remember?”

  Olivia laughed at that, looking me in the face for the first time since I’d come in here, and the sound of it was reassuring. “Fsssshhhh,” she said goofily, and after a moment, I laughed, too.

  TWENTY

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I said to Alex on Thursday; we were sprawled on the sofa in the apartment he shared with Trevor, the hum of the air-conditioning and one of my old mixtapes on the boom box, Alex’s mouth pressed warm and wet against the hollow of my throat. “That’s good, that’s good, but I want to talk for a second, though.”

  “You do, huh?” Alex asked, pulling back and smiling, his cheeks flushed pink and the baby hairs around his face frizzing up in the humidity. I could feel his heart tapping eagerly away under my palms. “Whatcha wanna talk about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, leaning back against the arm of the couch. “Anything.” I meant it, too: I wanted to know everything there was to know about him, wanted to hear every single one of his stories and learn all his memories well enough that they became my memories, too, until there’d never been a time when we didn’t know each other.

  “Anything?” Alex asked, making for my neck again.

  I laughed, pushed him gently away. “Anything,” I said, rubbing my thumb over his collarbone, like I was polishing a worry stone. “Or, okay, tell me about your family. Are your brothers singers like you?”

  “Kyle and Eric?” Alex smirked like I’d said something funny. “Nah. They think I’m a total freak. But, you know, a lovable one.”

  “Obviously,” I echoed, smiling at him. “When I was really little I always wanted brothers or sisters. Then I met Olivia, though, and it’s kind of the same.”

  Alex smiled. “You guys are really close, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, crossing my ankles in his lap, shivering as his fingertips brushed gently over my calves. “There are two kinds of friends in life, I figure. There are the ones who you have fun and party with, right? And those friends are great and all. But then there’s the other kind—like, people you can go to the bathroom in front of and who tell you if your shirt is giving you a uniboob, and who have heard your parents fight and don’t care.” And who’ll keep all your secrets, I thought uneasily, remembering the other night.

  Alex tilted his head to the side. “You go to the bathroom in front of Olivia?” he asked.

  I kicked him in the ribs. “You’re missing the point.”

  “I’m not,” Alex promised. “I’m just teasing, I swear. That’s awesome, that you guys have that.”

  I felt a hollow twist in my stomach. I was dying to tell Olivia about Alex. It finally felt like things were back to normal between us, and I hated keeping this huge secret from her. Still, every time I opened my mouth to confess I thought of finding her on the bathroom floor, hunched over the toilet, and just like that I couldn’t make myself do it. I was terrified of hurting her.

  I looked up at Alex. “Anyway, I don’t expect you to get it,” I teased him. “You probably had a zillion best friends growing up. You were probably the most popular person in your grade.”

  Alex scoffed. “I wasn’t the most popular person in my grade,” he protested, but from the way his voice got a little higher I could tell he was lying.

  “You were!” I accused, sitting up straight again.

  “I was not,” Alex said. “Do you not remember that story I told you about singing to myself during math tests?”

  But I wasn’t buying. “Uh-huh. And now you’re the hot singer kid everybody’s obsessed with. I’m dating, like, the Conrad Birdie of Galveston High.”

  “Conrad Birdie didn’t go to their high school,” Alex informed me. “He was the visiting celebrity.”

  “Which you’d know, because you were probably in the revival of Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway or something.” I rolled my eyes, then kissed him to show I was teasing. “What about your parents?” I asked. “What are they like?”

  Alex shrugged. “They’re nice,” he said. “Just regular parents. Kind of worried about me doing all this.”

  “How come?” I asked; then, remembering his dad was a minister: “Like, the sin and degradation of it?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” Alex looked embarrassed. “They’d like you, though.”

  I snorted. “Doubtful.”

  “Why?”

  “Parents never like me,” I explained. “I give off a vibe.”

  “What vibe is that, exactly?” Alex asked, tipping his face close to mine.

  “A shame and degradation vibe,” I shot back.

  Alex leaned back then, frowning, looking me right in the eyes. “Can you do something for me?” he asked. “Can you allow for the possibility that you’re more special than you give yourself credit for?”

  “I like this motivational speech you’re giving me,” I teased. “It’s very charming.”

  “It’s not a motivational speech,” Alex said, sounding hurt. “It’s what I think.” His accent got a little thicker when he was passionate about something, ah instead of I, that Texas lilt. I could tell he was being sincere, and I felt like a jerk about it. It wasn’t Alex’s fault we came from completely different universes. I could picture him at home with his family, all of them gathered for an after-church meal around a table with a lace clo
th, a golden retriever snoozing in the corner for good measure. For a moment I wondered what would have happened if we’d met back in Jessell, if we’d have had anything to say to each other.

  But we never would have met back in Jessell, I reminded myself. Our paths would never have crossed.

  Alex didn’t seem concerned about that, though. “I am, like, really into you,” he told me urgently. “And it’s not ’cause of how you look, and it’s not ’cause I think I can get something from you. It’s ’cause I’m into you.” He wrinkled up his nose a little, like he was waiting for me to make fun of him. “Is that corny?”

  “Really corny,” I said, and smiled. I kissed him to show I didn’t mind. Still, I couldn’t shake the creeping notion that what Alex and I had was specific to us being here in this place together, that it might not survive a change of time or venue. It made things feel fragile and important. It made me want to hold on tight.

  We stayed on the couch like that for a while, talking and kissing both; it had thunderstormed that afternoon and the sky outside the window still hung dark and heavy, a greenish tinge to the air. On the tape deck, my mix switched over to “Tangerine,” the Led Zeppelin song that was my favorite. “Listen to this,” I told Alex, lacing my fingers through his.

  “Well, Olivia is right about one thing,” he said after a moment, tipping his chin up thoughtfully. “This is, in fact, a sad, clangy, old-man song about a breakup.”

  “I didn’t tell you that so you could use it against me!” I said, swatting him in the bicep. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “Of course I’m on your side,” Alex told me. “Just, maybe, you know, not about this particular wailer.”

  “Jerk,” I said, both of us quiet for a moment as I listened along with him. “I don’t think it’s about a breakup,” I said slowly. “Or maybe it is, but it’s actually about, like, one perfect moment.”

  “One perfect moment, huh?” Alex asked, leaning in to kiss me again, his mouth soft and surprisingly tentative. “I like the sound of that.”

  His warm hands slid up the back of my shirt, and I breathed in, my whole body buzzing like my bones were full of neon. I’d made out with guys before—I’d done more than that—but I’d never really understood what the big deal was, what made people write songs and wage wars and generally act like idiots. I’d seen my mom get bogged down and tangled up by her own emotions, and I’d always sworn I’d never let that happen to me.