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For Tash
1
DAYANA
On the night their parents’ plane did a header into the Caribbean Sea, Josie and Jack Clay threw the biggest blowout River Bank High School had ever seen. Wait. That came out really shitty. It’s not like the twins knew about the crash during the party. Nobody in attendance did, especially not Archie Gallagher and Harrison Rebkin, whose parents were on the same doomed flight. I got my party on the way I always did: alone in my tiny, sweltering room, in front of the computer, stalking them all on social media.
I prepared my usual dinner: one blueberry Greek yogurt, two cans of Rock ’n’ Roar energy drink, unicorn puke in my vape pen, and as many pills as I could swipe from Papi’s stash. With my parents away on vacation, I had my pick of the in-home pharmacy. I lined up the bottles at the edge of my laptop like a tiny audience. Alprazolam, clonazepam, sertraline … the names of at least four different doctors on the labels. My father didn’t move his ass for much those days, but he never missed an opportunity to score from his enabler of the week.
I rattled out a few yellows with a name I recognized from the commercials. You know, the one starring White-Lady-Riding-Bike-with-Cat-in-Basket and Whiter-Dad-Climbing-Tree-with-Adorable-Kids. I swallowed the pills and washed them down with the energy bevs. Now there’s a commercial I could get behind. Brown-Teen-with-Purple-Hair-and-Face-Full-of-Piercings swallows a magic pill and suddenly the world comes to life in vibrant colors. Birds sing and a butterfly lands on her shoulder. Her clothes explode in flowery pinks and ruffles. The rings and studs drop from her ears, nostril, septum, eyebrow, and upper lip. Mami would empty the rest of the bank account for that little miracle. What wouldn’t she give to have her precious little princesa back?
While I waited for Papi’s little helpers to do their thing, I joined Josie Clay’s #epicClayparty #LastPartyBeforeSeniorYear, already in progress. I clicked on a photo of blonde, beautiful Josie and her ginormous shaved-headed brother, Jack, on the porch pre-party. I hit print and watched as it rolled out.
Cyber lurking wasn’t something I was super proud of. It’s just what I did. It had been a hundred years since Josie, Jack, Archie, Harrison, and I were in the same class at Sunny Horizons Preschool. Josie dropped me as her bestie a long time ago. Or maybe I dropped her. Whatever. Things happen. People change. I wasn’t bitter or anything.
If I’m being honest—and why the shit not at this point—I kept watch on a lot of people. Their Snapchats, Instas and finstas. I was pretty much up-to-date on Jack, his whole football team, and the rest of the student council; pretty much all of Josie’s followers. And she had A LOT of followers. All those characters I saw in the hallways. Spray-tanned white girls in miniskirts, making out with their hoodie-wearing boyfriends. I’m not saying I wanted to be part of their group. They were mostly asswaffles anyway. Their music was poser urban electronic techno-crap. They were fake to everyone outside their group and even faker to each other.
But they had drama. Stories. Lately my story was just a lot of me sitting home by myself getting high.
As #epicClayparty #LastPartyBeforeSeniorYear cranked up, Josie and her crew of look-alikes seemed to be spending more time posting pics, showing the world they were having fun rather than actually having fun. All of her new besties must have wanted a selfie with Josie. Josie in her clean white dress, holding a red cup and smiling like she’d just won Miss Teen New Jersey. Cody Salamone wearing a scarf and winter beanie with his board shorts, hugged her from behind. Was he her newest boyfriend? How long would he last? Josie was everywhere, that grin at the center of every post from the party. The smile wasn’t real though. I knew that smile, the one that said “I’m not really here right now.” It never quite reached her eyes.
While their house was under siege, Josie’s ’rents were on their way to the islands with Mami and Papi, Archie’s parents, and Harrison’s mom. They’d become friends when we were all in preschool together. And they were still friends, even if we weren’t. I wondered what would happen in a few days when the Clays got home. Maybe they already knew about Josie and Jack’s party and didn’t care. By the time they returned, the cleaning lady would’ve fixed it all up anyway.
’Course my parents wouldn’t have given two mouse balls if I’d thrown a party, invited the entire high school, and provided free meth at the door. Papi wouldn’t even notice, and Mami would be thrilled that I’d at least done something “normal.” Not that anyone would come to my shindig anyway. And who could blame them for avoiding me? I’d heard the rumors: that I’m a vampire or a Santeria witch or a Santeria vampire-witch. That I eat babies for breakfast. Didn’t matter that I was a vegetarian. Most of the time. Not like anybody would talk to me to find out. Mami would say, “Daya, maybe if you try to look a little less … rough, people might not be so afraid to get close to you.” I was okay with the distance. Really, I was.
I scrolled back through the latest posts in my feed, all filtered to perfection. But to me, the action in the background was the real show. There you got to see people in their natural states, when they didn’t know the camera and I were looking. Frosh chick nervously fixing her lacy bra straps. Hot-shit wrestler gazing longingly at his teammate. I was about to scroll past a picture of a bored-looking Jack Clay when I spotted something really fucking weird over his left shoulder.
I clicked and zoomed in on two sad and lonely figures hovering near the snack table. Archie Gallagher clutched the bulky sketchbook jammed under his arm, his thick-framed glasses so smudged with Doritos dust I could barely see his eyes. I’d say he was the last person I’d ever expect to see at Josie’s party, but he was at best tied with the pale, awkward creature looming above him. As far as I knew, Harrison Rebkin hadn’t been to a party since his eighth birthday was shut down when he had a panic attack at Chuck E. Cheese’s. What in Satan’s name were these two doing there? We were all buds back at Sunny Horizons Preschool, but those days were way gone. Our little group had scattered to the winds years ago. No chance Josie invited those two and not me. Right?
With my brain starting to fuzz around the edges, I closed my eyes and saw myself gliding into the party. Atop the perfectly manicured lawn, the crowd would part for me. I’d feel the beat from the sound system going right through my body. Some of the less douchey guys might even check me out. Josie, in the middle of a conversation with a horde of her followers, would sense me at the door. She’d turn and smile, like no time had passed. Like we were four years old and she was my lifeline in the scary world of the Sunny Horizons Preschool playground.
I. Am. Your. Friend.
Just like she did then, she’d take my hand and lead me inside, where Jack, Archie, and Harrison were waiting. The five of us, the way it used to be back at Sunny H.
I pulled open the fridge. On shelf after shelf were perfectly lined-up containers, each labeled in Mami’s neat lettering. Food from our native Costa Rica right next to our adopted American
“cuisine.” Casado cozying up to pasta with meat sauce and broccoli casserole. I had no desire to touch any of it. I wanted Mami to come home in a few days and see it all still sitting there. Rotting.
I cracked one of Papi’s beers and took a few gulps, leaving the refrigerator door open. Was it possible I could hear the music from the party this far away? I let my head bounce forward and back to the beat I may have only been imagining. What if I did take a stroll over to Chez Clay. You know, for research. I could roll in all coolio, grab myself one of those red cups, and chill in the yard. It’s not like I’d be bothering anyone. I mean, could I possibly be any more toxic than my old amigos Archie and Harrison?
My legs were getting a little rubbery, but I figured I could make the ten-minute walk to Josie’s house if I started now. She would be happy to see me. I was really starting to feel that. Stopping by this party would change things between us. Maybe the pharms were doing a job on me, but I was starting to feel … hopeful? Like senior year could actually be different. Less lonely. Less … tragic. Jack and Josie had thrown a rager and somehow Archie and Harrison showed up. And now I was going, too. It had to mean something.
I stuffed a bottle of Xans into my shoulder bag; you know, for the road. Losing my buzz halfway there would be disastrous. I reached for the door, but before I could open it, two beams of light flooded the kitchen.
Headlights were coming up the driveway. A car door slammed. Then another. Papi’s car? It didn’t make any sense. I looked out to see him trudging up the front steps, Mami tearing after him, screaming in Spanish. I wasn’t completely sure this was really happening. Why would they be here? It felt like they’d left just a few hours ago.
Mami usually tried to keep her English and Spanish separate. But when she was pissed, she was pissed en español and inglés.
Papi kissed me on the head and walked straight for the bathroom. Mami blasted through the front door after him. I wasn’t sure this was actually happening.
“Wait. I don’t … Aren’t you supposed to be in Antigua?” I blurted.
“Anguilla,” Mami snapped. “And no! We are not there because your papi’s passport expired last month. Ask me when he checked. In the airport!”
“You didn’t go?” I tried to shake out my brain. I thought I still heard the beat from Josie’s party.
“¿Estás sorda? Six hours and a half trying to find a way to get on a plane. After what it took us to get into this country, and now we can’t leave? So now Jennifer and the Gallaghers and the Clays are drinking margaritas on the beach while I’m here in this house on this street with this—” She stopped as she noticed the bag slung over my arm. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Oh, this?” I slurred. “There’s this, um, senior year party thing at Josie and Jack’s and weirdly Archie and Harrison are there so it’s kinda like this reunion thing maybe—”
Papi walked out of the bathroom holding several pill vials in his hand. Shit. “Daya, did you take some of Papi’s medicine tonight?”
Mami walked over, pried open my eyes like oysters, and shook my bag. “¿Drogas? You know what they do to you, how they pull the life from you?” She glared at Papi.
“So, can I get rolling to the shindig or what?” I asked.
“No,” snapped Mami. “No party! You will sit here with me and wait until the drugs are gone from your body.”
“What? You have no right to—”
“You could overdose. I will not find you tomorrow morning floating in Richard Clay’s pool.”
Mami’s rant was interrupted by a blast of music from her phone. She put it up to her ear. “¿Hola? Hello?… Yes, this is Vanesa Calderón. No, we did not get on the flight from Newark. We were not permitted to board.” She glared at my father. “Yes, connection to Island Hopper Airlines from St. Martin to Anguilla. With our friends. I booked it through—”
Her voice sounded far away. I leaned against the wall. I was starting to fade, and feeling like I could be sick. I let out a big yawn only a moment before the phone fell out of my mother’s hand and smacked on the cracked, yellowing tile. The rest, I have to admit, is kind of a clusterfuck in my brain.
Mami crying, choking out what the guy said to her on the phone … Completely giving up on English. Papi coming to hug us … I was slipping away and scrambling out of the house … Almost plowing into a neighbor walking her yappy little dog … Running through the dark … Every block looking the same … Cars parked everywhere in the Clays’ neighborhood … Loud hip-hop music … Nobody on the giant front lawn at Josie’s like in my fantasy … Shoving the gate … Opening the door … Everyone looking at me … Thousands of eyes … The followers whispering at me, pointing … Some dick in his varsity jacket grabbing my arm, trying to drag me out …
Josie’s new best friend, all in my face with fake lashes and her nasally voice that goes up at the end of everything she says. “Um, hi? Not trying to be rude? This is Josie and Jack’s private party? You’re not invited? You should probably find somewhere else to be?”
Josie, walking toward the door to investigate the disturbance at her party … Jack right behind her … Harrison and Archie hugging the wall near the stairs … We’re all here, I thought. We’re finally all here … The Sunny Horizons Preschool Class of 2007 …
I was so out of breath and wrecked out of my mind I could barely form a sentence. I braced myself against the wall, hoping just to stay on my feet. A different person might have planned a speech while she was staggering over to Josie’s house. She would’ve had soothing words and a comforting tone. She could’ve eased into it and told them to sit down first. ’Course, a different person wouldn’t have gotten so messed up in the first place. Josie stared blankly as I reached out and touched her face. It was like it took her a few seconds to even recognize me.
“Dayana? What are you doing here?”
The only way to describe what happened next is to say it vomited out of me. “D-dead. I had to come say … the plane … It went down … Nobody made it … They’re all dead … Fuck me, I’m so wasted…”
I don’t know if there’s a right way to tell the four people who used to mean more to you than anyone in the world that their parents died in a plane crash, but I can confirm with absolute fuck-all certainty that there is a wrong way.
2
ARCHIE
I can see the future. That’s what I used to tell people. Also in my wheelhouse: mind control, superspeed, and X-ray vision. Oh, and I was born on another planet to genius scientists killed in an intergalactic civil war. Who wouldn’t want to hang with someone like that? That last part could’ve even been true. It’s not like I ever met my birth parents. And I know one thing: wherever I came from was much different from where I ended up.
In the comics, being different meant you were special, gifted. In real life, different is just different. Being black with white parents doesn’t really get you much, other than a million stares and insulting questions. Still, most of the time, dudes don’t just start out as superheroes. Their powers only come out later, like after some experiment goes wrong or there’s a terrible accident. A terrible accident, yeah.
All I’m saying is maybe there was a reason Jack Clay invited me to his party that night I ran into him at the 7-Eleven. I mean, in the last three years of high school and the previous three years of middle school before that, Jack and Josie had never even added me to one of their massive group chats, much less a guest list. So what inspired Jack to invite me that day if it wasn’t, you know, fate or whatever?
Okay, so I did bust him loading up on red cups, Doritos bags, and other assorted party swag, which means guilt could be in the mix. Plus, he must’ve noticed how the rat-faced clerk was following me up and down the aisle making sure I didn’t steal anything. I wanted to be like, yo, this giant angry bald white dude is a way bigger threat to store security than the black art nerd in the thick glasses. But that’s the way it goes, even in a “progressive” town like River Bank. Different is different.
&nb
sp; I lied again when I said I ran into Jack. More like he ran into me. Through me. I was just sucking down a Slurpee and looking at my sketchbook one second and the next I was counting the lights and covered in orange goo. I scrambled through the book, making sure none of my drawings were wet or smeared.
“Archie,” grunted Jack. “Didn’t see you there.”
When I get nervous I have this habit of talking nonstop. Dad called it Jabber-Jaw. “My bad. I was looking down and I didn’t see you and … It’s hard not to see you. You take up the whole aisle. Practically the whole store. I don’t usually do the orange Slurpee thing, but the Coke one was all watery and I like a thicker consistency. Anyway, I was on my way to see this girl and she asked me to get her one. Okay, that’s a lie. There’s no girl. The orange was for me. But that guy was following me and—”
Jack reached down his paw and yanked me off the ground so hard I was momentarily airborne. “My parents are out of town for a few days,” he said once I’d landed. “Yours too, I guess.”
“Oh yeah. I’m solo, too. Well, not solo. I’ve got Lucas. Little brothers, right? What are you going to do? I didn’t even see my mom and dad when they left for the airport this morning. They let me sleep in. We’re cool like that. Plus, I had nothing to do, so…”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, we’re throwing a party. Jo is. End of summer, beginning of senior year thing. You should come.”
“I should?” My voice cracked with surprise.
He shrugged. “Sunny Horizons forever.”
Did Jack really feel that? Is that why he invited me? Did he really still think about the days when he and Josie and Harrison and Dayana and I were friends? Why would he? He had football and hot girlfriends and scaring ninth graders so much that they memorized his schedule and took elaborately planned detours to class. Of course, I still thought about our little group enough for all of us.
The Year They Fell Page 1