Our Year in Love and Parties

by Karen Hattrup

  Erika placed the wand back on the dresser, then climbed into bed next to Marissa. They lay on their backs and stared at the ceiling while Marissa cried.

  “I forget to take the stupid pills, all the time. What’s wrong with me?”

  “It’s easy to forget. But you might want to listen to my mom’s canned speech about how all college girls should have some kind of long-term birth control. She’s very passionate.”

  “Not necessary. This almost killed me. I’ll get that stupid patch or whatever. Maybe that ring you stick up there—that sounds fun.”

  Marissa was trying to laugh again, and Erika scooted closer to her. The two had met in ninth grade, when Marissa had appeared next to her in the bathroom to ask about her lip gloss, segueing directly into a plan for the two of them to share all their makeup, since they had the same complexion. Erika had been trying to figure out how best to escape from this total weirdo, when Marissa started rambling about how they were probably distantly related, descended from the same Irish peasants. Erika had started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  “Being home again is so bizarre, isn’t it?” Marissa asked. “When do you go back to St. B’s?”

  “Next Saturday.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. I’m headed to Maryland on Tuesday, thank god. Sophomore year, here we come.”

  “Sophomore year, here we come.”

  The words sounded so hollow when Erika repeated them, but she wasn’t sure if Marissa noticed. And why would she? Erika didn’t really complain, since St. B’s was basically fine. There were even things about it that she loved, like her lit classes, the quiet room in the library, the green expanse of the quad. The problem was the rest of it. Everybody mad for drinking and staying out late and hooking up—things she had done plenty of by the time she’d arrived. Things she had expected to throw herself back into without a care, a new start after the senior year of high school from hell. But no. Not quite. Freshman year, come and gone. She hadn’t kissed a soul.

  She’d barely touched another person, come to think of it.

  “Can we talk about the fact that you’re going to be an RA?” Marissa asked. “That’s still blowing my mind.”

  “How many times have I explained it to you? Free room and board.”

  And almost as important: her own suite with a bathroom. Sweet, blessed privacy with no one looking at you like you were a sad, pathetic loner because you didn’t feel like going out.

  Next to her, Marissa sighed. “I need a distraction—like a serious distraction—and there is absolutely nothing going on tonight.”

  Erika’s thumb slipped to her mouth, and she gnawed on the nail.

  “I’ve got something. Maybe.”

  “Bring it.”

  “Ugh, I really don’t know if I want to.”

  “C’mon! You owe me.”

  “I owe you? Am I the one who almost knocked you up? Seems like I’d remember that.”

  “Oh, you’d remember. They always remember. And by they I mean Marco. Since he’s the only one who’s had the pleasure.”

  They were laughing again, and then Erika sighed, covering her face with her hands.

  “The Cave just went out of business. One of my old coworkers texted a bunch of us, inviting us over tonight. For a party or whatever. After hours. Sneak in the back.”

  “I’m sorry—a secret party at the Cave?”

  “I guess.”

  “Booze and Skee-Ball?”

  “Sure?”

  “How did you not tell me this? How did you not invite me yet? Please, please take me to the creepy, abandoned arcade party.”

  Marissa was propped up on her elbow now, batting her eyelashes. Erika gave her a withering look.

  “That might work on Marco, but it doesn’t work on me. Speaking of—I thought you guys agreed that you were officially done? After he visited his grandmother in Colombia for a month and you finally accepted that you are terrible at doing long distance?”

  “I know, I know. Oops? Big-time oops.”

  Marissa was smiling a little, but her eyes were glassy, like maybe she was going to start crying again. Erika felt the creep of guilt coming on. Maybe she should take her out, let her have her fun. Erika should probably try to have a little fun herself, but she just didn’t like parties anymore. The last time she’d really enjoyed a party had been who-knows-how-long-ago.

  Since back before the entire world had seen the video.

  “Okay, maybe we’ll go.”

  Marissa squealed. “Is that funny kid going to be there? The one who used to flirt with you?”

  Oh my god—why does she have such an elephant memory?

  “I guess. He asked who’s bringing the beer. So clearly he’s grown into a total tool.”

  “What’s wrong with beer? I like beer. Tell me his name again.”

  Marissa took out her phone, and Erika rolled her eyes.

  “Tucker. Tucker Campanelli.”

  “That’s right, he did look like a nice little Italian boy. Watch me work. This will take no time at— OH MY. Mr. Campanelli has gotten very yummy.”

  Erika snatched Marissa’s phone from her hand and took in his photo, one of those carefully posed profile pictures that wasn’t supposed to look posed. She groaned and tossed the phone back.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’ve got problems, E. Serious problems. And whoa, hold up. He’s a senior at Gaithersburg? He would totally know our precious, perfect Nina.”

  “Sometimes I think you like Marco’s sister more than you like Marco.”

  “No shit. How about I text her and ask about your little friend?”

  “How about not, or I’ll murder you.”

  Marissa pushed Erika toward the edge of the bed, and Erika clung to the sheets, playacting like it was a disaster and then accidentally falling over for real, taking the comforter and Marissa with her. The two of them were laughing in a heap on the floor, and Erika remembered for a moment what it was like to be stupid and have fun with her friends.

  Erika made her way home at a jog. Saturday afternoon was slowly turning into Saturday night, and there was so much bustle. The overpriced organic grocery store, the new Chick-Fil-A, the third-best Thai place in town—all of their parking lots were packed. Erika wasn’t dying to go back to school, but she supposed she wasn’t dying to stay here either, in this congested little corner of suburbia. What was good about this place except for Marissa and her mom?

  Toward the end of her run, Erika passed the brick behemoth that was her old high school, keeping eyes firmly on the sidewalk as she did.

  She sprinted up the front steps into the townhouse where she grew up, headed into the front hall. Her mom was there wearing her scrubs, her dark hair in a low ponytail, no makeup. Youngish-looking for forty-five, tall and athletic to Erika’s short and athletic. It had been all of two hours since they’d seen each other, but her mom hugged her.

  “You don’t really have to go back to school, do you?”

  “Oh my god, you’re a freak. Unhand me.”

  Her mom kept holding her, rocking her back and forth. “You’re so full of it. You know you love this.”

  Erika wormed away from her, hopping onto the couch and turning on the television, which was set to HGTV, the channel from which it hardly ever moved.

  “Do you need anything before you go back?”

  “Existential fulfillment? Expensive boots?”

  “Ha ha. You’re very cute. Are you going out tonight?”

  “Not sure yet. I’ll text you.”

  Her mom hitched her purse higher on her shoulder, came to stand next to the couch.

  “Are you excited to see your St. B’s friends?”

  Erika had been about to turn the volume up, but now she dropped the remote, fiddling pointlessly with the buttons. Her mom had asked that question casually enough, right? Or was it screaming with subtext that Erika didn’t have any real friends at St. B’s?

  No, there was no way her mom knew. Erika
dropped plenty of names, acted like everything was fine. This was nothing her mom needed to worry about. Not making friends was not a real problem. Having a sex tape on the internet—that was a real problem, and her mom had helped her live through that, so she wasn’t going to bother her with silly bullshit.

  Her mom was still looking at her, though, with that worried little crease in her forehead.

  “I’m super pumped, for sure,” Erika said.

  She turned the volume up too high, watched a guy sledgehammer a wall and then frown at what he found inside. Her mom came and stood in front of the screen.

  “One more thing, and then I’m gone. Don’t you think you should try to see your dad before you go back? You guys had, what, one lunch all summer? You still haven’t met Jennifer.”

  Annoyance flared in Erika’s chest, because that was the last thing she wanted to think about now, and the chances of her making an effort to hang out with the two of them were pretty much nil.

  “His fiancée? Isn’t that the most annoying word in the world?”

  Her mom cocked her head, sighed loudly.

  “Do you think she got knocked up on purpose?” Erika asked.

  “Well, hon, I’m not sure if it matters, since they seem happy. But she is a high school health teacher, so I’m going to guess she knows how all that stuff works.”

  Erika raised her eyebrows very high. “But what if she’s exceptionally bad at her job?”

  Her mom gave her a smile, then finally left. Erika exchanged her remote for her phone and started peeking at the profiles and feeds and pages of everyone who was going tonight, trying to figure out where they were in their lives now, looking for any signs of misery or desperation. Everyone seemed fine, perfectly fine. She searched for Tucker, but his pages were all private. He did have a Facebook account, so she started scrolling through his old profile pictures going back, back, back until he looked like the kid she had known. As she looked at his face, a memory came to her.

  A few weeks after the video got posted, those boys had come into the Cave. Kids from her school. Freshmen, maybe? She’d been at the prize counter with Tucker, debating which character’s death from Harry Potter was the most emotionally devastating, when one of the boys had appeared in front of her and asked if she wanted to suck his dick.

  By then, Erika had gotten very good at not flinching, but words like that had still gotten her every time, shrunk her down to something small and hard. A marble to be flicked around at others’ will.

  “WHAT?” she’d shouted. “I didn’t hear you. Could you repeat yourself and speak up?”

  That sometimes worked like a charm. Sometimes it backfired in the worst way. That day, they’d taken off, and Erika had turned quickly around, almost bumping into Tucker.

  “Hey!” he’d said. “Uh, hey. I was definitely on standby to kick those guys’ asses, but now that seems almost insulting, since you dispatched them so easily.”

  He’d tried to do some kind of martial arts move with his hands, then got a little red in the face.

  “For the record, I barely know anything about . . . you know, whatever. The thing. Tim tried to tell me, but I told him to fuck off.”

  Erika had nodded, staring at the ground. Then she’d reminded him that the candy bins were a mess, and the two of them had set to work organizing them. They’d never spoken about the video again.

  She’d never thought much about that moment, buried as it was by the endless sidelong glances from her classmates, all those jibes from people she thought were her friends, her own dad barely able to look at her. Then there’d been those awful ladies on the PTA taking the issue up like their own personal mantle, organizing that assembly that was supposed to be about the bigger issue, but felt like it was all about her, a whole hour of absolutely absurd advice wrapped in a thick layer of slut-shaming . . .

  As Erika was preparing to drown out those thoughts with an episode of Fixer Upper, a text came in from Marissa.

  Marco’s being ridiculous.

  In Erika’s experience, Marco wasn’t usually the ridiculous one, but her approach to friendship was unconditional and one-sided, so she certainly wasn’t going to point that out.

  Sorry M. You know my offer to be your platonic life partner always stands.

  Marissa responded:

  I love you for that, but what I really want is to go out and have fun tonight.

  Then she sent an avalanche of the please hands.

  Erika sighed. She needed to loosen up, she knew that she did, and could there be any better test run than this? An abandoned-arcade party with her best friend, and possibly being fawned over again by some harmless kid?

  All right, bitch, all right. Put your Skee-Ball pants on.

  3

  Tucker

  “I’m sorry—explain this to me again?”

  “It’s a joke. Because we all hated them.”

  Suzanne appeared almost-but-not-quite amused as she considered the monstrosity of this tie-dyed polo shirt that had “Fun Cave” written on the back in peeling hot-pink letters. It was also ridiculously small now, but that was half the point, half the reason it was so funny, right?

  Tucker still couldn’t believe she’d asked to come, when he’d texted her to explain why he wouldn’t be at Adam’s. He still had no idea what it meant. Was there a chance this whole thing wasn’t over? Part of him hoped that might be true. Another part of him wished she wasn’t here at all, because the whole point of tonight was that he wanted to goof off without having to look over his shoulder and worry what she was thinking.

  They’d just arrived at the employee entrance in the back, and Tucker sent a text to announce their arrival. A minute later the door opened and Mikey was there, a flashlight in one hand and a beer in the other, gesturing wildly for them to hurry inside.

  “Tucker,” he said. “You’re a genius. This is so dope.”

  Tucker was in fact worried that this was not going to be dope at all; he’d become increasingly convinced on the drive over there that he and Suzanne would be stuck in a dirty cavern of unplugged machines, in the company of whoever happened to show up . . .

  But then they walked into the main room, and Suzanne said, “Ooooh.”

  The place was inky dark, lit eerily by the security lights on the floor and the exit signs in every corner, plus the six holes of mini golf whose windmills and archways were neon with phosphorescent paint. Tucker’s eyes adjusted, and everything came into sharper view. The Whac-a-Mole and the tiny four-horse carousel. The air hockey table and that zombie game that never worked. A few people were already there, drinking and watching that kid Noah shoot at the basketball hoop without the benefit of the flashing lights and tickets. He was missing every shot, and the air was filled with laughter and boos.

  Tucker was disappointed not to see Erika, but not really surprised since she’d never responded to the text chain. Who knew if she was even around? He didn’t have any online connection to her; back when they knew each other, she’d erased all her profiles and stories and timelines because of what happened with that video. He’d looked for her before he came here tonight, but if she had pages now, they weren’t easy to find.

  Mikey’s phone was buzzing, and he took off for the back door again, pointing Tucker and Suzanne to where the beer was, over by the ball pit.

  “I’m going to go grab one—you don’t want anything, right?” Tucker asked.

  “Nope.”

  Suzanne had officially given up drinking because she was in hard-core training mode this year, trying to get picked up by a college program. She’d offered to drive tonight, which worked out for Tucker. Guided by the light of his phone, he headed for the corner and rooted around in the cooler for the least shitty of all the shitty beers. As he came up and cracked it open, he expected to see Suzanne waiting for him, so that he could introduce her to everyone, but no.

  She had already taken over at the hoop and was making basket after basket.

  Swish, swish, swish.

&
nbsp; The small crowd went wild, and some of them looked in his direction, waving and calling his name. Noah was jumping up and down, demanding that he get his ass over there. Tucker smiled and waved back, but stayed rooted to the spot as he watched Suzanne, feeling both impressed and annoyed.

  And then, over his shoulder, he heard someone clapping, loud and slow.

  “That is some A-plus vintage fashion.”

  He turned to see two girls, and it took him a second to realize that one of them was Erika.

  She’d had a pink bob before, so he’d been looking for that, but her hair was brown now, chopped very short in a way that showed off her blue eyes, her smooth skin. Freckles. He’d forgotten the freckles, but there they were. He could just barely see them in the dimness of the room.

  She was with her friend, the redhead who used to show up at Pizza Hut sometimes. Melissa, Marissa? She was the one who had clapped and made the joke, and now she was taking in Tucker with a big smile, while Erika kept her lips pressed together, eyes shifting away.

  Tucker started to sweat. They were both looking at him, waiting, and he couldn’t read Erika’s expression at all, but he had to say something. In a panic, all he could come up with was the truth.

  “I’m starting to have a lot of regrets. I didn’t realize how weird it was, having people look at your belly button.”

  He saw it happen, right in front of his eyes—the exact moment when Erika gave in and started laughing.

  Whether it was at him or with him, he wasn’t entirely sure.

  In the end, more than a dozen people came, and as the minutes ticked by and the beer disappeared, the evening started to turn into a debauched version of the kids’ birthday parties that had once filled the place. The girls were crowding onto the mini-carousel, taking selfies while Mikey freaked out and begged them not to post pictures anywhere public. A game of putt-putt was dissolving into laughter and shrieks, no one able to make a shot. An epic quest to find the missing air hockey puck was finally fulfilled, and people cheered like they’d found the Ark of the Covenant.