I say, “You have no idea. Later,” and kiss him some more.
I drive up the hill wondering how this actually is going to work. Wishing that I could morph into the kind of girl he thinks I am. That I were her for real. Wishing I’d stayed.
• • •
Siobhan says, “He’s taking up all your time, you don’t answer texts, and you’re not getting check marks. Kissing? Seriously? What are you even doing with him?”
She is slouching around my bedroom at her sulkiest. It’s 9:00 at night, I’m pretty sure my dad is lurking in the hall, and I’m not sure why she appeared at the front door.
I say, “Come on. This was your idea. You set it up. I still see you all the time. Such as now.”
This placates her, but not enough.
I say, “How is it you can’t comprehend that I might want to hang out with the person you told me to hang out with? And do you ever look back at the shit you text me? Come on.”
“You should come to this Malibu thing Friday,” she says. “Bring the boy toy. I don’t care. It’s in the Colony. Better than last time, no one will freeze up and die between the water and the house.”
It is unseasonably hot, it’s all over the news; the beach is not out of the question. But the three of us at the same party, somewhat together, somewhat not?
I say, “I don’t know.”
She bangs the palm of her hand against the wall. “Am I your ninth priority now?” She is pacing, picking things up, tossing them down. “After Dylan and homework and Megan and feeding the poor and conditioning your hair? Do I ditch you when I’m with a guy? Uh, no. When I was with Kahane, I went to parties with you.”
I don’t even know how to respond to this one. I say, “I’m not ditching you.”
“Here’s a news flash! This is what ditching people looks like!” And she storms out, slamming my bedroom door, the front door, the gate to the courtyard, and her car door.
Siobhan, when she’s annoyed, doesn’t keep it to herself.
In the morning, the slamming theme extends to her locker, books on desktops, and snack trays at break. When she talks to me, I (and everybody else within a hundred yards) can tell she’s seething.
Dylan says, “Should I avoid dark alleys and homeroom? Eat lunch with me. I’ll protect you if she creeps up and tries to hit you with a lunch tray. But you’ll have to brave the music room.”
I say, “I like music.”
Dylan is sprawled on the redwood bench on the far side of the library, framed by vines that no doubt got confused by sudden summer weather and are covered with small, waxy flowers. He looks all earnest, and also to die for.
“Prove it,” he says. “Come out with me at night. I’ll even demonstrate how chivalrous I am by meeting old-school dad. Maybe he’ll like me.”
No he won’t.
Dylan lives in a guesthouse without parental interference. Dylan smolders and looks through people. There is something about even his posture, the way he stretches his arms out in front of him with his fingers laced together, the way he scowls at the world, and the intensity of the way he looks at you, the way he looks at me, that says Scary Indie Guy You Can’t Take Home.
I say, “Dylan, you don’t know him.”
“A problem easily solved by an introduction. He must have hated your French guy.”
“Why does my dad even have to know? We can meet late. I have a heavily used window.”
“Restaurants,” he says. “Movies. The LA Phil. The Bowl. They tend to be public events. Anything between the hours of eight and midnight. Afterparty. Siobhan said you were hot to go to Afterparty. Crown turd of Latimer shit, but maybe a seed from Saskatoon would find it amusing.”
“Too bad I don’t know anyone from Saskatoon you could go with.”
He ignores this. He says, “Well?”
When how wonderful this is hits me: Candy Land on a stick. “You want to? All that?”
Dylan says, “What I want to do, given that you can distinguish the brass from the strings, is go hear some music. Like normal people.”
“Like normal people with their parents’ season tickets. Have you noticed any normal people doing that around here?”
“I hope they crank up the drawbridge as soon as I leave the state,” Dylan says.
“I’m going to figure this out. You know I want to go, right?”
Dylan repeats, “Prove it.”
• • •
My dad says, “You want to study at a boy’s house?”
This was, I swear, not intended to produce cardiac arrest.
“He’s in orchestra. You might have seen him. Kind of geeky. Plays the violin.” (This is an accurate description of several guys in orchestra. Just not Dylan.)
“I’d feel a lot better if I knew the family.”
“This isn’t the twentieth century! People don’t look over each other’s families like that anymore. And it’s weirdly creepy if I can’t do homework in Beverly Hills in the middle of the afternoon.”
My dad crosses his arms.
I say, “I guess I could study with Siobhan, but she doesn’t always focus.”
My dad is not immune to the allure of me studying with someone who isn’t Siobhan. “Would you be in his bedroom?”
I sound exactly like the self he wants to think I am, the one that would ask first—not the one that has already been at Dylan’s virtually every day I’m not at the food bank and who knows the code to the gate at the end of his driveway.
“This isn’t a rave in the Mojave Desert!” (True.) “This is homework.” (Partly true.) “And his mom works at home. She designs baby clothes.” (Completely true, not that I’ve ever seen her.)
“All right,” he says. “Go be normal. I’m convinced. By all means, let’s avoid weird creepiness.” He throws up his hands, like a person who’s surrendering, but I can tell that it’s all right with him, which is good, given that I’m going to do it anyway.
As it turns out, I’m going to do a whole lot of things anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Siobhan: After school. My house. Physics. Makes no sense.
Me: Can’t after school. My house after dinner.
Siobhan: I know yr schedule. Yes u can.
Me: Dylan after school. Why not after dinner?
Siobhan: Physics demands screwdrivers. No screwdrivers chez Lazar.
Me: Come on. I’ll get cupcakes at Buttercake. 8:30?
Siobhan: This is shit.
Me: Come on.
Me: Are u still there?
Me: Siobhan?????????????
Me: This is ridiculous.
Me: Oh come on
Me: OK bye.
She doesn’t show at school and she doesn’t return texts. And when I’m on a lawn chair behind Dylan’s guesthouse, sipping lemonade, barefoot in the weirdly hot winter afternoon, my left leg making a bridge from my chair to Dylan’s chair, she is not one of my top ten thoughts.
Dylan says, “What did you say to get here?”
“That you’re a eunuch.”
“Slumming with a eunuch? Great.”
“At least eunuchs were musical.”
“They were missing some important parts.”
I gaze back through the acres of backyard. “I don’t know that I’d call this slumming. You might be in the one percent.”
He says, “You know. Siobhan said you wanted to go slumming with a slobby high school boy.”
“She said I wanted to go slumming with you, and you were slobby?”
“Roughly. I’m paraphrasing.”
I put down the lemonade, willing myself to not snort it out through my nose or throw anything. “Why did you even want to be with me?”
He says, “You know I like you. You’re cute when you’re insulting.”
“That’s so insulting!”
“Was I cute?”
Maybe it’s that it’s so hot that roses are screwing up and blooming at the wrong time, and the backyard smells like summer. Or because the sole of
my foot is touching his calf. Or because he reaches out, and after all that carrying-on to Siobhan that I want to be swept up in the romance of the moment, I am swept up in the romance of the moment. Or because when I trust that someone actually likes me and is not, in fact, about to slip a rufie into my lemonade, the ice cubes clinking against the inside of the glass sound like bells.
But thirty seconds later, I’m out of the chair and we’ve made it through the French doors, past the kitchen and into the bedroom, and my blouse is unbuttoned.
Which is when I notice my ability to go from zero to sixty in ten seconds alone with him.
How one minute, it’s a kiss, and how all I want is more lips and more tongue and more heat, and one minute later, I’m inside and my blouse is on the floor.
As is his shirt.
How sentences like “I’m not ready” and “Let’s wait” and “Let’s slow this down” and “I’m not sure yet” and the whole array of things good girls say (sentences I was pretty sure I would one day be saying, back when we examined all those sentences in detail during all-girl It’s Your Choice day in Modern Living) don’t seem relevant to modern life or human life or, more specifically, to my life.
Dylan says, “You want to? Not that we have to—”
“I want to.”
The compass rolls under the bed as Dylan reaches for the button on my skirt.
I blurt, “I’ve never done this before.”
“What?”
This kind of breaks the mood, Dylan standing there in boxers, holding a wrapped condom, looking seriously confused, as if virginity were an alien concept.
I pull the sheet up to my chin. “Yeah. First time.”
He says, “So you never . . .”
“First time,” I say. “Wait. Aren’t guys supposed to be happy about this kind of thing? Yay, a virgin. Like that?”
“Sorry.” Dylan sits down beside me on the bed. “I get it.” He is looking at me as if I’m breakable. “Does this entail bleeding?”
“Bleeding! There’s a romantic thought.”
“Not that you have anything to compare it to,” he says. “But that was a very romantic question.”
“For a vampire.”
He moves in closer. “Vampires have nothing on me.”
“Yeah, prove it.”
He does. He pushes my hair back behind my left ear and starts kissing the ear very gently. “This, over here, would be your earlobe.”
Who knew that ears could even do that. Oh God.
“And this is the back of your neck.” More kisses down toward the side of my neck. I have returned to an advanced state of urgency and, all right, it’s romantic.
“And oh look, those are toes. Let me make sure.” Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“And this is the back of your knee.”
“That tickles!”
“Then I’ll stop that.”
“Do not stop that!”
He doesn’t.
“And hey, look over here, what’s this?” Oh God!
And there’s no blood.
• • •
So it was all about romance with maybe some lust thrown in, but in one afternoon, I have vanquished a large section of my to-do list. Not only the actual list, but the things that I wanted that I didn’t even dare to put on the list.
And all it took was a complete failure of impulse control, and proximity to Dylan Kahane.
Protracted eye contact with Dylan Kahane: check.
Find out if I’m so repressed by my bizarre upbringing that I fall over, maybe hitting my head on the way down and sliding, dead, to the floor, in the presence of a naked boy. Well, I’m not: check.
Sex with Dylan Kahane. In Dylan Kahane’s bedroom. On Dylan Kahane’s bed. Following a long conversation with Dylan Kahane during which he acts as if he is sincerely—I’m not even slightly exaggerating—crazy about me: check.
Lie there with Dylan, acting like I own his room because we both know I’m going to be back there.
A lot.
Check.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MY DAD SAYS, “HOW DID the homework go?”
I am an unfortunate cross between Dylanesque smirking and panic. “Good.”
So good.
My dad is looking at me. And I think, Oh God, my blouse is on backward, my makeup that he doesn’t even think I’m wearing is wrecked, my sweater is inside out and I’m wearing my bra over it. But when I glance down, I am, in fact, dressed like a normal person.
My dad says. “You really like this boy, don’t you?”
Say yes, and he really will chain me to the piano.
I say, “Is that lamb stew?” He makes great lamb stew. With rosemary and mint and wine.
“It is lamb stew.”
“I love lamb stew. See how cooperative I am when you let me out of my cage?”
“I’m doing the best I can,” he says. He puts his arm around me and gives my shoulders a little squeeze. “And you seem to be turning into a pretty solid citizen, so I can’t be blowing it too badly.”
And I think, Damn, I really am a bad person.
The compass, for once in complete agreement, says, Yes. You are.
Dylan: U OK?
Me: Exponentially beyond ok. Stratospherically super-ok. You?
Dylan: Not bad
Me: NOT BAD???
Dylan: Also super-ok. OK?
Dylan: Tomorrow?
Me: Food bank.
Dylan: Friday?
Me: Shabbat dinner. Early sundown. Guests at 5:30.
Dylan: U want to take Lulu to the dog park before?
Me: Totally. Right after school.
Me: What about Saturday? I’ll say I’m shopping or something.
Dylan: Saturday, study marathon with eunuch. And Emma, you might want to go out the front door all the time soon. This is getting ridiculous.
Me: I told you. I’m working on it.
Dylan is waiting for me outside homeroom, leaning against the building. He hugs me and some male voice behind me goes “Aaaaaawwww” and I don’t even care.
Dylan says, “Have you recovered?”
“From what?”
He says, “Come here. I’ll jog your memory.”
We slide around the corner of the building where we engage in the best of the best of the best kiss.
When we walk into class, Dylan runs a finger between my shoulder blades. His face is cool and blank as always at school, but we might as well just tear off our clothes. That’s how obvious we are.
Siobhan says, “Jesus, Emma. Really?”
Between classes, she links arms with me. “You have to knock it off. Tell Mr. Goo-Goo-Ga-Ga to man up. Five more minutes of this and your whole backstory crumbles. The International Girl of Intrigue wouldn’t be going with a labradoodle.”
“He is not a labradoodle.”
“Maybe you have that effect on men. Reduced to licking, and panting, and wagging their widdle tails.” She starts to make loud slurping sounds, trailing me toward English.
Arif says, “It looks like you’re hungry for Emma’s cardigan.”
Siobhan glares at him but doesn’t stop.
I say, “Stop it. Right. Now.”
“Maybe she’s hungry for Emma,” Chelsea says. Lia giggles into her hands.
Dylan says, “Nice, Chelsea.” He sounds so caustic; if she were anyone else, she’d dissolve on the spot. But she just wriggles her hips into class.
Siobhan says, “Maybe you’re the one who needs to stop it. Maybe you need to put the public fondling on hold before people start strewing your path with barf.”
I grab Siobhan and pull her toward the lockers. I whisper, “But it’s all going according to your plan. What are you doing?”
“This wasn’t my plan.”
I whisper in her ear, “But I did it. Emma the Good is history.”
“You slept with my boyfriend?” she yells. We are visible and audible and no doubt highly entertaining.
“But you told me to!”
I’m going for an emphatic whisper.
But she seems to be enjoying the scene she’s creating.
“You slept with my boyfriend! Who are you, my mother?” She has me by the wrist and for a moment I’m outside of myself, as if I’m not even here, as if I don’t feel her nails biting into my skin.
She glares at me, her eyes are slits, but what I notice are the blackened lashes and how tears are balling up in them as if they were Astroturf. She seems to be living in some alternate reality, and I can’t get her back.
“Let go of me. You all but bought me the condoms. Let go.”
“I told you to try out your learner’s permit on his tiny dick. I did not tell you to fall for him. I did not tell you to go all Dylan, I loooooove you, all I can think about is youuuuuuuu. I did not tell you to ignore a text for eighteen hours.”
“Is that what this is about? I didn’t return your text fast enough?”
And there I am, in front of everybody, running after her.
“I’m the one who set you up,” she says. “So you liked him first blah blah but it’s not like you did anything about it. Do you think you’d be with him if not for me?”
“Why are you doing this? I thought you’d be happy for me!”
“You were supposed to be my friend. Only now you’re too busy turning into Stepford Girlfriend, and guess what? It isn’t going to last. He finds out one bad thing about you, and you’re done.”
There it is. The thorn at the center of my beating heart of fear: that he will see me, and he won’t like what he sees.
“I changed my mind,” Siobhan says when I’ve followed her into the ladies’ room. She’s staring into the mirror behind the row of sleek stainless-steel sinks, twirling her bangs. “I made you and I could undo you in three minutes. Two online.”
“This makes no sense. You’re the one who didn’t want to go down with me! You said to keep quiet.”
“Yeah,” she says. “But that’s not why you kept quiet. You kept quiet because he’s a jerk and you’re chicken. And now, chicklet, you’re going down.”
I am thinking little pieces of thoughts: She’d never do this. I’m her only friend. How stupid would it be to wipe out your only friend? Except that Self-Destructive is her middle name. What am I doing with a best friend with Self-Destructive for a middle name?
Afterparty Page 17