He says, “Can’t you borrow something from Siobhan?”
Oh God.
I say, very quietly, because it’s not true yet, but it will be if I ever talk to her again, “We just had a fight.”
My dad is too overjoyed about this to stay that annoyed. Or maybe I’m reading too much into the fact that he stops yelling at me.
Dylan is rummaging around in the kitchen. “You want something before you go?”
“Could I borrow a shirt?” The overnight bag is at Siobhan’s. All I have is the spaghetti-strap tight thing from last night and, in my car, a Latimer tee that’s cut off (actually cut, with scissors, not my best fashion experiment ever) three inches above waist level, and is not debuting at the Karps’.
Dylan’s closet smells like him. Not in a bad way. I take a white linen shirt, and I roll up the sleeves and look in the mirror to see if this could in any way pass as something a girl would wear when not desperate. I take the little metal belt from last night and try to get it to sit in the right place. The result isn’t strikingly horrible.
I hear Dylan rummaging around in the cupboards. “You want a jelly doughnut? It’s the only breakfast food I’ve got.”
“No time! I’ll just snort the powdered sugar off the top.”
“Bad joke, considering who I used to go out with.”
I say, “There’s another thing we’re never going to talk about.”
Mrs. Karp admires Dylan’s shirt and wonders if I got it at Fred Segal.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
BY THE TIME I’VE (BARELY) survived brunch—the first hour of which my dad spends glowering at me while Mrs. Karp flutters around saying how happy she is to have me, no matter what time I arrived, in possibly the world’s least helpful effort to be helpful—things are back to (mostly) normal.
My return to my dad’s good graces is greatly assisted by the youngest Karp child, who quietly spreads peanut butter on the Karp dachshund. Reminding my dad of his own amazing success in raising a daughter so repressed that she never, ever so much as considered coating a dog with peanut butter or jelly.
And when he walks me to my car afterward, if I weren’t wearing my boyfriend’s shirt, I would be the picture of goodness. Which is when I tell him how I left my overnight bag at Siobhan’s (true) because I was racing so fast to get out of there (not).
Now I’m tooling down Sunset in my own gumdrop-yellow car, windows open, radio blasting; this was the Candy Land dream, for a second at the beach club that first day when I first saw Siobhan. When Montana Gibson was no doubt down on the beach toasting a marshmallow while I was in the clubhouse kissing Aiden, and Siobhan was bagging him, and I had no idea who they were, or what I was actually seeing, or how all that confectionary sugar was going to melt and get sticky and rank.
I turn up Doheny toward Burton’s house, with its fake-pond Jacuzzi, and I’m thinking, Quick in and out. No confrontation, no screaming, no drama. Just bye.
I’m thinking, One forty-five, she could still be asleep, this could be completely painless.
But Siobhan is not asleep. She doesn’t look as if she slept that much earlier, either. She just looks wasted.
This couldn’t be completely painless. We’ve already had the big-ass fight a dozen times; this is us breaking up.
“Look who finally showed,” she says, rolling over on her black and white quilt, setting down her book.
I feel weirdly defensive, as if what I think is the final betrayal hadn’t already happened. As if we were still the Dynamic Duo and this was just a rocky patch in Gotham City.
I say, “I fell asleep. It was kind of unplanned. Sorry if you were worried.”
“I thought you went off with some forty-year-old perv who asked you to help find his lost kitten.”
I say, “Yeah, well, I told him I was boss of my body.”
She is sitting on the edge of her bed now, in the same short little skirt and unbuttoned shirt as when I left her at the party. “Didn’t get much sleep, did we?” she says.
“Could I just have my bag? I have to go.”
She says, “Where were you?”
“You know where.”
“He broke up with you for no good reason!” she half shouts. “He broke your heart and then you slept with him? Did you wake up stupid yesterday?”
At the center of me, there is something so hard and cold and icy, it’s as if my body temperature has plummeted to absolute zero and I don’t even have feelings left, because my heart is ice.
I say, “Forget it. I’m done. I can’t even listen to you.”
“What’s wrong with you?” She’s off the bed and in my face.
I’m dodging her, I’m behind the rocking chair, and I yell back. “What’s wrong with you? You pretend we’re friends and then you tell him I came over here to hook up with Aiden! Are you out of your mind?”
She’s grabbing at me and I’m holding up my arms and she has me.
I can’t twist out of her grasp. When I try to pull away, it just gets tighter. Her mouth is all blurred lipstick and her pupils are so dilated, her irises have almost disappeared.
I say, “Shit, Siobhan, did you do flamethrowers back there?”
“Who told you I do flamethrowers?” she screams, her face six inches from my face.
“How high are you right now?”
“Flames don’t last that long,” she says. “Because. If they did. I wouldn’t feel like this. And I’m not the one obsessed with heroin, grasshopper, you are.”
Then she curls up in a ball, and she closes her eyes, and I can tell from her breathing that she’s asleep.
• • •
At school, on Monday, Dylan says, “Look what I brought you.”
Two slightly melted chunks of chocolate swan wing, which he procedes to feed me during break.
He says, “Does this satisfy your lust for sappiness, Seed?”
Arif says, “Do you two want privacy?” Only he says it with a soft i, and it sounds British and adorable.
“I’ll just drag her into the bushes for that,” Dylan says.
Arif slaps his hand to his forehead. “If you don’t stop trying to impress her with your feeble attempts at humor, she’s going to race back to her ex.”
“Thank you for not telling him about my so-called ex,” I say to Dylan when we’re walking to class, his hand at my waist, which Latimer has now banned as inappropriate intimate contact. We are no-public-displays-of-physical-affection-and-joy violators.
Dylan says, “Once again, reminding you that I’m not Aiden.”
“You are the model boyfriend.”
Dylan puts his hands to his throat and demonstrates strangling himself.
He does, however, spend the next two weeks demonstrating model boyfriend behavior.
I barely miss Siobhan.
Barely.
When I think about her, I am either so sad or so angry or such a confusing combination of sad and angry that I go into Stop It mode. I do a lot of counting.
She seems to get it. There are no texts and no IMs and no tripping me in the hall or hauling me into the bathroom for drama. Or maybe she’s too high to care.
I keep wondering why Nancy or even—half-blind as Siobhan says he is—Burton doesn’t notice. Because Siobhan arrives at Latimer high, and she leaves even higher. At least Marisol is chauffeuring her around.
The hair isn’t perfect, and then, in English, when Ms. Erskine says something typically, monumentally stupid (unless you actually think that Shakespeare was an early feminist and King Lear proves it, which it doesn’t), Siobhan laughs out loud. Very loud. Normally, she distracts herself during moments like this by chipping off her nail polish. I look over, and no nail polish.
She says, “Oh fuck this,” and she runs out of the room.
I wait maybe three seconds to follow her, but I can’t find her.
• • •
Dylan says, “Drop it. She’s not your problem anymore.”
“Dylan, she’s constantly high
!”
“Like you never noticed that before? Weren’t you at the same parties?”
I say, “This isn’t parties, this is school.”
He says, “You never noticed at school?”
“I didn’t notice at school because she was straight at school.”
After lunch, French tests get passed back and she’s sitting there with a red D. Which is essentially impossible to get unless you accidentally stumbled into the room when you were trying to find Russian II.
After orchestra practice, when I meet Dylan and Arif in the caf, Arif says, “You should have seen your friend in Econ. Not a pretty sight.”
I say, “What?”
Dylan says, “Her former friend.”
“Oral reports,” Arif says. “Ordinarily she’s a big fan of the free market. Eats socialists for lunch, actually. Today—hard to tell what she was even talking about.”
I remember telling my dad how we were staying up late making suits of armor out of tinfoil for our Joan of Arc oral report, the night we went out riding Loogie and Sir Galahad. Eons ago. A few months ago.
Dylan says, “You can’t fix her. You already tried.”
I say, “Not hard enough. Look at her.”
Dylan intones, “Once again sucked into the vortex of bullshit.”
Arif says, “D.K., get off her back! You know it’s the right thing to do.”
“Do you want to get frog-marched back to Convo, where someone wants to hear you ranting about the right thing to do?” Dylan says.
It’s like hanging out with ten-year-olds. Really smart ones, but still.
I say, “Did anyone ever mention that you guys don’t exactly bring out each other’s mature sides?”
Arif says, “All the time.”
Dylan says, “Never.”
“Prepare to be amazed by my extraordinary maturity come September,” Arif says.
I ask, “Why?”
They both look at me. They both look slightly stricken.
Arif says, “D.K.?” Then he says, “Maybe I’ll go polish my shoes and learn Greek.” Latimer doesn’t have Greek, and he’s wearing Adidas made of shiny cloth and suede. He picks up his backpack and gives Dylan a withering look.
I say, “What?”
Dylan says, “I was going to tell you. But I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a parade or a funeral.”
At the pit of my stomach, something curdles. I put down my shake.
“What?”
“Do you want to walk?”
I have the feeling that, basically, he doesn’t want to tell me whatever this is in the caf and then be treated to me throwing food at him.
The quad is almost empty by now as we walk around its perimeter. “Just tell me.”
He says, “I got into Georgetown.”
I am just above us, in the trees, watching us. I am watching him evaporate into thin air as I reach out my arms and find them flapping in an unpopulated space.
“But you’re a junior. You can’t get into Georgetown.”
“I have enough units,” he says. “A junior from Loyola got in last year. Palmer just has to get Latimer to fork over a diploma. But they will, just to get rid of me.”
I am watching myself be a good friend and a decent person, and not having the clingfest that I feel like having.
I say, “That’s great! Congratulations.”
I am trying to be completely happy for him. Because it’s a big deal and it’s wonderful and he wants out so much—such as every few sentences, ever since I met him. I’m thinking about how the only things he’ll miss in L.A. are me and Arif and Lulu. How staying would mean one more year in a guesthouse he hates, at a school he hates, with parents who only make cameo appearances to tell him that he’s surly.
I say, “You have to go. Dylan! It’s amazing.”
He says, “You don’t look happy.”
“I didn’t realize that we had an expiration date that soon. That’s all.”
He says, “So. Here’s the thing. I don’t do sap. But where else am I going to find somebody that enthused over a half-eaten chocolate bird?”
“Excuse me?”
“We could still be together,” he says.
We are sitting on the bench on the far side of the library, my back against his chest, my head lolled back against his shoulder.
And I want to believe this, I do, but even in my smitten state, it’s not all that believable. “How would that even work?”
He says, “I can fly back all the time.”
“Don’t promise me things that you’re going to regret. Don’t. You’re not going to want to. You’ll be in college.”
He says, “I’ll want to.”
We walk to the parking lot, holding hands.
He says, “So. This is going to be good, right?”
I’m pretty sure that if I got into Georgetown, I’d get home and my dad would have frosted cupcakes in the school colors, and there’d be streamers in the living room. And I realize, he is going home to that cool, completely solitary guesthouse, clean laundry and fruit left by the housekeeper—not to people jumping up and down and going, Yay! Boy genius! Hug, hug, hug.
I say, “We’re going to celebrate. This weekend. We’re going to completely whoop it up.”
He says, “You don’t look like you want to celebrate, Seed. You look miserable.”
“I’m going to miss you, what do you think? But this is Georgetown, it’s not like I don’t know how much you want it. You want to picnic Saturday? Or I could take you to brunch? Or I could drive you up the coast. We could play miniature golf at that dorky place in Ventura.”
“Brunch?” He looks aghast. Then he says, “Yeah, that would be nice.”
He stands over me as I get into my car. It doesn’t hit me how much I’m shaking until he walks away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I SPEND THE EVENING IN avid celebration mode, as opposed to wallowing in the fact of Dylan’s somewhat imminent departure. I find the Georgetown colors (blue and gray) for purposes of cake decoration. I do not make a playlist of women wailing blues songs to accompany this activity. I order a Hoyas sweatshirt for him online. I consider putting on his white shirt that I haven’t returned yet, but don’t, due to the pathetic-ness factor. I make a congratulatory card in which a kinetic Airedale resembling Lulu tap-dances.
I don’t much feel like tap-dancing.
My dad sticks his head in and says, “Are you crying in there?”
It’s hard to deny, when there are tears dripping down your face, and you’re not dicing raw onions or watching Bambi.
He says, “Should I be worried?”
“Nope. It’s just stupid. I’m trying to do a ton of work instead.”
My dad says that this sounds quite mature, but walks away looking confused.
Mature or not, I am determined to jump around and say “Yay” all over Latimer in the morning, in a masterful display of my unclinginess.
But Dylan isn’t there. Not that that’s entirely unheard of, but usually he makes an appearance in homeroom, or he shows up in the music room. Or somewhere.
Me: Where are you?
Dylan: Taking the day off. Taking Lulu up to Tree People Park.
Dylan: Want to come?
Me: Some of us have to go to class from time to time.
Me: Some of us still have to worry about our GPA.
Dylan: And some of us don’t!
Me: Go be smug with your dog Kahane.
And I’m fine, completely fine. I eat lunch with two ballet girls that I barely know, and they’re kind of friendly. At the end of it, Kimmy sits down, takes her burger apart, and eats the bun, tomato slices, lettuce, and patty separately, all with ketchup.
She says, “Disgusting, huh?”
I’m not sure if she means the burger or her eating habits, but I agree.
I feel like master of the universe, like a person who can actually cope, in a riding-for-a-fall kind of a way.
I don’t have a clue.
<
br /> Siobhan is still walking around entirely un-made-up, entirely hostile, although somewhat cogent when called on. I’m wondering if a former best friend can ever mount some sort of intervention that the other former best friend listens to.
I head up to the rocks to find her, but nothing.
I leave for home, the back way through the hills, and there she is, sitting cross-legged on the hood of Burton’s DeLorean, with a box of Gitanes on her lap, smoking something that doesn’t look much like a Gitanes.
I roll down my window.
I say, “You want a ride?”
“Sweet,” she says, “are you supporting me? Because no thank you.”
“Shit, Sib, you can’t drive like that!”
“Why not? Don’t you know how officially sober I am? Nancy found my stash. Ask me about home drug testing kits. Fuck my life.”
“So Gitanes is selling undetectable weed now?”
“Nancy’s take on it is I’m too young for major pharma, so I should stick to drinking.”
She takes a long drag on the joint.
“Siobhan! We’re ten yards from school!”
“So what? If you weren’t completely obsessed going Ooooooh, Dylan, baby, delude me some more, you might notice that they don’t actually care.”
She crooks her finger at me. “You want to talk to me, c’mere. I have something to shooooow you.”
I pull up in a no-parking zone and climb onto the hood of the car. Siobhan takes out her phone, and I’m seriously waiting for this to be a horrible picture of me doing something embarrassing. But it’s not. It’s William and a beautiful, emaciated girl walking along the street in Milan. Shot after shot after shot.
“Her name is Elisabetta,” Siobhan says. “And he claims that she’s his other half. Does that bitch look like half of him?”
They do look remarkably similar to one another, rich and emaciated and half asleep.
“He can’t just walk away from me and take up with a piece of Eurotrash!” she yells. “We have a pact! He can’t just walk away!”
But there he is, walking away down the Via Montenapoleone, carrying Elisabetta’s shopping bags.
“Sucks. I’m sorry.”
Siobhan stares at the photo. “Doesn’t she look trashy to you?”
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