Skyler lived in her own private, two-story guesthouse, totally separate from the enormous main house that her parents lived in. When I got there, I knocked on the front door and Hailey opened it. She was barefoot and wearing nothing except a towel, like she lived there.
“Am I super early?” I asked.
Hailey shrugged. “We told everyone seven, and it’s like six forty-five . . . so . . . I don’t know. People probably won’t show up until eight or nine.”
“This is the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen,” I gushed nervously. “I can’t believe Skyler has it all to herself.”
“I know, right? She can do whatever. She’s so lucky. She’s upstairs getting dressed.”
“Oh,” I said. An awkward pause settled on us, and I looked around for something to talk about.
“Want a Coke?” Hailey asked, swinging open the door to a mini-fridge. It was crazy how comfortable she seemed here.
“I’m okay,” I said.
Hailey looked at me strangely for a second and then shrugged. “Okay. I’m gonna go get dressed.”
• • •
After trying on five outfits, Hailey had landed on a short black dress and one of those bright red Santa Claus hats with fake-fur trim. Her wet hair dried into perfectly tangled, messy locks so she looked wild and fresh all at once. She and Skyler blasted pop music and drank wine coolers while they set up, dimming the lights and filling glass pitchers with spiked punch.
It seemed like the whole school arrived at once, and everything grew dense and thick like the sky darkening before an unexpected storm. People shifted around in packs like rain clouds.
I watched Hailey from across the room. She was sharing a beer with a girl I didn’t know, and she must have been saying something funny because the girl laughed. Then Hailey started laughing, dropping her head forward so that her long hair tumbled over her bare shoulders. She glowed. I suddenly felt like I looked all wrong with my neat, combed hair and painted face.
An older boy shoved past me in a rush to get to the kitchen and accidentally stepped on my foot. Instead of apologizing, he and his friend erupted into laughter and then blended into the crowd. I felt a terrible, sinking longing for my own room.
I glanced back up to where Hailey had been a moment ago, deciding I would go join her, but she was gone. I scanned the room but didn’t see her anywhere. Why was she always disappearing? And why didn’t she ever hang out with me at parties? Why was it always up to her when I was her best friend and when I was just a stranger?
I pushed through the crowded room and out the doors into Skyler’s yard. I walked through the damp grass, trying to escape the sounds of the party. When I reached the far wall, I turned and looked back at Skyler’s house. It pulsed with energy and light, like a heart in the night. Jealous, hot emotions pumped in my blood. Why couldn’t I have fun like everyone else? Why couldn’t I be like Hailey? Why was I so awkward, so sure that no one wanted to talk to me and that these parties were stupid? Maybe being social was good and healthy and I was just no fun. Maybe the problem wasn’t Hailey—maybe the problem was me. I was so used to how I saw things, it felt uncomfortable to think there might be another way to see them.
A pack of people whose faces I couldn’t make out were moving toward me. They were laughing and smoking, their beer bottles refracting little pieces of moonlight.
“Hey.”
I recognized Nate’s voice before I saw him.
“Hi,” I said. I began to make out everyone’s faces in the group: Ryan and a few girls I didn’t recognize. They must have been from another school.
“Lima,” Nate said, as if that was a complete sentence. He took a sip of beer that was tucked into a paper bag.
I stalled, unsure what to do or say.
“Talk to me. How are you?” Nate said.
I looked up at him, and he swayed. He was visibly drunk. But somehow drunkenness didn’t seem sloppy and unflattering on him like it did on most people. On Nate, being drunk just seemed to magnify him.
“I’m having, like, the worst week ever,” I said. “My grandmother is dying.”
“Shit,” he said. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, I feel really bad for my dad,” I said. “’Cause it’s, like, his mom, you know? I’m sorry to be talking about this at a party. I’m such a downer.”
“Nate—you want?” a girl with dyed black hair held a joint out to Nate. A series of small silver hoops ran up the side of her ear, like a metal spring.
“I’m good for now—thanks,” Nate said, waving his hand away. “No, seriously, you were saying. It’s hard. When my dad died, it really sucked.”
“Your dad . . .” My voice trailed off. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said, wincing. “It’s okay now. Well, it’s not okay, but it’s okay. It was a really long time ago.”
Nate’s phone started buzzing, and he pulled it out of his pocket.
“It’s Sophie,” Nate said, holding the phone out to Ryan. “She probably wants directions. Talk to her.”
Sophie. The girl that Hailey and Skyler had said he’d been hooking up with. I felt an inexplicable weight drop in my stomach.
“So, is Sophie, like, your girlfriend?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Nate looked genuinely surprised. “What? No. Where’d you get that?”
“Hailey said it, or something like it,” I stammered.
He paused. “Truth?”
I nodded.
“We hooked up a couple times when she and her boyfriend broke up. But they’re back together.”
“Are you upset about it?” I asked.
He smiled, as if what I’d said amused him. He flicked my arm with his thumb and forefinger. “Nah. I’m okay.”
“Catch,” Ryan said, hurling the phone back at Nate. It slipped past him and fell into the dark grass.
“Fuck you, man,” Nate laughed. He crouched down in the grass and started looking for his phone. I stood there awkwardly, suddenly wondering if I belonged out here with these people at all.
“I’m going back inside,” I said.
Nate popped up with his phone, stumbled, and then steadied himself. He hovered over me. He was less than a foot away. Bending down to look for his phone had made all the blood rush to his face and his cheeks were pink, a lock of hair hanging down and covering one eye.
“I wasn’t upset about Sophie because I like someone else,” he said.
An unexpected wave of heat moved through me.
“You do?” I whispered. His words quickened my heartbeat, made me feel almost unsteady.
“Nate, give me your phone,” the girl with the black hair said. “I want to show Ryan something.”
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you guys, you just had my phone,” Nate said. “Just keep it.”
“C’mon, Nate, don’t be mad. You know you’re gonna miss the shit out of me when you’re in Hawaii next week,” Ryan said. “You know you love me.”
Everyone was drunk, murky, slippery.
“You love me more, man,” Nate said, and jumped onto Ryan’s back, tackling him to the ground.
I was stunned. What had just happened? Who did Nate like? This stranger with the black hair and the earrings? Why did I have the feeling that when Nate said he liked someone, he had meant me?
Nate and Ryan rolled around on the ground, laughing and kicking. The girl with the black hair and the earrings cackled, an audience of one.
“Lima, is that you?” Hailey’s voice called. I turned and saw her approaching in the dark.
“Yeah,” I said, hating her a little bit for showing up right at that moment.
Hailey stood next to me and linked her arm through mine. Now that I was standing near Nate, I was her best friend again.
“Hey, Nate,” Hailey s
aid, when the boys had stopped play fighting.
“Hey,” Nate said.
I watched him as he stood up, brushing grass off his jeans, and his eyes slid up to meet Hailey’s. The scooped neckline of her dress revealed just the tiniest bit of her lace bra, and her skin glowed in the moonlight. Her eyes were two enormous pools of black. She looked beautiful. I felt a pit of jealousy widening inside me, just seeing the two of them look at each other, and I knew I had to get away.
I pretended I had to pee, ran back to the house and into Skyler’s upstairs bathroom. I closed the door and stared at my own reflection. After seeing Hailey, my hair looked limp and straight, and my whole body looked wan and small, like a dusty twig. I wondered what Nate saw when he looked at me.
chapter
thirty-one
The day after Skyler’s party, Hailey left for San Diego to visit her dad. Hailey always had a way of falling off the grid a little when she went to San Diego, so I wasn’t surprised not to hear from her until she got back to LA a week later.
“How was your Christmas?” I asked her over the phone. Outside my window, a thick, drizzling fog wrapped itself around our house. The sky was a dirty sponge resting on top of the gray carpet of ocean.
Hailey was shuffling something around on the other end of the line. “Wait, what did you say? Sorry, Li, I couldn’t hear you ’cause my mom was talking to me.”
“Did you have a good time in San Diego?” I tried again.
“It was fine,” she said. Her words were clipped.
Then I asked her the question I had really been wanting to ask for the past week. “How was the rest of Skyler’s party?”
“Fun,” she replied absently.
“Did anything happen with you and Nate?” I asked. I had never in our whole friendship initiated a conversation with Hailey about Nate. But all week I kept thinking about him and her, wondering what had happened after I had left.
She paused. “Not really. Why?”
I tried to giggle. “I’m just being a good friend.”
“You’re a dork,” Hailey said. And then she added, “I mean, Nate stayed really late and I slept over. But there were lots of people around the whole time. We were never alone together so nothing could happen.”
I thought about how I always felt alone with Nate. Like whenever we spoke, it seemed as if we were separate from everything else, even if we were surrounded by people.
“Did you hear something about Nate?” she asked tentatively.
“Me?” I scoffed. “Like gossip? That’ll be the day.”
Hailey breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s why I love you, Li. You’re so above all this stuff.”
Hailey’s words didn’t help untie the knot in my chest.
“So, what are you going to do for New Year’s?” I asked, changing the topic.
“Sky and I are gonna go over to Bridget Howard’s house and pregame. Then we’re going to some party that Bridget heard of in the valley.”
I didn’t say anything. I waited for her to invite me along, or at least ask what I was planning on doing. When she didn’t, I said, “I don’t think I’m gonna do anything.”
Hailey paused. “Do you want me to ask Bridget if you can come with us?”
I hated Bridget Howard. I had been to her house once before, and it was one of the worst nights of my life. But Meredith was in Italy, Mom and Dad were at the hospital with Nana, and I didn’t want to stay home alone.
“Yeah,” I said. “Would you?”
While I made dinner that night, I kept thinking about scary Bridget Howard. Bridget had always been popular and perky. She had blond hair that was thick and shiny and seemed to move in one solid sheet of yellow when she walked. She played soccer and wore trendy clothes and lip gloss to school for as long as I could remember.
One day, near the end of sixth grade, she came up to me in the car-pool line just after Hailey had been picked up by her mom. “Why do you hang out with her?” she asked me.
“Hailey’s my best friend,” I said defensively.
“She smells weird,” Bridget said. “Why are you so anti-popularity?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know,” she said, “you guys are always like, ‘Whatever, I don’t care about being popular, I just want to wear hippie skirts and listen to folk music and not do anything.’”
I was surprised to hear myself described like that.
“I mean you’re, like, really pretty,” Bridget said. “You could be, like, really popular.”
I paused. I could?
“Come over on Saturday night,” she told me. “It’s my birthday. A bunch of girls are gonna sleep over, and we’re gonna stay up all night watching movies.”
For the first time in the conversation, she smiled. Even with her retainer in, her teeth were perfect and white. Her smile was shockingly sweet.
“Okay,” I said.
I never should have gone. First of all, I had to explain to Hailey why she wasn’t invited without telling her what Bridget had said about her, which was really hard to do.
Hailey started crying on the phone. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are you going without me?”
I felt guilty. But what if Bridget and I were meant to be friends? I had to find out.
At Bridget’s Bel-Air house, everything—even the carpets and the doors and the telephones—looked polished. The wood floors were shiny. The picture frames glistened. There were crystal chandeliers in every room.
Despite how fancy their house was, Bridget and her friends had already trashed the living room. There were candy wrappers and clothing and soda bottles strewn across every surface. Everyone was shrieking and dancing.
“I have such a sugar high!” I remember Bridget screaming as she jumped from one couch to another. The soles of her feet were dark gray with dirt, and she left stains on the couch’s cream-colored leather.
I didn’t know any of the girls very well. Skyler was there. She and Bridget used to be as inseparable as Hailey and me. All the girls were skinny and had long, stringy hair, and they were all wearing tiny cutoff jeans shorts, tank tops, and lots of bracelets.
After we ate pizza and birthday cake and Bridget’s dad and stepmom had gone to sleep, the trouble began.
“Truth or dare!” Bridget shrieked. Bridget was always yelling. It was exhausting.
Skyler went first, and Bridget dared her to get naked and run around the pool.
She did it. We all laughed.
“Your turn,” Bridget said, pointing at me. “Lima: truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
Bridget started thinking, and then she went over to Skyler and whispered something in her ear. Eleven-year-old Skyler was just this tiny little insect of a person with enormous black eyes and long eyelashes. Skyler nodded and laughed approvingly.
“Okay,” Bridget said. “But you have to answer honestly. That’s the rule.”
I sat up straight.
“Rank all of us from ugliest to prettiest, including yourself,” she declared.
Skyler snorted.
“What?” I made a face. “No. Everybody’s pretty.”
“Oh, grow up,” she said. “Not everyone is created equal. Just do it.”
I looked around the room. Bridget, Skyler, Sara, Jen, Lauren—they all looked sort of the same. Well okay, Jen’s eyes were beady and really close together, and Sara had almost no neck and skin that was blotchy and pale. I hated myself for noticing these things.
“You have ten seconds,” she said.
“I really don’t want to,” I said.
“Don’t be such a goody-goody,” she countered. “It’s my birthday party.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m the least pretty—”
“Okay, stop,” Bridget said. “You’re lying already.”
All eyes were on me. They were all waiting.
“I don’t think anybody is ugly,” I said.
“Ugh, this is boring,” Bridget whined. “How about I make it easier for you?” She stood up and pointed a finger at Jen. “Jen is the least pretty.”
Jen’s eyes welled up with tears.
“Don’t freak out,” she said to Jen. “You’re still cute. You’re not, like, ugly. You’re just not as pretty as, like, Skyler.”
Jen looked scared.
“Okay, so Jen, Sara, and Lauren are the bottom three,” she said. “Sorry, guys.”
Jen pushed herself to her feet and ran into the guest bathroom. Sara and Lauren followed, and they slammed the door behind them.
“Now you finish,” Bridget said to me. Her green eyes were full of something awful. “Do me. Do Skyler. Do you.”
“You’re the prettiest, then Skyler, then me,” I said. It seemed like the right answer. I looked at Skyler to see if she was annoyed, but she seemed fine with being second.
“Nice try,” Bridget said. “But you’re still lying.”
“I am?” I asked.
“You’re the prettiest,” she said. “Just admit it.”
“I don’t think so,” I stammered.
Bridget scoffed. “Just say it. Just say you’re the prettiest, and then me and then Sky.”
Skyler laughed. “Hey! I want to be number two!”
Bridget ignored her. “Come on, Lima. Stop being so perfect and sweet. Just say it. You’re the prettiest person here.”
“I’m the prettiest person here,” I said. My voice was tiny.
And then Bridget just burst out laughing and screaming. “Lima said she’s the prettiest person here! I knew it all along! Lima thinks she’s prettier than everyone!”
“You made me,” I said, my throat closing.
“It’s a free country,” she snapped. “Nobody can make you do anything. You said it because you think it’s true.”
chapter
thirty-two
Hailey put on makeup while I sat on the edge of her bathtub and watched.
First There Was Forever Page 9