by Una LaMarche
“Stop playing,” I heard Dante say, and I remember thinking that even though he set me on edge, at least he would interrupt Liv’s conversation with Dave. That was what I was worried about. I was so consumed with jealousy that I couldn’t see what was really happening, right in front of me.
I wish I’d understood that the game Liv was playing was bigger than me, and more dangerous than cruel.
Maybe then I could have done something. Maybe then I could have stopped it.
Chapter Six
January 7
126 days left
ETHAN GOT TO LIV FIRST, as usual. While Dante was mixing up a rum and Coke, Ethan stumbled out of the bathroom and made a beeline for her, which gave me the excuse I’d been waiting for to run interference. I wasn’t proud of myself as I crossed the room with the sole intention of ruining my best friend’s game, but I was emboldened by what you’d said earlier, before Dante had showed up. You were right: I’d stood up for myself that afternoon, in front of all my teachers and my entire class, risking everything I’d worked so hard for. If I could do that, I could stand up for myself in front of anyone.
“Hey!” I said aggressively, stepping into the eight-inch gap between Liv and Dave. Ethan was on her other side, his hand on the small of her back. He’d only beaten me by about five seconds but was already holding court. Typical.
“I know I shouldn’t say anything,” he said, his consonants a little fuzzy from the gin, “but Liv is literally the only person who could ever play Vi. I mean, it was obvious, right, how much better she was than everybody?”
Dave looked down at me and raised his eyebrows. Up close, his eyes were a deep hazel green, flecked with copper. “She’s, um, very talented,” he said, going back to examining his beer.
“She’s our generation’s Angelina,” Ethan said earnestly. “Only hotter.”
“Shut up,” Liv said, but I could tell she loved it. Hell, I probably would have eaten it up, too, if I’d had someone chasing me around all day telling me I was just a younger, cuter version of Kerry Washington.
“There’s someone here to see you,” I interjected, shouting over the deafening squeals that had erupted from the dancing girls as an old-school reggaeton track came on. “Where have you been?”
“Liv was just showing me around,” Dave said. “Introducing me to what seems like the entire school packed into eight hundred square feet.”
“It’s actually twelve hundred, but there are some rooms I don’t let anyone go in,” Liv said. She bounced along with the music, chugging her drink. I hadn’t seen her in a while, but I figured it had to be her fifth or sixth of the night. I handed her my water.
“Drink this,” I said. “Pace yourself.” She rolled her eyes, but took a sip.
“Hey!” A hand reached over me and tapped Liv’s bare shoulder. Dante. I’m ashamed to say I was actually relieved. You followed sheepishly behind him.
“You’re here!” she cried.
“You’re looking beautiful as always,” Dante said with a sly smile. “So, you wanna go . . . talk for a minute?” Ethan blinked at him angrily.
“Yesssss,” she slurred, squeezing past us. “I’ll be back!” she trilled as she led Dante toward the hallway.
“Who the fuck is that guy?” Ethan grumbled.
“My cousin,” you said, side-stepping to avoid getting sandwiched by Lolly and Maple, who were energetically body rolling in your direction. “He’s . . . leaving soon.” You watched Liv and Dante go into her parents’ bedroom with a pained look on your face.
“What are they doing?” Dave asked, seeing your expression and looking a bit stricken himself. I glanced over at the door; the two guys Dante had brought with him were still standing there, staring at their phones. They were acting like bodyguards, but they definitely didn’t make me feel safe.
“You never know what Liv is up to,” I said, feeling an immediate pang of shame at the intentionally misleading innuendo.
“Should I go check on her?” Ethan asked.
“Nah, man, I will,” you said. “I guess it’s my problem now.” You ran your hands through your hair and started off after them, leaving me with the Olivia Gerstein Appreciation Committee—of which I was, at least temporarily, no longer an active member. Dave kept his eyes trained on the ground, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Ethan launched into either an ass-kissing reverie or belligerent diatribe, neither of which would do anything to diffuse the tension. So I did the only thing I could think of. I went boring, and I went hard.
“So . . . what neighborhood are you in?” I asked Dave.
“What?” He looked surprised, like he had only just noticed I was there. My heart sank. “Oh, um, Upper West. Eighty-fourth and Broadway,” he mumbled. “Pretty quick ride from here on the 1.”
“Cool,” I said. “I’m uptown, too—Morningside Heights.”
“I hate you both,” Ethan groaned.
“He lives on Staten Island,” I explained.
“Yikes.” Dave winced. “That’s got to be a rough commute.”
Ethan laughed bitterly. “Well, if you’re legally emancipated, I would make an excellent roommate . . .”
“Sorry,” Dave said, not sounding remotely sorry. “I live with my family. Too much family, actually. So if you want to take one of them off my hands, maybe we can trade.”
Ethan blinked and pushed up his glasses. “But wait, aren’t you an only child?”
I cringed as I watched Dave realize how much homework we’d already done on him. He nodded and drained his beer, doing a quick sweep of the room, like someone looking for the nearest emergency exit on an airplane. “It’s a long story,” he said.
“Cool. So what’s your plan for next year, man?” Ethan pressed, apparently drunk enough to completely ignore social cues.
“Don’t know yet,” Dave said.
“Did you apply anywhere? Like, Juilliard, or—”
“Nope.”
“Liv’s taking a gap year, too,” Ethan nodded. “I already got in early decision to the Tisch dramatic writing program, so.” He stared at Dave, waiting for an impressed reaction.
“You know . . . I think I’m gonna head out,” Dave said, glancing down the hallway to where you were standing outside Liv’s parents’ room, jiggling the obviously locked doorknob. Admittedly I’d never seen a drug deal go down, but it seemed like too much time had passed. I hoped Liv wasn’t messed up enough to make an even worse decision than inviting Dante in the first place. Or to not make a decision at all. But then you caught my eye and shook your head: I got this. I let out a breath and turned back to Dave.
“Nooooo!! You’re leaving!?!”
For a second I was worried that pathetic banshee wail had accidentally come out of me, but then Eunice appeared on the other side of Dave, nearly tripping over an ottoman in her haste to harass him.
“Can I just tell you something?” she asked, grabbing Dave’s arm, not waiting for an answer. “I seriously never, ever talk to famous people, but you are like, so amazing. I just had to say that, or I would hate myself.”
“Wow,” Dave said, his features resetting into an unconvincing smile, like a shaken Etch A Sketch. “Um, thank you.” Lolly and Maple appeared behind Eunice trying to look casual, like they’d danced their way over by accident.
“You’re so cute!” Eunice cried. “I’ve seen Saving Nathan literally a hundred times.”
“Literally?” Ethan interjected. “You’ve literally seen it a hundred times?”
“OK, fine, like eight times,” Eunice said, shooting Ethan a withering look. “Still, that’s a lot. And I really, really love you.”
“In it,” Lolly said quickly. “She loves you in it.”
“Oh my God, what did I say?” Eunice squealed, delighted with her Freudian slip. “I’m sorry, I’m just kind of starstruck.”
“We
all are,” Maple said breathlessly.
“Don’t be,” Dave said, his plastic grin starting to wear thin. “Seriously, I’m just a regular person.” He looked for an exit again, and I saw my opportunity. Dave was clearly waiting for Liv to come out and save him from his fans.
“Yup, he’s just a regular person with a curfew,” I said, taking Dave’s arm in a way that I hoped wasn’t as hungry or proprietary as the others had been. “Why don’t we go find your coat?”
“That would be awesome,” he said, glancing at me gratefully.
“Oh, sure, whatever, just leave me to the wolves!” Ethan called as we turned our backs. I hoped for his sake that one of the girls—or anyone, really—would stay and talk to him, take his mind off of Liv for a hot second. That boy was badly in need of a reality check.
“Thank you,” Dave whispered as we snaked our way across the living room, dodging sloshing drinks and expressive elbows, ducking our heads against the current of double takes. I felt electrified by the attention, by everyone’s eyes not only on Dave but on me, too. We were headed for the coats, so as far as anyone else knew, we were leaving the party . . . together.
I imagined Liv, finally emerging, stoned and bored, looking around for us, asking people where we’d gone. I could almost feel my phone buzzing against my hip as she furiously texted me. It gave me a wicked thrill.
“My pleasure,” I said as we reached the kitchen. The bottle had rolled off into a corner, but a few couples had decided to continue the game anyway, sitting on counters and wedged against cabinets, their flushed faces pressed together under the bright track lighting. My pleasure. My real pleasure would have been to push Dave back onto the pile of coats in the laundry room and find out if his lips were as soft as they looked. And I hadn’t even been drinking. We stepped through the tangle of bodies as quickly as we could.
• • •
Finding Dave’s nondescript jacket in the sea of winter puffer coats could have been an SAT math question, it was that difficult. Mine was the only one that wasn’t some variation on a muted shade of New York–cool black or navy.
“Red, huh?” Dave asked, pulling it out by a sleeve from the bottom of the heap. “I guess you must like to stand out.”
“I don’t have a choice.” It came out cockier than I’d meant it—I was thinking more along the lines of feeling like an outcast and a long shot, more along the lines of 1 in 1,086, but Dave smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“I believe that,” he said. I felt a tingle rush up my cheeks; I had to purse my lips to keep from grinning.
“I feel like I should apologize for everybody in there,” I said, once I composed myself. “They’re drunk. Which, I mean—that’s fine, I guess, but you should know that not everyone at our school is like that. And my friends are definitely not like that.” Except Liv, I almost added, but then bit my tongue. She hadn’t always been that way. It had only been since things with Jasper started falling apart, around Thanksgiving, that she’d started coming to school hungover, and camping out in the nurse’s office. And I gave her a pass because I had never had my heart broken. I thought maybe everyone did that.
“It’s OK,” Dave said, tossing me my coat. “Everyone at every school is like that, especially at a party. I just don’t have any friends here yet, so it’s a little intense.” He leaned against the washing machine and looked out the window, which offered a beautiful—if tiny—view of Riverside Park, and the Hudson beyond, as smooth and gray as a piece of slate. The moon lit his profile like some old movie glamour shot. I wanted to ask him if he just walked around with a follow spot at the ready but then thought better of it.
“Must be strange to leave all that sunshine and sand for this icy hellscape, too,” I joked. “This it, by the way?” I held up a black North Face windbreaker and Dave shook his head.
“I miss the seasons,” he said. “And actually, I was born in the city. My grandparents still live here.”
“Native, huh? Well, now I really like you.” I smiled, caught his eye, and then looked away. Liv had taught me that move, back in middle school. I think she read it in some stupid magazine. Still, it worked: when I looked back at Dave, he was smiling, too.
“And here I thought you just liked me for my Papa John’s commercial,” he said.
“Please,” I said, “No self-respecting New York girl eats Papa John’s.” Dave laughed. “OK—” I held up two more contenders. “If it’s not one of these, I think you should just steal someone else’s.”
“You’re amazing,” he said, pointing to the leather bomber jacket in my right hand. “Seriously, thank you, Joy.”
“No problem,” I said, throwing it to him. “Want to—”
Want to ride home together?
That’s what I was going to say. Buoyed by the caffeine, and the genuine smiles, and the banter, and the way the moonlight hit his eyelashes, and the way he said my name, I was going to take a leap unlike any I’d ever done in ballet. I was going to ask Dave Roth if I could walk him the five blocks from Liv’s building to the subway, and then ride with him twelve deliciously slow local stops on the 1 train, and then—well, I didn’t exactly know what then.
And I was never going to find out.
“You’re leaving?!” Liv cried from the doorway behind me, sounding more like Eunice Lee than she would ever want to know. I spun around to see her looking back and forth between us, confused, her amber-shadowed eyes at a druggy half-mast. You were standing just beyond her in the kitchen, with an expression on your face like you just got slapped; something must have happened with Dante, but I was too swept up in my quickly unraveling fantasy world to care.
“Yeah, I’ve got an early morning,” Dave said. “I would have come and said goodbye, but I didn’t want to, uh—” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “—interrupt you.”
“Oh, what, that?” Liv laughed dismissively. “That was nothing. And you are not leaving. I’ve barely gotten to talk to you!” She reached past me and grabbed for Dave’s hand, but I intercepted her, pulling her in like I was going for a hug.
“Speaking of talking,” I whispered, “Can I please talk to you for a minute?” I was expecting to get a familiar whiff of skunky smoke in her hair, but Liv didn’t smell like weed. Was she just wasted, I wondered, or had Dante given her something else?
“Sure!” She grinned at me dreamily and then turned back to Dave, who was still holding his jacket in one fist. “Why don’t you go wait with the boys and I’ll be right out,” she said.
“Deserter!” I heard Ethan yell from the kitchen.
Dave laughed. “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess one more beer won’t hurt.” He folded his jacket and shoved it on a high shelf next to a bottle of fabric softener. “So you don’t have to go fish next time,” he said, looking at me. Next time. Maybe—just maybe—I thought, there was hope for a walk home after all. Which only made me more pissed off that Liv had intervened.
“What the hell?” I demanded once the door was semi-closed (it couldn’t close all the way, on account of the coat avalanche Dave and I had caused).
“What?” Liv was either playing dumb or too out of it to follow. Either way, it annoyed me.
“You were the one who told me I should go for Dave, but then you’ve been the one hanging on him like a spider monkey all night,” I said. “And then, just when I’m actually having a moment with him, you break it up. So I’ll ask again, what the hell?”
“I wasn’t trying to break anything up,” she said, the words slow and slurry. “I just want everyone to have fuuuun.”
“I was having fun,” I hissed. “I was having fun with Dave. I just wasn’t having your kind of fun.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, frowning a little.
She wasn’t lucid enough to debate me, so I didn’t bother sugarcoating it. “It means you’re fucked up, Liv,” I said. “And it’s not c
ute. Bringing Dante here was a shady move. Did you even notice how uncomfortable it made Diego?”
Liv laughed derisively. “That’s so weird, Mom,” she said. “I thought you were in Puerto Rico with Tia Mari.”
“Fine, then, don’t listen to me,” I said. “But if you like Dave, just say it. Don’t use me to get what you want.”
“I’m just being a good hostess,” she said, still giggling, drawing out the last word like a child’s whine. It was hard to be mean to someone who was so clearly out of it, but I couldn’t help myself. The words were long overdue.
“No,” I said. “What you’re being right now is a bad friend.”
Liv’s face instantly crumpled; her moods were like quicksilver even when she wasn’t wasted. “You . . . think I’m a bad friend?” she asked.
“Not always,” I sighed. “Just—look, we can’t really talk when you’re like this, so I’m going to go home.” I shoved my arms into my coat sleeves, avoiding her eyes. I knew that leaving meant giving up my supposed “party goal,” but I wouldn’t have felt right flirting with Dave knowing Liv was such a mess, anyway.
“Joy, please,” Liv said, her voice suddenly small and pleading. “I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” I lied, to keep her tears at bay. “I just don’t know why you can’t let me have one crush without stepping in first to prove how much better you are.” Unexpected tears sprung to my eyes as I moved past her and yanked open the door. On the other side of the pass-through, Dave and Ethan were engaged in another one-sided conversation. You were standing off to the side, looking as dejected as I felt, all traces of Mr. Hospitality gone. It was a special kind of hell to be plunged into personal drama while the rest of the party raged on so obliviously. “Get a fucking room,” I muttered under my breath as I pushed by a couple groping each other against the fridge.
I tried on one of Dave’s disposable smiles to say my quick goodbyes, pretending I was tired, but you saw right through it.