Late to the Party

by Kelly Quindlen

  “That’s funny,” Maritza said in a low voice, “because Codi hasn’t told us anything about you or anyone else here.”

  The silence that followed was unbearable. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

  JaKory shook his head. There were angry tears in his eyes. “Come on, Maritza,” he said, turning away, “we’re obviously not supposed to be here.”

  They tore out of my room, and I stumbled out of bed after them.

  “Lydia, I’m so sorry, I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, and then I pushed past my brother and chased Maritza and JaKory down the stairs, begging them to listen to me. In my peripheral vision I could see the kitchen was full of my other friends, frozen in the middle of breakfast, watching everything with their mouths open.

  “Codi!” Natalie called. “Should we leave?”

  “No,” I said, hurtling out the door, “no, everything’s fine!”

  I ran down the driveway and into the street, where Maritza’s car was, my bare feet burning on the hot asphalt.

  “Maritza! JaKory! Hold on!”

  They turned around. I waited for them to start yelling again, to curse me out, to call me names, but they just looked at me like they’d never seen me before.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I—there’s a whole story behind this—”

  “Okay,” JaKory cut in, voice full of acid. “What is it?”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

  “So you have a whole new set of friends we don’t know about,” Maritza said, tears spilling out of her eyes. “Is that why you’ve been so weird this summer? You went off and became this whole new person who throws parties and has girls sleep in her bed, but you couldn’t bring us along for the ride?”

  I still couldn’t answer. I stared at the asphalt, wondering if it was real, wondering if any of this was real.

  “They looked at us like we were aliens,” JaKory said.

  “They just don’t know you yet—”

  “Right,” Maritza said, wiping her face. “They think we’re strangers bursting in on your party. Just a couple of nobodies. They don’t know that we’ve been to your house more times than we can count, that we know the code to your garage, that your brother knew to call us when he couldn’t get ahold of you this morning—”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry—”

  “And you had someone in your bed,” Maritza said, her voice cracking. “You’re dating someone and we’ve never even heard her name.”

  “It just happened recently,” I said, wiping my own eyes. “Literally just the other day.”

  “Have you kissed her?” JaKory asked.

  My stomach contracted, and my face flushed with heat. I could only stare at him and Maritza, the answer obvious on my face.

  JaKory nodded very slowly, his jaw set. “Right,” he said, his voice unnervingly calm.

  “I was going to tell you, I promise, I just needed a few days to get used to it—”

  “I’m really happy for you, Codi,” Maritza cut in, her voice shaking. “But I guess you were right. I don’t know you anymore.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. And before I could think of anything, they had taken off in Maritza’s car.

  * * *

  I sat in the driveway for I don’t know how long. The sun was brutal on my neck, but I didn’t move.

  Lydia found me. She folded herself down next to me, laying a hand across my leg, but I was too embarrassed to look at her. A long moment passed before she reached for my hand.

  “Are you okay?”

  I started crying. Not hard, but enough to need a tissue. I wiped my nose on my shoulder and hoped she didn’t notice.

  “What happened?” Lydia whispered. “I thought they were your best friends. I knew you were having issues with them, but I didn’t realize it was this bad.”

  I looked at her. There was no judgment in her eyes, only compassion and concern.

  “I was trying to be different this summer,” I told her, wiping my nose again. “It’s like I told you that night at Samuel’s party … I didn’t like who I was with them. I wanted to try something new. But I never meant to hurt them.”

  Lydia brushed my hair back, her hand gentle on my face. “Why didn’t you like who you were with them?”

  I swallowed. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try.”

  “Okay, like … do you know how I became friends with them? It was the first week of sixth grade, during recess. I’d gone to this really small elementary school and didn’t know how to make new friends. I spent all of recess standing alone by the door waiting for it to be over. And JaKory had just moved here because his parents split up, and during recess he would just walk around the field aimlessly. Maritza was trying to hang around the popular girls, but you could tell she was trying too hard and was always the odd one out.”

  “Mm-hm,” Lydia said, rubbing my back, her eyes intent on mine.

  “So one day, this teacher called JaKory and me over to organize the recess crate. I think she was tired of seeing us standing alone and wanted to give us something to do. So JaKory and I started organizing it, and a minute later, Maritza ended up with us. She’d insulted one of the popular girls, and they’d all ditched her, and the teacher had seen it and brought her over before she could start crying. We started talking, and I remember feeling like—like I was safe, because they were as nervous and awkward as me. When the bell rang, we walked back into the building together, and we’ve been friends ever since.”

  Lydia’s eyes were steady. “And you don’t like that story.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t even choose them, Lydia. A teacher whose name I can’t remember put the three of us together because we were weird and lonely and didn’t fit anywhere else.”

  “But does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters! I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “But I feel like I am when I’m with them.”

  Lydia trailed her hand down my hair again. “I’m gonna get everyone out of here,” she said quietly. “Give you some space to figure this out.”

  “I don’t need space,” I said quickly.

  Her hand stilled. “Well, you need something, and I’m not sure what it is.”

  I looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

  We were silent for a minute, and then she said, “Codi, just so you know, I like who you are. Not just the you who wears pretty dresses to parties, but the you who was a painfully shy kid and who freaked out on the swings when I tried to kiss her. You don’t have to be just one version of yourself. You’re far more dynamic than that.”

  I wiped my eyes again. “Thank you.”

  She kissed me very carefully. “I gotta tell you,” she said, “if I was that fancy old rich lady who sent you a message in a bottle, I’d tell you so many beautiful things about yourself, you’d never have to worry again.”

  She kissed my forehead and led me back into the house.

  * * *

  Ricky stayed with me for most of the day. He cooked omelets with peppers and cheese, all the while telling me that everything would be okay. He was more settled in himself, more open and tender than he’d been with me before. Beyond the terrible weight of my fight with Maritza and JaKory, I was happy for him.

  “What happens with you and Tucker now?” I asked.

  He shrugged, but it was a more peaceful shrug than I’d seen before. “We’ll take it one step at a time. First things first, I’m taking him to dinner on Wednesday.”

  We smiled across the counter. Nothing more needed to be said. Then together we cleaned the house from top to bottom, just as we’d done that afternoon in May, until there was no sign of partying to be found.

  It didn’t matter; my parents found out anyway. Grant had called them when he couldn’t get ahold of me to pick him up, and when my mom had called Mrs. Stinch, our neighbor, to check on me, Mrs. Stinch had told her about the line o
f cars and pulsing music. “I never took Codi for a partier, Jen,” she’d told my mom, which was just about the most passive-aggressive line I could think of.

  My parents were at a loss for what to do with me. It seemed beyond their conception of possibility that I had enough friends to throw a party in the first place. When they asked me straight up if I had in fact thrown a party and I responded with a calm and matter-of-fact “Yes,” they simply stared at me in bewilderment.

  “I was very responsible about it, if that helps anything,” I told them. “Nothing got broken or stained, and nobody threw up anywhere.”

  They exchanged a look; it was clear they had no idea how to handle this. Finally, my mom held her hand out and said, “Give us your keys. You’re grounded for a week. Totes-n-Goats and this house, those are the only two places you’re allowed.” She looked at my dad, as if to check that that’s how it was done. He merely shrugged and raised his eyebrows.

  I stayed quiet, grateful that my punishment wasn’t worse. It crossed my mind that I would be losing a full weekend—and there were only three left before school started—but one weekend of being grounded didn’t seem like a bad trade-off for the first party I’d ever thrown.

  “And go apologize to your brother,” my mom said. “You left him hanging, and that wasn’t right.”

  Grant was in his room, the door shut, muffled music playing from his laptop. I knocked and heard the swivel of his desk chair.

  “What?” he said when he opened the door.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  He looked suspicious. “About what?”

  “I don’t know, Grant, just let me in.”

  He stepped back but left the door only narrowly open, so that I had to squeeze through the doorframe while he watched me. I walked toward his desk and leaned against the window, looking out on the driveway below. He really could see everything from here.

  “So?” he said.

  I turned around to look at him.

  “Sorry I forgot to pick you up from your friend’s house.”

  Grant’s eyes burned into mine. “It was really shitty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Darin’s parents were pissed. They wanted everyone out by nine thirty so they could go to church. You said you would be there by nine fifteen.”

  “And I forgot, and I’m sorry. It’s not like I’ve ever done this to you before. How many times have I picked you up from basketball camp or the movies or your other friends’ houses? And I’m always on time, and I never complain if you’re late.”

  “Don’t act like you do that to be nice or something. You only do it because Mom and Dad make you.”

  I ignored this and launched an attack of my own. “You didn’t have to call Maritza and JaKory. I told you in the car that I wasn’t talking to them yet.”

  “Who else was I supposed to call? They almost couldn’t get me either. Maritza’s grounded and her parents took her phone and her car. JaKory had to call their house and tell them that I was stranded and no one knew where you were. Mrs. Vargas almost came and got me herself.”

  “Maritza’s grounded?” I asked, momentarily distracted.

  “Her dad caught her drinking his rum. It was the only thing JaKory asked her about. He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to her. Probably because of that night you screamed at them on the deck.”

  I turned away from him and stared out the window again. My stomach was in knots. “You don’t get it.”

  “Don’t act all dramatic just because you’ve been a shitty friend,” Grant said, his voice acidic. “You probably think you’re cool now because you threw a party, but guess what, that doesn’t make you cool. You were cooler before, when you cared about people.”

  “I still care about people!” I said, stung.

  “Yeah, your new friends,” he said patronizingly. “You obviously don’t care about Maritza or JaKory or anyone in your family.”

  “You don’t know how I feel,” I said, my voice shaking. “Everything’s been so easy for you. You’re athletic and outgoing and Mom and Dad’s pride and joy, and you’re—”

  I caught myself; I’d been about to say he was straight. The word died on my tongue.

  “Yeah, you’ve got me all figured out, Codi,” he snarled. “Get out of my room. You suck at apologizing.”

  He threw himself into his desk chair, and I stormed out of the room.

  * * *

  It was a long week.

  I went to work, helped uppity suburban moms find peacock-print bags, and came home to a quiet house, where my brother ignored me and my parents watched me like they still weren’t sure who I was. I tried to call JaKory, who screened my calls, and even talked myself into calling Maritza’s house phone. It was Mr. Vargas who answered, and he told me firmly that Maritza was grounded, and that he needed to get back to cleaning his fish tank.

  Lydia came by a couple of afternoons to check on me. She brought me iced coffee from the café, and we talked over the kitchen counter about her math class, our work shifts, and the morning after the party over and over again.

  “Have you talked to them yet?” she’d say, with her hand on the small of my back, and when I’d explain I hadn’t been able to reach them, she’d rub circles over my shirt and promise I’d figure it out.

  Ricky and I texted back and forth, and on Thursday, after he got off work, he came over to tell me about his date. We went down to the basement with sodas and ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and he gushed about the jokes Tucker had told, and the liberating anonymity they’d enjoyed at the restaurant down in the city, and even the fact that Tucker had said his name.

  “He never used to say it before—he’d just avoid calling me anything—but now he says ‘Ricky’ when he’s talking to me, and I’m just like…” He shook his head and pointed quickly to his torso. “It hits me right here.”

  “Who knew you were such a romantic?”

  “Shut up. You’re the only person I can tell, so you have to deal with all the mushy stuff.”

  I looked at him. “Still don’t want to tell the friends you feel like you’ve known since kindergarten? Not even Cliff?”

  He rubbed the crumbs off his fingers. “Feels like I’ve known you since kindergarten, too, and that’s enough for now.”

  If my brother saw Lydia or Ricky coming and going, he didn’t say anything about it. He stayed shut up in his room, playing music and watching TV shows, or otherwise went out to hang with his friends in the neighborhood and didn’t come back until dinnertime. We didn’t speak to each other and generally pretended like the other one didn’t exist. It wasn’t until Friday night, four days after my failed apology attempt, that he acknowledged me at all.

  “Did you ever ask your friend Ricky what kind of truck he drives?”

  I looked up from my phone, where I’d been hovering over another unanswered text to JaKory. Grant wasn’t looking at me, but he had paused between bites of SpaghettiOs.

  “No,” I said quietly. “I forgot to.”

  My brother shook his head, not like a pissed-off fourteen-year-old boy, but like a tired, disappointed old man. He picked up his bowl and shuffled out of the kitchen without another word.

  * * *

  Saturday, the day before my grounding was over, went on forever. I worked from noon until close, one of the longest shifts I’d had all summer, and one of the most boring, too. Tammy stood at the open storefront, holding her wrists together behind her back and shifting from one foot to the other while she stared across the shopping plaza. I dragged myself around the store, spraying Windex on every glass surface and rearranging the zebra pencils so they all faced the same direction, and contemplated crashing Maritza’s dance camp on Monday just so I could talk to her.

  “Codi,” Tammy said, turning half around, “what’s today’s date?”

  “The twenty-third.”

  “Aw, shoot. CuppyCakes has that promotion up for half off their muffin tops, but it says ‘Now through 7/22.’ I meant to get one yest
erday. Shoot, shoot, shoot.”

  July 23 was ringing something in my brain, but I couldn’t place it. I trailed around the store again, trying to remember, but nothing came to me.

  It wasn’t until I was home, sitting on the deck with a glass of ice water pressed to my forehead, that I remembered with a sick, plunging feeling why today’s date was resonating.

  Saturday, July 23. The day JaKory was supposed to meet Daveon. The day he’d asked Maritza and me to drive him to Alabama.

  I checked my watch: It was almost ten o’clock—long past the hour I could have driven him there. Maybe, I hoped, Maritza had wrangled her way out of being grounded to drive JaKory there in time; or maybe Daveon had found a way to haul himself here instead, and he and JaKory were now nestled comfortably under some blankets, watching Doctor Who. I couldn’t bear the thought of JaKory sitting alone in his room, texting Daveon about how they’d find some other way to see each other, bitterly explaining that he’d never expected his two best friends to leave him hanging like this.

  I called him before I could think twice about it. He didn’t answer.

  I called again. He ignored me again.

  I texted him, sending up a prayer to the universe.

  Did you make it to meet Daveon?

  He answered after a long delay. I could almost feel him glowering down at his phone, hating me for asking.

  JaKory Green: What do you think?

  The plunging in my stomach intensified. My entire body was prickly and hot.

  JaKory Green: To clarify, no, I did not get to meet the boy I’m so deeply in love with. But thanks for caring.

  I felt sick with myself. Of all the things I’d messed up over the last week, this one was by far the worst.

  I sat there on the deck, the insects loud, the air still warm, the summer swelling with its last untouchable days. I thought of my parents, who were inside watching NCIS reruns and would no doubt be heading up to bed by eleven, and of my brother, who was shut up in his room, hating me, thinking I didn’t care. I wondered if he was right.