talking to Pam Markovitz, who is dressed up like some kind of junkyard cat, chewed-looking ears and whiskers and everything. Luke reaches out and yanks her bedraggled tail. Again my dumb, brainless body reacts: hands contract to fists, stomach clenches as if around bad chicken.
Joelle sees where I’m looking. “Slut.”
“I heard that Pam gave Jay Epstein head at the movies the other night,” Ash says.
“Really?” I say. “Who said that?”
“Jay Epstein.”
“There’s a reputable source,” I say.
“Still,” says Joelle. “Everyone knows she’s been with, like, the entire planet.”
“What an unpleasant visual,” says Ash. “Gotta love how the leotard rides up her butt.”
“Luke doesn’t seem to mind,” says Joelle. She catches my face. “I mean, he’s really really hot, but it’s a good thing you guys aren’t boyfriend/girlfriend and all that.”
“Oh, please. Who needs a boyfriend?” says Ash. “It’s not like we’re gonna get married anytime soon. Anyway, like Audrey keeps saying, college is right around the corner.”
It’s not supposed to bug me that Luke’s such a player; everything’s supposed to be casual. But in our friends-with-benefits arrangement, it seems like he’s the one who gets all the benefits. “Any other hot guys here?” I ask.
“I hope so,” Ash says. “I haven’t hooked up in weeks.”
Joelle runs off to get us some “soda”, which means that there’s beer that we’ll have to hide from Joelle’s dad, who probably won’t come out of his office over the garage long enough to see anything anyway. Me and Ash follow Joelle into the den. All the usuals are there: tramps, witches, devils, football players dressed like cheerleaders, cheerleaders dressed like football players. “So original,” says Ash. There is a guy wearing a plaid jacket with a fish tank on his head. When we ask, he says, “I’m swimming with the fishies”. Red plastic fish are glued to the walls of the tank. His teeth make a white piano in his blue-painted face.
Almost immediately, Ash starts dragging me over to every reasonably cute guy who doesn’t already know us from school. Joelle runs around taking bad pictures with her digital camera. Luke goes from girl to girl, stealing witch hats and pretending to poke people with a pitchfork he’s stolen from one of the devils. As if it’s my fault that everyone thinks she’s a slut, Pam Markovitz huddles with Cindy Terlizzi on the couch, Cindy shooting dirty looks and Pam smirking at me. I ignore them, talking to this person and that person, trying to relax and have a good time, but I feel like I’m far away and watching everything on a TV screen. Ash is getting sick of me being so gloomy, so she flirts big-time with Fish Tank, looking to hook up. At random intervals, cell phones ring and jingle and sing, and people go all yellular, shouting over the music, “What? WHAT?”
I down the rest of my beer and go over to the cooler for another one. I don’t even like beer.
“Awwww. Why so sad? Where’s Mr Popularity?”
I turn and see Chilly. He’s wearing baggy jeans, high-tops and a T-shirt that says “Insert Lame Costume Here”. Apparently it was good enough for Joelle, because he’s not wearing a tutu.
“Who?” I say.
“You know who,” he says.
“I don’t,” I say. Chilly gives me the creeps. He has eyes like radioactive algae and a wormy mouth. We learned a word for wormy in biology. Anneloid.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” he says. “Don’t you have a few thousand tests to study for? Another foreign language to learn?”
“Croatian,” I say. “But I can do that tomorrow.”
“You are such a good, good girl. Doesn’t it kill you that you aren’t graduating number one?”
As of the end of last year, I was number four in our class and had to work my butt off to get that much. A lot of people think that I’m some kind of genius because I skipped a grade, but I don’t think I’m much smarter than anyone else. I’m just weirder.
“There’s eight months to graduation,” I say. “Anything can happen.”
“Nah,” he says. He takes a sip of his drink, not beer but ginger ale. “You’ll never catch up with Ron. He’s got everyone beat. And Kimberly would rather commit ritual suicide than let anyone take her number two. I forget who’s number three, but whoever it is, you won’t budge them.”
“You sleep through all your classes. What do you care?”
“I don’t care at all. My test scores will get me where I want to go.”
“Oh, I’m sure they will,” I say. I resist the urge to puke on his shoes. I cannot believe that I ever went out with him. I want to jam my finger into my ear and scratch the memory out of my brain.
He takes a step closer to me, his algae eyes scraping across my chest. “Wanna hook up?”
“No,” I say.
“Come on,” he says. “You’re free, I’m free.”
I think, You’re always free. I look around the room for Luke. A mistake, because Chilly snorts.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s already occupied.” Chilly touches my cheek with a sandpapery fingertip. “He won’t mind sharing.”
I slap his hand and walk away. I can hear Chilly laughing behind me and I wish I’d thrown my beer in his face or something dramatic like that. But the drama queen stuff is Joelle’s job, not mine, and Chilly knows it. It’s why he likes to bother me.
When I’m upstairs in the bathroom, I swig the beer and check my make-up in the harsh light. I look like the Empress of the Undead, if Empresses of the Undead are pouty and pathetic. What’s the use of planning a big break-up if the person you’re breaking up with is too busy yanking on tails and poking people with pitchforks? I suddenly do not want to be at this party at all. I wonder if I should call my mom and ask for a ride home.
I’m still trying to decide when I bump into Luke in the hallway. Before I know what’s up, he’s pulled me into one of the bedrooms and shut the door with his foot.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey yourself,” he says. He—or someone else—has taken off the white collar, so he’s all in black. He looks more devilish than the devils do. I think that if there is a real devil, he has golden hair and round blue angel eyes, just like Luke.
“What?” he says, because I’m staring.
“Nothing,” I say. “Look. I’ve got to go.”
“Come on! We haven’t even had a chance to hang out yet.”
“That’s because there are too many other kitties around here,” I say.
“You’re not jealous,” he says.
