A half hour. That was all it had taken to find one of the moms who administered the page, so that she could take it down. A half hour that had become Erika’s life.
She could still remember staring at her phone, seeing it there. She’d barely kept herself from smashing the screen.
“You couldn’t download it—my saving grace. But people took screenshots and whatever. Made hilarious memes with them. They’re probably still floating around.”
“What did the school do?”
Be cool. It’s just old shit. No big deal, no big deal, no big deal.
“It was the beginning of June. The guys were a year older, so they’d already graduated, and it wasn’t an official school page anyway. Legally I could have gone after them, but . . . I don’t know. At the time I just wanted the whole thing to be over.”
She fought back tears now, as she sat there thinking about living her senior year in the aftermath of it all, getting called a slut again and again. By strangers. By people that used to be her friends.
By Dana.
Of course Erika had known that it was wrong, back when Grayson first started flirting with her, but she’d always had a thing for him, so she’d gone along. At some point, their semi-innocent compliments evolved into completely inappropriate conversations, like their joke about how he watched too much porn on his phone.
The tension between them built for weeks, until she’d finally gone off with him that night. He’d begged her to let him take the video. He went on and on about how he wouldn’t need anything else to look at, how sexy she was, how he was totally falling for her . . .
It hadn’t even been that hard to convince her. He’d played right into that want she had, to be everything to someone. Their whole world, their only desire. That’s how you knew you were worth something, right? When their need for you was that extreme, an absolute.
That was the part that was so hard, even now, to come to terms with. How desperate she was for someone to make her feel special. Afterward, she’d been so bitter, telling herself that everyone’s relationship was some version of that, that people sought each other only for some flimsy validation. It became another reason to distance herself from other girls, to look down on their silly crushes.
She didn’t want to be that way anymore. She wanted silly crushes—boys in trucker hats at luaus. But more important, she wanted friends to talk about it with afterward.
Erika was starting to realize that getting there would take a lot more effort than she’d been giving.
Finally, she put on her seat belt and readied herself to ask if she was taking him to his house. Before she could, his phone started beeping incessantly, and he fumbled with it, trying to turn down the volume.
“Everything okay?” Erika asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tucker said. “Ryan’s trying to get all the debate people together, in half an hour. He wants to get a picture of us jumping into his indoor pool, in our clothes.”
“Oh, ha ha. I can’t believe there are still rooms of that house that I haven’t seen.”
“I know, right?”
Erika fiddled with the hem of her dress. “I can drop you back off at the party. It’s not that far.”
“No, no. I’ll call an Uber, have it pick me up here. That makes more sense.”
“Okay. I mean . . . if you’re sure. But listen, don’t mess up that suit, okay? It’s a really nice suit.”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
Erika was still feeling restless, like she hadn’t said all she could, like she could have done a better job convincing him that he was special the way he was. She was still rattled, though, from everything that had happened tonight, and she couldn’t seem to find the words.
“Tucker . . .”
He looked over at her, cautiously, expectantly. After a second, she turned away.
“I guess I better head home.”
22
Tucker
Bobby had agreed to trade outfits with Tucker so that Tucker could be part of the debate-jump photo, and now the boys were standing in the changing room located off the pool, considering themselves and each other in the mirror.
“Damn,” Bobby said. “I look good in this.”
That made Tucker laugh, and he was thankful for that, because he still felt bad about what had happened with Bobby earlier. He was also reeling from the diner and the conversation he’d had with Erika in the car. He couldn’t believe he’d said so many deep, secret things out loud.
Now Tucker just had to hold himself together for a little longer. He could do that, he was sure of it.
“Hey,” Tucker said to Bobby. “Don’t get attached to that. I want it back.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see. If you end up ruining that shirt, I might keep this as punishment.”
“Isn’t it kind of adorable that we’re the same size?”
“So adorable,” Bobby said.
Tucker looked at Bobby’s jeans and nice button-down reflecting back at him in the mirror. That got him thinking of the Santa picture, so Tucker pulled out his phone, and, of course, his mom had posted it online, where it had already gotten a truly frightening number of likes. Then he saw that Bobby had responded with a line of mortified emojis, and Janet had replied that she missed him. Bobby had responded that he missed her, too.
In that moment, Tucker realized that Bobby was a Hufflepuff just like him. And maybe that was what pulled the two of them together, more than anything else. Maybe it’s why they’d been friends for so long. Maybe it would keep them together, even when everything changed next year.
That was something to be grateful for.
“Hey, listen . . . I’ve been a total jerk. About Skylar. I’m sorry. I . . . she’s actually really cool . . .”
“Seriously, it’s fine. I mean, we can talk about it later if you want, but I don’t want to talk about it now.”
Tucker nodded, then walked over to the door, opening it a crack to peer at the pool, which sat inside a glass cavern. Stars and a big fat moon glowed overhead, reflecting down into the water. Ryan was getting everybody ready for the jump, talking about how important the timing was because they’d only get one chance and then everyone would be soaked.
Tucker’s emotions were pinballing all over the place, but he was still managing to control them. He was okay. For now he was staying-busy-staying-busy-staying-busy.
“Just to be clear,” Bobby said. “You did drive off with Erika, and now you’re here again?”
“Yeah, yeah. Things got really weird. I took her to the diner, and we ran into my dad.”
“What?”
“It was bad. Like really bad.”
“Is that why you came back?”
Was it? Tucker didn’t think it was that simple. He’d left because the circumstances were wrong, both of them off-kilter. If something had happened, it might have been because they were hurting, and that didn’t feel right.
But there was another reason, too.
“I had fun here tonight,” Tucker said. “I didn’t want to miss the end of the party.”
Tucker and Bobby walked out into the glass pyramid, where it was steamy, chemical-smelling. Tucker joined the rest of the debate team, all of them lined up, barefoot, at the edge of the pool, their shoes, socks, and tights piled behind them. Ryan was pulling up a Christmas mix, then linking his phone to the speaker in the corner. Tucker was glad when it was a happy song that came blasting out, or at least happy-ish. It was that soul song where the woman was begging her baby to come home.
Standing there with his new friends, while Bobby hovered in the corner in his borrowed suit—Tucker was overwhelmed. The night suddenly felt strange and beautiful and sad all at once, the way the end of a year always did.
A lump formed in his throat, and Tucker was relieved when Ryan said that it was time to jump.
Across the pool, the professional photographer was waiting, along with a bunch of friends holding their phones. The water, impossibly clean and blue, was gently l
apping against the bright white tile. Ryan was trying to get everyone to be quiet, but it was hopeless—there was too much laughter, too much chatter. He gave up and did his best to yell over it.
“All right! Don’t mess this up. ONE. TWO. THREE!”
Up they went, and down they fell.
Splash.
Tucker kicked his way up, shocked at how heavy he felt, weighed down by the jeans, the shirt. He burst to the surface, then watched as everyone else did the same. The girls’ makeup was running down their faces, and everyone’s hair was a disaster, but it seemed like nobody cared.
They were all a mess, so what did it matter?
Dodging bodies left and right, he awkwardly made his way over to the side of the pool, clinging to the rough lip, smiling at everyone . . . and then somebody crashed down next to him.
It was Bobby, who leaned back to casually float there in his boxers.
Tucker splashed water all over Bobby’s face, but Bobby barely flinched.
“Don’t worry, I laid your suit out very nicely in the corner.”
“This is a pathetically obvious way to show off your muscles, just so you know.”
“What? Whatever. I’m just checking on you. In case you needed to be saved.”
“Sure, sure.”
As Tucker and Bobby kept bickering, Ryan and Nina were paddling up behind them, situating themselves to hang off the edge of the pool. Nina was looking at Tucker a little funny, and he thought maybe she was going to ask what happened to Erika, but then she started smiling, pointing back and forth between Tucker and Bobby.
“You two sound exactly like my little twin sisters when you fight.”
“Tucker’s totally like my twin sister,” Bobby said.
“Oh yeah,” Tucker said. “We’re twinsies for life.”
Nina and Ryan were both laughing at that, and Tucker was so happy. The wet clothes felt awful, but the water was so warm, and that soul song was ending, the word Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas echoing over and over. Ryan yelled at someone on the sidelines to turn up the volume as a new song began.
And of course. What else would it be? John-Fucking-Lennon.
Tucker sighed, letting the first bars of the song wash over him. And . . . maybe his mom was right. Maybe this was a good song. Right now, it was completely overwhelming him, filling him with entirely too many emotions. Bobby was across from him, still churning, still afloat, his eyes going wide with concern, because he saw exactly what was happening.
Tucker was crying.
Bobby splashed him in the face, asked if he wanted to race to the other end of the pool, and Tucker knew that Bobby was fulfilling his promise from a moment ago—he was trying to save him. But Tucker didn’t feel like he needed saving, not this time. He wiped his face, swallowed hard.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.”
“Are you all right?” Nina asked quietly.
“Dude, what’s wrong?” Ryan asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” Tucker said. “Or lots of things, I guess. My dad has pancreatic cancer and he’ll probably be dead in a year.”
Beyond them, the pool was still full of laughter and splashing. The camera was still flashing, phones still clicking. In their little circle, though, it was quiet. Ryan and Nina murmured how sorry they were, while Bobby kept treading water, his face crumpled in concern.
Tucker felt very bare, very raw just then. He was sad and he was scared, but he felt freer than he had in a while.
That part was almost exhilarating.
They were asking him questions, and he was answering, giving details in a mindless sort of way, letting the words flow out of him, explaining how his dad was staying with a friend, to be near the clinic where he was getting treatment. And then he told them that his dad was an asshole. That Tucker felt like he barely knew him. It seemed suddenly easy to say all these big, monstrous things, surrounded as he was by people who were looking at him with so much kindness.
When the three of them ran out of things to say, Tucker swore that he was fine, and then he pushed off the edge, floating on his back toward the middle of the pool.
Staring up at the stars, Tucker was glad for this complicated, bittersweet moment, for everything that had led to it.
That night in the tree house, Erika had talked about people wanting an excuse to say and do all those things they secretly wanted to say and do. But maybe parties were more than just an excuse. Maybe they were something a little more special.
Maybe some kinds of magic were real.
Tucker sat in Bobby’s soaking clothes, in the corner of the glass cavern. Before he could think too hard, he called Erika.
She said hello very skeptically.
“I took my suit off. Wait, wait. That sounded creepy. Let me start over. Bobby and I traded clothes, so that I didn’t ruin my suit. But then he took it off, too, and swam in his underwear. I don’t know why that matters. This is getting off on the wrong track.”
“Can’t wait to hear what the right track is, if there is one.”
“There is, there is. I had to call you because I heard the John Lennon Christmas song for the third time today, and it’s really grown on me. It helped me come up with a new theory about Christmas songs.”
He could hear her shifting around. He wondered if she was in bed, and he wondered what she wore to bed, and then he screamed inwardly at himself to focus.
“Okay, Campanelli. There’s nothing I like better at one in the morning than elaborate theories. Lay it on me.”
“Oh god, it’s that late? Sorry, sorry. Okay. So I think you’re right, but only partly. Yeah, those songs are written to heighten our emotions. But I don’t think that’s a sham or fake, I think . . . okay, this will sound stupid, but I mean it. The sensation you get, at the climax of a song—that’s how beautiful life is. But there’s no way to always feel like that, right? So we need things like Christmas songs to remind us. A touchstone or something. And when they make you kind of sad? That’s because even as they help you understand how much it all matters, they remind you of the times you didn’t understand at all.”
Now the other end of the line was very quiet. No more shifting. Was she thinking? Had she hung up? Had the chlorine warped Tucker’s brain, and this was the dumbest thing he’d ever done?
“Okay, okay,” she finally said. “I buy it. I think memories are like that, too. You know how there are big moments in your life that you think about all the time, stories that you tell in your mind?”
“Like a song played over and over.”
“Exactly. I think that’s how we explain ourselves to ourselves. Or something.”
Tucker was smiling, even though he was starting to get very cold and shivery. “That’s pretty good. Were you on debate, too?”
“Ha ha, no. But listen, I’m actually glad that you called, because I’ve been thinking, too. When we were in the parking lot . . . I shouldn’t have said you weren’t a pussy. I should have said that the word is, you know, invalid. Inherently flawed.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.”
“Don’t blow me off! I’m serious.” She paused, sighing loudly, mumbling that she needed a second to figure out how to say this.
“So I had the first boobs of anybody in my class—I know they aren’t much now, but everything that’s here I’ve had since fifth grade, and that was a lot for fifth grade. I showed up with them at the beginning of the year, and right away boys started calling me a slut. When I was ten. Ten. Later I was a slut because of something I wore, because I hooked up with too many people. By then I knew that word was bullshit, but it got harder to believe after the whole world saw what they saw.”
All of his friends were out of the pool by now. Ryan was handing out giant fluffy towels, and everybody was laughing about how miserable it was going to be to drive home in wet clothes. Tucker hunched down lower with his phone, trying to block it all out.
“I’m sorry. That’s . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t ha
ve to say anything. What I’m trying to explain is . . . I know I shouldn’t care, if people think I’m a slut. I know that it’s bullshit, the whole idea. But really believing that, deep down, all the time? That’s a different story. I’m not there yet. And maybe it’s the same for you.”
Tucker ran a hand through his hair.
“Yeah, yeah. For sure.”
For a few long seconds, neither of them said anything, but it was the nice kind of lull, the kind where you felt connected to the other person.
“So if Bobby put on your suit and is now in his underwear, what do you have on?”
“Did you just ask what I’m wearing right now?”
There was a weird noise on the other end of the line, and Tucker was fairly certain it was a snort.
“Got you? Did I get you?”
“Yes, fine. You got me. And now I’m going to bed.”
“Cool, cool. Thanks, uh, for talking to me.”
“No problem. Get home safe, Tucker. Have a good night’s sleep or whatever.”
“You too. Are you going to go play Pikachu?”
“TUCKER!”
Oh no. His face was on fire. Even though she couldn’t see him, Tucker hid behind his hand.
“I didn’t mean that—seriously! I honestly just meant Pikachu, not . . . you know. Anything else.”
“Well, this is great. Have we ruined Pikachu? I think we’ve ruined Pikachu.”
“No, no. Don’t say that. He’s not ruined, he’s . . . full of new superpowers. Or something.”
Now she was really laughing. “Okay, I’m definitely hanging up.”
Was this goodbye? Tucker hated the idea of saying goodbye to her, so he searched for something else.
“Merry Christmas, Erika.”
She paused, and in that gap, he felt sure that she was smiling.
“Did you know Christmas is my favorite holiday?” she asked.
“I didn’t. But that makes me weirdly happy. I hope it’s a good one. You know, like John Lennon says.”
“Thanks,” she said quietly. “I hope so, too.”
Our Year in Love and Parties Page 11
