The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life

by Tara Altebrando

  I turned to Winter and said, “So what did you do that’s so classy?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” she said.

  “I’m a big girl,” I said, watching Carson and Patrick cross the yard. “I can handle it.”

  “Okay, then…” she began, and it was all clear in that instant.

  She didn’t need to form the words.

  The dancing at prom, his hand on her hip, the “real classy,” his question about cheating….

  “You hooked up with him.” I was shaking my head. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “How did you know?” Winter looked suddenly more suited to her name, white like snow. “But wait, no,” she said. “I mean, it was a kiss. I wouldn’t really say hooked up.”

  “When?” I asked. “Where?”

  “Prom,” she said, and I shook my head and said, “I’m going to have to second Jill’s ‘real classy’ on this one.”

  I had never talked to Winter like this. Ever. Had never disapproved of anything she had done, really. And it all felt wrong.

  Winter liked Carson.

  Carson liked Winter.

  They’d already kissed.

  I should have been happy for her but I wasn’t.

  “But wait,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “I’m not an idiot,” I said, flatly. I felt like someone was manually wringing out my stomach.

  Carson had the trash can, and Patrick had the lid, and they were already putting it in the back of the car and I felt like I had a millisecond in which to make things better, to show Winter some kind of best friend support, but I couldn’t find a good word or good thought for her. She had kissed the guy I wanted and everything about that sucked.

  Winter had been right. The night had turned into a bad teen movie, one that I didn’t even want to play myself in.

  “Success,” Carson said when he got back into the driver’s seat.

  “I can’t believe I just did that,” Patrick said.

  I started a little list on the back of our master copy, called “Potential Points” and wrote, “Trash can. 100?”

  Everyone’s phones buzzed: HEADS UP. BE PREPARED TO SEND ONE REPRESENTATIVE TO RAINEY PARK TO CHILL OUT AND CHUG A RED BULL AND PERHAPS DISCOVER SOME HUNT SECRETS AT 9 P.M.

  “Okay,” Carson said, turning down the music. “We need to get serious. What on the list are we going for and what are we just going to skip entirely? What can we reasonably accomplish before getting to Rainey Park by nine?”

  I bristled at the fact that Carson seemed to be taking over, leading my team. He wasn’t even supposed to be here, and the fact of Dez’s being stuck in the hospital and not here with us hit me anew. I texted him and said: ANY CHANCE WE CAN SPRING YOU OUT IF MRI RESULTS ARE GOOD?

  Patrick said, “Skinny-dipping is a definite.”

  “Oh, lord,” I said.

  “Yes,” Carson said. “But we won’t have time before nine.”

  “I still think we should go to my house,” Winter said.

  “What’s there?” Carson asked, not having been privy to our Round 1 brainstorms and the treasures of the Watson household, and Winter said only, “Trust me. Just drive.”

  I was starting to feel like Dez did, that we were the lamest team ever, especially now that we’d lost him, and for a moment I felt like I was going to cry again. It was too bad there weren’t points for meltdowns, maybe 50 per.

  Dez wrote, NOT LIKELY WITH RENTS HERE.

  A new loop: He’d already kissed her. And she’d kissed him.

  THEY HOOKED UP AT PROM, I told Dez, who wrote back BAD FORM. Then followed it with: BUCK UP!

  11

  “SOMEBODY COME WITH ME,” WINTER SAID, tentatively, to the car once we were parked outside her house, a faded gray ranch built into a hill dotted with shrubs.

  “You’ll be quieter alone,” I said, not ready to support her in any endeavor. Not yet.

  “Yes, but faster with help,” Winter shot back.

  Patrick turned and said, “Aren’t you guys each others’ alibis? Like you’re supposed to be at the movies together?”

  Winter nodded.

  Patrick faced front again and said, “So you both have to go. In case you get caught. You can say it was sold out or whatever.”

  Winter and I just looked at each other. I knew there was no way around it; I had to go. Winter, who knew it, too, said, “You can look for a toy made in the U.S. in Poppy’s room while I get everything else.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

  A text from the Yeti said, ANYTHING MADE OF RED GLASS: 25 POINTS.

  “We’ll strategize while you’re gone,” Carson said, then shook his head. “Is it possible we’ve only gotten ten actual points and a hundred possible points so far this round?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” Patrick said matter-of-factly, while looking at the list. “But Winter’s house is actually a pretty big score.” He turned to us and said, “Look for a red crayon. And red glass.”

  “Okay,” Winter said, “but we’re sneaking in, so there’s a lot of stuff I won’t be able to get to.”

  “Just do your best,” Carson said.

  We headed for Winter’s bedroom window, which we’d jimmied open more than once over the years, and we climbed in like we had all those other times, stepping up onto a few cinder blocks stacked in the garden bed, and helping each other as best we could.

  Winter’s vanity mirror was stuffed with photos of us all taken at different events this past year. Like homecoming last fall. And the Halloween party at Mike Owen’s house, when Winter and I had gone as Daisy and Violet Hilton—a pair of Siamese twins who’d been famous in the 1950s. I stood there for a moment, losing myself in the pictures—so many of them—and tried to imagine what next year’s pictures would be, what our new friends would look like.

  “I don’t want you to be mad at me,” Winter said, pulling the Siamese twin photo out of the mirror’s edge.

  We’d been so fired up about that costume but now, tonight, it was hard to imagine us wanting to be joined at the hip.

  “You can’t control who’s mad at you,” I said, and Winter said, “Thanks, Dr. Phil.” Then she sat on the bed and said, “I just don’t understand why you’re so upset. I mean, I screwed up, but it’s not like he was your boyfriend. I wasn’t doing anything to hurt you.”

  Winter put the picture back, pulled her Breaking Dawn ticket stub from the mirror, and said, “Patrick’s a really good guy.”

  I groaned. “Of course he is. What does he have to do with anything?”

  “It’s so obvious, Mare,” Winter said, pulling Pictionary out from under her bed and putting a box of cards in a shopping bag she’d found; we’d pick an easy word to draw for the Yeti later, for a possible 35 points. “The way he looks at you.”

  “What’s your point?” I asked. “That I should like Patrick and not Carson? It doesn’t work like that!”

  Winter just looked at me, and I said, “You should just admit it was a shitty thing to do to me.”

  “I didn’t do anything to you!” she shouted, and I shushed her.

  “We’re best friends!” I protested, more quietly.

  “I can’t control who I like!”

  “Neither can I!”

  I pictured our argument as if it were a line drawing for Pictionary, a precarious tower of exclamation points that had peaked and then toppled.

  A moment later, I said, “When did we start keeping secrets from each other?”

  “I don’t know,” Winter said. “I guess I knew none of this would go over well and I didn’t want to deal.”

  “I still wish you’d told me.”

  She opened her closet and fished a Barbie out of a shoebox. “Well, I told you tonight and see how that’s going.”

  “I just don’t want us to have secrets. I mean, it’s only going to get harder to stay close next year. We’re all leaving.”

  “No, you’re all leaving.” Winter was enrolled in Fairleigh Dickinson
, a short drive from home, where she’d be still living for at least one year until she could maybe save money to dorm. At least that’s how she explained it, though I secretly knew she wasn’t ready to leave Poppy.

  “It’s just D.C.,” I said, though it was true I’d been acting like I was going away to Timbuktu. “You can come visit. It’s drivable. It’s trainable. It’s flyable. It’s only like five hours by car!”

  “You know it’s not the same,” Winter said, then she added, “D.C. is a whole new world.” She sighed, pulling stuff out of the bottom of the closet. “I thought you’d go to NYU and that we’d be able to visit each other all the time.”

  She seemed on the brink of tears and I whined and said, “Winter, come on!”

  “What!” Winter said. “I’m allowed to be sad.”

  “I’m sad, too!” I went to sit on the bed.

  Winter looked over. “But you’re disgusted with me right now, so it’ll pass.”

  “Disgusted is a strong word.” I took the photo from her and put it back in her mirror.

  “Well, I’m excited for you, I really am,” Winter said. “I mean about D.C. and everything. You’re going to Africa!”

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  The closest I had ever been to Africa thus far had been at the so-called savannahs of Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, where I remember feeling frustrated that we didn’t see more animals, closer animals. But at George Washington I’d have the opportunity to study abroad during junior year. There were programs in Japan and the Netherlands and pretty much anywhere you could think of, including Africa.

  “What if I’m totally wrong about all this?” I said. “I mean, international affairs? I’ve never even been to Canada.”

  Winter shook her head. “I was there on the class trip to the UN. I saw you eating it all up, like we were visiting a candy factory and not the most ho-hum place in the world.”

  “The UN is not ho-hum,” I said, all serious.

  “See!”

  The memory of that day came back to me full force. It had been during Carson’s first month of having moved to town and my crush was already developing. I was sure we were checking each other out—circling, mostly. Staring and getting caught. But I hadn’t known at the time, when we’d flirted over bagged lunches in a room set aside for class groups, that he would soon start dating Ashley Evans, and then Bradee Moore, and then a few others before Jill—with what felt like mere milliseconds in between—and now here we were, almost graduating, and he was moving on to Winter. All of that suddenly made it seem like there might be something wrong with him, something lacking.

  “I’m scared,” I said. “I mean, what if this idea of mine is totally random?”

  Winter asked, “What am I looking for again?”

  “Ouija board,” I said.

  “Right,” Winter said, and dug in again. “But, Mary, seriously. I am going to Fairleigh Dickinson to study marine biology. Could anything be more random than wanting to train seals for a living?”

  “At least people know what that is! You can say, I want to work at Sea World and people will get it. What do I say when my degree is in International Affairs? That I want to be a diplomat?”

  “Everybody already thinks of you as a diplomat anyway.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know, but that prom song fiasco, and then that time when the whole school had detention and you were the one who offered to replace the balloon or whatever. In front of the whole school.”

  I wanted to take the compliment—saw it as one—but said, “I don’t know anymore.”

  Winter said, “Well, I’ve certainly gotten myself into a bit of a diplomatic dilemma, haven’t I? And I mean, what if I’m wrong about Carson? What if he’s wrong? And we messed everything up for nothing?”

  “Well, you’ll find out soon enough,” I said. And there was a part of me that wanted her to have messed up, wanted the whole thing with Carson to go down in flames, except that she was still my best friend. I wanted her to be happy, to fall in love and swim with dolphins and have her every dream come true. Even if it meant being with Carson.

  In theory, anyway.

  “We better get moving.” She stood with the contents of the shopping bag—the Barbie, the Ouija board, and more—in hand. “I’ll go get a Ziploc and a few other things and meet you in Poppy’s room.”

  In the hall, the sounds of women squawking at each other drifted toward us from the other side of the house, and I knew it was some Real Housewives, since that was Winter’s mom’s favorite show.

  Housewives.

  Such a weird word. And something I never wanted to be.

  Because you couldn’t be a housewife and also be an ambassador.

  “Shoot,” Winter whispered. “If Housewives is on, where’s Poppy?”

  She cracked the door to her sister’s room open and peeked in, then whispered, “Napping. But if she’s taking a nap this late she must be exhausted. You’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?” I asked, and she shrugged, then I shrugged, too.

  It had to be done, so I sprang into action.

  Poppy’s room smelled sweet, like lavender and lollipops. Her breathing was a rhythmic exhale followed by a silent inhale, and it was backed up by the quiet static of a white noise machine perched on a small bookcase. I sat in front of the case—which held as many toys as books—and started my search among a herd of My Little Ponies. But it was pretty dark in Poppy’s room, so I had to take each toy over to the Tinker Bell night-light, in order to look for the manufacturing stamp.

  Twilight Sparkle. Made in China.

  Pinkie Pie. Made in China.

  I thought I would like to see the Great Wall someday, like Great-Aunt Eleanor had. But on the other hand, I wanted to stay in Poppy’s room forever—playing games about ponies and fairies and princesses—and never have to grow up.

  Winter came into the room and said, “My mother didn’t even blink,” and then proceeded to disappear again and then come back with Ziploc full of water. She scooped the fish out of Poppy’s bowl with a small plastic bathtub she found among the toys and pressed the thing shut. “You ready?”

  “They’re all made in China,” I whispered, and had a thought about how I was no better than those housewives, squawking at my best friend over a guy.

  Winter made a beeline for the toy chest across the room and picked up a few and said, “Check these.” Sure enough, the old-fashioned letter blocks had been made in the USA. “Should we take the whole set?” I asked.

  “Nah,” said Winter. “Let’s take a U, an S, and an A for some special points.”

  “And you said you don’t do clever,” I said, and right then I saw Poppy’s Lite-Brite.

  “Winter,” I whispered and pointed. “Put your name in lights?”

  Winter grabbed the Lite-Brite, then snatched a children’s book at random.

  “Any toy ambulances?” I asked softly.

  She shook her head.

  “Pooh?” I asked.

  “She only has love for Tigger.”

  I stifled a laugh as she pointed over at Poppy and her plush animal pillow, bearing the face of Tigger.

  It was all too much. We were suddenly on a roll.

  “Winter,” I whispered. “The pillow.”

  “It’s a Pillow Pet,” she whispered back.

  “Whatever,” I whispered. “It’s Tigger.”

  “We already have Tigger.”

  “But it’s Tigger and a pillow. Special points?”

  She shook her head and smiled like I must be crazy, but she put the shopping bag down and went down the hall and came back with a regular pillow. “On my count,” she said, handing the pillow to me, then she went over and lifted Poppy’s head. I pulled out the Tigger Pillow Pet and swapped in the other pillow, and Poppy moaned a bit. We froze and waited and then her breathing resumed its rhythm.

  Winter gave me a thumbs-up and we backed away, then went back to Winter’s room
and out of the house, carefully carrying our stash.

  “Guys,” Carson said, when we got back to the car and he pointed over toward the clearing in the woods across the street from Winter’s. “Fireflies.”

  It was, all of sudden, dusk; the air abruptly cooler—even damp. You could see the fireflies dotting the field next to the woods, like teeny tiny flickering lanterns.

  “We need a jar,” Carson said.

  Winter said, “I grabbed this,” and pulled a tall glass jar full of spaghetti out of the shopping bag she’d brought from the house. “In case there’s no spaghetti at Carson’s.” She set about emptying the spaghetti into the seat-back pocket, much to Carson’s obvious disapproval.

  “Don’t they need airholes?” I asked. “The fireflies.”

  “Actually, they don’t,” Winter said.

  “Really?” Patrick asked.

  “Airholes just dry them out faster,” Winter said. “Look it up if it you don’t believe me.”

  “You guys walk,” Carson said. “I’ll pull the car closer.”

  The edge of the woods was practically aglow from the number of bugs out there, but I was useless at catching them for some reason, too jittery. Somehow Patrick had already caught three and Winter four and I had caught none. So I sat down on the grass and added up the points from Winter’s, an impressive 388 when you counted all the extras she’d thrown in without my even knowing: a red crayon [10], a bib [10], a coffee mug [10], dice [20], an alarm clock [20], a gel pen [25], a toothbrush [3], and last year’s yearbook [30]. With the Ouija board [45], ticket stub [75], children’s book [20], American-made toy [35], pillow [20], and goldfish [65], that brought our total to 1757.

  Plus we had supplies for the points involving Barbie, spaghetti, Pictionary, and putting our name in lights. And the potential for some Special Points.

  Setting my list aside and waiting, just minding the jar, I thought about the last time Patrick and I had done this, in Eleanor’s backyard. It had been during the wind down of a July Fourth BBQ during which Eleanor had insisted on manning the grill and had performed a miracle worthy of the good Lord Jesus: transforming burgers into stones.