He slowed down for the light. “Then why do you even want to go?” he said.
“It’s for the no—” I stopped. I’d never told him about the novel. “It’s for the experience.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll come. I mean, it’ll be an experience for me too, I suppose.”
I let my hand rest on his hair and then drift down so it was touching his neck. “I really like you,” I said. “You’re a good person. The best.”
When the car came to a stop, he looked over at me with eyes that were so wide open and pleased that I impulsively popped my seat belt and shot over to kiss him on the lips and when he tried to break off the kiss after a few seconds, I pushed myself forward and our teeth ended up clicking together and our tongues got all jumbled up, too, but you know what? It was still pretty okay.
Ugh. Woke up and vomited. Mummy thought it was from anxiety. She sat down cross-legged by my side and said: “Come now, beta. Won’t it be best to stop this suit? Even if you still wish to apply to Stanford, they will be unhappy if they learn you are so litigious.”
I heaved again, trying to keep her at arm’s length so she wouldn’t smell the alcohol on my breath. Went back to bed and entered a feverish half-life, sweating and turning around over and over again, until finally, half an hour ago, I started feeling better.
Alex lives in a mansion up in the hills. When Aakash and I arrived, she was sitting on her patio and watching the sunlight play off the bay. She had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of green liquid and kept mixing whiskey sours. She sat in a wicker deck chair and waved the bottle with one hand—it was multiple bottles, at different times—and smoked a cigarette with the other hand—Alex smokes cigarettes!
I hovered around the edge of the patio for a few minutes, clinging tight to Aakash, but eventually Alex’s head lolled in my direction, and I stood on the tips of my toes, waiting for her to scream and toss me out.
“Oh, I didn’t think you’d actually come,” she said.
“Hmm…did I maybe win your grudging respect?”
Alex snorted as if I was saying something absurd, but you’ll notice she didn’t reply with an immediate insult.
“Chelsea’s not here yet,” she said. “Texted to say she wouldn’t be by until after midnight. Can you believe it?”
“That’s too bad…?”
“Which means I could throw you out. There are guys here who’d do it for me.”
“Are there?” I looked around. A few guys were leaning against a balcony, talking about some computer science thing. One of them waved at me. I think he was in my chem class?
“Not those guys! Other guys!” Alex said. “I know a great deal of guys!”
Then I looked at the cup in her hand and realized she was already drunk, so when someone grabbed her around the waist and pulled her away from me, I backed off. I’d told the lion exactly what time I was going to come to its den, and in response the lion had gotten trashed and decided to take a night off from being a savage carnivore, I guess?
Maybe she had just remembered that I was blackmailing her. But that hadn’t stopped her from telling me off in the past. So I don’t know. Maybe she was actually starting to like me?
Which left me free to take note of the party. Parties are a waste of time—there’s a reason I’ve avoided them until now—and all I wanted out of this one was to acquire enough material to believably fake my transformation into a fun-loving, hard-partying typical girl.
But the party was strange. It didn’t quite look like what I imagined. I’d expected a hundred people packed into a sweaty living room, chugging desperately from red cups until everything exploded into an orgy of unselfconscious drunkenness. But it wasn’t like that. Dance music emanated from the house’s speaker system, but it was set very low. The patio door kept sliding open and closed, and I lost count of the number of guys in baggy cargo shorts who sauntered out, looked at the bay for a second, then turned, leaned on the railing, and nodded laconically at me while downing their beers.
Alex was initially very put-together in a tight pink sheath dress with black stockings, but then she lost her shoes. As the night went on, she kicked up her heels and tucked them over the arm of her chair, contorting herself into silly and unsexy positions in an effort to keep her unshod feet off the floor. The bay breeze mussed her hair so badly that she finally sighed and tied it into a ponytail.
And weird people showed up. Kian, the extremely nerdy Indian debate kid who would be bumped to number five if I lost my lawsuit, dropped by with a few of his friends, and when Aakash saw them he visibly melted with relief and went over to chat.
Then George walked in with this black girl on his arm. I caught his eye and tried to say hi, but George looked right past me and nodded at Alex.
George was seeing someone? Really? Did Auntie know? George’s mom is really traditional and Christian, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t approve of dating.
At some point, I was feeling lonely, and I went to check on Aakash, and he’d entered deep into a conversation with Jeremy about, I don’t know, chemistry things. Honestly, at times I think he was enjoying himself more than I was.
The party had a long buildup, as people slowly arrived and got drinks and asked each other about what they were going to do later in the night. There was so much laughter! Alex kept screwing up her face and doing a spot-on impression of Ms. Lin until finally even the word covalence was enough to crack everyone up.
There was a brief moment of light and heat around eleven, when everyone was standing and everyone was moving and the music turned up and drinks were chugged (but someone always poured just one more!) and cigarettes were stubbed out and calls were made…but then…it never went anywhere. Kian got involved in a long, heated debate with Alex about whether molly would actually destroy your brain (he was, surprisingly, on the “no” side), which ended—unless this is a drunken delusion—with them making out for a solid two or three minutes, until he vanished.
It was weird: at the beginning of the party, Aakash abandoned me, but just as it was heating up, he was following me around everywhere, constantly asking if I wanted to go home.
I began doing this teleportation thing, where I’d suddenly end up in some random part of the house without understanding how I’d gotten there. And I remember whenever I’d pour myself a drink, Aakash would ask to take a sip and then the drink would disappear!
Then it was midnight, and Alex was still out on the porch, wrapped up in a shaggy rug that she’d insisted on plucking off her living room floor even though the house held a hundred blankets, and talking in a low voice, an attention-getting voice, about how much fun she’d had today and how much she loved us all and how glad she was that we’d stayed and how this was the real party, wasn’t it? Here out in the cool air, not running all around everywhere looking for the next thing but content to just be with one another. And for a brief moment she even looked at me, and I knew she was including me in that “one another.”
I stayed on the porch and sipped a whiskey sour, and people came and stood next to me…and…you know…most of them knew who I was. I guess I hadn’t understood how well-known I am. This huge soccer player kept saying, “Come on, Resh, you know my name. We were in precalc together!” And I kept guessing white-guy names (“Sean,” “William,” “Trevor”), but I never got it.
The lawsuit couldn’t help but come up. Some people were surprisingly supportive. A weedy Taiwanese nerd—he’s seventeenth in the class—whispered, “Your lawyer was right. They don’t believe we can write a good paper. Whenever I turn in an English assignment, I can feel the teacher wondering if it’s plagiarized.”
A stoner said, “You’re suing? Whatever. That’s cool.”
Even the perfects weren’t as awful as they could be. Tina said, “Yeah, Chelsea explained it to me. You still should’ve stood up for yourself, though.”
I kept hearing that Chelsea had explained something about me to all these people. But when I tried to ask them for mor
e explanation—I guess I was mumbling—they would back away and change the subject.
“Hey,” Aakash said. “You’re really drunk. I think it’s time to go home.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Alex! I’ve got to talk to you!”
And in my drunken haze, I felt like everything was so right and so perfect. Alex was my friend. I’d come to her party, and she’d finally accepted me. We were BFFs. Maybe even BFFLs. Or perhaps something beyond that. Was there something beyond that? I had to ask her right now!
I was so excited about trying to find Alex that I tripped over my own feet, and Aakash had to catch me.
“Come on,” he hissed. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Don’t tell me how to party,” I said. “Just go home. I’ll be fine.”
Then he was gone, and I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night, but I didn’t care because I didn’t need him anymore. Didn’t need anyone or any protection. I was the party and the party was me, and the only thing left to do was to confirm my BFFL-ship with Alex.
I raced around, asking everyone where she was, but she’d disappeared somewhere, and people kept pointing to other rooms that I either couldn’t find or that maybe didn’t exist, and then time suddenly jumped forward and it was 2 A.M. and the party had dwindled to a half dozen or so people on the patio. I’d drunk a lot, but after taking another Adderall, I was feeling pretty alert. And there she was! She flung open the sliding door and shouted something about dancing—the music was overpoweringly loud. But when she tried to dance, she kept falling over. And, finally, she stumbled onto the couch.
All my nerves were jangling. Now was the moment. I plopped myself down onto the couch next to her.
“I’m the best,” I said. And I knew that was all I needed to say. I was the best, and that meant we needed to be friends. Alex looked up with wild eyes, and even though the night was cool, her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat.
She grabbed my arm and leaned close to me with a secret smile, ready to whisper something, and that’s when I noticed Chelsea sitting on the edge of one of the wicker chairs and smiling a shallow smile at us both.
“You see,” Chelsea said. “I knew you’d fit in, Resh.”
When Chelsea spoke, Alex’s face closed down and emptied out.
“Oh, come off it!” Alex screamed. “You hate her! You told me you hate her!”
The whole party flickered and stood still. Chelsea’s forehead wrinkled. Was this it? The fight where Alex finally opened up to me? I didn’t know. It was kind of like that, but I actually felt more like a bystander than a participant.
“Alex, you should really drink some water,” Chelsea said. “Actually, why don’t I take you to bed?”
Alex’s nails were digging into my arm, and she was looking around wildly at every face but mine. “I’m so tired of doing your dirty work, Chelsea.”
When Chelsea smiled at me, her eyes trembled, and she said, “I’m really sorry about this. Normally, Alex is more—”
“Did you make me invite her here because you knew I’d get mad?” Alex said. “Is that it? Did you want me to insult her?” Alex’s pupils were crazy and disjointed, like she was cross-eyed, but when I tried to pull away, her eyes snapped back into alignment. “Come on. We’re almost done with school. Why can’t we just—” Alex looked around wildly, as if she didn’t recognize any of us.
Chelsea flowed up off the wicker chair and tried to pull Alex’s hand off of my wrist. “Leave her alone, Alex. She’s fine.”
“No.” Alex wouldn’t let go of me. “You know what, Chelsea? Maybe I’ll do exactly what you say you want. Maybe Reshma will be my new friend.” She looked at me with a nasty smile on her face. “Oh, won’t that be so delightful?” She looked back at Chelsea. “What are you still doing here? Why don’t you fuck off? I’m trying to spend time with my new friend.”
Oh my God. Was this really happening?
Eyebrows went up. Chelsea blinked really fast, and tried to say something else, but Alex shouted at her again, and finally Chelsea disappeared back into the house.
Alex was still next to me, holding on to my wrist. She looked at me with narrowed eyes, and I looked at her. I’d won. But there was a strange lull. We were left there for long moments, silently sitting next to each other.
“I…Thanks for…” I said.
“Too soon.” Alex finally let go of my hand. Then her eyes lolled, and she slumped bonelessly against the couch.
“Are you…?” As Alex’s newest (and perhaps best?) friend, was I obligated to call the ambulance when she passed out?
But someone grabbed my phone out of my hand and said, “Oh God no! Don’t get the cops involved!” And then they bundled Alex up and took her inside and that was the last I saw of her. I really hope she’s not dead. I’m almost positive she’s not dead. Probably someone would’ve sent me a text message if she’d ended up dead?
I drifted into the house after them. My heart was beating fast, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the alcohol or Alex’s outburst.
George was standing just inside the door, in the kitchen, and his hair still looked amazingly coiffed, even though he’d been making out on the couch for the last hour.
“Oh, hi. What happened to your, umm, the girl you were, umm?” The world was spinning, which made it a bit hard to think. “Does Auntie know you’re, umm, some girl? She won’t like it if you girl with.”
It was crazy: my mind was so lucid, but my words were coming out garbled.
“Cecily is passed out. And she’s not really my girlfriend….”
“Home you car?” I said, or something like that. Obviously, the night was getting a bit hazy around that point.
“Err, she was my ride….”
We stared at each other for a bit, and I shook my head and turned to the side.
“Where’s your, umm, that Indian guy?”
“Aakash.” I shrugged. “Gone. Told him to go away.”
We were about to break away from each other when Chelsea came down the stairs. Before she looked at me, she had a slight frown, but when we locked eyes, she attempted a smile. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “I’m really sorry about that.”
“Sorry what?” I said. “All friends every friend.”
Her smile flickered, got wider and more abstract, and she looked past me.
“Hey, umm, my…there’s a girl passed out on the couch,” George said.
Chelsea shrugged and said she’d make sure nothing happened to Cecily. She was already going through the kitchen dumping out cups and throwing them away. When she came by with a bag of trash, she said not to worry, the party wasn’t over necessarily, but she felt terrible if she didn’t tidy up when she went over to someone’s house.
I had a strong urge to ask her what the hell was wrong with her.
“Oh!” Chelsea said to George. “You haven’t been drinking. Why don’t you drive Reshma home?”
“I…sure.” He looked at me with a totally immobile face and asked, “Where do you live?”
I laughed and laughed and tried to explain about how we lived in the same place, but Chelsea gave me a confused look, dug my phone out of my purse, and found directions for him.
I don’t remember much of the ride back; George had to buckle me into my seat and brush my hair out of the path of the seat belt. At one point, he swerved across the lanes and my heart skidded, but when I yelled at him to stop, he slowed down and said a bunch of things to me in a low, serious voice. I think he was talking about that girl, Cecily.
But toward the end of the ride, the night air managed to sober me up a little bit.
I said, “Sorry about your room being depressing. About saying it, I mean.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You wanna leave? I’ll get you kicked out. You’re not supposed to be in our school anyway. One two calls e-mails to Colson, then done and you’re in school at home.”
His hand closed around mine, crushing it. “
Reshma!” he said. “Promise me you won’t do that. They could arrest my parents for that, you know. And yours, too.”
“Fucking you,” I said. “You almost get it. So close to getting it! But you’re too scared. Let me do it. I’ll send you home. My gift to you.”
The pressure got tighter and tighter. I could barely feel my hand.
“Fine!” I said. “Keep suffering. I don’t care.”
Then he disappeared. I sat still for a long time, confused. We were in front of my house. I hadn’t noticed the car stopping. Finally, I looked at my phone. I had seven text messages and two missed calls. All from Aakash. The first text said it was okay if I wanted to stay; he’d just wait around and I could call him when I wanted to leave. The next few were a bit irate. The ones afterward were panicked. It was after 3 A.M., and he was still there, searching for me.
Ms. Montrose is a darling. She’s fifty years old but wears brightly colored dresses, adorned with big pink bows and wide belts, that look like adult-sized versions of a little girl’s clothes. Her agency is on the twenty-second floor of a skyscraper in the Financial District. It’s all bronze statues and oaken walls and frosted glass partitions and girls in pin-striped skirt-suits—Chelsea, five years from now—whose peach-colored fingernails never stop clacking away at their computers.
After showing me around the office, she took me down to the Italian restaurant on the first floor. The waiter conveyed us to a booth in the back and delivered two glasses of wine. Ms. Montrose smelled hers and swished it around in her glass. I pushed mine away. After last weekend, alcohol still nauseates me.
“Right,” she said. “The ‘Reshma’ in your novel doesn’t drink.” Over the course of the dinner, she drank both glasses of wine, and, after we’d finished eating, ordered another one.
She started by saying, “I am absolutely in love with this book….”
She went on and on about its rawness and honesty, and, somehow, our talk got around to my recent troubles.
“I read about the second lawsuit,” she said. “They just won’t stop going after you, will they?”
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