by Ariel Kaplan
Fortunately, I can always count on Bethany for that. “God,” she said when I suggested it. “Me too. I haven’t slept in three days.”
We were driving back up from the Occoquan in Bethany’s mother’s car, as the team bus was full that day. “Are you sure?” I asked. “They were going to Cake Baby later.” Cake Baby was Bethany’s favorite cupcake place, and as a team, we’d sampled all the ones in the area.
“I just want to go someplace quiet,” she said. “I really need to talk to you. Didn’t you get any of my texts last night?”
I’d been avoiding her texts. I felt bad about that, because she was a completely innocent party here. She didn’t know I’d been texting with Greg. Still, I didn’t apologize. I guess I was too tired.
“Aphra, I really need to tell you something,” she said.
Here it came. I waited. I waited. It did not come.
I said, “Greg kissed you.”
“What? Who told you?”
“I kind of saw,” I said.
“You saw?”
“You were in the middle of the hall, it wasn’t super private.”
“Oh.”
She drove a little farther. I said, “So?”
She blushed. I knew that Bethany had never actually kissed anyone before; there had been a couple of guys who’d tried to mash their face into hers over the years, but she’d always managed to get out of the way at the last minute. I knew she had princess fantasies of the perfect first kiss, which was something so pure it could break a curse or bring a dying prince back to life. She said, “I was late for class.”
“Oh—okay.”
“I kind of handed your Deanna thing in late. I told Mr. Positano it was my fault, though.”
“Oh. I’m sure that’s fine.” But the kiss, Bethany. What kind of toothpaste does Greg use? No, wait. He’d been drinking coffee. Did he taste like that? Does a kiss have a taste?
“We’re supposed to go out tomorrow.”
“Ah,” I said. I wondered what kind of place Greg likes to take girls. Maybe he knows all the good hole-in-the-wall Russian spots. I don’t know what cheap Russian food looks like. Borscht? I like borscht. Bethany hates borscht. The only good thing about it, she says, is the color. Probably because it looks like Twilight Sparkle soup. She doesn’t really appreciate it, though. She doesn’t understand the nuance of borscht.
At this point in my thought process, I realized I had a problem. I was getting jealous over hypothetical consumption of beet soup, which even I know is, like, just beet soup. I looked at Bethany, who was driving, and knew I did not want to be this way. Sum amica bona. I am a good friend. Right?
“Where are you going?” I asked. “With Greg, I mean.”
“Oh, God. He wants to go out for Russian food.”
I was fine. I was fine. “You don’t seem very happy about that.”
“I just…A restaurant? Alone? With Greg?”
That sounded very good to me. “That’s bad?”
“Aphra, it’s like ninety minutes of doing nothing but talking to his face.”
“And you’d rather be sucking his face?”
“Jeez! No.” Yes, Bethany. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just…It’s a lot. I don’t know.”
“So did you suggest an alternative? Why don’t you go see a movie?”
“A movie.” She was stopped at a light and turned toward me. “I could totally do a movie. That’s perfect.”
“So tell him you want to see a movie. The new Star Wars is out. Tell him you’ve been dying to see it.”
“But what if he doesn’t want to?”
“He won’t care, he just wants to see you.”
She pulled in to the nearest strip mall. “What are you doing?” I asked.
She thrust her phone at me. “Text him,” she said.
“What? Why?”
“If I do it, I’ll mess it up!”
“There’s nothing to mess up! Just tell him you really want to see the thing with the damn porgs!”
“Aphraaaaaaa…,” she whined.
I really was tired. I rubbed my eyes. I said, “Fine.”
I texted, Hey, so as much as I am loving the idea of borscht tomorrow, I can’t stop thinking about how fun it would be to share my love of porgs with you. Would you be averse to the idea of seeing a movie instead?
He texted back so fast I think he must have been waiting to hear from her after the regatta. Porgs, huh? Sure, that sounds good.
I looked up the movie listings in a second window. 7:15?
I’ll pick you up at 7. Unless you’d rather pick me up at 7.
I eyed Bethany over the phone, who was staring at me while I typed. “Do you have the car tomorrow?” I asked.
“No, my mom has some Toastmasters thing.”
Pick me up at 7, I said.
Can’t wait.
I texted him a GIF of Yoda saying, Patience, young Padawan.
Your gif game is 1,000 times better than that movie.
Yes, I said. But to be fair, the bar is low.
Too bad you weren’t writing the screenplay.
Well, considering that movie came out when I was 5, the dialogue would have been like, “Me no like sand.”
Pretty sure that line’s in the movie. Is it possible you wrote it and don’t remember?
I think I’m insulted. Wait. I’m sure of it. Buy me some Junior Mints and I may forgive you.
Bethany was watching this exchange with her brows knitted together. She couldn’t actually read what I was typing, but I knew this was going on too long. I typed, I’ll see you tomorrow. At 7.
Perfect.
I handed Bethany back her phone, and she mouthed the words as she read what I’d written.
“How did you do that?” she asked. “Like, you didn’t even think about any of this before you typed it. You weren’t even trying.”
“Trying to what?”
“To be flirty! It’s just like, you open your mouth…or your hands or whatever, and this stuff just comes out. It’d take me all day to come up with this, and it wouldn’t be as good, either.”
I did not love the way this was going. “Yeah, but,” I said. “But you know you can’t ask me to do this all the time, right? Like, you’re the one who’s going out with him, not me. You should, you know, be yourself.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re probably right. Especially since I don’t like Junior Mints.”
“Everyone likes Junior Mints.”
“No, that’s you. They get stuck in my teeth. I hate that.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
* * *
—
I went home after that, skipped my shower, and fell asleep facedown on my bed. I woke up a few hours later to the sounds of my brother shrieking my sister’s name downstairs, and I sat up and looked out the window. There was a car I didn’t recognize in front of the house.
It couldn’t have been Delia, because she wasn’t coming home until Sunday and it was Saturday, which is not at all the same thing. I curled my fingers around the windowsill. “Dad?” I shouted. “DAD?”
No answer. He was probably somewhere reading about medieval tax codes; he spends most of his waking hours translating thousand-year-old pipe rolls. Where was Mom? Downstairs with Kit, it sounded like. Damn. Damn. I was still in my singlet from crew. I couldn’t believe I actually took a nap in it. I was greasy and smelly and gross and today was definitely not Sunday, because I know how to read a calendar.
I got up and watched through the window as my sister got out the passenger side of an old sable-colored sedan. Out of the driver’s side stepped a boy sporting a man bun, wearing a checked button-down with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. A boy? I shouted, “DAD!”
Delia grabbed the boy by the hand, led him to the front door, and p
ut her tongue in his mouth.
I took a step back from the window as they pried their faces apart for a millisecond to knock on the door, my sister and her boyfriend. Then she went back to eating his face.
Her boyfriend. Had someone told me she was bringing one? I guess it could have been in one of her emails, since I never actually read them.
Dad stuck his head in my door. “What?” He looked out the window. “Ah,” he said, cutting his eyes away from some very excessive PDA.
“Aphra!” my mother called. “APHRA!”
My father said, “I suppose this means we have to go down.”
“She brought a boy.”
“Yes, I witnessed the boy.”
“Did we know she was bringing a boy?”
“We did.”
“Wait. He’s not…he’s not staying here, is he?”
“He is.”
“For how long?!”
“Three weeks.” Dad rubbed his eyes. “He’s got a bunch of friends he’s visiting up here before he flies back to Denver.”
“Why isn’t he staying with them?”
Mom called again. “Where are you people?”
Dad said, “We should go.” I was marched down the stairs ahead of my father, who seemed to think I might turn around and flee back to my room otherwise. By the time we’d come down, Delia was sitting on the living room couch next to the man bun, their fingers threaded together and their knees bouncing up and down in unison. Kit was curled up on the far side of the couch around Walnut, whose eyes bulged like maybe Kit was squeezing the life out of him. I wondered if anyone had told Kit about the boyfriend.
“Hey, Aphra,” my sister said. I reluctantly met her eyes, trying to look anywhere but at the middle of her face. She was wearing a bunch of makeup, and her hair was sleek from being blown out. I realized with a stab that she looked…pretty.
I hated her for looking pretty. “Hey, Delia,” I said brightly, faking it where I could not make it. I perched myself on the arm of the chair where my mother was sitting with her hands wrapped viselike around a cup of tea. Dad, left with nowhere to sit except next to the boyfriend, hovered in the doorway and checked the time on his watch.
“This is Sebastian,” she said, nudging Man Bun with her shoulder. He smiled and extended his hand, which I shook.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. To Kit, I said, “He’s going to puke on you, stop.”
He relaxed his grip on Walnut and snuffled.
“Mom said you’re getting allergy shots twice a week now,” Delia said. “That must suck.”
“It doesn’t suck,” I said, because that was not helpful.
“They aren’t so bad,” Kit said in a small voice. He hugged the cat a little tighter. Walnut’s tongue protruded from between his lips.
“Are they helping? The side of your face is still kind of red.”
Kit’s eyes flicked to me, and he absently scratched his temple. “Aphra says they take like a year to start working.”
“A year!” Delia said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” I said. “He just has to take his antihistamines in the meantime.”
“He’s snuffling,” she said. “Is that new?”
“He’s getting a cold!”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“Well, let’s test it,” I said. “Kit, cough on Delia.”
Mom pinched the back of my leg. I retaliated by leaning across the back of the chair, my arm stretched behind Mom’s head, which put my smelly armpit at roughly the same meridian as her face. She looked at me darkly. I smiled.
“Do you do gymnastics?” the boy said, gesturing at my singlet.
I grit my teeth a little, because obviously no girl my size does gymnastics of any kind; like, my feet would drag on the floor under the uneven bars and my vault landings would leave a crater in the mat. I said, “No.”
Leaning to the other side of the chair, Mom said, “Aphra’s on the crew team.” To me, she said, “Why don’t you get changed so we can get dinner, Aphra. Our reservation’s in half an hour.” She got up. “I’m going to go up and wash my face….I’ll be down in a minute.”
I followed her up. At the top of the stairs, she said, “Please do not do this today.”
“Do what? I’m not doing anything.”
“You were nasty to everyone in that room!”
“What? I was kidding about the coughing thing. It was a joke!”
“Not. Today.”
“What is your problem? Are you afraid Man Bun won’t like you?”
“We don’t call people names in this house.”
“Man Bun is not a name, it’s a descriptor.”
“Aphra, so help me God—”
“Okay. I get it. I’ll be nice, I promise. I’ll tell Sebastian all about my illustrious career as the world’s most massive gymnast and that time I left a dent in the balance beam.”
“He was just trying to make conversation.”
Explaining to my mother that this had been a pointed comment would not do any good. On the surface, it was innocent. She probably hadn’t even heard the tone that’d gone along with it. It was meant to be ironic. Because of course I was not a delicate pixie gymnast.
“Just forget it,” I said. “I said I’d be nice.”
“Don’t pick a fight with Delia her first day home,” she said. “Please.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I will be the picture of familial harmony.”
* * *
—
At Yen Cheng, we were seated at one of those giant lazy Susan tables, me between Kit and my dad, with Delia and Man Bun on the other side of him and Mom between Man Bun and Kit.
“It’s so hard to find authentic Chinese food,” Man Bun remarked, reading his menu. “Nobody eats this stuff in China.”
I happen to know that Yen Cheng has two menus—the American-style one and the Chinese one—and I wished Greg was with me, because he could have asked about it and then ordered in Mandarin. I thought about texting him and then realized I didn’t have his number and there was no way to get it from Bethany without looking weird.
“American Chinese food is so sugary,” Delia said, as if she doesn’t order sweet-and-sour chicken every single time we go out. I considered asking her if that meant she wasn’t a regular at the Charlottesville Panda Express like she was at the one at home, but my mother was giving me serious eyeball, so I smiled and went back to my menu.
“And so bland. Nothing’s hot enough,” Sebastian agreed.
Kit was frowning, because (like Delia) he likes the American-style sweet stuff. I rested my hand on the back of his chair and said, “They have those paper-wrapped chicken wings you like.”
“Can I get those?”
“Sure,” Dad said, and, since the waiter had arrived, ordered for himself and Kit. Delia got some kind of spicy beef thing I was pretty sure she wouldn’t eat.
I said, “Sweet-and-sour chicken. Please.” Delia glared at me. I smiled. I was being very nice.
“So, Sebastian,” Dad said. “Delia said you guys met in a biology class. Are you pre-med, too?”
“What?” he said. The waiter had put out some spring rolls, and he put one on his plate with some hot mustard. “Oh, no. I was just taking that for a gen-ed requirement. You know.”
“Oh,” Mom said. “Sure, gotta get those out of the way. So have you thought about your major yet?”
He stuffed a big bite of spring roll into his mouth. I noticed, with some satisfaction, that he was holding his chopsticks wrong. “Well, not really. Since I’m actually not going back next semester.”
“Oh, you’re taking time off? That can be a good thing,” Dad said. “Are you planning to work or travel?”
He smirked. “I’m actually not taking time off. I’m
just leaving. See, I have this YouTube channel that’s making bank, and I’m planning to work full-time on my brand.”
“Your…,” Mom said. “Your brand?”
“His videos have been going viral for months,” Delia said. “You’ve probably seen some of them on Facebook.”
“Hm,” Sebastian said with his mouth full. “See, I take clips of famous movies, pull out the audio, and replace it with this George Michael song.”
My father stopped moving with his fork halfway to his mouth and met my mother’s eyes.
“So,” I said. I was smiling as nicely as possible. “You…post videos of movie clips set to old pop songs?”
“Song,” he said. “It’s just the one song. You know, ‘Careless Whisper’? It kills. My Rogue One clip got 20,000 hits last month.”
“And,” my father said, “you’ve been able to…monetize this?”
“I’m making bank, man,” he said, punctuating his words by poking his chopstick into the tablecloth. “Academia’s a dead end. Colleges charge all this money for a degree you can’t get a job with. I need to strike while the iron’s hot.”
Nice! I was so nice. “You are so right—wow!” I pointed to my mother. “Wasn’t I just saying that to you last week?”
“It’s just, what they’re teaching is not applicable to my life, right? Most of my profs have been teaching the same exact syllabus for the last twenty years. Like, you’re dried up, dude, move on. Nobody’s listening.” He glanced at my mom. “I mean, no offense.”
“HA!” I said. “So dried up!”
Delia said, “Hey, I got an A on my organic chemistry final! They just posted it this morning.”
The waiter returned with our food and set it out in the middle of the table.
I dumped the entire order of sweet-and-sour chicken onto my plate. “I’m starving,” I told Delia.
Mom said, “Uh. So. You think there are long-term prospects in setting films to torch songs?”
