“Aren’t you two going to need it?”
“It’s your birthday. You’re not couching it.” He grins. “Besides, we can take the guest room. Or the shower.”
“Please don’t put gruesome images in my head,” I say, hitting him on the shoulder in a not-so-delicate way.
“C’mon, there’s nothing gruesome about a shower. This isn’t Psycho.”
We discovered Hitchcock when we were twelve, stumbling upon a DVD of Strangers on a Train at the local video store. We watched it on the fuzzy TV in his basement, bringing down our sleeping bags to spend the night and pretending we weren’t scared. This led to a slew of basement movie marathons and the infamous time I peed my pants during The Birds. Now, whenever we see seagulls at the beach, or flocks of geese in the sky, he always says something infuriating about the air smelling like pee.
Andrew breaks into an impish smile, the corner of his mouth going crooked. He motions back toward Cecilia, his voice low. “Tonight, we’ll be Strangers on a Drain.”
“Oh, stop.”
“I can’t wait to check out her Rear Window, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ve got some birds for you.” I laugh, flipping both my middle fingers at him.
Andrew waggles his eyebrows. “Tonight I’m gonna show her my Hitchco—”
“My favorites!” Hannah crashes into us then, pulling both of us into a tight hug. “Are you guys seriously doing Hitchcock puns? If I didn’t love you both so much I would hate you right now.” Hannah’s grip is surprisingly strong because she’s been playing field hockey since sixth grade and has the muscles to prove it. A hug that almost hurts is a Hannah Choi specialty.
“Oh no,” Andrew says, pulling out of her grasp. “If you don’t think we’re funny, then who will?”
“That’s why you have each other,” she says, laughing and brushing the long bangs out of her eyes. Hannah has shampoo-commercial hair—black and thick and bouncy. She’s gorgeous, which doesn’t do me any favors considering I spend most of my time standing next to her.
“Actually, he’s ditching me.” I lower my voice, nodding my head back toward the kitchen. Cecilia is still there, whispering now with Susie Palmer, her arms folded.
Hannah flashes Andrew a wicked smile. “Oh, are you and Cecilia Brooks going to do each other?”
“Yeah, probably in the shower,” I say with a grimace. “I just heard way too much about it.”
Hannah laughs. “If anyone can handle all the gory details, it’s you.”
“We’re not going to do each other, as you so beautifully put it,” Andrew says, all faux-offended. “Besides, it’s your birthday, Collins, so if you want to hang out instead . . .”
He trails off, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to give him permission to ditch me. I should be annoyed, but it’s not like I didn’t know this would happen before the party even started.
“Don’t let me hold you back from love.”
He scratches his nose. “You sure? Hannah and I wrote you this birthday rap and we haven’t gotten a chance to—”
“That sounds excruciating.” I laugh, practically shoving him away from me. “Just go. If you keep ignoring her and talking to us, you’ll miss your chance.” I can feel Cecilia’s glare from here like it’s a physical touch. “I have Hannah. And leftover pizza.”
“Okay, cool,” Andrew says. “And I’m not ignoring her, you know. I’m giving her time to miss me.” He turns back to Cecilia then, flashing his stupid Party Andrew smile, and like always, it works. She comes into the dining room, sliding an arm through the crook of his elbow.
“So, Andrew, I need a partner for beer pong. Want to play?”
She begins to pull him as if he’s already answered her question, and he lets her drag him away. “I’ll see you two later, okay?”
“Have fun, kids!” I wave, and he calls back to me.
“My sheets have birds on them, Collins, so try not to wet the bed!”
I flip him off again and hear his laugh as he leaves the room.
“He’s disgustingly good at that,” Hannah says. “I don’t know why we’re friends with him.”
“We’re enablers,” I agree.
I know Andrew appreciates our help with girls, and if I asked for his help with guys, he would do the same for me; it just hasn’t ever happened. Guys don’t come up to me at parties and magically touch my shoulder. Before I can help it, an image flashes through my mind of Danielle and Chase naked and tangled together on the bed and I feel a little sick. I look around the party and try to imagine who I would approach if I could, who I would let lead me into the master bedroom like Danielle did. It occurs to me suddenly that I could do it, I could try to lose my virginity tonight, right now, on my eighteenth birthday, and then it would be over.
But there’s nobody here I want that way. Not Chase, who knows he’s the best-looking guy in our class and acts like it. Not Jason Ryder, who acts even worse. Not Edwin Chang, who everyone knows is in love with Molly Moye, or Jarrod Price, who is pretty much always high. Definitely not Andrew, who is basically my brother and is currently wrapped around Cecilia like a winter scarf, whispering into her ear as she wriggles in his arms.
I’ve known them all for too long—since they used to pick their noses, have farting competitions, eat melted crayons and glue. It’s hard to look past that now. I think for the millionth time about how college will be different, once I’m out of nowhere Vermont, once I get to the city and can walk down the street and be surrounded by strangers for the first time in my life—people who don’t all look and act exactly the same, who won’t know my parents or what I was like when I was ten, won’t think of me as Andrew’s best friend, as the girl Danielle tolerates—the least cool one allowed at the lunch table.
I shake my head and loop my arm through Hannah’s. “Andrew said I’ve got dibs on his bed. Want to share the room with me?”
“Yes. Thank God. I’ve been trying to find a spot to sleep for a while, but everyone’s claiming them. I tried to take the couch in the office and Sophie practically murdered me.”
Here’s the thing about parties in the middle of nowhere. There’s no such thing as Uber, and you’d be an idiot to drive drunk—especially with the snow—so everyone spends the night. It’s like one giant alcohol-infused sleepover.
Hannah and I head up the stairs, passing a wall of framed pictures from Andrew’s childhood, pictures I’ve seen a million times and am mostly in—Andrew and me on Halloween dressed as Ghostbusters, fistfuls of candy in our tiny hands; Andrew and me in middle school, blond and skinny with braces and acne, the height of our awkward phase. Hannah taps her finger on one as we pass—Andrew’s tenth birthday, when he and I got in a mud fight. We’re smiling at the camera, completely splattered.