And of course, we are having so much fun that we don’t even notice them standing over there.
Then Jamie does something that proves once again why he is our leader.
“Time for the champagne!” he shouts, and we scream a chorus of agreement that drowns the street in our elation. We run up the lawn laughing before they can retaliate. We are so over banging pots in the street; we have way cooler things to do inside.
We drink the warm champagne out of water glasses and act like it is no big deal.
Tipsy for the first time in our lives, we begin to dare each other to kiss. Brooke and Angie kiss. I kiss Noah. Sasha kisses Jamie. And then we decide that each of us must kiss all of the others in order to seal our eternal bonds of friendship. We giggle and cluster together. Did I kiss you? Have we kissed yet? Oh my god, I kissed Alex twice.
Afterward we wash all the glasses twice. Jamie and the boys take on the manly task of smashing the bottle on the driveway and sweeping up the pieces. When they come back inside, we all take breath strips and stand together in the kitchen. The girlfriends stand with their boyfriends in preparation of the impending separation. We hold hands and lay our heads on their shoulders, sighing how sleepy we are. The boyfriends smile at us indulgently. Angie sits at the kitchen table and endures as she always does.
“Hey, did Finn Smith wave at us?” Noah says. Brooke opens her eyes and lifts her head up.
“Yeah, I saw that,” she says.
“He was probably waving at Autumn,” Sasha says.
“Why?” Angie and Noah say at the same time.
“They used to be, like, best friends,” Sasha says. Everyone looks at me.
“He lives next door,” I say. “Our moms are friends. Really close friends.”
“They spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together,” Sasha says. “Every year.”
“Oh my God, that is weird,” Brooke says.
“We’re like cousins,” I say. “If Jamie was one of the popular kids, you’d still have to see him, right, Brooke?”
“Me?” Jamie says. Everyone laughs.
“Still, it is weird,” Sasha says. “For a little while in middle school, you guys still hung out sometimes, right? I mean you guys could still be friends even—”
“Hey, I’m not the one who tried out for cheerleading,” I say, and I am no longer the center of attention.
“You did what?” Alex says, as if she has betrayed him. Sasha begs for mercy, pleading her youth, her inexperience, her naiveté.
“I knew not what I did,” she says, her hands clasped in front of her. We listen to her case, and after she has been sufficiently melodramatic, Jamie pronounces her forgiven and we all hug her as Alex’s mom knocks on the door.
The subject of our pasts is dropped for the night, and we unroll our sleeping bags and huddle together on the living room floor. We talk about our boys and which of the popular girls is the snottiest. We all disagree, each choosing the one we feel is our counterpart.
“Sylvie always looks so smug,” I say. “I hate that.”
“But Victoria glares at me,” Angie says. “I mean, seriously. Like this.” We all laugh at her impression, which resembles Popeye more than Victoria. Sasha and I are even more delighted, because we had both always thought her grimace was funny, even when she was our friend.
My parents come home before we have fallen asleep. They are arguing and trying to be quiet about it, and the other girls pretend not to notice. After a few minutes, I hear my father go upstairs. A moment later, my mother pokes her head into the living room.
“Did you girls have a good New Year’s?” she asks brightly. All the girls nod and say, “Yes, ma’am.” She looks directly at me. “Did you, honey?” she says. I nod, but she looks at me strangely and leaves us.
Sasha probably would have added, if I had not stopped her, that Finny and I used to spend every New Year’s together too.
9
Winter is always a dead time for me. I wish I were like the trees. I wish I could feign death, or at least sleep through the winter. My tiara continues its reign as a permanent fixture on my head. Before long, no one asks me about it anymore.
Second semester I trade Gym for health class. On the first day the teacher, Mrs. Adams, tells us that she used to be a professional water skier and leaves out the part about how she ended up a professional health teacher. It becomes apparent after the first month that every disease we study, she has known someone who has had it. Most of them were on the water skiing team. Angie has the class with me, and Mrs. Adams becomes the frequent subject of our lunch conversations.
Walking to and waiting for the bus is now my personal hell. I stamp my feet, keep my head low and my shoulders hunched, and quietly hate the world for being so cold. I am careful to always stand with my back to Sylvie and Finny. I have never told anyone how much I hate seeing the two of them together; they would make too big of a deal out of it and think it meant something stupid. I just don’t like her, and they annoy me.
Some mornings, I think maybe Sylvie is talking for me to overhear. When it’s really cold out, I think the idea is ridiculous and that I am stupid for even thinking it. It’s cold, and nothing matters except getting inside that bus and getting to Jamie.
“So I was thinking this weekend we should go to that party—you know which one I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, everyone is going to be there, so we should really go.”
“Is Jack going?”
“Everybody is going, Finn.”
***
“Class,” Mrs. Adams tells us, “eating disorders are not something to joke about. I’ve seen what they can do to a person. One girl on my water skiing team had anorexia. Another was bulimic. They were such beautiful girls, but these are not pretty diseases.”
***
Jamie and I talk on the phone every night before we go to sleep. We talk about getting married someday and what sort of house we’ll have and how many children. It surprises me how much he wants these things, such normal things, and nothing else.
Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this person. It seems that it isn’t always like that. Sometimes I know that I love Jamie, but I don’t feel it, and I wonder what it would be like to be with someone else.
I love him the most when we fight and I am scared that he will leave me. After we fight, I want so much to be close to him, and the next day I want his hand in mine every minute. Sometimes he loves me more than I love him and he wants me to pay attention to him, but I wish he would leave me alone so that I could go back to reading or talking to Angie about Mrs. Adams. Sometimes we both love each other a lot and it’s hard to hang up at night, and I wish it could always be like that.