Jessa, who hates birds, shoots Frida a dirty look, but Amber points to herself and says, “Frida, say Amber. Am-ber.”
“Hola, Bela!” Frida says, then launches into a few bars of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
“You’re hopeless,” Amber tells Frida with a disappointed eye roll.
“You didn’t pick the lock on the front door, I hope,” I say.
“Nina let us in,” Jessa said, gesturing over her shoulder. Nina’s standing in the doorway, with Frick cradled in her arms like a baby, smirking at me.
“Et tu, sister?”
“Go to a party, Susannah,” she says. “It’ll be good for you.” Then she leaves.
I almost call after her to stay—we hardly ever see each other, and I miss her sometimes. We used to have fun together. We were close once. We joined GAC together, a long time ago now. But she wouldn’t want to hang out with me and my friends, except maybe Amber, who she’s always liked.
“Listen to your sister. She’s older than you, and therefore very wise,” Amber says. “You are going to this party, missy, and we are going to help you get ready.”
She has a massive bag in her hands that clatters as she flings herself across my bed.
“Jessa’s going to dress you, and I’m going to do your makeup,” she tells me. “Nothing outrageous, don’t give me that look. You have foundation, right? Mine won’t match you.”
“What do you think?” I rarely wear makeup, and even when I do, it’s just mascara, maybe blush if I’m feeling sassy. I spend half of each day in the water, so what’s the point?
She rolls off the bed. “I’ll ask Nina. She’ll have something we can borrow.”
Jessa puts her hands on my shoulders and stares into my eyes.
“Are you going to this party, Ramos?” she asks.
“Are you guys going to make me miserable until I do?”
“Susannah, we’re your friends.” For a second, Jessa sounds genuinely hurt, but then she grins. “Of course we will.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh as she drags me over to my closet. “I’m going.”
* * *
Harry texted me the address of the party earlier in the week, but I don’t map it until the three of us are piling into Jessa’s car. I assume we’ll have to drive to Beaumont, since that’s where Harry lived before he transferred. But the party isn’t far from my house, which means Tucker goes to our school. I wonder if we’ve ever had a class together. Gilcrest has about four thousand students, so I doubt it.
My parents think we’re getting dinner and going to a movie. I feel bad about lying, but they’d never agree to let me go to a party at the house of someone I don’t know. They’re barely comfortable with Jessa driving. Dad wanted to drop us off instead; it took twenty minutes to talk him out of it.
“What’d you say this guy’s name was?” Jessa asks, backing into the street. “Trevor?”
“Tucker,” I reply.
“I don’t know any Tuckers, do you?”
Amber and I shake our heads. The swim life is all-consuming. We pretty much don’t know anybody who’s not on the team.
Tucker’s house is even smaller than mine, one of the squat three-bedroom ranch houses in the older part of town, but it’s hard to miss with all the cars crammed in the driveway and lining the street. Jessa double-parks in front of the house—the girl has, like, a hundred tickets; I don’t know how she still has her license—and we make our way to the door.
My palms are so sweaty I have to wipe them off on the hem of my dress. I think my makeup looks good, thanks to Amber, who stuck to her promise of not going overboard, but Jessa made me borrow the dress from Nina after she deemed my entire wardrobe “unacceptable for social occasions of any kind,” and it’s too short. I keep tugging the back to make sure it’s covering all my important parts.
Getting dressed up for a guy feels weird. I’ve never done that before. I want Harry to think I’m pretty, but if he likes how I look tonight, in Nina’s clothes with Amber’s makeup on my face, will that mean he doesn’t like how I look without them? I’ll never be able to do this every day, and I don’t want to. But if he doesn’t like it, I’ll feel dumb and desperate.
My mind spins out further with ever more apocalyptic scenarios: What if Harry isn’t here and then we’re stuck at some stranger’s party? Or worse, what if he is here and I make a fool of myself in front of him? The possibilities of self-humiliation are endless, really. I should go home.
Amber grabs my arm. “I can see what’s going through your head all over your face. Cut it out. We’re going in.”
Tucker’s house is even more cramped on the inside than it looks on the outside—the rooms are tiny, the hallway is narrow and the dark, oversize furniture is worn. An enormous TV takes up most of one entire wall in the living room, and the floor in front of it is littered with gaming consoles and controllers. Hip-hop blares from a giant subwoofer near the window. Harry mentioned Tucker’s mom, but there’s no sign that anyone but a teenage boy lives here. Even with a party going on, the place seems kind of lonely.
There’s hardly any room to stand; people are stuffed in every corner of the place. Most of them have red Solo cups in their hands, which I’m sure do not contain soda. I don’t recognize anybody.
“Kitchen,” Jessa says, pulling me by the hand through the front room.
The closet-size kitchen is at capacity, but Jessa manages to thread us through the crowd. She bounces off to fetch us all something to drink, and Amber starts introducing herself to people she doesn’t know, as is her way. My shoes stick to the old-fashioned linoleum; someone must’ve spilled something. There’s a black trash bag slumped at my feet, overflowing with cups and cans.
I scan the room for Harry, but he doesn’t seem to be here. I consider texting him, but will that make me seem overeager and clingy?
“Susie! Susie, hey!”
I turn to see Harry slipping through a knot of people near the doorway. When our eyes meet, I light up like a Fourth of July sparkler—I can’t help it. He’s beaming that megawatt smile at me, and I feel the electricity all the way down to my toes. I’ve never been like this around a guy before. It’s exciting. And terrifying.
He looks great in a pair of dark jeans and a Pearl Jam T-shirt that seems soft and shows off his swimmer’s physique to maximum effect. If she were here, my mom would one hundred percent say he was “hunky,” after which I would die of embarrassment, but it’s true. His red-gold hair is shorter than it was yesterday, like maybe he got it cut this afternoon, and the lighter strands glow like the filaments in an antique light bulb.