Samira looks oddly touched. Another strange, half-sad, half-meditative expression crosses her face. I can’t explain it, but I chalk it up to senior-year sadness. We might not see each other that much after high school is over.
“No, Iris, I really can’t accept this—”
“Yes!” I insist, hugging her tightly. “I want you to have it. Dude, you’re my best friend in the whole world.”
Samira says nothing, and I take it that my gift has been accepted.
Peter hasn’t shown up yet. When he gets here, I’ll surprise him with the bouquet of purple irises and international plane tickets. He’ll be so excited. He’ll be so grateful. I’ll win a trophy for best girlfriend in the world.
It will be the most wild, amazing, completely unsupervised vacation ever. The beginning of great romance into our real adult lives.
“Let me know when Peter’s here,” I say to Samira as I get up to fix myself another drink and say hi to some kids at school who have just arrived. “Be right back!”
“Is that dress from Teen Vogue?!” a girl I vaguely know from algebra class calls at me in the kitchen. I flash a grateful smile at her, thrilled that she noticed.
“You’re the coolest, Iris Wang!” someone else shouts, high-fiving me.
I smile enthusiastically, wave like a nonplussed pageant queen, and make the social rounds. I’m not extremely popular at Bradley Gardens Public High School, but a lot of juniors and seniors know me enough to come to my parties. Freshmen and sophomores definitely come with the contents of their parents’ liquor cabinets, and I don’t mind. Freshman boys usually try extra hard to be nice, though, and sometimes I’ll even accept a beer or two from one of them.
There’s extra-loud rap music and some good-looking people and dancing.
I down another rum and Coke. Then another, and then another. Is it my fifth? I’ve completely lost count. It’s all going so well. Credit card bill forgotten. SUCCESS. I get caught up in some pleasant chatting with some kids from study hall that I sort of know. We cheers loudly, clack our plastic cups, and then as if it’s all predestined, a very drunk sophomore spills beer on my gorgeous Vera Wang dress.
I swear, this dress is cursed to the exponential of ten thousand.
How am I supposed to wash pee-colored beer off white Swarovski crystals?
How am I supposed to even wear it to prom next month?
Swearing loudly, I stomp back to my bedroom to change. Beer has trickled down the front of my dress. I’m worried that my night (like this gown) will be a stained, nonrefundable disaster.
Pathetic sophomore, I think angrily. Pathetic dress. Pathetic party.
That’s when I hear nonstop giggling, and a familiar girl’s voice is saying, “Not here, not here, not here!”
Positively giddy and almost feeling better immediately, especially with the prospect of having juicy gossip to tell-text Samira, I throw open my bedroom door dramatically, expecting to be half-annoyed, half-amused at the couple making out on my bed.
“Surprise!” I say.
Like in a bad romantic comedy, my best friend sits up, looking dazed. Samira is practically half out of the slinky black dress I gave her; her bra is showing. Peter, practically pantless, jumps off her. Samira and Peter are in my bed.
Peter at least has the decency to look ashamed.
What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On.
“Um, Iris! Hi!” he says, choking on his words. Samira has turned a hideous hue of rose-pink and is letting out a series of very undignified shrieks. Finally, she charges past me out of my bedroom. I’m stunned. I don’t know exactly what to say.
Meanwhile, my right eye starts to wink uncontrollably at Peter, followed by the left one. This can’t be happening right now.
Eye twitching has got to be the most annoying nervous tic on the planet.
“Iris,” Peter says, as if I’ve forgotten my own name.
“I know my name,” I say. “Thank you for reminding me, Peter.”
“Iris—”
“How long has this thing been going on?” I manage to sputter. “Please tell me that this THING, whatever it is, just randomly happened.”
He looks rather taken aback.
“Last month … when you were in the city with your parents.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“We … I … I … I … just couldn’t. Samira wanted to.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.
“Um, is your eye okay?”
“What?” I say. Is he joking?
“Your eye is …”
I touch my right eye and I can feel the eyeball spasm, like a pulsing monster, underneath my palm. Like it’s a living organ, suddenly alive and determined to embarrass me.
“It’s fine,” I lie.
“Iris, you know how I feel about you, but …”
Peter pauses, like he’s choking on a burrito. His face reddens into the shade of ungainly salsa. He fidgets.
“I’m … what?” I yell-ask. “Spit it out, Peter.”
He blinks.
“You’re … really boring,” he finally says, looking deeply uncomfortable. “You’re superficial, self-absorbed, and you kind of think the world revolves around you.”
He’s staring at me. My left eye has begun to twitch violently.
“You’re narcissistic, Iris. And vapid. You just try too hard.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I say, not understanding. How can I be all these things? I’m just one person.
He pauses, then says, “I just don’t think you ever really liked me as a human being. Do you even know my actual birthday?”
“Yes! It’s June twenty-fourth. I got us plane tickets to Paris right after our graduation ceremony.” I accidentally blurt out the surprise, devastated. Why does it feel as if my heart and stomach and brain are strangling each other?
“Iris, my birthday is in January! I’ve told you a million times. And why would you think we were going to Paris after graduation? I told you that I was going camping with my brother.”
I pause. How did I not know that he was going camping with his brother?
“But I thought you said you wanted to go to Paris!” I protest.
And how can I be self-absorbed? What is Peter even talking about? I’m the most selfless person on the planet, after Gandhi and my parents.
Peter stares at me with the utmost disbelief.
“But I was taking you to Paris!” I shout at him again, spotting the Nordstrom shopping bag hiding the flowers and card and tickets. I grab the bag and then wave the bouquet in his face.
He backs away.
“Do you even know Samira’s birthday?” he says. “Do you even know anything real about the people around you?”
My heart thump thump thumps. I stop listening. If my heart could be an actual living flower, it feels like it has been killed with weed killer.
Peter Hayes, loving boyfriend of two years, is dead to me.
Grabbing my purse, I run out of my bedroom and barely manage to make my way down the spiral staircase before I start heaving into the kitchen sink. I retch for what feels like the length of three movies until someone mockingly calls out, “You’re a lightweight, Iris! Asian red-face!”