1
BLYTHE
Some nights it seems like the world has its arms wide open, that the future sizzles with possibility. White streetlights glare in your eyes like disco balls as you whiz down the road. Stars glitter in the black sky. Your favorite song bursts out, and the bass shimmies the car under you as you and your friends chant along.
This is not one of those nights.
We get to Sophie Miller’s house and right away my boyfriend, Devon, and his best friend, Sean, leave me alone inside so they can smoke cigars with the rest of the soccer team. “Cigars are for old men,” I say to Dev as he kisses me.
“I promise to chew some gum before we make out,” he says. Another kiss and he’s off.
Sean, the beatific Sean Nessel, is the reason we’re here. Sean has a thing for a junior girl—Ali Greenleaf. She’s tonight’s focus. “She stares at me a lot,” he said earlier, back at Dev’s house. “Who doesn’t stare at you a lot, Nessel?” I wanted to say, but it would have come out awkward.
Sean and Dev are still close—I hear them and the other guys roaring about their win yesterday. State Champs, all because of Sean’s winning goal. In the school paper since day one. Front page every day. Like they don’t get enough attention since the football team disbanded last year. Now the football moms and the entire town have put all their attention on the soccer boys. Their groveling attention. Outside, the guys are chanting a primal call. DE-FEAT. DE-FEAT. It makes me uncomfortable, all that male animalistic bonding with their claps and their stomps. Everyone at the party is tuned in to it; you can tell by their heads turned toward the windows where the sounds are coming from. Even when they’re not in the room, the boys’ growls take over.
My crew of girls—we’re known as the Core Four: me, Donnie Alperstein, Suki Fields, and Cate Sandoval—should be here by now, but they’re not. People aren’t used to seeing me alone. I bury my head in my phone and text Cate.
Where are you
Be there in 2
“Oh my God, Blythe Jensen!” A girl I don’t know hops in front of me. This happens a lot. When people get drunk, they introduce themselves to me. I nod politely.
“We’re in chemistry together,” she says.
“Where’s the keg?”
She stumbles over directions. She’s actually describing to me where the keg is. So I stop her before it gets too irritating.
“You would be so useful if you could just find the keg and get me a beer,” I say.
“Oh! Sure!”
Ali Greenleaf, the girl Sean wants to hook up with tonight, walks in the door about a minute later. She’s with Cherie Mizner, Raj Patel, and another girl, who I think is Cherie’s sister. Ali is a scrawny chicken. A goose neck. A pasty-faced pumpkin. Full lips. Like a baby. Her hair with a loose curl. Bangs, which aren’t easy to pull off. She has nice hair. Some cute freckles. Wearing a bunch of bracelets up her arm. I like the bracelets. I’ll give her that.
Chemistry Girl is standing right in front of me again, twitching. She says “thank you” when she hands me the beer.
But I want to watch Ali. I want to see what Sean sees in her. She turns to her friend, her face glowing in that innocent way a face does. She’s the kind of girl who doesn’t realize how pretty she is. I can see it in her eyes. That scared look. One more oblivious girl who has no idea what’s coming to her. Because I’ve been through this many times with Sean. Ali will come crying to me, wanting to know what happened between them. I know you thought he liked you so much, and he does like you, sweetie, except Sean just isn’t the commitment type. It’ll happen a few days from now. A week from now. This is textbook Sean. And these stupid girls, forever thinking they’re the one he’s going to be different with.
I text Dev: Nessel’s girl is here. Better come back in.
Cate marches in with Suki and Donnie following. She pushes through the crowd to get to me, and the other girls follow. No one says a word about being pushed by them. They just step out of the way.
“So, so, so sorry it took us so long to get here. My mother was giving me a hard time,” Cate says.
“Oh, mothers,” I say, my words dripping.
Cate’s mother is originally from Puerto Rico. She still makes Cate’s lunch every morning. Feeds us when we eat at her house. Pours us wine. Wants to fatten us up.
My mother is not this way. I wish I didn’t have to help my mother sort her pills or deal with fielding my father’s phone calls because he’s so worried about her, but that is how it is at my house.
“Plus it took Donnie forever to leave,” Suki says to Donnie, who is wobbling a little already. She’s been stealing her sister’s Vicodin lately, left over from a running injury. And maybe she took too much. She’s wearing an oversize army jacket with a short white shirt showing off her brown belly and black skinny jeans. Her tight black curls are wild tonight—the bottom half is a washed-out blue.
Donnie twists around and trips over her foot. I catch her elbow.
“You gonna be okay, Don?”
“B, I’m sooo good.” She licks her lips, wiping her hair away from her eyes. She pulls a blue strand out of her mouth.
ALI
Sammi, Raj, and I sit in a little circle drinking beer and smoking Raj’s Lucky Strike cigarettes, which are destroying the back of my throat. These Lucky Strikes are Raj’s grandfather’s. The old man has emphysema and Lucky Strikes aren’t easy to find, so he has Raj Google tobacco shops where they sell them. The two of them make a monthly pilgrimage, his grandfather with his portable oxygen tank. His grandpa stockpiles them. As long as Raj keeps it a secret, he’ll throw Raj a pack or two.
Raj has been on varsity soccer since he was a sophomore. Which means he’s friends with Sean Nessel, which means he’s often in close proximity to Sean Nessel.
We play the Who Has Had Sex? game and focus on Blythe Jensen. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be her. In the hallway at school, she’s always staring straight ahead, like there’s a light at the end of the hall, or a camera, or something else, much further away and superior. As if she’s looking anywhere other than here.
“I don’t think it’s a question of if Blythe Jensen’s had sex,” I say. “She’s been going out with Devon Strong forever. It’s how much sex.”
“Actually, the discussion is whether she’s got a whip and handcuffs,” Sammi says. “She looks like a punisher.”
“Okay, Raj, your turn. What about him?” I point to a super-thin hockey player whose shoulders are bigger than his feet.
“I don’t even know why we play this game,” Raj says. “Half of this room has had sex.”