Raj has wavy brown hair; it’s soft and puffy and kind of hangs over one eye. All that softness, plus those brilliant green eyes and his skin, a mellow brown from his father’s side, whose family is from India, goes against this intense glare, his eyes squinty, even behind his black-rimmed glasses, like he’s angry, or thinking too much. “I’m just perpetually skeptical,” he told me once when I asked him about it.
Then Sean Nessel glides past a window. Sean Nessel and his silky blond hair to his shoulders. I’m just going to say it: Everything in my life revolves around Sean Nessel. This is no secret. Raj and Sammi understand the full weight of my Sean Nessel obsession.
Even this stupid game. It’s just a diversion. We’re here at this party for a reason. The three of us, waiting here for something to happen. Because Sean Nessel came up to me and Raj on Friday in the hallway.
To
My
Locker.
It’s why Cherie, Sammi’s older sister, who is home from college for the weekend, helped us sneak out. It’s why we lied to their mom and dad. And Sammi never lies to her parents. It’s why I told my father I’d be sleeping at Sammi’s and wouldn’t be going anywhere. It’s why we’re at this party. Because Sean Nessel told us to come to this party. He told me. Well, actually, first he told Raj. And then he turned to me, his voice radiating in my brain. And his finger strayed, so that he pointed right at my face.
You should go.
Sean Nessel said this to me. To my face. You should go.
In the collages I make, Sean Nessel is my little doll. I turn his pupils into heart eyes in a blip. I wash him in a hazy pink. I meld him with rainbows and hearts.
Sean Nessel. With the cheekbones and the blond hair swept to the side. The shoulders. Biceps coming out from under his T-shirt. And how does a guy have such perfect skin?
I shake my head, coming out of my cloud as Sean Nessel walks through the front door like a magical freaking unicorn.
BLYTHE
Sean and Dev stroll through the door, laughing after their cigar smoke-out. Hoot. Hoot. Hoot. The whole place shoots up two decibels. I sip my drink and give Suki a side-eye.
Behind the noise I hear Sophie Miller crying, “You guys, you guys.” Whining.
“What did you think was going to happen when you invite the school to your house, honey?” Donnie says, slurring.
“You think we’d take it easy? Nooooo,” I say.
No one takes it easy on anyone.
ALI
People are hooting. They all want Sean Nessel’s attention. I take a big gulp of my beer. Stare at him until my eyes water.
I’m going to hypnotize you, Sean Nessel. I stare at him. Stare at him, stare at him. Until my powers get him to stare back at me. His hands. His arms. His faded turquoise T-shirt tight over his chest. His flushed cheeks, like a sunset. He’s a sunset. And I’m the beach. I stare away because I’m feeling so hot and I can hardly breathe. I duck my head into Sammi’s shoulder.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
I’m shaking. I have to lift my head back up. Just look one more time. Didn’t he want me here? He wanted me here. So I’m here. I did so much to get here! Look at me, Sean Nessel. Look at me.
And then it happens. Sean Nessel looks back at me. Once. Twice. It’s like a stream between us, a narrow and sweaty tunnel of love where everyone else in the room floats away.
Deep breath. If I can breathe. I can hardly breathe.
I’m going to be sick.
Sammi pinches me on the side of my leg, and I swat her.
With his eyes still on me, Sean nods his head to the left, over in the direction of a side door. An abundance of Jedi mind tricks have preceded this night. I am the girl you’ve been looking for.
BLYTHE
I watch Sean talking to Ali. Stupid girl. She’s so predictable, like the other girls. It’ll start innocently. He’ll go jogging with someone. Or he’ll get the hall pass with someone. Or he’ll hook up with some girl from another team at a soccer match like he did the first night of State Champs just a few weeks ago. But I think back to the Nationals in South Carolina last year, when Sean told Dev that after the game he went back to the hotel room with two girls. Two girls? Sounds like a porn, I told Dev. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and every time I thought about it, there was that rush of heat between my thighs.
Dev’s nothing like Sean. Dev’s concerned when I talk about my mother. Dev actually listens. The way he treats everything I say like it’s the weight of the world.
If Dev is a Golden Retriever, Sean is a Siberian Husky, fierce and maybe on the edge of the wild.
Cate is trying to show me a picture of herself in a dress she wants to wear to the dance, which is two months away. It’s a washed-out lavender dress. Halter top with cutouts in the middle and back and a high-waist cigarette skirt. The skirt part is so tight that you’d have to peel it off her. I’m thinking about my own thighs and how I have some cellulite and how my mother called me out on it at the pool this summer. My mother is going to want to go dress shopping with me for the dance too. It’s our thing together. I say thing lightly.
“So what do you think about the dress, B?”
Donnie jumps in: “I think there’s entirely too much cleavage. It’s messy.”
Donnie’s the only person I don’t mind being less pretty than.
I pull the phone from Cate’s hand. The dress is awful. And I hate her for bringing it up and making me think about my mom, who I’m going to have to eventually go dress shopping with.
“I can’t help that I have boobs,” Cate says to Donnie, looking down at her chest. Her breasts have been that way since she was ten. It’s a sore spot.
“I thought you were going to try that leotard? To flatten you out?” Suki says, rubbing her hands across her chest. Suki is practically a pencil with her black leggings and big T-shirts. She calls herself a proud Jewish Chinese American. Celebrates the New Year three times: Rosh Hashanah, the Chinese New Year, and with the rest of the idiots on December 31st.
“You don’t flatten out a dress like that.”
“Go back on that no-carb diet. Last time you were on that, your boobs totally shrank,” I say.
“Or maybe she should try eating cotton balls filled with orange juice again,” Donnie says. Her quips are designed to kill.
“Wait, you really ate those cotton balls with the orange juice? I thought that was a joke. I thought you were just watching those girls on YouTube?” I say.
“You’re basically making fun of that time I had an eating disorder, and I don’t appreciate it,” Cate says. She’s serious now.