The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life (17 page)

Winter’s vanity mirror was stuffed with photos of us all taken at different events this past year. Like homecoming last fall. And the Halloween party at Mike Owen’s house, when Winter and I had gone as Daisy and Violet Hilton—a pair of Siamese twins who’d been famous in the 1950s. I stood there for a moment, losing myself in the pictures—so many of them—and tried to imagine what next year’s pictures would be, what our new friends would look like.

“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” Winter said, pulling the Siamese twin photo out of the mirror’s edge.

We’d been so fired up about that costume but now, tonight, it was hard to imagine us wanting to be joined at the hip.

“You can’t control who’s mad at you,” I said, and Winter said, “Thanks, Dr. Phil.” Then she sat on the bed and said, “I just don’t understand why you’re so upset. I mean, I screwed up, but it’s not like he was
your
boyfriend. I wasn’t doing anything to hurt
you
.”

Winter put the picture back, pulled her
Breaking Dawn
ticket stub from the mirror, and said, “Patrick’s a really good guy.”

I groaned. “Of course he is. What does he have to do with anything?”

“It’s so obvious, Mare,” Winter said, pulling Pictionary out from under her bed and putting a box of cards in a shopping bag she’d found; we’d pick an easy word to draw for the Yeti later, for a possible 35 points. “The way he looks at you.”

“What’s your point?” I asked. “That I should like Patrick and not Carson? It doesn’t work like that!”

Winter just looked at me, and I said, “You should just admit it was a shitty thing to do to me.”

“I didn’t do anything to you!” she shouted, and I shushed her.

“We’re best friends!” I protested, more quietly.

“I can’t control who I like!”

“Neither can I!”

I pictured our argument as if it were a line drawing for Pictionary, a precarious tower of exclamation points that had peaked and then toppled.

A moment later, I said, “When did we start keeping secrets from each other?”

“I don’t know,” Winter said. “I guess I knew none of this would go over well and I didn’t want to deal.”

“I still wish you’d told me.”

She opened her closet and fished a Barbie out of a shoebox. “Well, I told you tonight and see how that’s going.”

“I just don’t want us to have secrets. I mean, it’s only going to get harder to stay close next year. We’re all leaving.”

“No,
you’re
all leaving.” Winter was enrolled in Fairleigh Dickinson, a short drive from home, where she’d be still living for at least one year until she could maybe save money to
dorm. At least that’s how she explained it, though I secretly knew she wasn’t ready to leave Poppy.

“It’s just D.C.,” I said, though it was true I’d been acting like I was going away to Timbuktu. “You can come visit. It’s drivable. It’s trainable. It’s flyable. It’s only like five hours by car!”

“You know it’s not the same,” Winter said, then she added, “D.C. is a whole new world.” She sighed, pulling stuff out of the bottom of the closet. “I thought you’d go to NYU and that we’d be able to visit each other all the time.”

She seemed on the brink of tears and I whined and said, “Winter, come on!”

“What!” Winter said. “I’m allowed to be sad.”

“I’m sad, too!” I went to sit on the bed.

Winter looked over. “But you’re disgusted with me right now, so it’ll pass.”

“Disgusted is a strong word.” I took the photo from her and put it back in her mirror.

“Well, I’m excited for you, I really am,” Winter said. “I mean about D.C. and everything. You’re going to Africa!”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

The closest I had ever been to Africa thus far had been at the so-called savannahs of Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, where I remember feeling frustrated that we didn’t see more animals, closer animals. But at George Washington I’d have the opportunity to study abroad during junior year. There were programs in Japan and the Netherlands and pretty much anywhere you could think of, including Africa.

“What if I’m totally wrong about all this?” I said. “I mean,
international affairs
? I’ve never even been to Canada.”

Winter shook her head. “I was there on the class trip to the UN. I saw you eating it all up, like we were visiting a candy factory and not the most ho-hum place in the world.”

“The UN is not ho-hum,” I said, all serious.

“See!”

The memory of that day came back to me full force. It had been during Carson’s first month of having moved to town and my crush was already developing. I was sure we were checking each other out—circling, mostly. Staring and getting caught. But I hadn’t known at the time, when we’d flirted over bagged lunches in a room set aside for class groups, that he would soon start dating Ashley Evans, and then Bradee Moore, and then a few others before Jill—with what felt like mere milliseconds in between—and now here we were, almost graduating, and he was moving on to Winter. All of that suddenly made it seem like there might be something wrong with him, something lacking.

“I’m scared,” I said. “I mean, what if this idea of mine is totally random?”

Winter asked, “What am I looking for again?”

“Ouija board,” I said.

“Right,” Winter said, and dug in again. “But, Mary, seriously. I am going to Fairleigh Dickinson to study
marine biology
. Could anything be more random than wanting to train seals for a living?”

“At least people know what that
is
! You can say, I want to work at Sea World and people will get it. What do I say when my degree is in International Affairs? That I want to be a diplomat?”

“Everybody already thinks of you as a diplomat anyway.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, but that prom song fiasco, and then that time when the whole school had detention and you were the one who offered to replace the balloon or whatever. In front of the whole school.”

I wanted to take the compliment—saw it as one—but said, “I don’t know anymore.”

Winter said, “Well, I’ve certainly gotten myself into a bit of a diplomatic dilemma, haven’t I? And I mean, what if
I’m
wrong about Carson? What if he’s wrong? And we messed everything up for nothing?”

“Well, you’ll find out soon enough,” I said. And there was a part of me that
wanted
her to have messed up, wanted the whole thing with Carson to go down in flames, except that she was still my best friend. I wanted her to be happy, to fall in love and swim with dolphins and have her every dream come true. Even if it meant being with Carson.

In theory, anyway.

“We better get moving.” She stood with the contents of the shopping bag—the Barbie, the Ouija board, and more—in hand. “I’ll go get a Ziploc and a few other things and meet you in Poppy’s room.”

In the hall, the sounds of women squawking at each other drifted toward us from the other side of the house, and I knew it was some
Real Housewives
, since that was Winter’s mom’s favorite show.

Housewives.

Such a weird word. And something I never wanted to be.

Because you couldn’t be a housewife and also be an ambassador.

“Shoot,” Winter whispered. “If
Housewives
is on, where’s Poppy?”

She cracked the door to her sister’s room open and peeked in, then whispered, “Napping. But if she’s taking a nap this late she must be exhausted. You’ll be fine.”

“You sure?” I asked, and she shrugged, then I shrugged, too.

It had to be done, so I sprang into action.

Poppy’s room smelled sweet, like lavender and lollipops. Her breathing was a rhythmic exhale followed by a silent inhale, and it was backed up by the quiet static of a white noise machine perched on a small bookcase. I sat in front of the case—which held as many toys as books—and started my search among a herd of My Little Ponies. But it was pretty dark in Poppy’s room, so I had to take each toy over to the Tinker Bell night-light, in order to look for the manufacturing stamp.

Twilight Sparkle.
Made in China.

Pinkie Pie.
Made in China.

I thought I would like to see the Great Wall someday, like Great-Aunt Eleanor had. But on the other hand, I wanted to stay in Poppy’s room forever—playing games about ponies and fairies and princesses—and never have to grow up.

Winter came into the room and said, “My mother didn’t even blink,” and then proceeded to disappear again and then come back with Ziploc full of water. She scooped the fish out of Poppy’s bowl with a small plastic bathtub she found among the toys and pressed the thing shut. “You ready?”

“They’re all made in China,” I whispered, and had a thought about how I was no better than those housewives, squawking at my best friend over a guy.

Winter made a beeline for the toy chest across the room and picked up a few and said, “Check these.” Sure enough, the old-fashioned letter blocks had been made in the USA. “Should we take the whole set?” I asked.

“Nah,” said Winter. “Let’s take a
U
, an
S
, and an
A
for some special points.”

“And you said you don’t do clever,” I said, and right then I saw Poppy’s Lite-Brite.

“Winter,” I whispered and pointed. “Put your name in lights?”

Winter grabbed the Lite-Brite, then snatched a children’s book at random.

“Any toy ambulances?” I asked softly.

She shook her head.

“Pooh?” I asked.

“She only has love for Tigger.”

I stifled a laugh as she pointed over at Poppy and her plush animal pillow, bearing the face of Tigger.

It was all too much. We were suddenly on a roll.

“Winter,” I whispered. “The pillow.”

“It’s a Pillow Pet,” she whispered back.

“Whatever,” I whispered. “It’s Tigger.”

“We already have Tigger.”

“But it’s Tigger
and
a pillow. Special points?”

She shook her head and smiled like I must be crazy, but she put the shopping bag down and went down the hall and came back with a regular pillow. “On my count,” she said, handing the pillow to me, then she went over and lifted Poppy’s head. I pulled out the Tigger Pillow Pet and swapped in the other pillow, and Poppy moaned a bit. We froze and waited and then her breathing resumed its rhythm.

Winter gave me a thumbs-up and we backed away, then went back to Winter’s room and out of the house, carefully carrying our stash.

“Guys,” Carson said, when we got back to the car and he pointed over toward the clearing in the woods across the street from Winter’s. “Fireflies.”

It was, all of sudden, dusk; the air abruptly cooler—even
damp. You could see the fireflies dotting the field next to the woods, like teeny tiny flickering lanterns.

“We need a jar,” Carson said.

Winter said, “I grabbed this,” and pulled a tall glass jar full of spaghetti out of the shopping bag she’d brought from the house. “In case there’s no spaghetti at Carson’s.” She set about emptying the spaghetti into the seat-back pocket, much to Carson’s obvious disapproval.

“Don’t they need airholes?” I asked. “The fireflies.”

“Actually, they don’t,” Winter said.

“Really?”
Patrick asked.

“Airholes just dry them out faster,” Winter said. “Look it up if it you don’t believe me.”

“You guys walk,” Carson said. “I’ll pull the car closer.”

The edge of the woods was practically aglow from the number of bugs out there, but I was useless at catching them for some reason, too jittery. Somehow Patrick had already caught three and Winter four and I had caught none. So I sat down on the grass and added up the points from Winter’s, an impressive 388 when you counted all the extras she’d thrown in without my even knowing: a red crayon [10], a bib [10], a coffee mug [10], dice [20], an alarm clock [20], a gel pen [25], a toothbrush [3], and last year’s yearbook [30]. With the Ouija board [45], ticket stub [75], children’s book [20], American-made toy [35], pillow [20], and goldfish [65], that brought our total to 1757.

Plus we had supplies for the points involving Barbie, spaghetti, Pictionary, and putting our name in lights.
And
the potential for some Special Points.

Setting my list aside and waiting, just minding the jar, I thought about the last time Patrick and I had done this, in Eleanor’s backyard. It had been during the wind down of
a July Fourth BBQ during which Eleanor had insisted on manning the grill and had performed a miracle worthy of the good Lord Jesus: transforming burgers into stones.

“Your family’s awesome,” Patrick had said as he and I chased fireflies to put inside a paper lantern where a small bulb had burned out. It was a science experiment at best—how many fireflies would it take for the lamp to glow—but the bugs wouldn’t stay inside it, seemed determined to be free and get their glow on.

“They’re okay,” I’d said, because Eleanor had just bored everyone with one of her rants about Sue Fink from the garden club and how she had no idea how to run a meeting.

“I mean that I like being with them,” he said, and then he had added, “With you.”

There’d been a funny look in his eye right then, a look I couldn’t recognize on him, and I’d said, only, “Come on. There are ice-cream sandwiches.”

Patrick now sat beside me on the grass, shook his head, then caught another bug and slipped it into the jar. He said, “I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

I smiled. “Don’t tell me we’re going to have a big talk about animal rights or some nonsense.”

He shrugged and watched as Carson joined Winter by the trees’ edge. “You ever see that
Sesame Street
episode about fireflies?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

He had his eye on another firefly and hands at the ready, reservations or not. “Telly and Baby Bear catch a bunch of fireflies, but then they look really sad and stop flying around, and they don’t glow. So the lady from the Laundromat makes Telly and Baby Bear pretend to be fireflies and imagine how it would feel to suddenly be stuck in a jar.”

“Deep,” I said.

“Just sayin’.”

I said, “We’re not going to win unless we take every opportunity to get points.”