“What an asshole.”
“He is definitely an asshole, but he’s our best shot.”
“We’ll pay the jerk,” said Nate. “I’m not drinking Coke at the party.”
“You got that right.”
“So, you’re making this happen?”
“Yeah,” said Josh. “I’ll make a few more phone calls and we’ll be in business.”
“Perfect,” said Nate, sitting up.
“I’ve got more,” said Josh.
“Yeah?”
“Billy’s trying to score some weed.”
“Awesome,” said Nate, smiling.
“It’s party time,” said Josh.
Nate made a face as he ended the call. That putrid smell seemed even stronger now. “Okay,” he said, getting onto his hands and knees, “one of us is leaving this room.”
He looked back under the bed again. This time he found a pair of navy blue sweatpants, two more socks, a brand new Frisbee still in its packaging, a pair of plaid boxers, a whole lot of dust, and a plate holding a half-eaten piece of New York cheesecake. Green and blue mold sat like a hairpiece over the top. Nate gagged, then put it into a garbage bag, plate and all. He stuffed the Frisbee, the socks, and the boxers into the bag, too. The sweatpants he walked to the mound of laundry already in the hall.
Lauren, who was walking past his open door, stopped. “I’m done! I’m free!” she said, smiling.
“Good for you!” sang Nate sarcastically.
“And I’m going to get pie!” sang Lauren back.
It was late enough in the day that Nate was starting to get hungry. And he couldn’t think of anything better to eat than his grandmother’s cherry pie. “Are they done?” he asked.
“Of course not,” said Lauren. “Gran and I are making them together.”
“One of them is mine.”
Lauren looked past him into his room. “Not by the looks of that room, mister.”
“Tell me you’re done with your room.”
“Neat as a pin,” said Lauren.
“Suck up,” said Nate.
“I think I’ll have my pie with ice cream,” said Lauren, walking away.
Nate forcefully shut his door. He went back to his bed and put on his headphones. He listened to four songs from his favorite CD, then sat up. Slowly, he got off the bed. He reached for the half-drunk bottle of Mountain Dew on his desk and dropped it into a garbage bag.
After dinner, Nate had two pieces of pie. He cleared the table and then headed upstairs for a shower. Lauren, who was going to the movies with two friends from the volleyball team, helped Eileen with the dishes. She found that fitting everything into the dishwasher was like doing a puzzle: the dessert plates fit best in the rack at the back, and the bowls slid in perfectly along the sides. When they were done, Gran patted Lauren’s back and thanked her for helping. Then, saying she’d be back before Lauren left, Gran went to the guesthouse to check on Selma and Sam. Lauren walked into the den and turned on the TV. Halfway through the stations she found an
Entertainment Tonight
story about Charlie Sheen. Just as she was settling in under a blanket, the doorbell rang. She lazily got up from her seat and walked to the front door. When she looked through the side windows, Josh waved at her. “Hi,” he said, when she opened the door. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” she said, smiling at him as she closed the door behind him. “Nate’s in the shower.”
Josh looked at his watch. “That’s not surprising,” he said as they walked down the hallway to the kitchen.
“What are you guys up to?” Lauren asked, getting a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Party,” said Josh, biting into an apple he took from the bowl on the counter that Eileen filled the day before. “Want to come?”
“Very funny,” said Lauren
“I’m serious,” said Josh, chewing.
“My brother would rather die than be seen at a party with me.”
“That’s probably true for him,” said Josh “but not for me.”
Lauren blushed. “I’m going to the movies,” she volunteered.
“That’s cool,” he said. “You going on a date?”
Lauren laughed. “I wish. No, I’m going with Pammy and Katie.”
“Blow them off,” said Josh, taking a step closer to Lauren and taking another bite. “I’ll blow the party off and you and I can go sit in a dark theater.”
Lauren looked at Josh. He was several inches taller than she, and he had long, lean arms. If she took one step toward him, she would walk right into his chest, and he could wrap those arms all the way around her. He looked into her eyes, smiled, and then reached over and tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Her face tingled where he touched it before putting his hand back into his pocket. A moment later, watching him take another bite of the apple, Lauren thought she could have imagined the whole thing, even though her face was still hot.
“What’s up?” asked Nate, walking into the kitchen.
“An evening of fun, my friend,” said Josh, turning to face Nate. Lauren slowly backed away from Josh and, for something to do, she opened the cupboard above her head and grabbed a box of low-fat crackers. “Who’s driving?” asked Josh.
“You are,” said Nate. “I am so out of gas.”
“Cool,” said Josh. “Are we picking up Jenny?”
“No, she’s going with the girls,” said Nate, looking at his watch. “They should be there by now.”
“Let’s roll,” said Josh. Their conversation took place around Lauren, as if she weren’t there. And then, just as Josh was walking out of the kitchen, with Nate a few steps ahead of him, he turned to Lauren and winked.
Steve Jansen-Smith lived on the other side of town, a ten-minute drive. On the way, Josh and Nate each drank a Red Bull. When they arrived at Woodview Court, it was already crowded with badly parked cars, forcing Josh to circle the block and park on Timber Lane. The boys threw their aluminum cans into Josh’s backseat before easing themselves out of the car and into the snowy night. “I am so pumped for this party,” said Nate, briefly removing his hands from the pockets of his worn jeans to thrust them into the air. “It has been way too long.”
“Months,” said Josh. “It’s been months, maybe years, since anyone in this town’s thrown a decent bash.”
Nate laughed. “Allison’s coming,” he said, teasing his friend.
“Allison who?” asked Josh.
“I don’t know why you don’t like her,” said Nate. “She’s cute.”
“Yeah,” said Josh, “in the dark maybe.”
“Man, you’re getting really picky.”
“Says the man who’s got Jenny.”
“Point taken,” said Nate. “But hey, maybe Allison will look better to you after some beer.”
“Ask me after I’ve had three or four,” said Josh.
As instructed, the boys walked around the side of the enormous brick house and down a snow-covered slope into the backyard. Through the floor-to-ceiling basement windows, Nate and Josh saw a crowd of people, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, dancing, laughing, talking, and shouting to each other over the thumping beat of the music. “We’ve arrived,” said Nate, smiling as he opened the sliding glass door to an instant blast of party sounds. Josh followed Nate inside, where Steve, the host, approached them immediately. “Welcome, gentlemen,” he shouted. “Your beer is in the fridge—bottom shelf, Budweiser.”
“Cool!” Nate shouted back. “Have you seen Jenny?”
“Yeah,” yelled Steve, pointing to the other side of the room. “She’s over there, making out with Tom.”
Nate twisted his smile. “Fuck you, man,” he said, moving in the direction of the white refrigerator at the end of the hallway. As promised, he and Josh found two six-packs of Bud among several six-packs of imported beer. Nate grabbed two from Josh’s, marked with a black Sharpie, and handed one to his friend.
“I saw that,” said Josh, smiling.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Nate. “You can get them from mine next time.”
Beers in hand, Nate and Josh walked into the party room and stood, with their backs against the wall, surveying the scene. To their right was a sitting area, two couches and two chairs arranged in a crooked oval. On the couch, Tom really was making out with someone, but it wasn’t Jenny. It was Tiffany from their chemistry class, the girl who asked dumb questions and laughed at whatever the teacher said. Josh shook his head; Tom was such a smooth operator. He could talk almost anyone into a make-out session. Next to them, Andy had on his lap a girl Josh recognized but couldn’t name. He rubbed her back with one hand while he sipped a beer with the other. She held a Coors Lite in her hand but didn’t appear all that interested in it. In fact, after Andy had taken the last sip of his beer, she leaned into him and gave him a long drink from her can. Andy moved his hand down and began to caress her lower back. Sitting in the chairs and on the other couch was a group of girls from the field hockey team. They were gorgeous, all five of them, and dressed exactly alike: extra skinny jeans, little pastel tops with words written across the chest—Patti’s said
BABY
—and generous slices of flat, toned tummies visible between the top of their low-rise pants and the bottom of their short shirts. They all had long hair—three blondes and two brunettes—that they had twisted up at the back of their heads. They talked and laughed; Ashley smoked a cigarette. Soon, they were joined by their soccer-team boyfriends, who circled them like stagecoach settlers. Josh turned his attention to the dance floor and saw Jenny on the other side. “There’s Jenny,” he said to Nate. Nate wove through the dancers like a determined laboratory rat working a maze. When he reached Jenny, she smiled and kissed his lips, surely a better reward than a piece of stale cheddar. Nate immediately put his arm around her shoulder, a high school code of possession more than an act of passion, and said something into her ear. She laughed. Josh gulped the last of his beer before working his way back to the fridge for another. Trying to fit her wine coolers onto the overcrowded top shelf was Jenny’s friend, Allison Haynes. “Oh, hi, Josh,” she said, giving him a big smile. “Great party.”
“Yeah,” said Josh, already thinking of ways he could extract himself from her company. If he didn’t come up with something quickly, he’d be listening to her babble all night.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“A while,” said Josh, looking beyond her into the fridge for his Budweiser.
“Same here,” she said. “Jenny was wondering when you’d get here. She was thinking that maybe you’d changed your minds and were doing something else. But I told her, ‘Oh no, Jenny. They’ll be here.’ ” Josh glanced back at Allison. “She’s crazy about him, you know,” she said. “Then again, I guess I don’t have to tell you that—you have eyes, don’t you? Anyone who looks at the two of them can see how crazy they are about each other. How nice it would be to feel that way about someone, you know? And to have him feel that way about you, too.”
Josh nodded his head. “I’m going to grab a beer,” he said. “Do you want one?”
“Sure,” said Allison, setting her wine cooler down on the floor. “I don’t really like these anyway.”
“They’re on the bottom shelf,” he said. “Let me just get by you.”
Allison moved to Josh’s right, propping the door wide open with her body. When Josh bent down to get to his beer, she put her hand on his head. He looked up at her. “Sorry,” she said. “Lost my balance for a moment.” Josh looked back at the bottom shelf: no Budweiser. He checked the other shelves: Coors Lite, Heineken, Sierra Nevada, and St. Pauli Girl. Josh stood. “Did you drink it all?” asked Allison. Josh quickly surveyed the hallway and spotted several Budweiser-sporting girls. One of them had her hand wrapped around a can with N
ATE
written on the side. He left Allison at the fridge and strode up to the gaggle. “Where did you get that beer?” he asked.
“From the fridge,” one of them said. “Steve told us to help ourselves.”
“Well, I think that’s my beer you’re drinking.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at the can. “Actually, it’s Nate’s beer. But hey, sorry. There’s lots more in there, though.”
“Yes,” said Josh. “And it belongs to other people.”
She took another sip. “Well, hey, I don’t think anyone would, like, care.”
“I do,” said Josh, turning to leave.
“What happened?” asked Allison, scurrying after him.
“My beer’s gone,” said Josh. “I’m going to find Steve.”
“What?” asked Allison, having trouble keeping up with Josh, who moved through the crowd like a bouncer at a bar.
“I’m going to find Steve,” Josh shouted back at her.
“I’ll wait here,” she yelled.
Working his way through the mass of warm bodies crowding the dark hallway adjacent to the party room, Josh lost his enthusiasm for being there. Parties were great when everything went his way, he thought, as he passed another girl drinking Budweiser: when no one touched his six-pack, when a cute girl flirted with him, when his mother didn’t wait up and sniff his breath like a bloodhound when he got home. But they could turn from sweet to sour in an instant. An ember of hope presented itself when Josh found Steve, Todd, and Nick, illuminated by a red lightbulb hanging over the hot water heater at the end of the hallway, smoking pot. “Dude!” said Steve when he saw Josh. “What’s up, man?”
“Someone drank my beer,” said Josh.
“Shit,” said Todd. “That is such a drag.”
“Take someone else’s,” said Nick. “With all these chicks here, there’s got to be a huge supply of, like, Amstel Light, dude.”
Steve and Todd cracked up. Josh looked at the three of them and waited for someone to ask him if he wanted a hit off the roach. Even though they all knew one other, it was considered poor form to ask for it. They all stared back at him. “You are so fucking tall,” said Todd, breaking into laughter. Steve and Nick joined him and Josh knew it was a lost cause. They were all too stoned to realize what pricks they were. Josh turned and walked through a doorway, finding himself on the far side of the dance floor, where Nate had been standing earlier. He was no longer there; he was slow dancing with Jenny. Josh found a piece of wall and, folding his arms across his chest, leaned against it to wait. As soon as the music stopped, Josh approached Nate, whose heavy eyes and rubbery lips broadcast his alcohol-induced relaxation. “I’m out of here,” he said.