“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think they’re together.”
“Well, if they are,” I say, winking, “it won’t be for long, buzz kill.”
Paige kisses me on the cheek. The peck, it isn’t sweet. She smiles, says, “Not as though you’d remember anyhow.”
THREE
The song has been sung in the lunchroom.
We’ve talked. We’ve laughed together. Flirted even, maybe.
This party is surely where we kiss.
Tonight, this party is the moment I have waited so many seasons for.
The frost is over and the summer has come. I spend an hour in the bathroom and I look over every inch of my face. This is prom and my wedding and my first real job all wrapped up in one. I make myself look and smell and feel as good as I can. I use the gel, I use the lotions, I use the aftershave, I iron my clothes, and shine my shoes. My stomach is an impossible knot.
First thing Paige and I notice when we hit Oscar’s is that it’s a costume party.
We decide to hang around outside Oscar’s place and wait for more partygoers.
Maybe find some other idiots without costumes.
Everyone who walks in I scan like I’m an MRI. Trying to make out the shapes of the beneath the costumes. ’Course I’m not looking for tumors.
I’m looking for Vauxhall.
Paige has smuggled a half bottle of whiskey from her dad’s liquor cabinet and we sip that while we wait, out throats getting chapped. Paige is chatty, but I’m too nervous to speak. When I do, it’s just me saying stupid things and stuttering about how anxious I am. Paige finds me ridiculous.
When this guy named Jethro that Paige’s friends with shows up, we walk in with him and his date. Jethro’s a Mormon and is dressed like a nun and his date is some Filipino girl with braces dressed like a witch. Walking in, the two of them describe their newfound love of chicken tinola. We have no idea what that is but imagine it’s something like what Oscar’s place smells like. It must be pot and coconut milk.
Inside, I see Vauxhall first.
Of course I do.
This is exactly how fate and destiny and providence works.
She’s wearing dark slacks. Innocuous footwear. A blue button-up shirt. Electric blue, no less. She’s also wearing gloves. Black leather. And her face is entirely swathed in bandages. Bowler hat on. Shades on. Vaux’s speaking damaged French to someone I think is named Bethany.
Vaux has a name tag that says, VAUXHALL, NEW GIRL.
A little light on the top of the tag, like an Xmas tree light, flashes on and off and on and off. This is Vauxhall as the cool mummy.
She’s so relaxed. And it makes me feel uptight.
I can’t keep my eyes off where her face should be.
So I push my way into the kitchen for a drink. I need something to loosen up before I talk to Vauxhall. Unfortunately, Heather Albine, Chris Lavoire, Liz Chin, and Gina Foley are standing around the cooler. These are bitches I hate being trapped in kitchens with.
I push in between them, reach into the cooler, and pull out a cider. Not my favorite, but I want something sweet because I’m sure I’ll be swilling bitter wine later. I look around for a bottle opener.
“What do you think of her?” Heather asks me.
“Who?” I play it dumb.
“Who?” Liz laughs. “Who else?”
“Uh, yeah, she’s interesting,” I say, reaching around each of them, hands scouring the countertops looking for the bottle opener, desperate for the bottle opener. Gina has it. Has been holding it the whole time. She hands it to me and asks, “Ade, how did you get into the party, anyway?”
“I was invited. Me and Paige.”
They laugh like jackals.
Gina says, “You three-you, lesbo, and the new bitch-are like a perfect team.”
“How’s that?” I ask, eyes narrowing.
Chris, she says, “You’re all mutants.”
“Why’re you lumping Vauxhall in with…”
“Are you serious? Have you even seen her?” Chris snickers. “That crazy bitch is like the biggest-”
“Opposed to who?” I interrupt. “You ugly skanks’re just jealous. Maybe she wasn’t raised in Crestmoor. Maybe her dad’s not a doctor. Doesn’t make her any less-”
I stop when I realize they’ve all gone quiet.
Standing behind me, Vauxhall says, “My dad’s dead.”
Liz and Gina cringe, make sympathetic faces. Heather laughs uncomfortably. And then all four of them, moving like some trained acrobatic team, squeeze out of the kitchen in seconds. There was a magic trick and the bitches have evaporated.
“Friends of yours?” the mummy asks.
“Not at all.”
I’m thinking right here is the real beginning.
The way this story really truly starts.
Standing here, looking at Vauxhall in her getup, I’m imagining how we’ll reenact this story for friends years from now. In my mind I see us older and sophisticated, maybe at a restaurant sipping wine and eating strange cheese, and Vauxhall’s covering her mouth and laughing and telling our friends, also mature wine drinkers, that we met for real, really met, at a costume party at some dude’s house, some dude neither of us can recall. We’ll laugh about that. I’m sure of it.
Right now, me getting all dreamy leaves a wedge of uncomfortable silence between us. Vaux breaks it by leaning in and saying, “It’s not what you think it is.”
What a great opening line.
“What’s not?”
“My costume. It’s more complicated than it looks.”
I take a sip of cider, say casually, “Okay. Let me guess. Uh, a mummy?”
“Didn’t see that coming.” Vauxhall laughs.
“I got nothing.”
She looks disappointed. “Why are you drinking that bitch fizz, anyway?”
The cider in my hand, I shrug. “Tasty?”
I’m leaning against the stove and put my right hand down on the range and while it’s there, just fleetingly, Vauxhall puts hers on top. The touch is brief. I feel only the warm leather. The hand beneath is a mystery. I feel the shape, but without touching the skin, it’s like touching a picture.
This is our first official touch, as brief and unexpected as it is.
And this is exactly when some asshole barges in with a bottle of wine, splashing it everywhere. His eyes are bloodshot.
He sees Vauxhall, his face twists into a mischievous grin.
“Sorry.” He laughs. And turns and leaves.
“Know him?” I ask Vauxhall.
A silence follows. Both of us rocking in our shoes. I break the tension, ask, “Right, so, I think I should know, but
