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.”
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
