So, of course, I know immediately who the hell that is.
“Ew, scary!” Lisa says. She's annoying.
And Theo is awesome.
And okay, maybe Josey too.
I gallop over and say, “You two are insane.”
“Well hey there, firefly,” Josey says, while Theo hugs me. “You seem to be lacking blood stains.”
I look down at my arms now that I've hugged Theo. “Not anymore!”
“Now you're a carnivorous firefly,” Theo says.
“I already was. Just a secret one.”
He wraps his arms around my waist and hauls me up and spins me around. “You're flyiiiiing!” he says. People are staring and I don't care.
Josey says, “I'd help you get down if I had thumbs,” which is ridiculous because a. her hands are totally free from the costume b. lions have thumbs, sort of.
The point is that she doesn't want me to get down.
He does eventually release me, though, and I say, “I don't know what you two are doing dressing like that.”
Theo says, “We're awesome. If people liked us, we'd be those weird kids everyone likes.”
“As it is we just make people uncomfortable,” Josey says.
“Yeah,” Theo says. “Showing up to parties we weren't invited too in non-matching bloody costumes.”
“You're a little too proud of yourself, I think,” I say.
Theo grins.
And I want to kiss him so badly that it actually hurts my throat.
So I distract myself with food, as always. “Come on,” I say, tugging them both by the hands. “There's brownies.”
“In a minute,” Josey says. “You guys go ahead.” She searches around for a minute, then spies the back door, through which a bunch of people are out on the porch shoving each other around. “Aha. Back soon.” She works her way to the door. I don't know how she's walking in that thing.
“I don't let her smoke in the car,” Theo explains.
“Who smokes nowadays? I don't get it. Like, if you're eighty and have smoked forever, okay, you've given up at this point. But when people our age start, it's like...have you not heard the thing about it killing you?”
“I think that's why she does it. Trying to prove that smart people can do dumb stuff too.”
“That...is dumb.” That is imperfect.
“Yeah, she's generally successful when she sets her mind to things. You serious about those brownies?”
“Would I ever joke about such a thing?”
“Let's hit it,” he says.
Theo and I scarf brownies and dance a little, and it is definitely a good thing I'm not drunk after all because so much of me wants to just get all over him like most of the girls here are with their guys. It should probably help me keep my hands to myself that he's never looked less attractive, or that the girls I was dancing with are totally giving me looks that are half-confused and half-disgusted, but it doesn't.
“I'm gonna get some fresh air,” I say.
Kind of smokey air, it turns out, but that's okay. I nudge past a few drunk guys laughing and shouting at each other about which of them is the biggest bitch, whatever that means, and sit down next to Josey. She's off the porch and sitting in the damp grass. She startles a little and then smiles when I sit down.
“Hey, firefly,” she says.
“Hi.”
“Having fun?”
I say, “My mom thinks I should take more risks in my life.”
“Is this your way of asking me for a cigarette? Because I've pledged not to convert anyone.”
“Yuck.”
She blows smoke away from me. “Good girl.” Then she turns back to me, squints, and says, “You're reconsidering us, aren't you?”
“I don't know.”
“You totally are.”
“Are you actually surprised?”
She laughs. “He was sure you'd reconsider. I wasn't so convinced.”
“You've never really been convinced about anything to do with me,” I say.
“Opposite,” she says. “I got waaay too convinced way too fast.”
She gives this little laugh in her throat—a cold laugh, the kind I've come to expect from this cold girl—but she turns away from me to tap the ash from her cigarette onto the ground and I realize...I know how it feels to tell someone you like them and have them not say it back. It's the exact embarrassment I was trying to save Mike from. And it's the reason I knew he wouldn't say anything, would keep tiptoeing around it, just like I always used to when I liked someone. Aanya and I would giggle about it and pass notes and make fun of each other.
You'd have to be a crazy person to just tell someone you liked them. My whole belief system revolves around dropping hints, playing games, giggling and passing notes.
And here I am with this girl who scares the hell out of me and I broke her heart a little.
No wonder she has a hard time looking at me.
“I mean,” she says finally, staring straight ahead. “You're obviously hung up on him. But we didn't know what would happen. We didn't know if it's for you.”
“I don't either.”
I scoot down some so I can lie back on the grass without hitting my head on the deck. She does too. We lie there for a minute, looking up at the stars, listening to the boys grab at each other's crotches or whatever it is boys do. She's close enough that I can hear her breathing.
“But doesn't it make you feel like you're not enough?” I say.
She's going to laugh at me. She's going to say, look at me, you think
