Josey takes the phone. “Mom?” She listens for a second, then says, “Okay, okay, yeah, open it.” She bounces a little on her feet, and then she smiles as gradually and deeply as a breaking wave.
She squeals and stamps around in her high heels, and I'm making sounds more high-pitched than I knew I was capable of making, and Theo says, “Get out here! Get out here!” and we rush out from behind the curtain and smother him and each other in taffeta and hugs.
He kisses her forehead. “Way to go, pumpkin.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you wearing?”
And everything is different, at the same time, because we're just better at everything. And it has nothing to do with Josey getting to relax about college, because we've been better since the second Theo and Josey kissed in the parking lot. It's all out in the open now, how scared and unsure we all are about what's going to happen after they graduate. We don't have to pretend, but we also don't have to talk about it, because it's all on the table. We can just live around it.
On prom night, I get very far away from Facebook and all the pictures of the happy couples getting ready—even if my happy couple isn't exactly the type to post pictures of their prom group, in part due to not having a prom group—and lie around with my mother eating popcorn and watching '80s movies. We don't talk, because we aren't doing much of that lately. Sure, we have conversations when we need to, but for the most part we're quiet.
But we do spend a lot of time together. That's the strange thing. We read together in the living room, or she hangs out in the dining room with me and watches me work on my legos, or I do my homework in her bedroom where she's watching her telenovelas.
It's a weird sort of reassuring closeness, like we're saying, I might not know what to say to you, I might still be so mad you, I might not be really sure who you are, but I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
But it does make me think about someone else I haven't talked to in a while, so when my mother falls asleep near the end of Sixteen Candles I go up to my room and shut the door, so I don't wake her up. Aanya answers quickly. She always does.
“Remember that year we had prom?” I say.
“Oh God,” she says. “When we were..what, nine?”
“Yeah. We dug out all your old stuffed animals and tried to fit your Barbie clothes on them.”
“And then put my mom's lipstick all over our necks so we looked like we'd been making out with...invisible boys, I guess.”
“Or your manlier stuffed animals.”
She laughs. “I have a feeling that's going to be better than real prom will be.”
“Ours is tonight,” I say.
“Yeah, ours too.”
“And we're both home alone,” I say. “Woe is us.”
“Well,” she says. “My reason's a lot more boring than yours is. Dating a junior. No in.”
“Juniors can't go at my school,” I say. “Even if they're dating seniors.”
“That sucks.”
“Nah, it's okay,” I say. “They're having fun.”
“I don't know how you're so cool about this,” she says, but she doesn't say it snidely. She says it like she honestly doesn't know how I'm so cool about this, and for the first time that means I consider that I just might be.
“It gets easier,” I say.
“I just...I don't know. I don't think I could do it.”
I roll over onto my stomach. “You know you don't have to.”
“Ha. I know.”
“But I didn't think I could do it either, for what it's worth.”
“But do you like...I don't know.” She sighs. “Do you think me and Jake are like super boring now?”
“What?”
“I don't know, like, you're all out with your new wave relationship set-up or whatever and you must look at people like me and Jake and think that we're like...beneath you or whatever.”
“Aanya. Of course I don't. How could you think that I thought that?”
She's quiet, because it's so obvious she doesn't need to say it. Because I haven't kept up with calling her and answering her texts. Because I didn't give her a second chance after she was, granted, somewhat out of line at the diner. Because I don't talk to her about my school and my new friends, and I didn't invite her to my swim meets or to Theo's play.
She's scared I think she's beneath her because I freaking act like I think she's beneath me.
I have had a lot of uncomfortable self-discoveries lately.
“You and Jake have been boring since you were twelve,” I say. “And not because you're monogamous, but because you're so ridiculously in love that nobody thinks you're ever going to break up.”
“Really?” I can hear her smiling.
“Sure,” I say. “There's always the one couple who doesn't break up. It can be you guys.”
“What about you?” she says.
“I'm still figuring it out.”
“I guess boring's not the worst thing you could be,” she says.
“No, it's not.” I laugh a little. “My life could use a little more boring.”
“Aanya to the rescue!”
“You're not boring,” I say. “You know you're not.”
“I'm your first sister,” she says. “Don't let Lexie take that away.”
“You got it.”
Three hours later, I'm putting together a puzzle at the kitchen table
