Party (4 page)

“James starts his shift pretty soon,” she says. “Can you imagine him arresting us?”

“Hell yes! He’s
hot
!”

I say that from time to time to gross her out, which it does. She goes, “Ewwww, god!” and I laugh.

I throw open the door and jump out. I slam the door shut with a flourish. “Burritos and beer. What better way to spend a Saturday night.”

Ashley laughs and we race each other to the entrance of Super Cuca’s. I totally beat her. That’s what she gets for wearing flip-flops.

The hell with my parents. You hear that, Mom? Dad? How’s my
atti
now? Get bent.

I’m going to have a great night if it kills me.

So we order our burritos and take them outside, sitting across from each other at one of the tables for two along the patio wall. We unwrap our food, but then Ashley stops and squishes her eyebrows together (why’s it called “knitting your brow,” you ever wonder that?) and looks past Super Cuca’s and to the intersection like she’s checking something out. I turn around and look, too.

“What?” I ask her.

“Nothing,” Ashley says, but then adds, “It’s Beckett.”

I sweep my eyes across the street, and it only takes a millisecond to pick Beckett Montgomery out of the scattered crowd waiting for the next bus down San Andreas. I’m white, like
almost a ghost, but this girl’s got my pastiness beat by a few shades. Only she wears this ridiculous, like, reggae hat thing that I have to say really looks out of place on her.

What a dork.

“Yeah, that’s her, so what.” I turn back to my burrito. I’m hungry after my jailbreak. Ashley and her used to be, and I quote, BFFs or whatever. They like practically
lived
together, hanging out with Antho’s family for barbecues and things like that. Über wholesome, right? But they haven’t talked since like freshman year. So who cares what she’s doing now? Every day we passed her in the hall at school, Ash would say hi, and at first, Beckett would mumble something back. By the time the holidays had passed this past year, she stopped saying anything at all. Hello, freak show!

Ashley sort of frowns, and I’m like,
What the hell? But
I don’t say it.

“She looks …,” Ashley starts, but doesn’t finish.

“Like a Rastafarian?
Hey, mon.”
I snicker at my razor wit. What can I say—I’m a gem.

Ashley smiles a bit. “No,” she says. “I was going to say lost.”

I glance back at the girl as if I cared—which, it turns out, I do not. “She looks like she knows where she’s going, Ash. C’mon, eat.”

“Not
that
kind of lost.” Ashley goes on unwrapping her burrito, but she’s still watching her
ex–
best friend.

It’s not that I’m jealous. More like … protective. The way Ashley tells it, one day they were friends and the next Beckett wouldn’t talk to her much. Eventually they stopped
talking altogether. (Don’t blame me, it was before I showed up.) I’d seen her around school too, of course, but
chica
just kept her head down and her mouth shut, two things I’m not very good at. So how she and Ash ever got along I couldn’t say.

“Didn’t she like ditch you?” I say, just to make a point. “Go all like ice queen on you?”

Sometimes I do try to get Ashley to get pissed, because usually she’s so laid-back and it amuses me, but tonight she’s too smart to buy into it.

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” she says. “I just figured she met some guy or something.”

“You kept calling her,” I point out.

“Yeah, and she never called me back.”

“Okay, so, who cares?”

“I guess I do, sometimes.”

This is vintage Ashley. The girl just
can’t not
care. About anyone. I guess it’s one of the reasons I love her so much. I can be an unlovable little shit sometimes, I know. But I also know if I just stopped talking to her, she’d make it her business to track me down. According to her, that’s what she did with Beckett, but Beckett kept brushing her off. Even an old soul like Ashley can take a hint after a while.

Plus we became friends just a couple months later. So like, I win.

But I’m feeling particularly
sassy
tonight, so I go, “Well, let’s see what she’s been up to,” and stand up on my seat. I cup my hands to my mouth.
“BECKETT!”
I scream at the top of my lungs. The other patrons glare at me, and I savor the moment.

“Morrigan, what the hell!”

I give Ashley a shrug. “You want to know why she’s lost, let’s ask her.”

Beckett’s shoulders seize together in surprise and she whips around. She looks up, startled. This pleases me for some reason. I shout,
“C’MERE FOR A SEC!”

“Morry! God! Sit down, dork!”

Beckett looks around, like she’s not sure what she should do. She might not even recognize me, and she probably can’t see Ashley behind me. Then she turns away, holding her bag close to her chest as the bus pulls up. Her long, dark, wispy skirt billows out behind her as she climbs the steps.

“Ooo, takin’ the Shame Train,” I say. “Poor kid.”

I sit back down, grinning. I’m a bitch, I know it. But I’m so
good
at it. It’s my spiritual gifting, as Virginal Joshua would say. Jerk. Straight-edge
queer
.

Anyway.

“What was
that?”
Ashley wants to know.

“It sounded like you wanted to talk to her.”

“Well, maybe I do, but you just scared the crap out of her! It sounded like you were going to kick her ass, for god’s sake.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, and take a big bite of my burrito. “I was just playing.”

Ashley folds her arms on the table and squints at me. “Are you jealous of her?”

“
What?
God, whatev. No!” I swallow and pick bits of chicken out of my teeth with my tongue. Then I add, “Yes.”

Ashley grins at me. “You’re sweet.”

“Why would you want to talk to such a bitch anyway?”

“Whoa, I never said she was—”

“No,
I
did.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“So why?”

“She’s not a bitch, Morry.”

“What would you call me if I just stopped talking to you all of a sudden, huh?”

Ashley takes a drink of her soda. “Nothing. I’d just want to know why.”

“Exactly, and if I didn’t tell you, like ever, you’d say, to hell with that
bitch
, and move on.”

“I did move on, dork.”

“So why worry if she’s ‘lost’ or whatever?”

“Oh my god! You really are jealous of her! I haven’t talked to her in years, Mor. I’m just curious what happened. Her dad bailed on her a few years ago and—”

“Sounds lucky to me.”

“Mor!”

“Well, maybe you can talk to her tonight,” I say. “I’m sure she’ll be there boozing it up with the Deaf and Mute Club or something.”

Ashley tries to look mad, but laughs. “You are wicked.”

Score one for me. I don’t hate the
chica
, Beckett; I don’t even know anything about her other than what Ashley says she used to be like. But I knew there was no way in hell she was going to this party. Way too shy. And possibly mental.

So yeah, I’m jealous. Ashley’s the best thing that’s happened
to me since I got here, and I’m not going to let some weirdo Rasta chick ruin that. Best friends are hard to come by, you know?

“It’s weird that she’s taking the bus,” Ashley says. “She usually takes her mom’s car.”

“Why don’t you call her and ask her why?” I say,
slightly
exaggerating my excitement at the idea. It ticks me off that Ashley’s been keeping close enough tabs to know what kind of car the freak show’s been driving. “You still have her number in your cell, don’t you?”

Ashley kind of sighs and doesn’t respond. That makes me feel bad, so I let the topic drop and we both pick at our food.

I fish for another subject. “Antho coming?” I ask. That’s what we call Anthony Lincoln. A lot of other people call him “A-train,” which is frickin’ ridiculous, but whatever. He and Ash go way back, like fourth grade, almost as far as her and Beckett, who’s known Ash since like kindergarten.

Ashley shrugs. “I don’t know. Would you?”

“Under the circumstances, probably not. But it’s been a few months since, you know. Maybe a party’s just what he needs.”

“C’mon, Mor. Seriously.”

“Okay, okay. I guess I’d stay home, too. But it’s not like the football team’s going to come to a party like this. I mean … are they?”

“I don’t know.”

I can tell she’s getting bummed, and I can’t let that happen, so I change the subject again.

“Speaking of
invitees
, do you think Ryan will be there?” I ask Ash with my mouth full. One of the benefits of eating with your best friend: table manners are not a big deal.

“Ryan
Brunner?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, god, for real?” Ashley says. “I thought you were kidding about that. Are you out of your frickin’ mind, Mor?”

I shrug innocently. “What?”

“Okay, rule number one, as everyone on the planet knows, is you do not hook up with your ex’s friends.”

“How is that
my
freakin’ problem?”

Ashley gives me the big-eyed shocked routine. “It’s been like a week since Josh!” she says. “Can’t you at least let the sheets cool off? Geez, woman.”

“They weren’t that hot to begin with,” I say, and take another huge bite of my burrito. I’d been trying to, quote, “watch my figure” ever since me and Josh hooked up six months ago. Not that I have much of a figure to watch; I weigh about a buck-five soaking wet, even when I’m wearing my favorite boots, and my pirate name would be something like Captain Lackboobs. Still, I did want to look nice for him.
Back then
, I mean. Well, screw that noise now, bucko.

“Sex is not everything,” Ashley says, all grown up.

“But it is
something
,” I shoot back.

Ashley sets down her soda, still staring at me. She couldn’t be more opposite from me if she tried: long hair, Southern California blond, beach tanned, blue-blue-
blue
eyes.

Me = short hair, brunette, pasty white, mud-puddle brown
eyes. And not only do we look a lot different, we aren’t interested in the same types of guys. She went surfer/jock, I went punk. That probably saves us a lot of issues. No haggling over the guy stuff. Much as it
pains
me to admit, Josh is hot. Short, but hot. He’s got this amazing black mop of hair that tends to curl over his eyes and just makes me—

Never mind. We’re done.

“I’d take it back in a heartbeat,” Ashley says with those blue-blue-
blue
eyes glaring at me. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Todd loved you,” I say, pointing a purple-polished fingernail at her. “You broke up with
him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you told me, stupid.”

“No, I mean, how do you know he loved me?”

“He must’ve, why else would you sleep with him?”

Ashley finally stops looking at me and shakes her head. “Morry …,” she goes.

And I’m like, “What?”

She takes another sip of soda. “We’re sixteen years old,” she says. “How the hell can either of us pretend like we know what love is? I mean, really, really know?”

“I know what it
isn’t,”
I say, and it’s a lot bitchier than I’d meant.

“God, Morrigan …,” she says and shakes her head again. “You can’t seriously be telling me that if Josh had slept with you, that by itself means he loved you.”

“It’s a good start.”

A little physical intimacy never hurt anyone. Quite the opposite, I’d heard. A hug here, a kiss there. Too much to ask? Hell no. Couldn’t get it from Josh, so fine, I’ll look elsewhere, thanks much. I mean, we hugged and we sure as hell kissed, and we, you know, did quite a bit in the back of his Blazer, but if he wouldn’t—

(Okay, for real,
enough
.)

“Is that why you wanted to do it?” Ash goes. “Because you love him? Seriously.”

I swear, you know? Best friends are awesome, but sometimes …

“I cared about him,” I say. “And I wanted to show him that.”

“So there’s no other way to do that.”

“It’s a
good start
.”

“Did you know my parents never had sex?”

“So you’re, what, adopted then?”

“I mean before they got married. I ever tell you that?”

“No. And, um,
ew!
Next topic.”

“I haven’t even told them about Todd yet.”

Whoa. This is news. Bob and Dianne are like wicked cool. Ashley didn’t talk to them the same way she talked to me, of course—I mean, what are best friends for? But they were in on most of her life, unlike two other parents who shall remain nameless. I never asked if she told them about Todd because I assumed she did.

“How come?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Ashley says. “I just felt like they’d be disappointed. I mean, they waited, you know? So it’s not like Josh is
the only person on the planet who doesn’t want to rush. But that’s not why I wish I hadn’t slept with Todd.”

“Okay …?”

“It’s that … now I can’t give it to anyone else, even if I wanted to.”

“You can’t have sex?”

“I mean no one else can be first. That’s a big deal. Don’t you think?”

What the hell does she know? Josh is a straight-edge religious freak nutjob prude, and that’s the end of it as far as I’m concerned. And now Ashley’s starting to sound just like him. Well, screw that. All I wanted was to know that he cared enough to be with me, and it turns out he didn’t, just like everyone else in the world except Ashley. So screw him, and I don’t mean in bed.

Plus, as we’re sitting there in silence, our burritos getting cold, I decide it is way past time to change the subject again.

I cross my arms and lean back until my shoulders are against the wall of Super Cuca’s.

“I don’t want to talk about Josh anymore,” I say.

“Why not?”

I look off to the right, turning away from the parking lot, and give Ashley my biggest, brightest smile.

“Because he just pulled up.”

J
OSH AND ME WERE SITTING ON THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF MATT’S HOUSE, LEANING AGAINST THE DRIVER’S-SIDE DOOR OF JOSH’S DUSTY RED ’76
B
LAZER WHILE
I
SMOKED
. It was warm outside. The party was at a house near Shoreline Beach, so maybe if it got too hot, we could dive in the water for a bit.