Christopher was leaning against my car after school. He had this way of standing like his limbs were just barely connected, sort of loose.
“Do you like parties?” Christopher asked as I walked up.
The real answer to the question was that I didn’t know. It was one of those things where I hadn’t been invited to many in the past couple of years. However, Claire would have been to a zillion. I put a hand on my hip. “It depends on who’s at the party.”
“Do you want to come to one with me tonight?” Christopher asked.
“Like a date?” I hated how my voice came out all high and screechy.
“That’s what I’d been thinking. I thought maybe we’d give the whole being together outside the movie theater thing a try.”
“I do better in the dark.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew it didn’t come across like I meant.
“Well, that sounds promising.”
“I meant, I had a good time at the movie. You know, dark theater.” I decided I better change topics. “Who else is going to the party?”
“So are you saying you don’t want to go with me to the party unless your friends are there?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” I didn’t add that while I wanted to go to the party with him, I especially wanted to go if Lauren could see us together. “I’ll go.”
“Well then, it’s a date,” Christopher said with a smile. He took a step forward and then paused. He was going to kiss me. My heart started to beat super fast like I was running a sprint. His hand reached over and cupped the end of my elbow, pulling me just a touch closer. I swallowed. God, I hope I don’t have Kit Kat caught in my teeth. That’s all I needed, for him to kiss me and end up finding a snack in there. No one likes secondhand chocolate. If I’d known he was going to kiss me, I would have gone to the bathroom and swished out my mouth first. I closed my eyes and I could feel his breath as he leaned in. His breath smelled like mints.
HONK!
We both jumped back. A car driving by gave another loud honk and someone leaned out the window, yelling at a kid on the school steps.
“Joe! Suck this!” The kid in the passenger seat turned around and pressed his butt cheeks against the window. The pasty butt, quite hairy I might add, had a way of taking all the romance out of the moment. Christopher apparently felt the same way as he was rubbing his palms on the front of his jeans nervously and showing no signs of coming back in for a kiss.
“Yeah, so …” I wasn’t really sure what to say, so the sentence sort of trailed off.
“Yeah.” Christopher looked at me and then away. “How about I pick you up at your house around six? Julie Baker’s parents are out of town and she’s doing a sort of barbecue thing.”
“Sounds good.”
Christopher gave me a nod and walked off. It was framing up to be a very interesting evening.
Popularity Question: How do you know if a high school party is successful?
1. There is at least one person throwing up outside in the flower beds.
2. So many people have come that someone thought it would be a good idea to start parking on the lawn.
3. A minimum of three couples are having sex somewhere in the house—at least one of them in the parents’ bed.
4. Doritos, chips, and other salty snacks have been crumbled into a fine powder and ground into the living room rug.
5. At least one priceless breakable has been broken. Someone will make an attempt to fix it with superglue or toothpaste. It will not work.
6. The kitchen floor will be sticky from spilled liquids, making it possible for a small freshman to become completely stuck to the floor like to a giant piece of flypaper.
7. Music is playing at a level loud enough to cause ears to bleed. Occasionally someone will yell to turn it down before the neighbors call the cops. This person will then be called a pussy by the others and the music will go a notch louder.
8. A group of jocks will be around the dining room table, playing a complicated drinking game to which no one completely understands the rules. It is possible that the rules are completely irrelevant anyway.
In the case of Julie’s party, it was all of the above. Julie didn’t seem to mind. She was wandering through the house wearing her mom’s silk kimono-style bathrobe and drinking a wine cooler. It was possible that she had decided she was going to get the death penalty for the party when her parents got home so she might as well enjoy her final night on earth.
Lauren was already at the party. When Christopher and I arrived it was clear she’d had quite a few drinks. It looked to me like she’d left drunk behind a few beers ago and had moved into that stage where your brain starts to float free in all the alcohol. Lauren lunged at Kyla declaring her to be her “very best friend in the world!” Kyla met my eyes across the room and shook her head in disgust. It didn’t look like Bailey was there. I wondered who Lauren was counting on to hold her hair out of the toilet when she started puking, because it was clear to me that Kyla was not going to volunteer.
Christopher and I wove our way through the crowd of people until we found the cooler in the kitchen. He grabbed a beer for himself and then looked over at me.
“Is there any Diet Coke left?” I asked.
Christopher fished through the melting ice water and pulled out a can, taking the time to pop the top for me. And people say there are no gentlemen left.
We clinked our drinks together and wandered out onto the back porch where at least it was quiet enough to hear yourself think. The porch was screened in so it wasn’t quite as cold as being outside, but it was still way colder than the house. You could see your breath in the air.
“You cold?”
I started to shake my head no and then realized there was no point in being polite; my shivering was most likely giving things away. Christopher pulled off his military jacket and wrapped it around me. It was a deep olive green wool and still warm from his body.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much.”
We sat on the bench, watching people come and go through the kitchen. I knew I should talk about something, but I was at a complete loss to come up with a topic. The longer I didn’t talk, the louder the silence was between the two of us. What if we had nothing to talk about but movies? Did that mean our relationship was doomed? Would it be easier to talk to him if I was being myself, or was he only interested in me because I was Claire? Maybe it didn’t matter who I was because I was doomed in any relationship due to my lack of communication skills. There was a constant loop in my head, say something, say something, say something, say something.
“So did you know Katharine Hepburn did all her own stunts? She thought the stunt women didn’t stand up straight enough,” I blurted out. I then wished for a meteor to suddenly fall from the sky and take me out for saying something so completely random. That’s the problem with space debris. It never causes a cataclysmic event when you want it to.
“I can honestly say that no, I didn’t know that,” Christopher said, no doubt taking pity on my poor social skills. “I would have thought it was part of the job requirement for stunt people to have good posture.”
“Yeah. It could have just been her take on stuff. She was sort of a control freak about things. I mean, the guy I used to date who was into movies told me she was,” I tried to explain while still waiting for the earth to swallow me whole.
“I always had the impression she wasn’t the kind of person to be wishy-washy on issues.” Christopher took a drink of his beer.
“What’s wrong with knowing exactly where you stand on things?”
“Life isn’t a vintage film,” Christopher said. When he saw my confused face he explained, “Things aren’t black-and-white.”
“Some things are.”
Christopher gave a vague one shoulder shrug. “Don’t get me wrong. I like Katharine Hepburn. She was honest. You knew where she stood.”
I swallowed. I wondered what he would think of my less-than-honest take on key issues like my real identity.
“I have no idea why I brought up Katharine Hepburn,” I admitted.
“Don’t worry. Random isn’t a bad thing.”
“The thing is, I’m not really good at this kind of thing.”
“Just so we’re on the same page, what kind of thing are we talking about?” Christopher asked, taking a long drink of his beer.
“Being with people.”
“I thought it came second nature to the elite crowd,” Christopher said.
“Sometimes it only looks like it comes easy. It can be a lot of work.”
For some reason I had the urge to tell him about Lauren. About what she did and how it made me afraid to get too close to anybody. I don’t know why, but I was sure he would know what to say, that he would have some kind of advice. I wanted to explain that I had been sure things were black-and-white, but lately there was all this gray everywhere. I opened my mouth to tell him when the door to the patio flew open and Julie spilled out. She spotted us and swayed back and forth while her mouth waited to catch up to whatever her brain was thinking.
“You guys have to come inside, we’re playing a game,” Julie said, though it came out more like, “You’ll gooz, come inziiid, waa plainning a guum.”
It was possible that an out of control party was not the place to spill your guts. Unless you counted Lauren, who dashed past all of us to spill her guts in the bushes in a nonmetaphorical sense.
Christopher stood up and took a step toward Lauren and then stopped. There wasn’t anything he or anyone else could do to help.
“Splashdown!” one of the jocks yelled out the living room windows. I glanced over my shoulder. It looked like everyone was getting a good view of Lauren.
“Those are my mom’s azaleas,” Julie slurred.
“Not her finest hour,” I said.
“What’s your problem with Lauren?” Christopher asked.
“I don’t have a problem.”
“You spend a lot of time worrying about something that isn’t a problem.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I didn’t meet his eyes. “Do you want to go inside and play a game?” I tried to make my voice sound flirty.
“You know, unlike most people, I’m not real big on playing games.” He turned around and walked away.