The Last Best Kiss

  “We’re lemmings,” I say to Lucy, when we’re in her mother’s minivan. I’m up front with her. Phoebe and some friend of hers named Ronna, who goes to a different high school, are sitting together in the middle row, and Eric and Oscar are in the way back. “We do what everyone else does, even if it’s a mistake.”

  “Is it a left or a right on Garden?” is her reply.

  We should have taken a shuttle bus. At least then we’d have been let off right in front of the club. But instead we have to search and search for a parking space and discover that the public lots charge a twenty-dollar flat rate on weekend nights, which we’re not willing to pay. We end up driving all the way up the hill to find a neighborhood that isn’t permit parking only. We have to walk what must be a quarter of a mile back down to Sunset Boulevard, which is rough on all the girls, since the whole point of after-parties is to wear your shortest skirts and your highest heels. Lucy and I are both sober, but the others were drinking in the car, so they’re laughing and stumbling behind us as we lead the way.

  “Whose idea was it to skip the shuttle?” Lucy says irritably as we wait at the light to cross to the club. “Oh, well, at least I can go inside and get drunk and forget all about this—oh, wait, no, I can’t, because I have to drive us home again. Isn’t this just fun for me?”

  “It’s not all bad,” I say. “Jackson’s here—I just saw him go inside.”

  “Really?” She turns to face me, her arms raised to tighten her ponytail. “Do I look okay?”

  “Seriously amazing.” The theme for the after-party is always something sexist and borderline offensive for the girls—like “zombie whores” or “nympho schoolgirls”—but the boys get easy costume assignments like “cowboys” or “heroes.” This year the theme is “trashy cheerleaders and jocks” which is why all of us girls are wearing our shortest miniskirts with tight tank tops and the guys are all wearing whatever team uniforms they already had lying around.

  “Now do me,” I say.

  She fixes my locket, pushing the clasp back behind my neck where it belongs, winds my ponytail around her finger to curl it, and pronounces me perfect.

  “Was Jackson with anyone?” she asks me as the light changes and we cross, the rest of our gang right behind us.

  “Just that guy we met at Starbucks.”

  “Your long lost cousin?”

  I nod and smile. I’m kind of looking forward to another family reunion tonight.

  I find Wade by the guacamole—or what used to be the guacamole. There’s not much left: just some green mush and a few chip crumbs around the bowl.

  “Hey, cuz!” I have to shout—the music’s loud.

  He looks up, registers it’s me, and says a welcoming “Hey!” He leans in to say, “I like that we barely know each other and yet we already have nicknames. Also? You look really great.” He’s got on a baseball jersey in lazy deference to the party theme.

  “Looks like I’m too late for the guacamole,” I say.

  “Don’t blame me. I swear it was like that when I got here.”

  “After-parties aren’t known for the plentifulness of their food,” I say. Then: “Is plentifulness a word?”

  “I’m kind of doubtingful.”

  I laugh. “So . . . if there’s no guacamole and we’re standing at the guacamole table . . . what does that make us?”

  “Hungry,” he says. “And ready to give up on the idea of food to go dance.” He tilts his head back and peers at me. “Yes?”

  Most definitely yes.

  He gestures toward the dance floor behind me. I turn too quickly and collide with Lily. “We were coming to say hi,” she says in that half yell you have to use at a party. “When did you guys get here?”

  The “we” is her, Finn, and Hilary. Hilary’s dressed like the rest of us in a little flippy skirt over some kind of biker shorts and a cropped spandex tank; her hair’s in the requisite ponytail. But Lily—who has no problem wearing short skirts and tight-fitting tank tops on any normal school day—has deliberately ignored the dress code for tonight and gone grunge for the evening, with loose jeans, her red Doc Martens, and a flannel shirt.

  “How exactly are you a cheerleader?” I ask.

  “Let’s just say I root root root for the softball team,” she shouts back with a grin.

  I greet Finn with a polite nod, and he nods back at me. That’s what we do these days: bob our heads like two friggin’ birds drinking water. He’s dressed normally, in jeans and a dark green polo shirt, and is wearing his contacts.

  I introduce Wade to them, and the girls start pelting him with questions, like what school he goes to and how he figured out we were cousins and whether he’s friends with various people they know at his school, and so on.

  Wade is friendly and answers all their questions, but after a while he turns to me and says, “Still up for that dance?” and I nod eagerly.

  Lily says to Finn, “Let’s dance too,” but he shakes his head. “I don’t do that. Sorry.”

  “You don’t dance?” she says. “At all?”

  “I had a bad experience at a dance once.” His gaze flickers across my face. No one else notices, but my stomach clenches with shame. “I don’t usually even go to them. I’m only here tonight for a sociological experiment.”

  “Yeah? What are you studying?” asks Hilary.

  “The effects of a multitude of very short skirts on the developing male brain.” Everyone but me laughs. I force a weak smile.

  “It’s not the brains that are reacting,” Lily says with a leer. She shrugs. “If you’re not going to dance, then we’ll have to go without you, right, Hil?”

  “I don’t think people are doing that,” Hilary says, studying the dancers. “It’s, like, mostly couples.”

  “Oh, who cares?” Lily says. “If we want to dance, we should dance, with or without someone who happens to have a penis.”

  “Hear, hear!” says Finn. “And to show my support, I’ll come watch.”

  “I bet you will,” says Lily with a toss of her head. Finn leans against a wall while the rest of us join the crowd on the dance floor. It’s a relief to leave him and my discomfort behind. The music is loud; the room is hot; the floor is packed—perfect dancing conditions. I intend to enjoy this.

  We start out in a group, the four of us all dancing together, but pretty soon Hilary shouts, “I’m done,” and goes back to where Finn’s alone at the side of the room. Lily keeps glancing over at them, and after a while she leaves the dance floor and joins them.

  Wade and I keep dancing, but the heat that started off feeling welcoming and inviting turns overwhelming and sickening after a while, and there’s one drunk kid who keeps bumping into me—at first I think it’s by accident, but after his hand lands on my butt more than once, I start to wonder—so after a song ends, I shout, “Let’s take a break and get something to drink.”

  We make our way to where a bunch of sodas and juice are set out on a counter. Wade asks me what I want, but I say I’ll take care of my own drink. I’m kind of paranoid about that actually: we had these people come talk to the school about drugs and alcohol when I was in eighth grade, and one of the things they said was that open bottles and cans can be spiked with all sorts of crap, and the only way to be sure what you’re drinking is safe is to open a new bottle or can and pour it yourself. So I find an unopened Diet Coke can and pour myself a cup while Wade gets himself a Sprite.

  “Do you want something stronger?” he asks me. “I know a couple of guys who were going to smuggle some stuff in.”

  I tell him about my promise to Lucy to stay sober, and I realize I should probably check on her. We search the crowded room, greeting people we know and talking to each other as much as we can, given how noisy it is. Wade doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave my side, and I’m not in any hurry to leave his: I’m liking his company, and I’m also liking the way girls from my school are eyeing him approvingly. Everyone will be asking me about him on Monday. I’m thinking that
maybe when they do, I won’t mention that we’re distantly related, because even though it’s not creepy, it sounds like maybe it could be creepy.

  “Is it a coincidence that I don’t see Jackson anywhere either?” Wade asks after we’ve completed a lap around the room.

  “Good question. There’s an outside, right?” We find the open doors that lead to some sort of courtyard area, which turns out to be Hookup Central—couples are on every piece of furniture, mouths plastered together, hands exploring. And there are Lucy and Jackson. He’s leaning against a tree, and she’s leaning against him.

  Well, good for her. She’s been wanting this for a while.

  It’s kind of awkward standing in the middle of all these kissing couples. Wade and I may be having fun together, but we’re nowhere near this yet. Maybe if I were drunk. Maybe if he started something. . . . But he doesn’t, and I’m not, so we have a few uncomfortable moments of standing there trying not to look at any of the couples or at each other, and then I excuse myself to go use the restroom.

  Back inside I spot Phoebe and Eric off talking in a corner. That’s all they’re doing—talking—but somehow they’ve created their own space bubble, and I don’t want to go over and interrupt. Maybe it’s the way she’s looking down as they talk and he’s leaning in close that makes me reluctant to break in on them. I squint at them and consider. Phoebe and Eric? Not a couple I would have put together. But that makes it kind of interesting.

  After I’ve used and left the bathroom (long wait, of course—dozens of girls in line along with a few sheepish guys), someone grabs my arm.

  “Hey!” I say. It’s Oscar. He’s wearing board shorts and a sleeveless muscle tee, because (he told us earlier) going surfing is the closest thing he’s ever come to feeling like a jock. He usually slicks down his wavy light brown hair, but tonight he’s left it naturally unruly, which makes him look about three years younger. “You having a good time?”

  “Not really,” he says. “I am so tired of this, Anna.”

  “Of after-parties?”

  “No. Of being the only out guy in our grade, not just at Sterling Woods but at every major private school in the LA area.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “Maybe it’s an exaggeration. But look around you.” He flings his hand out. “See any other gay guys? And you know what really pisses me off?”

  I link my arm in his. “What really pisses you off, Oskie?” We start to walk toward the area of the room that has the drinks.

  “What really pisses me off,” Oscar says, putting his mouth closer to my ear so he doesn’t have to shout, “is that half the guys here are going to come out of the closet one day. But it’s not going to do me any good. I’m going to finish up my senior year without a single date, and then I’m going to come to the tenth reunion and all these guys—and I could name some of them right now—are going to come over to me and tell me how they wanted to come out but didn’t have the guts and how now they’re all rah-rah-we’re-here-and-we’re-queer and everything and I’m going to want to kill them for all the time lost and the fun we could have had.” He shakes my arm. “And I should be allowed to kill them. I really should.”

  I squeeze his elbow. “You’re just much cooler and braver than anyone else. I think my sister’s pretty cool and brave, but even she didn’t have the guts to come out in high school.” Oscar and I had a long, intense conversation about Molly a couple of weeks ago, so he knows the whole story.

  “You know what being cool and brave gets me?” he asks. “Nothing. Because there’s no one to be cool and brave with. My nights are lonely, Anna.”

  “My nights are lonely too,” I say, but at that moment I spot Wade, who greets me with a welcoming smile, and I can’t really blame Oscar for his skeptical silence.

  I sleep over at Lucy’s house, and when we wake up the next morning—or actually the same morning, since we went to bed at 2:00 a.m.—or actually the same afternoon, because it’s now 1:00 p.m.—I have a voice mail on my phone from my dad. “I need you to come home before six,” he says. Which surprises me, because when both of my sisters are out of town, Dad and I tend to lead pretty separate lives. His complete indifference to my whereabouts when I want to be completely independent makes up for his complete indifference to my whereabouts when I don’t.

  Lucy drops me off at home mid-afternoon, and I go straight to Dad’s office. I knock and wait for his “Come in” before opening the door—all of his daughters were trained to do that at an early age.

  He looks up from his computer screen. “Thank god you’re here,” he says, which is most definitely not the way he normally greets me. I’m lucky if I get a distracted “How’s life? Good? Good” as he passes me in the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, fine.” He absently runs his fingers through his hair, then realizes what he’s done and smooths it carefully back into place. “I just felt it was important that you join us this evening.”

  “Us?” I repeat.

  “Yes, me and, um, your friend Ginny Clay. Your teacher. Ms. Clay. Ginny.” He’s avoiding my gaze, so he misses my horrified double take. “There’s a, um . . . a exhibit. An exhibit. At the MOCA. It’s an artist she admires. She, uh, mentioned this exhibit to me in an email and said she thought it would be very inspiring for you and your work—”

  “For me and my work?”

  “To inspire you and your work, yes.”

  I’m staring at him with my very stoniest of stares, but he’s fiddling with the glass paperweight on his desk and doesn’t get the full effect, or any effect at all, really.

  Gently rocking the paperweight from side to side, he says, “We’ll all go together, see the artwork, and have dinner downtown. Oh, you’ll be excited about this—I made a reservation for us at Jersey.”

  “Why would I be excited? I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “Your sister’s been saying we should go for months.”

  “Because she cares about that kind of thing. I don’t.”

  “It’s the hottest new restaurant in LA,” he says, looking up with what seems to be genuine surprise at my lack of interest. “My assistant had to work very hard to get this reservation. We had to track down a client of mine who invested in it and—”

  “I can’t go, anyway. I have to work on a paper.”

  “You can work on the paper now. But you’re going tonight.” He sits up straight and lowers his voice. Suddenly he’s an imposing figure—even a little scary. “We planned this evening for you. I will graciously assume that your lack of gratitude is a teenage reflex, and now that it’s over we can move ahead with our plans. Be ready to go at six o’clock.”

  “I need to get an A on this paper,” I say, but already my voice is losing its confidence. Maybe it’s the way his eyes are narrowing—it still scares the hell out of me, even though I’m not a little kid anymore.

  “You will be ready at six o’clock,” he growls. “Or lose the use of the car for the next two months.”

  “You don’t think that’s a little harsh?”

  He puts on his reading glasses. “Be ready to go at six,” he says.

  I can’t even pick up the phone to complain to my friends—it’s all way too embarrassing. The idea that Ginny Clay thinks she has something to teach me about art. The idea that she and my dad send each other emails (!). The idea that I’ve been ordered to go to dinner with them.

  I assume I’ll tell Lucy about it eventually, but for now I just curl up into a fetal position and try to reread the James Joyce story I have to write the paper about. The words don’t make sense. Life has become senseless.

  Ginny drives up to our house at 6:02.

  “Answer the door!” my father shouts from his room, after she rings the bell.

  “Why can’t you?” I yell back.

  “Just answer it, Anna!”

  I walk slowly down the stairs. Ginny keeps ringing and knocking, but I don’t increase my pac
e. I reach the door in my own sweet time and open it.

  “Hi, Anna!” she sings out, and throws her arms around me before I can dodge them. When I can slip out of her grasp, I see that she’s dressed exactly the way someone in a movie would dress to go to an art exhibit, in a smart little black linen dress with her hair pinned up in a French knot to show off sculptural silver earrings and a matching silver necklace. She’s wearing black spike heels, and I sincerely hope they’ll pinch her feet when we walk through the gallery.

  “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asks me.

  I look down at my jeans and T-shirt: I’m in comfortable weekend mode. “I guess.”

  “We’re going to a museum and a nice dinner,” she says with a smile. “Don’t you think you should change?”

  “I’ll put on a sweater.” I was going to, anyway—museums are always cold. So are fancy restaurants. I have no idea why they keep the air-conditioning up so high at both. They just do.

  “And maybe some nice shoes?” she suggests. “Just to dress it up a little?”

  “Whatever.” I move toward the stairs.

  “You might want to brush your hair too,” she calls after me.

  On my way up, I pass my father, who’s coming down. “Where are you going?” he says sharply.

  “To get a sweater.”

  “Well, hurry up,” he says. “You were supposed to be ready to go.”

  “You made me answer the door!”

  I keep trudging up. Behind me, he and Ginny greet each other, her voice high and chirpy, his low and precise. I glance over my shoulder. She’s thrown her arms around him, just like she did with me.

  And he looks about as comfortable with it as I was.

  In the garage he opens the front passenger door and gestures to Ginny to get in.

  She pauses. “Doesn’t Anna want to sit here?”

  “She’s fine in the back.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I have to work, anyway.” I brought the James Joyce book with me. Mostly so I’d have an excuse to ignore them.

  My father whispers, “I expect you to participate in the conversation,” as he passes me on his way around the car.