Admittedly, I didn’t do some of the homework assignments and yes, I occasionally skipped class (because a person can only take so much Thrope). I’m terrible at math, but put a dollar sign in front of a number, and I’m a star student. I aced Thrope’s econ tests. I had an A-grade brain for economics, even if I had put in B-level effort. I deserved better than a C, and Thrope and I both knew it.
I considered raising a certain finger in response, but didn’t. My hand clenched into a fist instead.
She ruined this town. She ruined my life. She needed to pay.
One final Cuddle Huddle in the school parking lot before we took a temporary break from BFF festivities and went off to celebration dinners with our individual families.
“We love you so much we might also go baldy,” Slick and I told Fletch as we wrapped our arms around each other.
Fletch said, “I love you both so much I might steal you to Africa with me.”
“I don’t have a passport,” whispered Slick, regretfully.
“I fear airplanes,” I added. “But I love you so much I’ll conquer that fear of being blasted through space in a disease container that defies the laws of the natural world.”
“Do you even know the laws of the natural world?” Fletch asked me.
I shook my head.
“She’ll learn,” said Slick. “For you, Fletch.”
“Break it up, you codependent freaks,” a guy’s voice drawled. I looked up and saw Jake Zavala-Kim, Slick’s older brother and my brother Chester’s best friend. Jake was forbidden fruit, and I was a low-class sucker for how badly I wanted to take a bite. Jake placed his hand on Fletch’s bald head and started to rub. “Will this give me good luck?” he asked her, grinning.
Slick was not smiling. She shoved her brother’s hand away from Fletch. “Don’t flirt with my friends, asshole!”
“I wasn’t flirting,” said Jake. “I was admiring.”
“Admire with hands off,” Slick ordered him. Her mother used to reference a favorite old song and call her daughter “a slick chick on the mellow side,” but when it came to this topic, Slick was anything but easygoing. She’d spent her entire middle and high school years having girls try to befriend her as a means to getting closer to Jake. As a result, she had serious trust issues, except for her Cuddle Huddle girls, obviously.
It was highly inconvenient that my hormones wanted to defy Slick’s ban on Jake. My heart pounded hard—for how much I wanted to rip Jake’s clothes off, and for what a lousy friend to Slick those lustful thoughts made me.
“But I feel huggy,” Jake taunted Slick, as our fellow graduate Bo Tucker happened to be walking by. So Jake pulled Bo to his chest, but Bo literally flailed himself out of Jake’s embrace, wailing “No hugs!” Most Likely to Be Hospitalized for OCD Germaphobia (and God Help That Hospital): Bo Tucker.
“I have a hug for you, Jake,” cooed Amy Beckerman, coming up behind him. Junior year Homecoming Queen, Death Valley’s disco roller-skating champion, Girl Most Likely to Start a Clothing Line for Strippers. Amy pressed herself against Jake, and Slick rolled her eyes, while I seethed. I wanted to be that press-on girl.
Lindsay, in the passenger seat of Dad’s car, leaned over to the driver’s side to honk the horn. She rolled down the window and shouted, “LET’S GO! I have a flight to catch.” Lindsay had only come down from San Francisco for the day. We were on our way to Las Vegas for my graduation dinner, and then to return Lindsay to the airport there.
Fletch said, “Cuddle Huddle out. We’ll resume operations tonight at nine p.m. Navarro homestead, as per usual.”
“Good cuddle,” I said.
“Good cuddle,” Slick said.
Our usual good-bye complete, I stepped into the backseat of the Navarro-mobile and sat next to Chester, who was already asleep against the window.
Dad said, “I can’t believe it’s going to be just me and Chester at the house after next week.”
Lindsay said, “I can’t believe how sorry I am for you about that,” while she simultaneously texted me in the backseat: I saw that side eye you gave Jake, dumbslut. Please don’t tell me you’re so common as to have a crush on the town man-tramp.
I texted back, There’s a big difference between crush and lust.
Lindsay laughed and Dad said, “What’s so funny?”
Lindsay said, “You and Chester having Friday night date nights eating frozen pizza and streaming Hugh Grant rom-coms once Vic has flown the coop. That’s what’s funny.”
“I do love that Hugh Grant,” said Dad.
I had no fucking idea who Hugh Grant was. But I felt a twinge of regret at the thought of Dad and Chester bonding over him with a tub of popcorn, and without me there also. It sounded like quality dumbass fun.
Finally, my tears arrived. I started to cry in the backseat, realizing the enormity of graduation. I was leaving Rancho Soldado, the only place I’d ever lived. I was leaving my dad and my brother, and much more upsettingly, breaking free from my besties. Later on, after our family dinners, would be the Cuddle Huddle’s last all-nighter together.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked, eyeing me with concern through his rearview mirror.
“Girl stuff,” I said, so he’d stop asking.
Everything is over, I texted Lindsay.
Everything is just beginning, she texted back.
Lindsay turned around, reached over her seat, and slapped Chester awake. “Comfort your sister!” she demanded.
Chester patted my hand, and then went back to sleep.
I was not comforted.
I was not yet ready to let go.
“Make it stop!” Slick shrieked from somewhere deep in the barrel of her zippered sleeping bag as my phone’s ringtone covered an old classic—Britney’s “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” Slick hated morning light, which was why she’d closed the blinds and curtains in the basement the night before, making it impossible for me to locate my ringing phone in the dark cavern of our morning-after slumber party. Half-awake, I reached around the area surrounding my sleeping bag, but wherever my cell was, I couldn’t feel it, or see it.
My forehead found it seconds later, thanks to Fletch throwing it at me from the floor near her sleeping bag. “New ringtone?” Fletch asked.
“Lindsay,” I mumbled. My sister had visited just long enough to attend my high school graduation festivities—and, I guessed, to mess with my phone settings.
“Dumbslut,” Fletch whispered, reverently.
“All I need is time / a moment that is mine,” my phone sang out.
“Make it stop already!” begged the blob beneath Slick’s sleeping bag.
“Hello?” I whispered into the phone, standing up and walking over to the basement stairwell so I wouldn’t disturb Slick. I didn’t recognize the caller ID number, and I couldn’t imagine who could possibly be calling me at ten in the morning. Anyone who knew me at all would be fully aware I’d be sleeping off the previous night’s debauchery. And by “debauchery,” I mean marathon late-night games of Super Mario Bros., a jumbo Doritos pizza (exactly what it sounds like—an XL pizza with crushed Doritos as topping, no apologies), and infinite consumption of Oreos.
“Victoria? Is that you?” the voice on the other end of the phone call asked. Another thing anybody who really knows me already knows: Everyone calls me “Vic,” except for two people, one whom I like, and the other whom I wish all kinds of evil on. I could tell by the old-lady voice on the other end of the line that this was the person I liked.
“Bev!” I said, concerned. “You okay? Do you need anything?”
“I need you to throw your fucking graduation party,” Bev huffed into the phone. “What the fuck do I care?”
“No fucking way!” I whispered into the phone, honoring my cursing mentor the best way I knew how. She’d caved! “When?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” I repeated. “That’s not enough time to organize and get the word out!” But I was already planning—decorations, food,
music, and how to get the class to the party without Thrope sabotaging it.
“It’ll have to be. I’m signing the sale papers tomorrow.” Bev slurred her words, making me wonder if she’d had too many Bloody Marys this morning, which she confirmed when she took an audible sip from a drink and then exhaled, “Ahhh! Mary, don’t you weep.” She sniffled a little and then continued. “There’re lots of RASmatazz pies and ice cream still in the freezer. Have fun, use it up, enjoy. You little Rancho Soldado High bastards deserve one last graduation party.”
“What made you change your mind?” I asked Bev.
“I’m fickle. Just like you teenagers!” She laughed.
“And it would be an awesome fuck-you to Miss Ann Thrope,” I added.
“That’s just a bonus.” It was a fair-handed slap to Thrope, who on the one hand had provided the buyers for Bev’s real estate sale, but on the other hand was just an unrepentant fuckwad, which was how Bev typically referred to Thrope. Bev said, “Provided you can keep the unrepentant fuckwad from finding out about the party till after.”
I said, “She’s making such a fat-ass real estate commission, that oughta console her.”
Bev said, “I’m serious, Victoria. She needs to find out after the party is over. That’s your problem to figure out.”
“I can handle it,” I said with my typically misguided overconfidence.
“Promise me something,” Bev slurred.
“Anything.” I glanced over at my trying-to-sleep friends and couldn’t wait to wake them the hell up with this amazing news. Last night’s slumber party hadn’t been our final hurrah after all! We had just over twenty-four hours till Fletch left for LAX for her journey to Africa. That was plenty of time to give us the best send-off in the history of Rancho Soldado: a final celebration in our favorite childhood place, Happies!
“Whatever happens tonight, NO ONE”—Bev shrieked those last words, causing me to hold the phone back from my ear—“and I mean NO ONE, goes into the theme park.”
“No one could go in even if they wanted to,” I assured Bev.
“The ghosts of Ernesto and Mary Happie will curse you if you let anyone in!”
“I won’t!” I promised.
I meant it. I’m hella scared of ghosts, just like everyone in our town. Rancho Soldado was built on the original gravesite of a battalion of United States Army gringos, who were killed in a minor but vicious battle during the Mexican-American War. The soldiers’ campsite was ambushed by Native Americans, in cahoots with the Mexican Army, and their ghosts have been haunting the town that sprung up over their remains ever since, so we knew from paranormal activity.
And I would never risk being haunted by Ernesto and Mary Happie. For decades their small theme park adjacent to their restaurant was the only decent entertainment along the desert route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Then casinos came into neighboring areas, and business at Happies plummeted. After some scary gang fights in the park, Bev closed it down. It had been fenced and locked away for the past fifteen years.
“Promise me!” Bev repeated.
“I promise, Bev!” I didn’t know why she cared that much. No one I knew would ever even try to breach the twenty-foot fence around the theme park, mostly thanks to the hideous fifty-foot graffiti-covered clown head that hung over the park entrance. It was creepy as hell.
“There’s no air-conditioning in the restaurant,” Bev said, like she was trying to talk me out of the party she’d just authorized me to throw.
“No big deal. It’ll be cooler at night, and we’ll open the windows and run the ceiling fans.”
The ancient AC system had been the final nail in Happies’ coffin. When it died, the cost of replacing it was what finally made Bev decide to throw in the towel. You can’t have a restaurant in a desert town with no air-conditioning.
“It’s earthquake weather,” Bev intoned. “Beware.”
“There’s no such thing,” I reminded her. “We’re more likely to get a brush fire in this drought than an earthquake.” Generations of Southern Californians, accustomed to a mild and generally soothing climate, have created a myth that exceptionally hot, sweltering weather means an earthquake is coming. There’s no scientific basis for “earthquake weather,” but ask any native what the weather portends on a brutally hot day—even desert people, who are used to the heat—and they will say “Earthquake.”
“The Death Valley Psychic News says we won’t have rain again until Christmas,” Bev said.
“Yeah, and the Death Valley Psychic News should know.” I regretted my skeptic tone immediately. It would be mean of me to berate Bev’s primary source of news, traffic, and weather when she was already so down in the dumps. I needed to perk her up. I changed my tone to upbeat. “You won’t have to worry about drought anymore once you move to Florida, right, Bev?”
“Don’t remind me. I’ll just be trading in earthquakes and drought for hurricanes and humidity.”
“I thought you were excited to move to Florida!”
“Was. Last night I found out my Florida boyfriend has another lady friend. She’s called his wife.”
“Damn!” For a second, I considered ditching the party plan and immediately jetting off to Florida to pummel whoever was responsible for breaking Bev Happie’s heart. There was a special place in hell reserved for anyone who’d mess with Rancho Soldado’s last surviving Happie. “I’m so sorry, Bev.”
“Don’t be. I disobeyed the primary rule of restaurant work. Don’t fall for customers.”
“I hear you,” I said supportively, but shaking my head, as I’d already disobeyed another crucial rule of restaurant work: Don’t fool around with coworkers while locked in the freezer room. Total Health Department violation. Then it hit me: Jake’s Chug Bug! Tonight was the perfect night for its debut. He’d have a captive, and grateful, underage clientele for beer, he’d earn a ton of cash and exposure for his business, and he’d want to find a delicious way to show me his appreciation, so we could finish off what we started that time in the freezer room, and Slick would never need to know about the brief meetings of the body parts.
Bev said, “It will make me too sad to be there tonight, but you give Happies the graduation party send-off it deserves, and Thrope be damned. We had a fine tradition that should be upheld one last time. So enjoy those last pies. You’re a darling, Victoria Navarro. A terrible, terrible waitress, but a champ.” Bev was a whimper away from a full-on sob. There was nothing more I could say or do to console her. Happies was over. It was up to me to give it one last hurrah.
I wondered if, given her depressed, inebriated state, perhaps Bev wasn’t in the best place to authorize me to throw this party. Did that obligate me to turn down this once-in-a-lifetime chance? Was I taking advantage of a grieving senior citizen? I considered that prospect for a millisecond and decided, fuck to the no. Even sober and not having found out her boyfriend was an adulterer, I knew Bev would want Happies to have a final good-bye party.
“You are the champ,” I told Bev. “Thank you so much. I won’t let you down. I promise no one will get into the theme park, and the restaurant will be left in the same condition it was found, minus the ice cream and pies.”
“I don’t care if the restaurant’s a mess. It’s just going to be razed. But make sure the kids are cleared out by early morning. The lawyers are coming with the papers tomorrow at nine a.m.”
“I will. Thanks, Bev. You’re the greatest.”
“Bloody Mary’s the fucking greatest,” said Bev, and I heard her down another gulp. “I’m not authorizing or condoning alcohol, by the way. But I recognize that kids will be kids at a party, so if you stupid shits are going to drink, there had better be designated drivers, or I will personally wring your neck. I’m holding you and you alone responsible.”
“Got it.”
“I left the key for you to open the restaurant under the mat at the back kitchen door. Knock yourselves out.” She hung up.
PARTY TIME!
I st
ood up and threw a pillow onto Slick and Fletch to rouse them from sleep.
“Get up!” I said. “We’re having a party tonight!”
“I hate parties,” Fletch said. “That’s why I hang out with you.”
“Because you’re too bossy to be fun,” Slick said from beneath her sleeping bag.
“I’M FUN!” I yelled, more trying to convince myself than my friends.
I’m not that fun. I can be, but I have to, like, plan it. It’s not a spontaneous thing.
In a week, I was leaving Rancho Soldado, probably for good. In my eighteen years of living in this podunk desert nowhere, I hadn’t done a single thing for my town to remember me by, despite my many appearances at Town Council meetings with suggestions for improvements that Thrope made sure were never acted on.
That could all change tonight. We’d party like Thrope never existed. We’d pretend a version of Rancho Soldado could exist without her overlord tyranny.
Last Call at Happies, brought to you by Victoria Navarro, who will at least give her friends and classmates one final celebration to remember her by, and bring Annette Thrope’s senior class party at Happies nightmares to fruition one last time.
I called the Cuddle Huddle into session, joining my arms around Fletch and Slick for our usual circular team meeting. “I need a sick amount of help to pull off this party in such a short amount of time. Everybody in?”
Slick said, “I love you but I really don’t want to help you if it involves heavy lifting or spending my afternoon doing anything besides napping.” Slick was one of the dearest and clumsiest girls in the world; also one of the laziest. Not like that was a bad thing, but it was occasionally problematic. I’d already considered this variable and picked the perfect chore for her.
“I need you to set up the sound system tonight before the party. That leaves you the afternoon to nap, and to program the music. You can do it while you’re swinging on your backyard hammock under the shade this afternoon. Dance music, no repeats, no EDM.”
“A hammock afternoon not programming EDM does sound rather pleasant,” Slick said.