Fletch laughed—it was an old joke that never got tired—but I was too panicked about what Slick was about to do.
“No! Don’t!” I shouted.
But I was too late. Slick dramatically threw the Barbie onto the grill. The crowd cheered as poor Ugly Stepchild Barbie seared onto the metal.
I quickly ran back inside the restaurant, retrieved the fire extinguisher from beneath the cashier counter, and returned to the parking lot. I sprayed the grill, and the first-arrival crowd of about twenty people booed. I was supposed to be the party planner, not the party pooper.
“Guys!” I said. “No fires! THINK! We’re in a drought. One stray spark could set this whole area on fire. Also, are you trying to bring Rancho Soldado High’s fire marshal to this secret party?”
“Thrope,” a few voices groaned.
I heard a few people mumble, “Sorry, Vic,” as they snapped photos of the disgraceful corpse.
The remorseful people did not include Slick, who looked at me with such abject betrayal that my heart squirmed into a knot. Slick said, “What the fuck, Vic? It was just gonna be a quick, fun fire to launch the party. Damn. I’ve been planning that Barbie thing as a last-night-together surprise for us since forever.”
Poor Ugly Stepchild Barbie, I thought. I regret it had to end this way. You put in years of service and you deserved a better death than this, half melted and now suffocated by dry chemical fire extinguisher foam.
To Slick, I said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. I wish you’d warned me.” Slick knew I hated surprises I couldn’t control. She should have known better than to think the words “quick” + “fun” + “fire” went together in any way that did not = “disaster.” And did I really have to apologize to her and everyone here? About something so obvious, because drought, anyone?
If I wanted the opening of this party to recover, I guessed I did. “Sorry, everyone!” I added, in the same upbeat, positive tone I used when I petitioned the Town Council. No one looked that impressed, just like the Town Council. I knew there was really only one other word besides “sorry” I could invoke to save this situation. “Beer!” I called. “Out back. Go through the restaurant. Cash only.”
A collective cheer marked a positive change of mood. “Pretty please help me, most beautiful and clever Barbie-murdering girl in the world?” I said to Slick, trying to swing her sulk away with blatant sucking up.
Slick jumped down from the back of the pickup truck. Reluctantly, she said, “Okay.” I grabbed her and Fletch into the Cuddle Huddle. There’d been so much Cuddle Huddle during our last week together that my arms were sore. “I love you,” I told them. “Thank you for finally throwing a Barbie onto a barbie. Tomorrow, I’ll go light candles at church for Ugly Stepchild Barbie in your honor.” My two BFFs were devout and weirdly sincere churchgoers, so offering to make amends in their place of worship always went a long way with them.
“Good plan,” said Slick.
“Good cuddle,” said Fletch.
“Good cuddle,” I agreed.
We broke formation.
I walked over to the front entrance of the restaurant and, as we’d planned, Slick and Fletch joined me as door security to help with entry instructions. Jason “the Dunk” Dunker was the first in line to gain admittance inside. I asked him, “Who’s your designated driver?” This party was going to be responsible about all the alcohol flowing so irresponsibly.
Without looking up from his phone, the Dunk said, “Olivier Farkas.” As he was about to post a photo of Now-Dead Ugly Stepchild Barbie, Fletch snatched his phone just in time and played with the settings.
I said, “Jason. Phones need to be in data mode off for tonight. Take all the pictures you want tonight, but post tomorrow. I need your promise.”
The Dunk shrugged. “What, is the fearsome Cuddle Huddle gonna make me sign a contract or something?”
“Just your word of honor,” said Slick. “Or face forever shame in class history as the guy who broke the promise to turn off data on his phone for one freaking night, like that’s so hard.”
“’Kay,” said the Dunk. “But there had better be enough beer to last the night.”
“There is,” I assured him.
“Where’s the weed?” said Amy Beckerman, standing behind him.
The Dunk gestured to his backpack. “Fully stocked,” he said.
“You may enter,” I said, waving my hand to let the Dunk through.
It took hardly any time for the restaurant to fill up with partygoers. Within an hour, about two-thirds of the graduating class had shown up, and they quickly grooved into throes of beer-buying, beer-drinking, beer-ponging, and beer-dancing.
Fletch said, “Shift over! I need a drink. Any late arrivals are just going to have to be on the honor system with their phones.”
“Agreed,” said Slick, who had probably already sweated off five pounds in her skinny jeans from dancing to the beat of the music blasting from inside the restaurant. “This Zavala-Kim’s shift is over.” She grabbed Fletch with one hand, and me with her other, and dragged us inside Happies. Some old Spice Girls song was playing, and we immediately raced to the dance platform to get our middle school–age girl power dance on. We had to squeeze through a ton of people to get to the dance floor, as the music and beer were working their magic. And, so was Zeke.
The spry cherub inserted himself in the middle of our dance circle and started dance-waving his arms around like an octopus. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or sexy, but the result was somewhere in between. Bizarre, yet endearing.
“Tell me what ya want, what ya really, really want,” he sang.
And Slick said, “I want for you to move out of the way, little brother!”
“Out of the way?” Zeke repeated, mock offended. “I’m the one who got all these people dancing to begin with.”
“How’s that?” Fletch asked.
“’Cuz I think the beer did it,” I suggested.
Zeke said, “Think again, Team Cuddle Huddle. It was me dragging people up to the dance floor and wailing around them long enough to make them laugh and loosen up and have a good time!”
People were crowding around Zeke, imitating his octopus arm dance with great affection, so there may have been some accuracy to his boast.
Zeke did some break-dance moves around me, whirling across the floor with all the grace of a lumberjack, and then stood up and almost spat in my face he was so close. “Can I get you a beer?” he asked.
“Offer all of us, not one of us,” said Slick, giving the side of her baby brother’s shaved head a mild slap.
“Be useful, junior,” said Fletch, shooing Zeke away. “Go forth and provide your elders with the beer they so richly deserve.” She eyed Emerson Luong, Rancho’s star track-and-field athlete bound for the University of Miami, and Raheem Anthony, its star computer programmer bound for Berkeley, drinking shots near the Make-Out Your Own Sundae Bar. She told us, “I foresee some dirty dancing in my future with those two.” Zeke went for beer like a good junior as Fletch hightailed it toward the cute boys. Together, Fletch, Raheem, and Emerson were like a triumvirate of the smartest people at our school.
Slick asked me, “DDR match? Loser has to hear my industrious plans for this summer.”
I laughed, because Slick always assumed I’d lose (she was usually right), and because Slick rarely had meaningful plans beyond scheduling her nap and all-important snack times.
I said, “I should make rounds and check on people first.”
“Check on them how? People are drinking and dancing and making out. Exactly what they’re supposed to be doing at a party. Situation looks under control to me. Maybe I have important news to share.”
If Slick had breaking news she would have relayed it to me within seconds of it happening. I had more pressing issues to deal with. I said, “DDR soon. Promise. Right now I need to take a quick spin to monitor the ground troops.”
She looked at me with the same disdain that had greeted me when I
fire-extinguished Ugly Stepchild Barbie. “Are you having a party or masterminding a war battle, General Navarro?”
Bao Ling approached us, beer in hand. “Where’s your bestie Thrope tonight?” I asked her.
Bao Ling said, “Thrope’s not my bestie, but she can prove useful if you let her. Trust me. She paid me fifty bucks to translate for her this afternoon.” She raised her beer in toast. “Beer money for tonight, thank you very much! And Thrope’s going to a Ping-Pong tournament in Vegas tonight with her clients. She won’t be bothering us.”
“She has tentacles everywhere,” I said, eyeing Bao Ling suspiciously.
“Not on me!” said Bao Ling.
Standing at Bao Ling’s side, Slick tried to playfully bump her hips, but Bao Ling didn’t seem to want to participate. “You don’t dance?” Slick asked her.
“I dance!” Bao Ling said. “It just feels weird to dance with you two standing right here. I can see your third over there. Isn’t she the one supposed to be dancing with you guys?”
We looked toward Fletch, now in a full-on Raheem Anthony/Emerson Luong dance sandwich by the Make-Out Your Own Sundae Bar.
“We dance with other people!” Slick proclaimed. “Come with me, let’s DDR over there.”
Bao Ling’s face turned wide with awe. “Wow, am I being allowed inside the formidable BFF clique? I feel so special.”
“We’re not a clique!” Slick and I said in unison. Our response was automated and standard, since Slick, Fletch, and I had been forced to defend our BFFdom since first grade. We were inclusive. We hung out with other people. For real! We just liked each other’s company the most.
“Jinx clique!” Bao Ling said.
“I gotta check on my guests,” I told Slick. “Have fun without me.” I looked toward Bao Ling. “You too, of course.” I didn’t mean Bao Ling, too, who still had a shadow of suspicion hanging over her in my opinion. But I was all about false sincerity in the name of trying to disprove the BFF clique accusation that had chased me, Slick, and Fletch through twelve years of the Rancho Soldado community pool and public school system.
Slick dragged Bao Ling away, calling back to me, “We’ll be at the DDR having fun. Find us there if you want to do the same, loser!”
I walked to the long hallway leading outside, where the Dunk was set up for business, sitting at a folding table and chair, like a Girl Scout selling cookies.
“Brownie?” the Dunk asked me, holding out a tray of particularly yummy-looking chocolate goodness.
I rarely indulge in weed, mostly because I’ve seen how too much of it has made my brother basically comatose, but I said yes, mostly to be polite to the supplier. I needed to keep my wits about me to get through the night, but a brownie for later on, when the party wound down with me feeling up Jake, could be a nice treat.
The Dunk pulled the tray away from my hand as I was about to lift a brownie off it. “Two dollars,” he said.
“What?” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve been charging people for brownies.”
“Nothing good comes free.”
“Sure it does. Emerson Luong brought the free Jell-O shots as a contribution to everyone’s good times.”
The Dunk sneered. “His mistake. Socialist. I prefer to exercise my right to free enterprise. Two dollars.”
“You’re at least supposed to comp the hostess, who made your business possible.”
“Nah,” said the Dunk, looking away, distracted by a group inside the restaurant. “Oooo, hookah me right in!” He stood up, tray in hand, and walked away, back toward the main assembly of party people. I followed him while pulling out two one-dollar bills from my pocket. I threw them onto his tray and lifted a brownie off it. “These better be good.”
“I can’t speak for the chocolate, but the weed oil is brought to you by Temecula’s finest crop.” He bowed down to me like an Asian businessman closing a transaction. “Pleasure doing business with you. A most fine party, General Navarro.”
I wrapped my brownie in a napkin, put it in my purse for later, and watched the Dunk retreat to a corner where the stoners were situated. They were sharing a hookah pipe and exhaling their smoke onto a mountain of vanilla soft-serve, which was rapidly falling in the restaurant’s hot air, mesmerizing the stoners with its melt. Someone handed the Dunk a cup of coffee, which he dunked a brownie into, as was his typical habit. I’m not sure if it’s because his last name lent itself so well to the practice, or he just had a natural proclivity for soaked meals, but the Dunk’s food never met a beverage it did not want to drown itself in. I blame Slick’s tenth birthday party, when her mom demonstrated Oreos dipped in milk. It was like we saw a light go off in Jason’s head—ding!—and he’s been the Dunk ever since. That was the same party where some parents bestowed the nickname General Navarro on me, after I negotiated a peace settlement between Amy Beckerman and Bo Tucker, who’d gotten into a heated battle over the last seat during an epic battle of musical chairs. The adults couldn’t get them to stop fighting, so I offered Bo my chair, which he wiped down with a sanitizing Wet Ones towelette from the packet he always had available in his pocket, and Amy whined, “That’s not in the rules!” and I said, “The best rule is the one where you and Bo can both be winners,” and she relaxed and it was a great party once again.
My eyes scanned across the restaurant, and I smiled, realizing how much the party had broken into the same social circles as in the school cafeterias we’d frequented since first grade. Our class, most of whom had known each other since elementary school, had graduated, but the high school archetypes they’d evolved into remained intact. Would it be the same at our reunions, five, ten, twenty years from now? The stoners had taken over one corner, while the jocks and cheerleaders congregated in the middle of the room. The smart people and nerds were in the back of the restaurant, while the art kids were making rounds, inspecting the yearbook and Happies wrappers decorations. The kids who crossed categories or didn’t belong to any were the ones primarily occupying the dance floor.
I approached the hipster crowd who were lingering by the soft-serve ice cream machine. The air was too hot for too-cool threads, so the hipsters had abandoned their ironic T-shirts in favor of bare chests on the guys, and halter tops on the girls, with the exception of Amy Beckerman, who was wearing a tiny string bikini top and barely-there white denim shorts. She had been a chubster until middle school. The summer between eighth and ninth grades she went to fat camp and got really skinny, and she basically opted for next-to-naked apparel ever since.
“Everyone having a good time?” I asked the hipsters. They shrugged nonchalantly, which meant yes.
Amy Beckerman stepped up onto a stool, lifted the lid on the soft-serve machine, and then poured a bottle of vodka into it. “Is the fro-yo fat-free?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Full of chemicals, too.”
“Awesome, now here’s some more.” She hiccupped and swayed a little as she placed the lid back onto the machine, and then she nearly fell off the stool. I held out my hand to help her back down onto the floor. “Thanks,” she said, and hiccupped again.
It was too early in the party to have that major an exhale of booze breath. Concerned, I conscripted Olivier Farkas into service. “You’ll look out for Amy?” I asked him.
“I guess,” he said, eyeing Fletch and her dirty-dancing partners. “What’s Genesis doing?” He had the tone of the sober. Not amused. Too alert. “Does she like Raheem or Emerson?”
“You know she’s a free agent now,” I reminded Olivier. “Don’t hate.”
Olivier—a bodybuilder who took out his aggression through lifting weights or eating power foods—chose to eat his stress about Fletch’s new paramours. He reached into the bag of snacks on the counter, took out a dark green chip, and bit into it.
“Hey,” I said, suspicious of the color of the chip. “Those chips weren’t baked by the Dunk, were they?”
Olivier shook his head. “No way. You know I’m straight edge. These are kale chips.
I make them myself. Delicious, and an excellent source of fiber. Want one?”
“Sure,” I said, mostly to be polite. Olivier extended the snack bag to me, and I reached in and then munched on a kale chip. “Mmmm,” I said, faking delight but wanting to spit it out.
“Yes, yum!” said Amy Beckerman, who’d served herself her own customized culinary delight and was licking from the tip of her vodka-infused strawberry fro-yo.
“I need you to buddy system her tonight,” I told Olivier.
“I already said I would. Give an order and trust it will be done, General Navarro,” said Olivier, now eyeing Amy Beckerman’s ass cheek spilling out of her shorts as she bent over for the fro-yo lick. “Don’t micromanage.”
He was right. I knew better. Did he? “No inappropriate moves on drunken girls,” I said.
“I’m insulted,” said Olivier.
“Don’t be. I’m just doing my job.”
“Don’t worry.” He sulked. “Genesis ruined me for all others.”
I said, “I commend your excellent taste. Sorry, pal. Have fun, everybody!”
I moved next to the nerd assembly, gathered around the old pinball machine. “Hi, guys! Everyone having a good time?” They raised their beers to me, except for Bo Tucker, who’d just finished his turn at the game and then had to rub sanitizer on his hands. “How soon till Thrope shuts the party down?” Bo asked, always the alarmist.
“She’s not going to shut the party down,” I said confidently. In my experience, I’ve learned that sounding confident is more important than being confident, because in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. All that matters is that people think you are. I almost wanted to fast-forward to the end of the party, so I could right now have the satisfaction of seeing Thrope’s face when she arrived for the real estate closing and found out what had happened tonight.