care about any of this stuff after high school ends.”
Again I said nothing. Some mysterious force pulled me back, snuffed out my personality, and let Avani just explore her own thoughts as if I wasn’t even around.
“The thing is,” she said, “on the beach I’m basically nobody. The things you and I are good at—the talking—it doesn’t matter there. But . . . do you remember the lake house?”
“Mmm-hmmm?”
“Well, my parents have been asking what weekend I want to invite my friends over. Jessie and Carrie and I have done this for, like, years, but Carrie already said she won’t go if her girlfriend, Gabriela, can’t come, and I was like, ‘Fuck you, then let’s not do it.’”
“That sucks. You used to have all these plans about maybe using the lake house more this year.”
“Yeah . . . I guess. . . . But you know I’d never throw a party. That’s the dumbest thing on earth. People who throw parties are so desperate. Nobody respects them.”
This was dangerous ground. Avani on some level really wanted to have people over. She wanted to host and to feel important. But last year whenever somebody threw a party, Lyle would lead the entire Ninety-Nine in the task of completely trashing their house.
“You’re right. You could never have something big there.”
“I could never have anything. You know how out of control things get.”
“Totally. It’s best to not use it.”
Now I waited, my heart beating fast.
“Still, something small might be cool,” she said.
“You’d need the right people, or it would totally degenerate,” I said.
“Yeah. How many, though?”
Again, my tongue swerved to the side and avoided making a suggestion: “Actually, just the three of you was probably the best number.”
“But with Gabriela along too it’d be so awkward.”
“Then maybe . . .” I smiled, because now my brain had caught up with my tongue, and I realized my strategy. “Maybe twenty people?”
“Way too crazy,” she said. “But I don’t know? Eight or nine?”
“You sure it wouldn’t get too crazy?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not if they were the right people.”
“I guess. And the nice thing is, it’s not like you’re letting Gabriela invade your totally private thing that you used to do with Carrie and Jessie. Instead, you’re killing the old thing and creating something new for her.”
“Exactly!”
I heard a rustling on the other end of the phone. “But who should come?”
At this point I was about to say me, but I stopped myself, and I let that force flow through me again. “Who do you think?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking Henry. You two are close. You could ask him, right?”
“Uhh.”
“Come on,” Avani said. “What, are you insecure about spending the weekend with a gay guy?”
Avani was living in a glass house. I wanted to deliver a jab about how she was desperate to have a gay best friend, but that’d probably destroy everything.
“Sure. I can ask Henry.”
Now was the trickiest part. If Avani got any hint that this thing wasn’t entirely about her, she would back out. And if I mentioned Dave at all, she’d put two and two together and be, like, wait a second, are you doing this for him? Dave’s name was stuck in my throat: I knew that mentioning him would blow up this entire plan, but I needed to get him invited.
She rumbled on. “But it’s only two guys: you and Hen. Seems lopsided. Do you think I should invite Pothan and Ken?”
“Uhh . . .”
“They’re a lot of fun.”
“You already have Carrie there. She’s gonna try to make things wild.”
“Well it’s not gonna be like when we were twelve and my mom was upstairs. It’s gonna be a little wild, probably.”
“I . . . if that’s what you want.”
“And I don’t want them to feel left out.”
“Yeah . . . yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”
She had a few more doubts and insecurities, and I talked her through it, but all the while I marveled at my own power. This was magical. It really was. After a solid year of trying to talk her into inviting me, all it’d taken was to let her talk herself into it. Now all I needed was to somehow get Dave onto the guest list.
At lunch a few days later, Carrie plopped down on a bench next to me.
“Welcome to hell,” she said.
“Uhh, hey.”
“What’re you eating?”
I shrugged. “It’s pizza day.”
“Gross.”
She unwrapped a protein bar and picked off a little end of it for me.
“Umm, thanks.”
I was at a table in the corner