different. Or maybe it was only different because she had done it and not me.
My phone had been buzzing and beeping ever since I’d hung up on Mari, and I finally answered.
“You’re being summoned,” Avani said. “Both of you. I think Mari will actually have a stroke if you don’t tell her what’s up.”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll come down.”
Dave was quiet on the way over, until I slipped a hand through the gate of Avani’s mansion and found the tiny button that opened the electronic lock.
“Umm,” he said. “This doesn’t look—”
“Don’t worry. This is how I do it.”
I went around the side and down to the basement door, expecting her to open it right away. But we waited for thirty seconds, and, instead of knocking again, I called her.
“Where are you?” I said. “We’re at the door.”
“No you’re not,” she said. “I’m at the door.”
“At the basement door?”
“What’re you doing? Come by the front.”
So I took Dave around again, and we walked up between two big marble pillars and rang the doorbell. Avani, looking tiny against the gold and marble of the foyer, threw open the door. We heard distant giggling upstairs.
“Hey!” She hugged Dave first, and his lips twitched. Then she came in to hug me too, and I pulled her bony body close.
“Awesome,” she said. “Come up.”
The stairs curved in two wings, leading to the mezzanine level. She climbed the stairs, trailing her hand on the flowery wallpaper, and took us to a massive bedroom. I mean this room was easily bigger than the living room of my apartment. There was a canopy bed in one corner, a love seat tucked into one bay window, a sitting area clustered around the other one, and a little open area on the floor near us where beanbags and folding chairs were clustered together.
“You’re here!” Mari shrieked. She jumped up, seemingly coming out of nowhere, and ran at me shoulder first. I oofed as she hit me, and my arms wrapped around her. “You smell good,” she said.
“Err, okay?” I said. “Are you all right?”
When she pulled back, her eyes were wide-open crazy. “WHAT HAPPENED?”
Mari was in tight yellow high-waisted shorts and a blue tank top, the whole outfit totally unlike the jeans she normally wore.
“AVANI DRESSED ME,” Mari said.
Jessie flowed upward from a chair by the window, and when she slid closer she said, “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Now Mari was clinging to Dave, and she tried to get him bouncing up and down. Avani had a hand to her mouth, and the two of us exchanged smiles.
“What is going on here?” I said. “Have you guys been drinking?”
“I think she’s just excited,” Avani said. “Uhh, hey, you can sit down.”
I collapsed onto a beanbag, and then I grabbed Dave’s pant leg, telling him to get down here with me, and we huddled together on the edge of the cushion. Avani sat cross-legged on the floor, while Jessie sat awkwardly on her hands.
Mari dragged over a chair from the corner. “I don’t sit on the floor,” she said. “I’m not a floor-sitting type.”
“So, uhh, what’s been going on here?”
At that, Dave gave me an openly beseeching look. I’d promised him this would be a short stop.
“Well, it’s been half about you, of course,” Avani said. “And the other half about that disaster last night.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I forgot. That was crazy.”
“Carrie was so wild,” Avani said. “I don’t know what has happened to her.”
“Yeah,” Jessie said. “She’s really not like that.”
“Well . . .” I shook my head. “I mean she wasn’t when you were twelve.”
“No,” Avani said. “I know this isn’t politically correct or whatever, but it’s this gay thing. It’s so totally about image for her. Like if you guys suddenly started, I don’t know, to lisp and wear crazy clothes, it’d be an act. That’s not you.”
Dave looked monumentally uncomfortable, and I was almost angry with him, because it’d taken me so long to get into this room and have these conversations.
“So she’s dead to you,” I said.
“Well that’s what we’re discussing,” Avani said. “Do we give her another chance or what? I mean, she and I have been friends for ten years. That’s pretty incredible.”
“No, I know.”
Jessie’s soft voice interjected. “And she’s fun. You like her, Avani. You know you do.” Jessie looked at me. “I think we’re just hurt. We can party too.” Her smile was sad. “But Carrie doesn’t think about us anymore.”
“Come on,” I said. “She wouldn’t even have gone to the lake house if she