Spider-Man slowly—so slowly I didn’t notice while it was happening—the years morphing him from the gangly kid, all hands and feet and freckles, into someone girls find cute, someone with power over girls like Cecilia Brooks and Susie Palmer. And with great power comes great responsibility, so I try my best to keep him in check—to keep him from becoming SuperDouche.
Still, I can’t help thinking about how he’s so much farther along than I am. It’s like everyone else in school is competing to beat each other’s high scores and I’m still trying to put the batteries in my controller.
“G’night, Drewchebag,” I say into the dark. But he’s already asleep and he answers me with a loud drunken snore.
THREE
“NOW THAT I’M a woman, I’m going to order an espresso,” Danielle says from the driver’s seat on our way to Dunkin’ Donuts the next afternoon. “That’s the little one without any milk and sugar, right?”
“Yeah, and it tastes like gasoline,” Ava answers from shotgun. “Besides, you’ve put five Splendas in your coffee since seventh grade. I don’t think one magical night can change that.”
We’ve just spent all morning helping clean Andrew’s house—scrubbing down counters, mopping the floors, shoveling the driveway so everyone’s footprints and tire tracks are gone. Andrew’s mom is a bit intense about the house—she refers to her bedroom as “the sanctuary” and spends so much time at Crate and Barrel she probably gets the employee discount. So we know she’ll notice if something is out of place. The morning after a party is always a several-hour ordeal if you’re nice enough to stick around. Guys like Jason Ryder never do.
I have this idea in my head that things will be different once I get to California, that the kids there are classy and drink wine with their pinkies out, that the guys don’t get drunk on Keystone Light and then try to smoke weed out of the empty can. But maybe people are the same everywhere.
We’ve been sent on a dumpster drive, so the car is piled with bags of trash we’re supposed to drop—empty bottles and cans that we couldn’t leave as evidence inside the house. I’m in the back seat with Hannah, who looks a little green, probably from the smell wafting out of the trash bags. Unfortunately for all of us, Ava loves musical theater, so we’re currently listening to a song from Wicked that’s about three octaves too high for the day after a party.
“For the love of God, can we turn this off?” Danielle reaches for the stereo, but Ava slaps her hand away.
“No! ‘Defying Gravity’ is literally the best song of all time. Are you telling me this doesn’t make you feel something?”
“Yeah,” Danielle says. “It makes me feel like I want to die.”
“Careful,” Ava says. “I could put on Cats instead. Cats is terrifying.”
Ava has been the star of every school musical since freshman year. She’ll be at NYU next year with Hannah, and although their majors are different, the image of the two of them exploring New York City together makes my heart hurt if I think about it for too long.
“Is there a musical where all the songs are just relaxing ocean sounds? Let’s listen to that,” Hannah says, leaning her head against the window.
We’re on a curvy back road lined on either side with pine trees. Prescott is full of roads like these, carving through the middle of nowhere. Downtown is only a four-block strip lined with shops and restaurants. In the summer, the nearby lake draws tons of tourists: families with inner tubes and giant tubs of sunscreen, or hikers with backpacks and dreadlocks passing through on the Appalachian Trail. Fall brings the leaf-peepers, city people from New York or Boston who drive so slowly on the roads they’re a hazard to traffic. But in early March, we’re a ghost town.
As we pull onto a busier street, Dunkin’ Donuts appears on our left, a glorious pink and orange beacon of all things good in the world. Danielle drives right past it.
“What are you doing?” Ava shrieks. “I need caffeine! I have a headache!” This is hard to believe from the decibel of her voice. Ava always projects like she’s trying to reach