giving her time to miss me.” He turns back to Cecilia then, flashing his stupid Party Andrew smile, and like always, it works. She comes into the dining room, sliding an arm through the crook of his elbow.
“So, Andrew, I need a partner for beer pong. Want to play?”
She begins to pull him as if he’s already answered her question, and he lets her drag him away. “I’ll see you two later, okay?”
“Have fun, kids!” I wave, and he calls back to me.
“My sheets have birds on them, Collins, so try not to wet the bed!”
I flip him off again and hear his laugh as he leaves the room.
“He’s disgustingly good at that,” Hannah says. “I don’t know why we’re friends with him.”
“We’re enablers,” I agree.
I know Andrew appreciates our help with girls, and if I asked for his help with guys, he would do the same for me; it just hasn’t ever happened. Guys don’t come up to me at parties and magically touch my shoulder. Before I can help it, an image flashes through my mind of Danielle and Chase naked and tangled together on the bed and I feel a little sick. I look around the party and try to imagine who I would approach if I could, who I would let lead me into the master bedroom like Danielle did. It occurs to me suddenly that I could do it, I could try to lose my virginity tonight, right now, on my eighteenth birthday, and then it would be over.
But there’s nobody here I want that way. Not Chase, who knows he’s the best-looking guy in our class and acts like it. Not Jason Ryder, who acts even worse. Not Edwin Chang, who everyone knows is in love with Molly Moye, or Jarrod Price, who is pretty much always high. Definitely not Andrew, who is basically my brother and is currently wrapped around Cecilia like a winter scarf, whispering into her ear as she wriggles in his arms.
I’ve known them all for too long—since they used to pick their noses, have farting competitions, eat melted crayons and glue. It’s hard to look past that now. I think for the millionth time about how college will be different, once I’m out of nowhere Vermont, once I get to the city and can walk down the street and be surrounded by strangers for the first time in my life—people who don’t all look and act exactly the same, who won’t know my parents or what I was like when I was ten, won’t think of me as Andrew’s best friend, as the girl Danielle tolerates—the least cool one allowed at the lunch table.
I shake my head and loop my arm through Hannah’s. “Andrew said I’ve got dibs on his bed. Want to share the room with me?”
“Yes. Thank God. I’ve been trying to find a spot to sleep for a while, but everyone’s claiming them. I tried to take the couch in the office and Sophie practically murdered me.”
Here’s the thing about parties in the middle of nowhere. There’s no such thing as Uber, and you’d be an idiot to drive drunk—especially with the snow—so everyone spends the night. It’s like one giant alcohol-infused sleepover.
Hannah and I head up the stairs, passing a wall of framed pictures from Andrew’s childhood, pictures I’ve seen a million times and am mostly in—Andrew and me on Halloween dressed as Ghostbusters, fistfuls of candy in our tiny hands; Andrew and me in middle school, blond and skinny with braces and acne, the height of our awkward phase. Hannah taps her finger on one as we pass—Andrew’s tenth birthday, when he and I got in a mud fight. We’re smiling at the camera, completely splattered.
She grins. “Think everyone has already seen these, or is there still time to hide them?”
“It’s too late.”
“I can’t even tell which kid you are.” I know she’s joking, but she’s got a point; I look exactly like a boy here. But there’s no use hiding the past. If I can remember everyone picking their noses, chances are everyone remembers me like this too.
I spent all of elementary school with Andrew. I didn’t see the