I were running through the house, checking bathroom cabinets and drawers, gathering up all the tampons and pads that Tara’s mother and older sister had in the house. I was so happy I was dizzy. Lindsay Edgecombe and I were talking, and not just talking but laughing, and not just laughing but laughing so hard I had to squeeze my legs together to keep from peeing. Then we ran out onto the deck and started throwing handful after handful of tampons down onto the pool party below. Lindsay was screaming, “Beth! These fell out of your bag!” Some of the tampons swirled down into the water and all the guys were suddenly pushing and shoving to get out of the pool like they were going to be contaminated. Beth stood on the diving board, dripping wet and shaking, while the rest of us nearly died laughing.
It reminded me of the time my parents took me to the Grand Canyon in fourth grade and made me stand on a ledge to get photographed. My legs hadn’t been able to stop shaking and my feet got a tingling feeling in the soles, like they were itching to jump: I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to fall, how high up we were. After my mom took the picture and let me back away from the ledge, I started laughing and couldn’t stop.
Standing on the deck with Lindsay I got that exact same feeling.
After that Lindsay and I were best friends. Ally came in later, after she and Lindsay were in a field hockey league together the summer before eighth grade. Elody moved to Ridgeview freshman year. At one of the first parties of the year she hooked up with Sean Morton, who Lindsay had had a crush on for six months. Everyone thought Lindsay would kill Elody. But the next Monday at school Elody was at our lunch table, and she and Lindsay were bent over a plate of curly fries, giggling and acting like they’d known each other forever. I’m glad. Even though Elody can sometimes be embarrassing, I think deep down she’s the nicest of any of us.
THE PARTY
After school we go to Ally’s. When we were younger—freshman year and even half of sophomore year—we’d sometimes stay in and put on clay masks and order as much Chinese food as we could eat, taking twenties from the cookie jar on the third shelf next to Ally’s refrigerator, where her dad keeps an emergency thousand dollars at all times. We called them our “egg-roll emergency” nights. Then we’d stretch out on her enormous couch and watch movies until we fell asleep—the TV in Ally’s living room is as big as the screen in a movie theater—our legs tangled together under an enormous fleece blanket. Since junior year, though, I don’t think we’ve stayed in even once, except when Matt Wilde broke up with Ally, and she cried so hard that the next morning her face was puffy, like a mole’s.
Today we raid Ally’s closet so we don’t have to wear the same outfit to Kent’s party. Elody, Ally, and Lindsay are paying special attention to how I look. Elody puts bright red polish on my nails, her hands shaking a little so some of it gets on my cuticles and makes it look like I’m bleeding, but I’m too nervous to care. Rob and I are going to meet up at Kent’s and he’s already sent me a text that says I evn made my bed 4 u. I let Ally pick out my outfit—a metallic gold tank top, too big in the chest, and a pair of Ally’s crazy four-inch heels (she calls them her stripper shoes). Lindsay does my makeup, humming and breathing vodka onto me. We’ve all taken two shots, chasing them with cranberry juice.
Afterward I lock myself in the bathroom, warmth tingling from my fingertips up to my head, and try to memorize exactly how I look there, in that second. But after a while all of my features seem like they’re just hanging there, like something I’m seeing on a stranger.
When I was little I used to do this a lot: lock myself in the bathroom and take showers so hot the mirrors would cloud completely over, then stand there, watching as my face took shape slowly behind the steam, rough outlines at first, then details appearing gradually. Each time I’d think that when my face came back I would see somebody beautiful,