Late to the Party - Kelly Quindlen Page 0,45

it was Saturday, and I could hear my parents bustling around downstairs, their favorite nineties rock playing in the background. I chugged the water on my nightstand and went back to sleep.

A while later, someone was rubbing my back. I rolled over, hazy-eyed, to find my mom peering down at me.

“Do you feel okay, honey? It’s almost noon.”

“Yeah,” I croaked. I wasn’t sure whether I sounded hungover or just tired, but I didn’t have the energy to care.

“You came home late last night,” Mom said. She left it hanging, and I tensed up, expecting her to put the pieces together, to deduce that I’d been out drinking like a typical teenager. In that moment, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted her to know or not.

But then: “You and Maritza must have watched more than one movie, huh?”

I swallowed. I didn’t know if she was handing me the lie for my sake or her sake, or if she realized it was a lie at all. Maybe it was just outside her realm of possibility to consider that I’d been drunk—that her shy little artist had started rebelling after all. I remembered my brother standing in the hall last night, accusing me of drinking. At least he thought it could actually happen.

“Yeah,” I said finally. “A few movies. You know how Maritza gets.”

“Mm-hm,” Mom cooed. “Well, why don’t you take a shower to help yourself wake up, and then come down and help us clean out the garage.”

* * *

I finally saw Maritza and JaKory on Monday night, after JaKory got back from Florida. We went to Chick-fil-A and sat on the patio and talked as loud as we wanted to. I hadn’t seen them in days, but neither one of them asked much about what I’d been up to. I was somewhat relieved, since I wouldn’t have to lie through my teeth again—but their assumption that I’d merely been working and painting also reinforced how boring and predictable they thought I was, and I resented it.

“Y’all should drop by the dance studio one of these days,” Maritza said, stirring her strawberry milkshake. “There’s always something dramatic going on. Did I tell you about the seventh-grader who got her period for the first time the other day? She ran out of the bathroom screaming that she was dying. Didn’t even know what was happening. Absurd. Coach Leslie had to take her into the bathroom and tell her what to do through the stall door, and the other girls were trying to act all compassionate, but mostly they were acting superior, and—”

“Did anyone have something to give her?” I asked.

“I had some tampons with me, but she was too freaked out to try that, so Coach Leslie said we should get her a pad instead—”

“Ugh,” JaKory interrupted. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Stop being such a boy,” Maritza said, kicking his ankle. “How many times do we have to tell you that we’ll be talking about period stuff in front of you until your dying day? So anyway, Coach Leslie’s like, ‘We need to get her a pad,’ but none of the girls had one, so of course fucking Vivien Chen went to CVS to buy her some—”

“That was nice of her, though,” I said.

“She didn’t do it to be nice,” Maritza said exasperatedly, “she did it to suck up to Coach Leslie and prove that she’s all captain-y or whatever.”

“Isn’t she just the worst?” I said, catching JaKory’s eye.

“An absolute she-devil.”

“Y’all don’t know her like I do,” Maritza said darkly.

“You’re so dramatic,” I told her, trading out our milkshakes. “Tell us something good about the dance job.”

Maritza shrugged. “It’s pretty great, overall. I mostly hang out with Rona. She’s perfected her impression of Vivien, even down to the bizarre way she holds her water bottle—”

“I’ve started talking to this guy,” JaKory interrupted. He said it in a rush, and I got the impression he’d wanted to tell us since the moment we’d sat down.

“What?” I asked breathlessly.

“Who?” Maritza squealed, swatting his knee.

“His name’s Daveon.” JaKory’s eyes were shining, but he looked away from us. There was a pause. “We met on Tumblr.”

His words hung in the air. Maritza and I traded looks, and I hurried to speak before she could.

“Wow,” I said in the most neutral tone I could muster. “What’s the story?”

JaKory started talking so fast he could barely breathe. “He writes the funniest, most sarcastic posts about, like, everything. He’s in the Doctor Who fandom, too, so he’s always reblogging