But Bernardo is next to me, and his hand circles my wrist, and he holds up his cig for me to smoke from, a gesture so sweet and gentle and small and sexy that I lose my head in it. It’s not comfortable, like the things Arizona is describing. It’s something else. Irresistible. Bernardo puts his arm around me and I fit there. Arizona’s phone dings with a text message, and I’m sure it’s a friend of hers I’ve never even heard of.
“Stay down here,” I say. “Have a drink. Have a smoke. Let’s stay up all night and be crazy, okay? Let’s do that. Let’s get your hair pink too!” I leap out of Bernardo’s arms and hug my sister. We’re not historically huggers, but it feels good. We could do this a whole new way. I think she’ll maybe even say yes. She sighs and squeezes me more tightly. She runs her hands through my hair and calls me a nut. “I know this is fucked up, but it can still be a fun night,” I whisper, something only for Arizona so she knows I’m not on board with it all, I’m not crazy. “We’re in it together. You and me,” I say, words that are sort of true and sort of false.
“I’ll go pink too! Solidarity!” Karissa interrupts.
All Arizona’s muscles tense, and she lets go of me.
“Or probably you two want to do that alone. Also great. I can help?” Karissa says, trying to shove the words back in her mouth, hearing her own mistake. It’s too late. She’s twenty-three and marrying our dad and overeager and freaking us out.
“I don’t want to stay down here,” Arizona says. She’s whispering, and Bernardo is so on top of it that he turns the music up, so we can have a moment of privacy. Roxanne sings along to words she doesn’t know and a melody she has only a vague grasp on.
“You can keep the turquoise beads,” I say, because the look on her face says she wants to make a hope chest for failure. She wants to wish the worst on Karissa, and even though I don’t want Karissa with Dad, I can’t do a ritual that hopes for her heart to get broken.
“Keep them and the pearl necklace and the gold bangles and the heart locket Dad bought for Mom. You can have it all.” I try to pull Arizona onto the couch with me. “Let’s stay down here. Let’s do it a new way, this time.” I’m smiling and probably slurring, but I want her to agree to find some new way to be.
“You keep thinking I’ve done something to you,” Arizona says. “I went to Maine. You’re in a fucking fairy tale.”
Her steps are loud enough to hear over the music all the way up the stairs, and when she opens the door for a second before closing it behind her, adult voices and classical music and the smell of baking feta and onion tarts waft downstairs.
I almost follow her. I am so close to following her.
“You know what’s amazing?” Karissa says at the very end of the night, when everyone else is asleep and I’m somewhere past drunk. “You have, like, a whole life.”
“You don’t have a whole life?” I say. She opens the vodka and pours a tiny mini-shot into each of our cups. I don’t want it, I’ll definitely throw it up in, like, twenty minutes, but I take it anyway.
There’s a grief-filled pause, for all the things she’s lost.
“Well, I do now at least!” she says at last, and gestures, a circular motion with her hand that is not occupied with vodka. I don’t know if she’s gesturing to the basement or the whole brownstone or me and my friends, or my absent father, or the cloud of smoke that hasn’t quite made its way out of the basement through the crack in the windows.
June 25
The List of Things to Be Grateful For
1Stolen food.
2The way Bernardo looks at me and not Karissa, even though everyone else is looking at Karissa. Maybe this is part of love too.
3Someone beautiful thinking my life is beautiful.
twenty-seven
In the morning everything is terrible. Bernardo has escaped and left a note on my chest and a message on my phone that he had to make it home before his parents woke up. Arizona stands over me with a coffee and a grimace.
Roxanne and Karissa are gone too. In some ways the night never happened.
Except for my hangover.
“I stayed over,” Arizona says. “I thought you might want me around today.” I hear the bit of apology in her voice, and that she wants to be us again.
But she’s in this shirt. Maybe it’s from the Closet of Forgotten Things or maybe she bought it with her roommates or maybe she’s had it forever, but it’s never fit quite this way before.
It’s white and V-necked with rhinestones along the cleavage and lace on the sides. I hate it. Arizona should hate it too.
“I do. But you can’t wear that shirt anymore,” I say, meaning it to come out as a joke. But it’s not a joke, so it doesn’t sound like one.
“I get it. You hate my body. I hear you loud and clear, Mon,” she says.