My mother talked loudly and fed me. My brothers punched my arm and stared into the middle distance. Even Ari—we didn’t avoid each other, but we didn’t hang out or talk, either, not since the funeral when she made it clear she wasn’t interested in commiseration. Fine. Good. She had the right idea. It hurt to look at her, anyway.
Here was what it meant, Win’s death: It meant that the world was unfair. The wrong guys came out on top. Nothing anyone did mattered because eventually we all came to the same end. What was the point of loving or being loved or any of that shit when death was so absolutely permanent?
I hung out by the keg at the bonfire and watched them all laughing, everyone I knew, everyone Win and I used to call friends. If you’d asked them, they would’ve said they were sad about Win. But it sure didn’t seem that way from where I was standing.
My brothers kept the party going. Brian turning a blind eye to the underage drinking, Dev starting games of tackle football in the dark, Cal smiling and glad-handing from group to group. They had a crowd of people around them at all times. They made everyone laugh. For them it seemed effortless to be a Waters, to be the guys who threw the party, who knew everyone, who had no worries.
Brian came up to me first, stepping away from a trio of girls. If he saw the look I was giving him—a very special get-the-fuck-away-from-me glare—he pretended like he didn’t. “Little bro,” he said, swinging a heavy arm around my neck. “In my professional opinion, it does not look like you’re having the time of your life.”
“Maybe I’m not.”
He went on as if he didn’t hear me. “In my professional opinion,” he repeated, “you’re sulking.”
“What profession are you talking about? Law enforcement?”
“Being an older brother is my profession.”
I ducked out of his arm. “Can I talk to your manager, then?”
He frowned, which clearly pained him—Waters boys didn’t frown at parties. “I know you’re upset. But you’ll be fine if you just relax, okay? And if you’re not up for it, you can always go home. Skip the party this year. I’ll drive you, just let me know.”
Kicked out of my own party by my brothers. No way.
I turned my back on Brian and saw Diana North, Ari’s best friend, standing staring into the fire. She had dyed her hair a blinding red and was wearing an open shirt over a neon green bikini top. She’d always been vaguely off-limits because of Ari. And she used to be mousy and quiet, shy in a boring way, doing whatever Ari told her to do; it had never seemed worth pissing off Ari to flirt with her. Now I looked at her red hair and bikini and thought about Win and how pointless and impossible everything was and I thought: fuck it. There was no point in spending time with someone I actually liked. They would only disappoint me. I could talk to Diana North and not care if it ended or began.
That was probably awful. Ari would’ve told me I was being a pig and dragged Diana away. But Ari wasn’t around. Besides, why did I have to listen to Ari? Win was dead. She was no longer my annoying conscience.
I left Brian talking to a group of girls that had materialized around him and walked over to Diana. She pretended not to notice. “You look different,” I said. That’s one of those things that is true but noncommittal. I didn’t like to have my words thrown back at me—“you’re beautiful” could be turned into some nuclear-level shit.
Diana ran a hand through her newly red hair, worrying the ends of it. She smelled good— shampoo and suntan lotion, even though it was dark out.
“I dyed it,” she said. “I’ve wanted to for ages but I never did—afraid, I guess, though it sounds dumb to be afraid of a hair color. I thought if I dyed my hair I wouldn’t know who I was anymore, but the exact opposite happened. I feel . . .” She looked up at me, as if she’d forgotten who she was talking to, or as if she’d heard her words coming out of someone else’s mouth. “Um. Well. You look exactly the same.”
That was blatantly not true, I mean not only on a physical level, because I had lost ten pounds in the last month, but on a deeper level, too. My insides were a mess, like the wrapped present you shake so hard it breaks the toy inside, so there’s nothing but shards of plastic rolling around. Even this July third beach bonfire, which I had been going to since I was seven, when Brian threw the first one, felt different.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said, which in bonfire-speak means make out, at a minimum. Diana froze.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand.
We walked down the beach, not talking, passing couples making out lying in the sand or standing ankle-deep in the waves. The ones in the waves were always the ones deeply in love. Soulmates splashing each other and carrying their shoes.
I spotted Ari talking to my brother Cal. She didn’t see me and Diana. Something seemed off about her, and I realized she wasn’t standing up straight. She slouched. I don’t think I’d ever seen her like that. Some automatic gut response made me wonder what was wrong with her, until I remembered what was wrong with us both.