Half our senior class had been crammed into Lindsay’s stuffy basement, chugging watered-down beer Lindsay scored using her new fake ID, a birthday present from her cousin. The cliché topics we all silently swore to leave untouched until school began started slipping into every conversation anyway. “Where are you applying?” “What majors are you considering?” “Are you taking a gap year?” “What did you get on the SAT? Or did you take the ACT?” I finally snapped the tenth time someone asked me what I planned to do with a degree in botany, practically shouting, “I don’t know, maybe grow some plants?”
Agatha hauled me away before I could embarrass myself further, and shoved a Solo cup of Diet Coke into my hand. She managed to pull Lindsay away from her third round of shots to play the ten-finger method of Never Have I Ever. Zaq dragged overdressed Wesley over, and Sammie joined soon after, because where there is Wesley and Lindsay, there is usually Sammie buzzing around them, trying to intervene. Slowly even the stragglers who I’d never seen at any of Lindsay’s other parties were playing along.
The room shook with laughter at the expense of friends and echoed with whistling following every dropped finger, even if the admission wasn’t particularly promiscuous. We all groaned when Evan Matthews said, “Never Have I Ever dyed my hair multiple colors at once,” because his ex, Danica Peters, was sitting directly across from him with freshly dyed rainbow hair. Never Have I Ever could get extremely petty, and I was grateful Lucas wasn’t there to tempt me.
My fingers stayed mostly raised due to what Lindsay likes to call my “lack of teenage experience.” My only lowered fingers were from cop-out answers about crushing on someone in the room or having piercings. Lindsay and Sammie, on the other hand, were in the negative finger zone within the first few rounds.
Usually my raised fingers would’ve felt like a glaring sign above my head screaming “Look at me! I’m boring!” but something about the communal participation made me feel less on display. Like the collective vulnerability protected all of us from judgment. Maybe it was the feeling of senior year creeping up on me, the unspoken realization that it was the beginning of the end for our teenage years, but the laughter and cheers and ache in my cheeks from smiling so much made that night feel less like a subtle competition of slut shaming, blatant callouts, and discreetly raised or lowered fingers, and more like a celebration of whatever the past three years of high school had or hadn’t been comprised of.
Most of my summer had been spent watering my roses with tears over Lucas. Even Agatha and Sammie dragging me to the local mall to scope out cute boys working at those clothing stores with shirtless guys on their bags couldn’t cheer me up. But that night, surrounded by my drunken peers and best friends, I’d forgotten all about my heartbreak.
Agatha and Zaq got up to refresh their drinks, leaving an empty space between me and Talia. I’d been focused on ogling Lou Santos from across the circle, in all his basketball-playing, six-foot-five glory, but something about the way she stood out in the corner of my vision drew my attention away.
She turned and smiled politely when she caught me staring, raising her red Solo cup in friendly greeting. Even in the dim basement lighting I could see the way her nose ring and deep red lipstick sparkled like her nails. I’d never noticed how full her lips were before then. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but a shrill voice interrupted my thoughts and drew Talia’s attention away.
The voice belonged to Jackie Mitchell, one of those people you go to school with for ages but never actually get to know. The type whose birthday party you’d get a pity-invite to in middle school. That night, she wore a tight black tube top and a neon miniskirt that glowed in the dark room, accentuating her curves and leaving her collarbones on full display. I forced my eyes from her body, my face flushed from what was definitely jealousy over how good she looked, but I listened as she huskily said, “Never have I ever … kissed a girl … and liked it.” She batted her lashes at Lou, and he grinned devilishly as she, against the rules of the game, dropped her finger with a wink.
Jackie’s claim to fame was when, during our freshman year, she and her best friend snuck into some senior party and drunkenly made out in a pool together. Some of the boys recorded it and posted the video to Twitter, because “girl-on-girl action is so hot,” making it the talk of the school for a week or so. I nearly broke Sammie’s phone when I saw he retweeted it.
Most of the guys dropped a finger, and everyone moved on to the next confession, but I couldn’t. The ease with which Jackie admitted she liked kissing a girl alongside the blatant use of that admission as flirtation with Lou made my stomach inexplicably clench. My tenseness must’ve shown, because when I looked up from my drink, Talia was staring.
She glanced at Jackie and rolled her eyes, then fiddled with her nose ring, dropping a finger discreetly in the process. Except she was looking straight at me as she did it.
I didn’t react. I didn’t know how to, given the hot, oddly pained feeling that the look she gave me left in my chest. More than that, I was overwhelmed by the confusing intensity of why I suddenly needed to know everything about her.
Before I could muster up the courage to scoot closer, Agatha and Zaq returned, passionately debating the difference between thrift stores and vintage stores, and I lost hold of what exactly I expected to get out of Talia in the first place.
We didn’t interact for the rest of the night, the game dying out a few rounds later when Evan targeted Danica again and Sammie had to calm them both down before a fight broke out. Ags and I slept over once everyone went home, well into the night, and I watched in envy as Linds and Agatha comfortably shared a blanket on the other side of the couch. I wasn’t envious of them cuddling together; I was envious that they could do it without feeling weird like I always did. I fell asleep to the sound of Lindsay mumbling about prom and Wesley, as I forgot all about Talia and her red lips, red nails, and red cup.
By the first day of school, a week later, the significance of Talia had completely vanished. But when she turned around in government to pass back the syllabus and said hello to me for the first time, it all came rushing back.
Every time she asked to borrow an eraser or reminded me of an upcoming test, I felt like I was sitting on that basement carpet all over again. I never brought up Linds’s party, too uncomfortable with the memory of how our small interaction affected me. But no matter how hard I tried, my mind couldn’t let go of the one thing I’d wanted to ask her most.
What did she see in my face that night, looking at Jackie and Lou across the room, that made her confess?
TWO
By the time we’re back at our lockers after school, Agatha has a plan.
“I am not running for prom queen,” Lindsay says, slamming her locker shut as she stands. “You know how I feel about Little Mermaid jokes. Why would I subject myself to that shit?”
“Because you know how I feel about this theme. A prom-campaign project could salvage the end of senior year.” Agatha slams her locker even harder, like that’ll solidify her point. “I’m getting bored.”