“I texted him,” I say. “He told me he was coming.”
“Yeah, well, maybe he left.” Dara’s dark eyes flick to mine, and the message is clear. Let it go. So. They must be fighting again. Or maybe they’re not fighting, and that’s the problem. Maybe he refuses to play along.
“Dara’s got a new boyfriend,” Ariana says in a singsong, and Dara elbows her. “Well, you do, don’t you? A secret boyfriend.”
“Shut up,” Dara says sharply. I can’t tell whether she’s really mad or only pretending to be.
Ari fake-pouts. “Do I know him? Just tell me if I know him.”
“No way,” Dara says. “No hints.” She tosses down her cards and stands up, dusting off the back of her jeans. She’s wearing fur-trimmed wedge boots and a metallic shirt I’ve never seen before, which looks like it has been poured over her body and then left to harden. Her hair—recently dyed black, and blown out perfectly straight—looks like oil poured over her shoulders. As usual, I feel like the Scarecrow next to Dorothy. I’m wearing a bulky jacket Mom bought me four years ago for a ski trip to Vermont, and my hair, the unremarkable brown of mouse poop, is pulled back in its trademark ponytail.
“I’m getting a drink,” Dara says, even though she’s been having beer. “Anyone want?”
“Bring back some mixers,” Ariana says.
Dara gives no indication that she’s heard. She grabs me by the wrist and pulls me out of the horse stall and into the barn, where Ariana—or her mom?—has set up a few folding tables covered with bowls of chips and pretzels, guacamole, packaged cookies. There’s a cigarette butt stubbed out in a container of guacamole, and cans of beer floating around in an enormous punch bowl full of half-melted ice, like ships trying to navigate the Arctic.
It seems as if most of Dara’s grade has come out tonight, and about half of mine—even if seniors don’t usually deign to crash a junior party, second semester seniors never miss any opportunity to celebrate. Christmas lights are strung between the horse stalls, only three of which contain actual horses: Misty, Luciana, and Mr. Ed. I wonder if any of the horses are bothered by the thudding bass from the music, or by the fact that every five seconds a drunk junior is shoving his hand across the gate, trying to get the horse to nibble Cheetos from his hand.
The other stalls, the ones that aren’t piled with old saddles and muck rakes and rusted farm equipment that has somehow landed and then expired here—even though the only thing Ariana’s mom farms is money from her three ex-husbands—are filled with kids playing drinking games or grinding on each other, or, in the case of Jake Harris and Aubrey O’Brien, full-on making out. The tack room, I’ve been informed, has been unofficially claimed by the stoners.
The big sliding barn doors are open to the night, and frigid air blows in from outside. Down the hill, someone is trying to get a bonfire started in the riding rink, but there’s a light rain tonight, and the wood won’t catch.
At least Aaron isn’t here. I’m not sure I could have handled seeing him tonight—not after what happened last weekend. It would have been better if he’d been mad—if he’d freaked out and yelled, or started rumors around school that I have chlamydia or something. Then I could hate him. Then it would make sense.
But since the breakup he’s been unfailingly, epically polite, like he’s the greeter at a Gap. Like he’s really hoping I’ll buy something but doesn’t want to seem pushy.
“I still think we’re good together,” he’d said out of the blue, even as he was giving me back my sweatshirt (cleaned, of course, and folded) and a variety of miscellaneous crap I’d left in his car: pens and a phone charger and a weird snow globe I’d seen for sale at CVS. School had served pasta marinara for lunch, and there was a tiny bit of Day-Glo sauce at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“Maybe,” I’d said. And I really hoped, more than anything in the world, that I would.
Dara grabs a bottle of Southern Comfort and splashes three inches into a plastic cup, topping it off with Coca-Cola. I bite the inside of my lip, as if I can chew back the words I really want to say: This must be at least her third drink; she’s already in the doghouse with Mom and Dad; she’s supposed to be staying out of trouble. She landed us both in therapy, for God’s sake.
Instead I say, “So. A new boyfriend, huh?” I try to keep my voice light.
One corner of Dara’s mouth crooks into a smile. “You know Ariana. She exaggerates.” She mixes another drink and presses it into my hand, jamming our plastic cups together. “Cheers,” she says, and takes a big swig, emptying half her drink.
The drink smells suspiciously like cough syrup. I set it down next to a platter of cold pigs in blankets, which look like shriveled thumbs wrapped up in gauze. “So there’s no mystery man?”
Dara lifts a shoulder. “What can I say?” She’s wearing gold eye shadow tonight, and a dusting of it coats her cheeks; she looks like someone who has accidentally trespassed through fairyland. “I’m irresistible.”
“What about Parker?” I say. “More trouble in paradise?”
Instantly, I regret the question. Dara’s smile vanishes. “Why?” she says, her eyes dull now, hard. “Want to say ‘I told you so’ again?”
“Forget it.” I turn away, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Good night, Dara.”
“Wait.” She grabs my wrist. Just like that, the moment of tension is gone, and she smiles again. “Stay, okay? Stay, Ninpin,” she repeats, when I hesitate.
When Dara gets like this, turns sweet and pleading, like her old self, like the sister who used to climb onto my chest and beg me, wide-eyed, to wake up, wake up, she’s almost impossible to resist. Almost. “I have to get up at seven,” I say, even as she’s leading me outside, into the fizz and pop of the rain. “I promised Mom I’d help straighten up before Aunt Jackie gets here.”
For the first month or so after Dad announced he was leaving, Mom acted like absolutely nothing was different. But recently, she’s been forgetting: to turn on the dishwasher, to set her alarm, to iron her work blouses, to vacuum. It’s like every time he removes another item from the house—his favorite chair, the chess set he inherited from his father, the golf clubs he never uses—it takes a portion of her brain with it.
“Why?” Dara rolls her eyes. “She’ll just bring cleansing crystals with her to do the work. Please,” she adds. She has to raise her voice to be heard over the music; someone has just turned up the volume. “You never come out.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “It’s just that you’re always out.” The words sound harsher than I’d intended. But Dara only laughs.
“Let’s not fight tonight, okay?” she says, and leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. Her lips are candy-sticky. “Let’s be happy.”
A group of guys—sophomores, I’m guessing—huddled together in the half-dark of the barn start hooting and clapping. “All right!” one of them shouts, raising a beer. “Lesbian action!”
“Shut up, dick!” Dara says. But she’s laughing. “She’s my sister.”
“That’s definitely my cue,” I say.
But Dara isn’t listening. Her face is flushed, her eyes bright with alcohol. “She’s my sister,” she announces again, to no one and also to everyone, since Dara is the kind of person other people watch, want, follow. “And my best friend.”
More hooting; a scattering of applause. Another guy yells, “Get it on!”
Dara throws an arm around my shoulder, leans up to whisper in my ear, her breath sweet-smelling, sharp with booze. “Best friends for life,” she says, and I’m no longer sure whether she’s hugging me or hanging on me. “Right, Nick? Nothing—nothing—can change that.”