“I don’t want it off my chest, though. It keeps me close to her. Plus, she’s happy, and it’s not my place to disturb that.” He sat back against the bench and smiled sadly. “Is that weird?”
“Nah, it’s not weird. Actually, Julia and I have this list...” He stopped himself when he couldn’t think of how to phrase what he wanted to say without calling Vince a cliché. So many people were quietly in love that he and Julia considered it part of a normal high school experience and had therefore sworn it off. But Dave hadn’t really thought about it in those terms in a long time. Pining silently was a cliché, which meant that people were constantly in love with each other without saying a thing about it. How much unrequited, unspoken love filled up the halls every day? How many kids in class felt exactly like Dave did on a day-to-day basis? “You’re probably not alone,” Dave finally settled for. “I’m sure most of us are thinking about someone else when we’re in class.”
“Yeah, but that’s mostly horniness.”
They chuckled, then Dave finished his beer and crumpled it like Vince had. “Do you want to talk more about Carly?”
“Nah,” Vince said, standing up. “Just saying it out loud every now and then makes it more bearable. Thanks for listening. Let’s go inside and get drunker and talk to other people who are being gently eaten alive by longing.”
Dave smiled, and then took the hand Vince was offering to help him off the bench. Dave strolled around the house, reveling in everyone’s drunkenness, and how different it was than he’d imagined. It made him think of the title of one of his favorite albums, You Forgot It in People by Broken Social Scene, and he was a little embarrassed that he’d assumed all of his classmates were cartoons of teenagers.
When he couldn’t spot Julia anywhere, he checked his phone again and saw that the battery had died. There was a flutter of worry when the screen didn’t click on, Dave feeling like a shitty friend for being unreachable, for maybe causing her to worry. Then the mood of the party settled back into his bones and he pocketed the phone, sure that Julia was elsewhere in the house, enjoying herself in just the same way he was.
He’d ended up in the den, where he stared at the hundreds of books in the Kapoors’ library, turning his head slightly to read the spines.
“I do that, too,” a girl’s voice said.
He looked up to find Gretchen, a girl from his AP Chemistry class. Her back was to him, but he could recognize her by her hair, which was wavy enough to maybe be considered curly. It was dark blond, lightening up toward the ends, though he didn’t know enough about her or her hair to know if the blonder tips were natural or the evidence of a past dye job.
She turned to look at him, big brown eyes and the hint of a smile. At a glimpse, he could tell that her bottom teeth were slightly crooked. The world was full of details he’d failed to notice before.
“Do what?” he said.
“Check out bookshelves at strangers’ houses,” she answered, stepping up next to him and looking at the books as if to prove she wasn’t lying. “I’m usually a bit awkward in houses that I haven’t been to before, so it’s a way to not look weird. If I find something I’ve read before it automatically makes me more comfortable.”
He looked over at Gretchen, who fixed her eyes on the books. She was in a simple blue dress and—Dave couldn’t help the thought—looked lovely. “Is that what you’re doing now?”
She met his eyes for just a moment and turned them away again, trying to hide a grin. “Oh, I don’t know how to read.”
She was laughing as she said it, showing another glimpse of her crooked lower teeth. They weren’t unsightly, just imperfect. Dave liked the look of them, for some reason.
Dave chuckled. “That was one of the worst attempts at a lie I’ve ever seen.”
“Dammit, I know.” She blushed a little and rolled her eyes at herself. “I’ve been trying to get better, but I smile every time. I think I could be one of the greatest pranksters of our generation, but my mouth just doesn’t want any part of it. Stupid smile.”