I’m not great at reading when I’m tipsy, and my eyes keep sliding to the end of every paragraph, but even from a sloppy once-over, I can tell this book is going to dazzle. The writing is tight, assured. There are none of the juvenile slipups of her debut work. Her voice has matured and sharpened. Every description, every turn of phrase—it all sings.
It’s better than anything I could write, perhaps in this lifetime.
“You like it?” she asks.
She’s nervous. Her eyes are wide, almost scared; she’s fiddling with her necklace as she watches me. How often does she put on this act? How forcefully do people shower her with praise when she does?
It’s petty, but I don’t want to give that validation to her. Her game works with adoring reviewers and fans; it won’t with me.
“I don’t know,” I say flatly. “I can’t really read drunk.”
She looks crestfallen, but only for a moment. I watch her hastily plaster on a smile. “Right, duh, that was stupid, of course you don’t want to . . .” She blinks at her glass, then at me, and then at her living room. “Well, then do you want to just . . . hang?”
So here’s me, just hanging with Athena Liu.
When she’s hammered, it turns out, she’s shockingly banal. She doesn’t quiz me about Heidegger, or Arendt, or the half-dozen philosophers she loves to name-drop in interviews. She doesn’t go off about what a good time she had guest modeling for Prada this one time in Paris (which was completely by accident; the director just saw her sitting outside a café and asked her to step in). We cackle about celebrities. We both profess that the latest twink with puppy-dog eyes in fact does nothing for us, but that Cate Blanchett can step on us, always. She compliments my style. She asks where I got my shoes, my brooch, my earrings. She marvels at my skill at thrifting—“I still get half my stuff from Talbots, I’m such an old lady.” I make her laugh with stories about my students, a procession of pimply, dull-eyed kids who could waltz into a lower tier Ivy on their parents’ legacy connections if they could only score two hundred points higher on the SAT, and how their ghostwritten college essays are all an exercise in inventing some personal hardship when it’s clear they’ve never experienced any. We trade stories about bad dates, about people we knew from undergrad, about how we’ve somehow hooked up with the same two guys from Princeton.
We end up sprawled on her couch, laughing so hard our ribs ache. I didn’t realize it was possible to have so much fun with Athena. I’ve never been so myself with her. We’ve known each other for over nine years now, but I’ve always been so guarded in her presence—in part because I’m nervous she’ll realize I’m not half as brilliant or interesting as she thinks, and in part because of what happened freshman year.
But tonight, for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I have to filter every word I say. I’m not struggling to impress Athena Fucking Liu. I’m just hanging with Athena.
“We should do this more,” she keeps saying. “Junie, honestly, how have we never done this before?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and then, in an attempt to be deep, “Maybe we were afraid of how much we’d like each other.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, and not remotely true, but this apparently delights her.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. Oh, Junie. Life is so short. Why do we build up these walls?”
Her eyes are shining. Her mouth is wet. We’re sitting side by side on her futon, knees so close they’re almost touching. For a moment I think she’s going to lean over and kiss me—and what a story that would be, I think; what a plot twist—but then she jumps back and yelps, and I realize my whisky glass has tilted so much I’ve spilled on the floor; thank God it’s all hardwood, because if I’d ruined one of Athena’s expensive rugs I would have just flung myself off the balcony. She laughs and runs to the kitchen for a napkin, and I take another sip to calm myself, wondering at my racing heart.
Then suddenly it’s midnight and we’re making pancakes—from scratch, no box mix, and embellished with several dollops of pandan extract in the now-neon-green batter because Athena Liu doesn’t do normal pancakes. “Like vanilla, but better,” she explains. “It’s fragrant and herbal, like you’re taking a big breath of the forest. I can’t believe white people haven’t learned about pandan yet.” She flips them off the pan and onto my plate. The pancakes are burnt and uneven, but they smell incredible, and I realize then that I’m starving. I wolf one down with my hands, then look up to see Athena staring at me. I wipe my fingers, terrified I’ve disgusted her, but then she laughs and challenges me to an eating contest. And then there’s a timer going and we’re shoveling down the gloppy, half-cooked pancakes as quickly as we can, swigging milk in between to help the bulging lumps down our throats.
“Seven,” I gasp, coming up for air. “Seven, what did—”
But Athena’s not looking at me. She’s blinking very hard, brows furrowed. One hand goes to her throat. The other frantically taps my arm. Her lips part, and out comes this muted, sickening rasp.
She’s choking.
Heimlich, I know the Heimlich—at least, I think I do? I haven’t thought about it since grade school. But I get behind her and wrap my arms around her waist and jerk my hands against her stomach, which should dislodge the pancake—holy shit, she’s skinny—but she’s still shaking her head, tapping my arm. It’s not coming out. I jerk in again. And again. This isn’t working. It crosses my mind to pull out my phone to Google “Heimlich,” maybe watch a YouTube tutorial. But there’s no time, that’ll take forever.
Athena’s banging against the counters. Her face has turned purple.
I remember reading a news article a few years ago about a sorority girl who choked to death at a pancake-eating contest. I remember sitting on my toilet, scrolling through the details in prurient fascination, because it seemed like such a sudden, ridiculous, and devastating way to die. The pancakes were like a lump of cement in her throat, said the EMT. A lump of cement.
Athena yanks at my arm; points at my phone. Help, she mouths. Help, help—
My fingers keep shaking; it takes me three tries to unlock my phone to call 911. They ask me what my emergency is.
“I’m with a friend,” I gasp. “She’s choking. I’ve tried the Heimlich; it’s not coming out—”
Beside me, Athena is folded over a chair, jamming her sternum against the back, trying to perform the Heimlich on herself. Her movements get more and more frantic—She looks like she’s humping the chair, I think stupidly—but it doesn’t seem to work; nothing comes flying out of her mouth.
“Ma’am, what is your location?”
Oh, fucking hell, I don’t know Athena’s address. “I don’t know, it’s my friend’s place.” I try to think. “Um, across the taco place, and the bookstore, I don’t know exactly . . .”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Dupont! Dupont Circle. Um—it’s a block from the metro station, there’s this nice revolving door—”
“Is it an apartment building?”
“Yes—”
“The Independent? The Madison?”
“Yes! The Madison. That one.”
“Which unit?”
I don’t know. I turn to Athena, but she’s curled on the ground, jerking back and forth in a way that’s awful to watch. I hesitate, torn between helping her and checking the door number—but then I remember, the ninth floor, so far up you can see all of Dupont Circle from the balcony. “Nine-oh-seven,” I gasp. “Please, come quick, oh my God—”
“An ambulance is on its way to you now, ma’am. Is the patient conscious?”
I glance over my shoulder. Athena has stopped kicking. The only thing moving now is her shoulders, heaving in wild jerks like she’s been possessed.
Then those stop, too.
“Ma’am?”
I lower the phone. My vision swims. I reach out and shake her shoulder: nothing. Athena’s eyes are wide, bulging open; I can’t bear to look at them. I touch my fingers to her neck for her pulse. Nothing. The dispatcher says something else, but I can’t understand her; I can’t understand my own thoughts, and everything that happens next, between the banging at the door and the rush of EMTs into the apartment, is a dark, bewildering blur.