I was about to say that I had no idea what Kate Grigorieva looked like when Sydnie stuck her phone in my face, showing me a photo. She looked like a generic pretty girl. Her hair was slicked back, so I couldn’t even tell what color it was, presumably the same color as Sydnie’s, but I said, “Yeah. Yeah, you look a lot like her.”
We passed a pickup truck that had about a dozen bumper stickers on it, but the funny thing was, they weren’t the usual pickup-truck bumper stickers. Other than the expected My President is Charlton Heston (I was pretty sure Charlton Heston was dead, but it was an old truck), it had two Darwin fish and mostly liberal sentiments like, If you’re against abortion, get a vasectomy and The road to hell is paved with Republicans, along with a neutral I’d rather be flying plate holder.
I said to Sydnie, “How many bumper stickers do you think you can have before you look crazy?” This was a topic Amanda and I frequently debated. Amanda said no more than two. I said you could have more than that as long as some of them were politically neutral “My child made the honor roll” or “Go Gators” type stickers. This guy would have too many by any standard.
Sydnie looked at me like I’d spoken a foreign language, but finally, she said, “Don’t they mess up the paint on your car?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
We reached the beach. People were standing around in clusters of shadows, drinking something out of Solo cups. We took some. Coke. Drew Bailey, one of the seniors, offered us something from his flask.
“Oh, no thanks,” I said. I’d had to beg to be allowed to drive to the party, on account of my brother’s legacy. Part of that begging had included promising not to drink.
“You’re so cute.” Sydnie accepted a shot into her own soda. “Such a cute nerd.” She peeled off her shorts and left them lying on the sand.
“You know what’s bad about going to the beach at night?” she said.
“What’s that?”
“We can’t rub sunscreen on each other.”
Someone wanted to take a picture, and Sydnie hung on my arm. I thought I was hallucinating. This was my life. This was me. On the beach at a party with people who looked like extras on a CW show, with this girl who sort of looked like some model saying she wanted me to . . . rub her?
I said, “That’s unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate.” Sydnie burst out laughing. “God, you’re funny!”
“Okay.” I didn’t really think I’d said anything funny.
“I always thought you were really funny and nice.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Everyone always knew how funny and nice you were.” She moved, if possible, even closer. Someone had on music, and she held my shoulders, sort of dancing, but sort of not.
I wondered, if everyone thought I was so funny and nice, why I’d never gotten invited to parties like this before, why she’d never even spoken to me. I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t friends with all these people. But I knew the answer, of course. I’d been a duckling. I hadn’t been fit to party with the swans. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that. I mean, weren’t people at least supposed to pretend they liked you for you, not just because you looked a certain way?
But I pushed the thought back when Sydnie stroked my arm and said, “Let’s go into the water.”
“You want to . . . swim?”
“Yeah, silly. I want to swim. I’m thinking about trying out for the swim team.”
“You have time . . .” I started to ask if she had time for swimming with cheerleading. Then I realized she was being sarcastic. Short, fat Chris used to get sarcasm. Tall, thin Chris apparently had no sense of humor, not even enough to keep up with a girl who had photos of Victoria’s Secret models on her phone.
She stood on her toes and whispered loudly in my ear, “I want to make out with you in the water.”
So I followed her into the water. She wasn’t really who I wanted to make out with, but she was pretty and she was there, and she wasn’t my best friend, and I’d never kissed anyone before, so I followed her, and we made out in the water. And I may have had a couple of drinks after all, but I was big enough and we stayed late enough that I didn’t get drunk. At least, I didn’t hit any public art. But I did forget to charge my cell phone, so when I woke up the next morning at eleven, it was totally dead.
And it was almost noon before I charged it enough to get Amanda’s text that said: Hope you had fun with your uncle
And then I saw about twenty photos online of Sydnie and me at that party. Including one of me with my tongue fairly obviously in Sydnie’s mouth. I guessed Amanda knew about those parties even if I hadn’t. Amanda knew everything.
And, by then, it was too late for me to make it to Amanda’s noon game.
And since they lost, it was the last one.
And she didn’t answer any of my texts saying I was sorry.
Or any of the others.
And I was too ashamed to go knock on her door, even though I should have.
On the Monday-morning announcements, they said the Lady Lions had come in third in the regionals. Amanda was MVP.
I was probably the only person in my class who even heard the announcement. Sydnie held up her phone, then pulled me toward her for a selfie. I tried to smile.