“Ignore him,” Austin said, passing a joint around the circle with one hand and a bag of Doritos with the other. The apartment was his and Mario’s; they called their place the Model UN because Austin was Filipino, Mario was Mexican, and they’d both done catalog work for department stores before they came here. Everybody in the boys’ group looked like they’d been genetically engineered for maximum physical attractiveness. “We don’t let him out of his cage much.”
“Clearly,” Kristin said, then shook her head as he offered her the weed. “That stuff is murder on your voice.” She looked at the rest of us with authority. “You guys shouldn’t do it, either.”
“Yes, Mom,” Ashley said with a smile, and I laughed. A few days in, I was starting to feel a little less awkward around her and Kristin. Both of them were super into hugging, which didn’t really bother me except when we were all sweaty and gross from rehearsal, which was actually a lot of the time.
I finished my beer and got up to pee in the grody bathroom; when I came out, Alex was waiting in the dimly lit hallway, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his baggy khaki shorts. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said, stopping abruptly, with a quiet intake of breath I hoped he didn’t notice. I’d purposely avoided him since the first day of rehearsals, pushing Olivia forward and melting into the back of the group whenever Hurricane State was around, telling myself whatever flicker of interest I’d felt wasn’t worth it. “Having fun?”
Alex nodded. “I am,” he said, and there was that slow, sweet smile again, the same one from the night by the vending machines, the one I was working hard not to notice. The girls and I, crowded into the doorway of the studio and probably looking anything but inconspicuous, had caught the very end of Hurricane State’s dance rehearsal yesterday. Even just watching for a few minutes, it was obvious that Alex was the most talented one in the group: in my experience, teenage boys mostly look like total boners when they’re dancing, but Alex looked natural somehow, like he already knew the steps in his body, so he didn’t have to think about it too much. “How about you?”
“Uh, yeah.” I glanced over my shoulder toward the living room, where I could see Olivia with her head ducked close to Kristin’s, their matching waterfalls of shiny hair. “I’m good. So. I’ll see ya.”
Alex nodded, still smiling. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I repeated like an idiot. “So. Bye.”
I told myself to pull it together and met up with the other girls, who had decamped to the apartment’s tiny patio, presumably to escape the voice-ruining pot smoke. As I opened the sliding glass door, the damp heat slammed into me like a wall of water, carrying the smell of car exhaust and humidity. Across the parking lot I could see a couple of barely dressed women waiting at the bus stop—probably not, I suspected, for a bus.
“He definitely likes you,” Ashley was saying, tipping her Corona in Olivia’s direction and stretching her long legs out in front of her, crossing her delicate ankles. She was perched primly on one of the wobbly rubber-and-metal lawn chairs that came with all the apartments. “Dana,” she said, “don’t you think Alex likes Olivia?”
I tugged the end of Olivia’s hair and squeezed into the rickety chair beside her. “I think he’s a moron if he doesn’t.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Ashley said confidently. Ash was seventeen, a year younger than Olivia and me; she had a boyfriend at home in Oak Park and was saving herself for marriage, which didn’t stop her from taking a healthy interest in everyone else’s sex life. She’d flat-out asked me if I was a virgin the first night we met. “I love this, you guys meeting up again after all this time. It’s classic. I think he’s just shy, is all. He needs a girl who’s gonna make the first move.”
Mikey slid the door open just then, the noise from inside suddenly amplified in the hot, quiet air. His shirt had Dr. Evil from Austin Powers on the front of it. “What are we gossiping about, ladies?” he asked.
“Nothing you need to know about,” Olivia said, her voice turning so chilly that I almost felt bad for him—Mikey seemed harmless enough. She stood up, brushing some imaginary debris off her white denim shorts. “We’re going back in.”
Inside, the boys were watching old episodes of SNL on Comedy Central; Alex grinned at me as we came through the door, scooting over to make room on the couch. Mario plopped down beside him before I could react one way or the other: “You all wanna play Asshole?” he asked. “I got cards.”
I settled myself on the floor instead, rubbing idly at a spot on the side of my knee I’d missed when I shaved that morning. I was starting to feel tired and bored. The Saturday Night Live rerun ended; Mario wound up Asshole three rounds in a row. Olivia got up for another beer and Kristin followed her, a look on her face like she was about to hatch a plot—and sure enough, on their way back into the living room the two of them started singing that song from the musical Rent about lighting the candle, which I knew from earlier this week was one of Kristin’s favorites to belt at the top of her lungs whether anyone was listening or not.
I was surprised—for all the parties we’d been to together, I’d never seen Olivia stage an impromptu performance like this—but I understood all at once why she’d done it the moment Kristin dropped out and pulled Alex off the couch, pushing him up toward the TV, where Olivia was standing, as he jumped right in on the boy part, like a star athlete who’d been waiting for the coach to put him in. Their voices sounded right at home together. Olivia wrapped her arm around his waist.
Well, I thought as they got to their big finish, taken off guard by the sharp zing of disappointment behind my rib cage, feeling caught out and embarrassed and not wanting to investigate why.
That’s that.
I wanted to dump my Corona in the sink and call it a night, but Trevor followed me down the hallway, and ten minutes later I was sitting on the counter next to the refrigerator, eating Cheetos out of the bag and talking to him about Stephen King movies, which Olivia despised with every fiber of her being but which it turned out he and I both loved. “Ever seen Cujo, though?” I was saying, when Alex came in. “Cujo is freaking terrifying.”
“Cujo is scary as shit,” Trevor agreed. Then, to Alex, who I was clearly ignoring: “Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Alex said, leaning against the counter for a minute. He opened the mostly empty fridge and peered inside it. Then he closed it again.
“Looking for something?” I asked him finally, an edge in my voice.
“Looking for you,” Alex said.
I snorted, disbelief and a little bit of horror. Alex grinned.
“I gotta go,” Trevor announced suddenly, tipping his beer in my direction before he headed back into the living room.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” I told Alex, once we were alone under the bright fluorescent light. This kitchen had the same dingy countertops and white cabinets as ours did, though it was closed to the living room: for the moment, at least, he and I were alone.