“Maybe.” He was fiddling with the lemonade’s straw. “But she was intense making us swear to love each other as friends forever. And the dance, it sort of changes stuff.” He glanced up tentatively. “If you want it to.” I couldn’t look away from the warmth of his brown eyes. There was no more guilt tying my stomach in knots, no fear about breaking our promise. I let my smile answer him. Yes. I wanted. There was only the rush of Harry smiling back at me.
We watched the commotion of a police officer chasing boys on skateboards zigzagging along the cordoned-off street. I squinted at one of the boys. Did I see a white IV on his black backpack or was it another symbol, transmuted by distance? I went to ask Harry if he could make it out, but a glistening blue dome of ice appeared in my face. “Sno-cone for the snow queen,” Viv said with forced generosity. “Here.” The blue ice touched the tip of my nose.
I took it from her as it lurched at me again. “Thanks.”
Viv slurped her cherry-red cone through the straw. I hated blue sno-cones. What naturally occurring fruit was blue? And Viv knew this, knew all my loves and hates. I stabbed the straw through the cone’s outer shell of ice as the floats advanced like glaciers. I could think of worse punishments.
Our school mascot, a blue-eyed tiger, loped by and showered us with a toss of plastic-wrapped hard candy. Loud pops thundered sporadically—Principal Harper at the helm of his float armed with a T-shirt cannon, firing cheaply made apparel at dangerously close proximities. The boys and girls of the soccer and lacrosse teams waved from advancing floats.
Harry and I cheered for one in the shape of a pirate ship carrying the Brass Bandits and the school orchestra. Graham watched the parade with the bewildered look of an anthropologist observing an alien civilization.
I shouted across Harry and Viv to Graham, “Don’t pretend you don’t love this!”
“His veins run blue and white,” Harry teased.
“What?” Graham pointed to his ear, smirking. “I can’t hear you.”
“He’s going to try out to be Waldo the Tiger,” I told Harry.
“He’s planning to off the current Waldo the Tiger so there’s an opening,” Harry said.
Graham shook his head, but his eyes laughed.
Harry’s hand brushed mine. The mascot made another pass on foot. Harry’s arm went up to shield the two of us from the candy shrapnel. I turned into him. For a second our faces came close. The flicker of his lips was all I saw. Then his arm dropped as a curtain while the final float, homecoming royalty with their glitter cannon, came into my periphery. A storm of bright bits of paper winnowed around us. Flecks of color spiraled, changing from summer petals to fall leaves.
Our hands brushed again. He had confetti in his hair and I brushed off a speck of glitter from my nose.
“I’m starving,” Graham complained. “Let’s get a pizza before swimming.”
“It’s too cold for the pool,” Viv said, holding the opening of her cape closed, chattering her teeth. I was warm in my T-shirt and shorts. “Besides, we’ve been invited to a house party.”
Viv handed me her cell, a group text chain with Jess and Rachel on the screen. Jess’s parents were away for the night and friends were headed over to pregame homecoming. Viv squeezed in between me and Harry, slung her arm over my shoulders. “I know you’d rather eat pizza and swim, but please? It’s majorly important we go.” My tongue was still puckering from the awful blue sno-cone. Viv was chewing her bottom lip.
I wanted her to forgive me. “I don’t mind if everyone else wants to go.”
“Why is it important?” Harry asked.
“To hear what they’re saying about you know what,” she answered robotically. I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth.
“You’re not actually considering going, Iz?” Graham asked. He was disbelieving, finger fused to the bridge of his glasses. “Do I really have to lobby for pizza eating—extra cheese, fennel sausage, arugula—versus standing in someone’s kitchen, inhaling Conner’s beer burps and watching girls suck face for his attention?”
Viv rolled her eyes at me and said, without swiveling to face him, “You’re not into girl-on-girl action?”
Graham crossed his arms at his chest. “No. That’s not every guy’s fantasy.”
“Isn’t Jess your fantasy? She wants to know if you’re coming,” Viv said, swinging around. “I swear. Seeeee.” She scrolled up in the text chain and presented the cell to Graham with a flourish of fingers.
He blanched reading it, ran a hand through his hair, and said, “Maybe it would be a travesty to graduate without having the authentic experience of a house party?”
His eyes settled on me. I knew he must be remembering the house party freshman year. It was right before Thanksgiving; Viv and Harry had both been out of town with their parents. Graham and I already had our authentic experience. Once was enough. We never even relived it by talking about it.
“And if it would help your whole revenge scheme, who am I to say no?” Graham added.
I shoved my hands into my shorts pockets and tried to muster enthusiasm. “All right. We’re all in.”
None of us asked Harry what he thought. I realize now that I often mistook Harry being easygoing and mature for not having opinions. He had plenty. He wasn’t like Graham, Viv, and me, projectile vomiting words like Earth’s revolutions would grind to a halt if it didn’t hear what we thought.
We turned up at Jess’s front porch with a glut of other kids. Viv was snatched by Jess. “Conner’s gonna burp the names of models,” she told Viv, like Hurry, you’re about to witness history. Everyone crammed in the kitchen that quickly began to stink of beer and stomach bile. Harry and I wedged deeper and deeper into the corner by the microwave as kids kept squishing by and stepping on my toes. I abandoned my beer and hopped up to sit on the counter.
From that height I had a view of Viv by the fridge, waving a lollipop like a royal scepter, laughing throatily. She was a quick study.
“What’s with Jess and freaking lollipops?” I muttered. Graham was between Viv and Jess. Despite how into Jess he claimed to be, he was watching the ceiling fan spin rather than talk to her.
“What do you think she’s planning?” Harry asked, elbow on the counter alongside me.
I knew he meant Viv’s grand plot against Amanda. I grunted indistinctly.
“Why don’t you ask?” he said.
I bit my lip watching Viv’s expression alternate between aloof and manically entertained. “Have you noticed Viv trades stuff in for brighter, shinier stuff really fast? Like she never uses the same nail polish color twice because there’s always a better color waiting. In theater, there’s always a new role headed her way. It’s easy to stay in love with it, I think.” I slid down from the counter. I didn’t want to watch her anymore. “I’m afraid to ask her what she’s planning because I’m afraid something more exciting than revenge on Amanda has finally come along. I would understand if she wanted to make peace.” I grimaced. “Accept it, at least.”
“Not me. Where’s the fun in fitting in?”
Viv’s laugh sliced through the room’s chatter.
“You think she’ll be ready to quit tonight’s experiment after that beer?” Harry asked.