The plan was that we would pregame and leave for the party before Pat got home at ten. That was the plan. Stuart was not part of the plan. I was just going to watch him from a distance at the party and if he saw me, wave, and that would have been enough for me. And now he’ll be in the same room as me. Where I am one of four people. Where I can’t just hope he’ll notice me, where he will have to notice me, and where I will have to acknowledge that he notices me. I will have to pretend like I haven’t wanted him since the first time I saw him. Maybe I’ll even have to figure out if I actually want him to want me back, or just want to add him to a list of smart people with whom I would make out if given the chance.
Once, shortly after he had gotten published for the first time, I had stayed late to talk to Ms. Cigler about an assignment, and Stuart came into the classroom for the following period. He had sat down and scrawled something quickly on a piece of notebook paper, looking back and forth from a novel held open, doing his homework at the last minute.
I could have said something so simple. Like hi. Or congratulations. Instead, I said loudly to Ms. Cigler, “Thanks, Ms. Cigler. I didn’t consider that passage that way before.”
I guess I hoped he would have looked up and said, What passage?
And I would have told him which one, and he would have said, You have an unconventional beauty. Let’s talk about it sometime.
But I had wanted him to think I was smart before he thought I was beautiful, because I knew no one would think I was beautiful, so I just kept talking, louder and louder, about the book, until Ms. Cigler said, “My next class is about to start,” and he never looked up from his homework.
That was about how much I was prepared for an interaction with Stuart. Talking loudly to other people while he was in the room. Oh god.
THE DEATH DRIVE
When Maddie was done in the bathroom, she came back with wet hair and a green glass bottle of gin.
“What color is your hair now?” I asked.
“Just a little darker red,” she said. “Less Ariel, more Loud-era Rihanna.”
I bunched my curls into a ponytail and looked past her to her mirror. “What music is this? This isn’t Rihanna.”
Maddie laughed. “No, it’s not.” She toweled off her hair and tossed the towel aside. “It’s the Knife.”
I took my hair back out of the ponytail. “How long until they get here?”
She squirted gel into her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe an hour.”
“Do we have a designated driver?”
Maddie spiked her hair. “Dale doesn’t drink, and he can take my car.”
The image of Stuart walking along the road played in my head. I unbuttoned my shirt one button, so you could see the hint of upper chest. Then the thought of sitting next to Stuart, his thigh touching mine, made me paralyzed, and I buttoned back up.
“Sammie.” I looked at Maddie. “Relax.”
“That’s the worst way to relax someone.”
“Your teeth are audibly grinding.”
“I do that when I’m concentrating!” I told her, which is true. “Do you not want me to concentrate on the task at hand?”
“You know what?” She opened a drawer from her bedside table and brought out a deck of cards. “We’re going to play a game.”
I felt my muscles loosen a bit. Games meant winning. I liked winning. “What game?”
Maddie set the deck in front of me on the floor, and handed me the bottle of gin. “It’s called Loosen the Fuck Up.”
“How do you play?”
Maddie pointed. “Pull the first card.”
“It’s a queen of hearts.”
“Take a drink.”
I did. “Now what?”
“Do it again.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the game.”
“This isn’t—”
She held up her hands. “Any more talk of the game will defeat the purpose of the game.”
Maddie is the only person who I would let interrupt me. I don’t know why. Because I always liked listening to her. I rolled my eyes and swigged.
“Is Stacia coming?” I asked.
Maddie flexed her abs in the mirror. “She better.”
Stacia is Maddie’s “something.” Maddie told me she doesn’t call Stacia her girlfriend because she doesn’t believe in monogamy, but I also think it’s because Stacia isn’t totally sure she only likes girls. Stacia is tiny with red lips and huge eyes and a breathy voice. She paints the sets for all the plays and, at some point, everyone has been in love with her. Including a teacher, which got him fired.
Maddie, because she’s Maddie, has been the only one to get Stacia to want her back.
She put on a sleeveless black T-shirt over her sports bra. I stood up next to her. I was wearing my dad’s old button-down, black leggings, and Keds. I stared at my pale lips, my ballooning thighs, my butt, my waist invisible under the sack of a shirt. “I wish I had features traditionally considered attractive.”
“According to who?”
“According to…” I laughed a little. She was asking for sources.
Maddie pulled the next card from the deck on the floor. “Three of diamonds! Doesn’t matter.” She tossed it aside and took a drink. We both laughed. You had to give it to her—Loosen the Fuck Up lived up to its name.
“Then again,” I started, still thinking about what sources to give her. The tangibly measured, very nontraditional attractiveness of Maddie fought against what I was saying. So I fished around. “… to the average appearance of people who have had another person express attraction to them. Openly. I mean, you could take a poll at Hanover…”
“You can go on all day about what’s wrong with you or you can just fucking own it and enjoy yourself.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered.