“I do.” With a curtsy, I accept his speechlessness as the compliment that it is.
He leads me to the side walkway, where there are lights and laughter twinkling from the patio. I’m holding my breath in excitement and all the extra air in my lungs makes my heartbeat more pronounced, thuddier against my rib cage.
Jonah opens the gate entrance, and my guests cry “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” so loudly that it’s like walking into a wall of sound, and the tears spring to my eyes, blurring everything into blobs of color and glowing light.
There are two picnic tables pushed together, lengthwise, with big pillar candles in lanterns down the center. The leaves are deep jade, crawling up the wooden trellises, and there are white fairy lights everywhere and Chinese lanterns that glow like planets suspended in the galaxy. And benches are filled with my mom and these beautiful people who barely know me and will not only show up but show up in costume. I can barely make them out, but I see the feathered pink flamingo costume that my mom was perfecting for herself this morning.
There should be a word for this feeling: spectacuclarity or burstsomeness. It’s too much to dam inside my body, and I cover my face just moments before the tears spurt out. I don’t even want to try to stop myself from feeling everything, from reacting the way I really feel, because I am only turning seventeen once, and I am honestly trying to live this life while I can. The emotion swells around me, into this huge, humid feeling that I must be doing something right.
“Viv,” Jonah whispers. “Please tell me that’s a happy cry.”
I slide my hands down an inch, so my fingertips rest right below my eyes. Jonah’s eyebrows are turned down, those dark eyes concerned and desperate to read me.
“This is literally the most wonderful thing that anyone has ever done for me,” I choke out. Then I laugh, partially so everyone knows I’m okay and partially because I feel half-hysterical with love and gratitude. “This is already the best night of my life, and it just started!”
Jonah guides me to my seat at the head of the table, and I clear the tears from my eyes to take in all my guests. Isaac is an owl, with a yellow construction-paper triangle taped to the noseband of his glasses. The bottom of Silas’s nose is painted black, and he’s wearing a sweatband around his head that is mounted with two long black socks—droopy puppy ears covering his own. Bekah is in what looks to be a store-bought bumblebee costume, perhaps a relic of Halloween past. Whitney’s dress is covered in glued-on white cotton balls, and little black sheep’s ears stick up from her curly, wild hair. My mom, the flamingo. Leah, my peacock, my tiniest friend. And, between them, Officer Hayashi.
“What animal are you?” I tease, since he’s just in a nondescript blue sweater. But it looks like he’s combed his white hair, and I could die from the sweetness of him sitting between Leah and my mom.
“Grumpy old bear,” he says, and I laugh and laugh, interrupted only by someone touching my arm gently.
“Sorry I’m late,” Naomi says, although her tone is unremorseful. She didn’t wear a costume either, but I like her dress, which is brown with white polka dots. After she takes her place by Silas, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a headband with two pert little ears on either side. She’s a deer—of course she is—with her long limbs and speckled dress. The tears want to start again, but the food is coming, and I choose to focus on that.
Ellie emerges in a white shirt and black vest, our waitress for the evening, and I’m having such a nice time that I don’t even care that her skin glows like amber in the candlelight. She serves us the food Jonah has made, all family-style in big bowls or on platters—beautiful green salad glossed in champagne vinaigrette, and coconut tilapia, breaded and fried and slathered in some sort of spicy pineapple relish that my mind can’t explain but my taste buds can relish, savor, memorize.
My eyes well up as I open my presents—a book from Isaac and silvery-pink nail polish from Bekah and a hand-drawn portrait of me from Leah and a mug Whitney made herself.
“Here. Give that to her.” Hayashi has Leah pass me a little plant still in its plastic container from the nursery. “It’s a—”
“I know.” A Japanese maple seedling. If I can’t go to Japan yet, he gave a little piece to me, and it’s almost impossible for me to swallow.
“Well, I know how you like trees,” he says gruffly. “Maybe if you grow your own, you won’t be tempted to deface arboreal public property.”
“What?” my mom asks, and my jaw drops open. He’s seen my tree in Irving Park?
“Oh, nothing,” Hayashi tells my mom. “Silly joke.”
My eyes are still flooded when Jonah brings the cake out. It’s black cherry and chocolate, two layers, with sparklers instead of candles. I watch them sizzle, and I wish for nothing. How could I dare? How could I dare, when I have all this?