“TONIGHT IS GOING TO BE CRAZY,” Liv said, stepping back to take another picture of the mantel. Before a party, Liv always took down anything breakable, stashing framed photos, vases, and various precious family knickknacks in a laundry bag at the back of her closet. But first, she took photos of everything so that she could put it all back perfectly before her parents got home from wherever they had gone off to. It was pretty impressive, but also kind of messed up given how many opportunities she’d had to perfect her system.
“Crazy like fun, or crazy like fire hazard?” I asked, taking a sip from the red Solo cup full of water I had already marked with my name even though we were the only people in the house. I didn’t want to risk taking an accidental glug of Liv’s drink, an amaretto and Coke mixture she’d gleefully dubbed “the Amaghetto.”
“Well, some junior I’ve never met before invited me to my own party, so . . .” She raised her eyebrows excitedly and then turned to photograph the wall lined with her mom’s collection of African masks. She was wearing a sleeveless, skintight sweater dress, which was such a Liv thing to buy: its form completely undermined its function. She also owned more than one pair of open-toed boots.
“Doesn’t that make you nervous?” I asked.
Liv put down her phone and drained her cocktail. “No, it makes you nervous,” she said. “Come on, you know it’s always fine. Hector knows what’s up—and he’s basically legally blind—the apartment across the hall is being renovated, and the people with the baby next door are still on vacation in Miami.” Hector was the building’s near-sighted night doorman, whose loyalty Liv purchased with care packages of cookies and long conversations in Spanish about his sick grandmother. “Besides,” she said, splashing some more amaretto into her cup, “If anyone needs to relax tonight it’s you. You’ve been so uptight about the audition, and now it’s over.” She raised the drink in a “cheers” motion, fixing me with an expectant smile.
“It’s definitely over.” I crossed my arms and stared down at the Oriental rug, a dizzying blood-red pattern of interlocking vines. Liv and I had already gone over what had happened with Ms. Adair numerous times, and I knew she was desperate for me to move on and focus on the party. But I couldn’t shake the ache of humiliated anger I felt, not only at being body-shamed in front of the entire ballet program, but also at being so quick to talk back. “They’ll never give me a solo now,” I said morosely. “I’ll be lucky if I’m, like, a tree in the background.”
“You are not a tree!” Liv said. “You are a total badass. Everyone will be talking about how you shut down that bitch.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not really what I wanted everyone to focus on.” I sipped my water again, shifting uncomfortably in the fleece-lined boots I hadn’t thought to change out of. Compared to Liv, I felt like a lumberjack in my hoodie and cords.
“Fuck them,” Liv said dismissively, arranging stacks of cups on the dining table around the bottles she’d had her downstairs neighbor Kyle—a balding twenty-six-year-old who still lived with his parents—buy for her. “If they don’t think you’re perfect the way you are, they don’t deserve you. And I bet you danced the shit out of Don Coyote or whatever.”
That made me smile for the first time in hours. “I did dance the shit out of it,” I said. The looks on some of the girls’ faces had been priceless. It was like their features were confused, trying to figure out how to express slay but not having the cultural reference.
“See?” Liv smiled. “We’re celebrating. Now please have a drink with me so I don’t feel like an alchy.”
“Oh, hey, how was your audition, by the way?” I asked, trying to stall. “All day I’ve just been complaining about mine.” Aside from keeping myself Amaghetto-free for the time being, I really did want to know what had gone down at the Drama Showcase tryouts. I was sure Liv had sailed through—everyone knew Ethan had written the part for her—but there was someone else I was a little more curious about.
“It was fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You know how Ethan is. He made us do it like five thousand different ways with different ‘motivations.’”
I fanned out some cocktail napkins. “Which guy do you think will get it?”
Liv gave me a look. “Oh my God, you’re so obvious,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re fishing.” She wiggled her perfectly waxed eyebrows. “For a big, shiny Californian catch.”
“Nope.” I tried to swallow my smile, but it was pointless; my poker face didn’t work on Liv, who was the emotional equivalent of a card counter.