The Music of What Happens(7)

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Kayla says. She is on day three of her typical “I’m going to eat better from now on, I swear” thing, so she is rocking a Cobb salad from Panera. “Shouldn’t you just boycott Panda? And shouldn’t you do that anyway, because it’s Panda Express and that’s barely food, and would your volleyball coach be even a little okay with you eating that crap?”

Pam’s eyes go all wide and she runs her fingers across her cornrow Mohawk. “Oh I swear to God if you get all holy about food again.”

Kayla winces and tosses her blond bangs to the side. “It’s not again.”

Now Pam rolls her eyes. “Post-Thanksgiving tofu fest. Check. Early January freak-out followed by a trip to Whole Foods with your mom, and then a million phone calls about how deprived you were and how gross radishes are. Check. Valentine’s Day crash diet. Check. Earth Day’s Day of Eating Earth, which is not happening again, by the way.”

“Okay, okay,” Kayla says, cutting a piece of lettuce into tinier and tinier pieces. “God. Self-righteous ever?”

We eat, unable to avoid the Sia video playing above our heads because mall officials have decreed it’s a criminal offense to not be assaulted by at least six sources at any given second. Kayla intermittently texts Shaun, the Chess Club participant most likely to get a girl pregnant at MG.

“Bitch is resting-bitch-face-ing right at me,” Pam says, still not over her made-up drama.

“I hate to disrupt this diatribe about a microaggression that may or may not have happened, or this world-changing conversation about Kayla’s latest unnecessary diet, but I was wondering if for one second we could focus on me,” I say. “I mean, what about me? What about my needs?”

“Drama queen,” Kayla says, putting her phone down and forking lettuce into her mouth.

“Queer card,” I reply, slapping an imaginary card on the counter. We all have cards we get to play, though I only get to play mine once a week because I lost a bet (Keanu Reeves is in fact Canadian, not dead). Pam, whose mom is black and whose dad is Mexican, gets to play her card daily, and Kayla, whose dad is Canadian and whose mom is Scandinavian, gets to play hers whenever the hell she wants. Because privilege.

The girls are looking at me, having decided to grant me center stage for a moment, and suddenly it’s hard to figure out what to say. How I am supposed to feel in this situation. If, say, my mom quit the food truck and I was stuck with it and with an employee I barely know, but we weren’t, say, about to be homeless. I can’t figure it out, so I swallow, and I pivot.

“Can we just for a second focus on the fact that I will never, ever have a boyfriend because I am hideous, and because God forbid anything should ever go my way in this life, ever?”

Kayla rolls her eyes theatrically, looking a little like her saucy grandmother character from the spring production of Pippin, and Pam, perhaps sensing that this is not a groundbreaking conversation as we talk about my burgeoning spinsterhood every day, looks up at the video.

“Oh, look,” she says. “Sia was once a victim, but not anymore.”

“That hardly ever happens,” I say, grateful the spotlight I asked for has been turned off.

The talk subsides, which is excellent because I am partaking in my favorite pastime, which is ignoring my pathetic life by fantasizing about having my first boyfriend.

I get pretty specific when I do this.

This time he is a redhead with a slightly bent nose and eyes so light blue they actually have a vague ocean scent. He plays trombone and he used to be friends with these kids who are now Alt-Right-ers and now that he’s out they troll him online, and one day his dad, a construction worker, visits one of their fathers and says, “You make sure your Nazi son stays away from my boy.” He likes to play Frisbee and makes viral videos of himself lip-synching to Beyoncé songs. We go to the same community college and get an apartment in downtown Mesa along the light-rail, and every night I make dinner — he loves pasta primavera — and we watch British costume dramas on TV. We get married after college and he gets an IT job and I get a job waiting tables while I write my first screenplay, and when I sell it to Hollywood and it becomes a movie, we move to Southern California and get a place overlooking the ocean for us and our two children, Aimee (after Aimee Mann, of course) and Dale (after Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons) — both girls, thank God — and they take his name because it’s something with a little more kick than Edwards, like maybe Darlington. Yes! Dale Darlington. Totally.

“Oh my God,” Kayla says, smirking at me.

I realize I’m smiling like a dork, so I adjust my expression. “What?”

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“I am not,” I say, biting my lip and averting my eyes.

“You totally are. And shouldn’t you have an actual date before you wind up with kids, living in Costa Rica?”

“You could not be more wrong,” I say.

She puts her hands down on the table and crosses them, like she’s waiting for proof.

“Laguna Beach. And he’s Irish this time. Redhead.”

She rolls her eyes. “You are such a ridiculous romantic. We need to get you your first boyfriend. This summer. Hey! We should do a makeover!”

“Um. No,” I say.

“No. We totally should! Right today. Don’t you trust us? Don’t you trust me to make you so beautiful that no boy will ever be able to withstand your gorgeousness?”