The Best Laid Plans(8)
“Love poem from Cecilia?” I whisper. “‘O Dearest Andrew. O Captain my Captain. Why did you leave me all alone on the couch in the basement?’” I can’t see his face very well but can practically feel him rolling his eyes.
“She’ll be fine, Collins.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of tortoiseshell glasses with big thick frames, glasses I’ve always thought make him look sort of like someone’s grandpa. He always keeps them tucked away in his pocket, only putting them on when it’s extremely necessary, like he finds them embarrassing. I scoot closer so I can read the text with him. It’s not from Cecilia after all, but from Susie Palmer, Cecilia’s friend—the one who had like way too many shots and couldn’t drive.
Are you asleep? I’m alone in the guest room if you want to find me
“She realizes you just did her best friend, right?” I ask.
“I’m not gonna answer her.” He clicks the phone off so the screen goes black. My eyes take a second to adjust to the dark, and for a moment I can’t make out the shape of his face next to me on the bed. Then slowly his glasses come into focus.
“Really?”
“You sound surprised,” he says, voice soft. “I’m not that big of an asshole.”
“Or you just have a massive crush on Cecilia and you don’t want to mess it up,” I say, grinning. “I get it.”
“It’s because her conversation is so stimulating.” He smiles, and I shove him, rolling away and closing my eyes. I’m used to this side of Andrew now, Party Andrew, who hooks up with girls like it’s no big deal, joking about taking coed showers like it’s something we all do.
In comic books, superheroes have this big moment—a spider bite or a puddle of radioactive goo—that turns them from someone normal into something extraordinary. But Andrew changed from Peter Parker into Spider-Man slowly—so slowly I didn’t notice while it was happening—the years morphing him from the gangly kid, all hands and feet and freckles, into someone girls find cute, someone with power over girls like Cecilia Brooks and Susie Palmer. And with great power comes great responsibility, so I try my best to keep him in check—to keep him from becoming SuperDouche.
Still, I can’t help thinking about how he’s so much farther along than I am. It’s like everyone else in school is competing to beat each other’s high scores and I’m still trying to put the batteries in my controller.
“G’night, Drewchebag,” I say into the dark. But he’s already asleep and he answers me with a loud drunken snore.
THREE
“NOW THAT I’M a woman, I’m going to order an espresso,” Danielle says from the driver’s seat on our way to Dunkin’ Donuts the next afternoon. “That’s the little one without any milk and sugar, right?”
“Yeah, and it tastes like gasoline,” Ava answers from shotgun. “Besides, you’ve put five Splendas in your coffee since seventh grade. I don’t think one magical night can change that.”
We’ve just spent all morning helping clean Andrew’s house—scrubbing down counters, mopping the floors, shoveling the driveway so everyone’s footprints and tire tracks are gone. Andrew’s mom is a bit intense about the house—she refers to her bedroom as “the sanctuary” and spends so much time at Crate and Barrel she probably gets the employee discount. So we know she’ll notice if something is out of place. The morning after a party is always a several-hour ordeal if you’re nice enough to stick around. Guys like Jason Ryder never do.
I have this idea in my head that things will be different once I get to California, that the kids there are classy and drink wine with their pinkies out, that the guys don’t get drunk on Keystone Light and then try to smoke weed out of the empty can. But maybe people are the same everywhere.
We’ve been sent on a dumpster drive, so the car is piled with bags of trash we’re supposed to drop—empty bottles and cans that we couldn’t leave as evidence inside the house. I’m in the back seat with Hannah, who looks a little green, probably from the smell wafting out of the trash bags. Unfortunately for all of us, Ava loves musical theater, so we’re currently listening to a song from Wicked that’s about three octaves too high for the day after a party.
“For the love of God, can we turn this off?” Danielle reaches for the stereo, but Ava slaps her hand away.
“No! ‘Defying Gravity’ is literally the best song of all time. Are you telling me this doesn’t make you feel something?”
“Yeah,” Danielle says. “It makes me feel like I want to die.”
“Careful,” Ava says. “I could put on Cats instead. Cats is terrifying.”
Ava has been the star of every school musical since freshman year. She’ll be at NYU next year with Hannah, and although their majors are different, the image of the two of them exploring New York City together makes my heart hurt if I think about it for too long.
“Is there a musical where all the songs are just relaxing ocean sounds? Let’s listen to that,” Hannah says, leaning her head against the window.
We’re on a curvy back road lined on either side with pine trees. Prescott is full of roads like these, carving through the middle of nowhere. Downtown is only a four-block strip lined with shops and restaurants. In the summer, the nearby lake draws tons of tourists: families with inner tubes and giant tubs of sunscreen, or hikers with backpacks and dreadlocks passing through on the Appalachian Trail. Fall brings the leaf-peepers, city people from New York or Boston who drive so slowly on the roads they’re a hazard to traffic. But in early March, we’re a ghost town.