I scratched the bottom of my
chin. My face felt so tight. I pushed my elbows against my knees. “Look, I’m
sorry about what you saw in the kitchen. If I had known you were gonna be home
so early, I never would have done that, anything like that. And it’s just so
mortifying to me that you would’ve seen me—”
“Sydney.”
I stopped. “What?”
“I’m happy for you. Evan's a
good guy, and I know how much you care about him. I just hope he cares about
you, the way I do.”
I teared up a little, despite
my best efforts not to. I hugged him, and said, “Thank you, Lukas. Your support
on this means everything to me.”
“Of course. What are friends
for?” He rested his head on my shoulder. We both stayed quiet for a moment. “So,”
Lukas finally said, “was Evan going down on you before
you had the waffle, or after?”
I slugged him in the shoulder,
and we both laughed real hard, real fast, as we lay back against his bed.
Lukas and I didn’t say much
after that. But I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
Who was going to have the
louder bedroom this summer?
Chapter 24
“Happy birthday to you… happy
birthday to you…”
The boys were singing, and I
was begging them to stop. I pushed my hand over Evan’s mouth, but he pushed it
away and kept belting out the stupid song. Lukas and Robert weren’t helping
matters either; they sang at the top of their lungs, their arms wrapped around
each other's backs. The waiter dropped the chocolate frosted ice cream cake on
the center of the table.
“Happy birthday dear Sydney…
happy birthday to
you!”
Evan pulled a lame plastic
birthday hat over my head, and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.
I gestured to the yellow
cardboard hat, as Lukas took a picture of me. “I hate you guys so much,” I
said, and promptly blew out the lone lit candle. “I didn’t even think they
had
cake here. That’s why I picked this
place!”
“They don't,” Evan said. “Only
green tea ice cream. I had to stop at a little mom-and-pop store before I
picked you up. First name Baskin, last name Robbins.” He swiped a glob of the
chocolate frosting from the cake and brought it to my mouth. “Open wide.”
I smiled, and did as my
boyfriend said. Evan brushed his finger against my bottom lip, and I sucked the
scrumptious frosting right off.
“Wow,” Robert said, sitting
across from us. “I think I just caught a glimpse of your wedding video. You
gonna let him lick some frosting off your finger, too, Sydney?”
I shook my head. “Hell, no. You
think I'm sharing any of this? No way!”
When Robert and Lukas stabbed
their forks into the cake, both terrified that I was being serious, I laughed
and grabbed the closest knife.
“Only kidding, you two,” I
said, and shook my head again. It turned out I wasn't the only one with a sweet
tooth at the table. “All right, who wants the first slice—oww!” I dropped
the knife.
“What?” Evan asked. He looked
down at my hands. “Oh no, did you cut yourself?”
I grabbed a napkin and
pressed it against my index finger. “I just nicked it, I’m fine.”
Evan grabbed another knife
and started cutting into the cake, as I sucked on my tiny wound and continued
to dab at it with the napkin. When I flexed my finger up and down, a small
trickle of blood oozed out. It seemed fitting, really: the gruesome reality
that the fun and games of this glorious summer were coming to an abrupt end,
and the horrors of classes and midterms and deadlines were about to begin.
I hated my birthday, not just
because I hated birthdays in general, which I did; I hated it because it was
always on the weekend before school started, at the end of August. Ever since I
was a kid, all the fun from my birthday was drained away because I had that
scary first day of school looming in the near future. Sometimes my birthday would
actually fall on the first day of school, like in the third grade, when my
gifts on the dining room table included a backpack, a thermos, and a bouquet of
sharpened pencils.
I had particularly mixed
feelings about my birthday this year; the start of school meant I wouldn't get
to spend as much time with Evan. In the month we were together following that
memorably dangerous day at Runyon Canyon, we spent almost every waking moment
together—from lounging around on the beach and taking long road trips, to
boring ourselves silly in art galleries and picking out the craziest new foods
at Trader Joe’s. I slept over at his place, he slept over at my place more, and
we just generally slept together, a lot. Probably enough to make any other
young couple go insane, with exhaustion, with boredom, or both. But when it
came to Evan, enough was not a word in my vocabulary. And now with our classes
starting on Monday, and with Evan trying to balance school with a part-time internship
at a local law office, our time was going to be limited to the weekends—and
that's if we were lucky.
“Would you like another
bottle of wine for the table?” the waiter asked, as Evan passed out the last
slice of cake.
Evan looked at me, for
permission, and I shrugged. I thought we had enough, but he said, “We’ll get
one more of the same, please. Thanks.”
“Right away.” Before he
departed, the waiter made an obvious glance toward my glass of wine, which,
unlike the other empty glasses on the table, was still half-f.
That was the other difficult
part of my birthday this year: turning twenty-one. I didn’t have the excuse any
longer. I couldn’t say, “Still underage, still a kid, maybe next time.” Even
though I’d had a fake ID since freshman year, I only used it when Lukas
pressured me into it. Now that I was twenty-one, I was going to have to start
acting like the other lame kids my age who waited too long and had to finally catch
up on their drinking. I knew one little glass of wine was about the equivalent
of having an unsweetened fruit punch, but I still refrained from going
overboard, even tonight. I didn’t care that it was my birthday, and that I was
supposed to be the one drowning myself in alcohol. What if I was the only one
sober enough to drive? I didn’t need to drink to have a good time. Evan knew that
about me. Night after night after night.
“So Sydney,” Lukas said, as
he dug his fork into the cake, “what’d you wish for?”
I took a bite of the sinfully
rich dessert, and shook my head. “I didn’t wish for anything.” It was the
truth. Ever since my fifth birthday, when I wished my new dog Maximus to stay
with me forever and ever, only for him to get run over by a truck the following
morning, I always cleared my head before I approached a lit candle.
“Oh, come on. You have to
wish for
something
.”
I enjoyed a second bite, then
set my fork down. “All right, all right. Here’s my wish.”
Robert looked at Lukas and whispered,
as if I couldn’t hear him, “But if she tells us, it won’t come true.” Lukas
slapped his boyfriend’s hand, and nodded toward me.
I cleared my throat, and
raised my glass. “I wish that the four of us have a healthy, and very happy,
junior year.”
“Here, here,” Evan said. The
second bottle of wine came just in time; the waiter poured it for Lukas,
Robert, and Evan. When he finished, we tapped our glasses together, and I took another
sip of the spicy Zinfindel.
I sighed, quietly. I was
twenty-one, and I was still scared to drink. I hated forcing myself to always be
the designated driver, but what if they all started slurring their words and stumbled
out of the restaurant forgetting their own names? I didn't want anyone crashing
the car on the way home. I had to play it safe. If anyone I loved ever got hurt
because I let loose for even just one single night, it would break me forever.
I scooted out the left side
of the table. “I’m going to the bathroom. Nobody touch my cake, all right?”
Lukas waited for me to stand
up, and then he hovered his fork over my barely touched slice.
I spun around. “Hey! You
better not!”
He put his hands up, like he
was under arrest. “Only kidding.”
“I’m watching you, all of
you,” I said, playfully, and then leaped down the three steps to the main floor
of the restaurant.
I passed by the overcrowded
sushi bar and entered the ladies’ restroom. It was quiet inside, obviously
empty. I went to the stall in the back and took a seat. I closed my eyes, tried
to relax. Oh, how I hated birthdays.
The bathroom door opened, and
someone with loud heels marched inside. She stopped at the sink and washed her
hands.
I finished up, flushed, and
stepped out of the stall. The girl was still standing in front of the mirror. I
could only see the back of her, but she looked like she was re-applying
lipstick. She wore a skimpy black-and-white-striped dress, and had straight
blonde hair that dangled down past her shoulders. I approached the sink next to
her.
I ran my hands under the
faucet, applied the foamy soap. I looked at my face in the mirror. I didn’t
realize how much I had overdone my make-up before I left the apartment. I wet
my pinky with the warm water and brushed off some of the eyeliner. I reached
for a paper towel, but the girl beside me blocked the dispenser.
“Umm, excuse me,” I said.
“Could you hand me a paper towel?”
“Sure thing,” she said, and
she grabbed two.
“Thanks. I—”
I screamed, and struck my
back against the hand dryer. It turned on full blast behind me.
“Whoa, what the fuck!” the
girl shouted, taking two steps back. “What the hell's the matter with you?”
I brought my hand to my
chest, tried to breathe. I looked at her again. Squinted. “Oh. Oh my God. It’s
you
.”
She stared at me, harshly. “I'm
sorry, do I know you?”
I looked away from her for a
second, took a long and deep breath. “Yes, we met at your sister’s funeral.” I
wanted to crawl under the nearest stall and hide for the rest of the night.
“I’m so embarrassed. I don't know why I screamed. It’s just… you look
so
much like Melanie.”
She took a few deep breaths
herself, and said, “Trust me, I know. I’ve heard it my whole life.”
“I'd imagine so.” I pressed
my lips together and nodded, awkwardly. “Again, I'm really sorry.”
“It's fine, don't worry about
it,” she said. She tapped her fingers against her chin. “Wait a minute. You're
Sydney, right?”
“Yes. And you’re…” I
hesitated. Went blank. What the hell was her name?
“Michelle. Hi.” She reached her
hand toward me. I had screamed in her face, had forgotten her name—and
she still wanted to shake my hand.
“Michelle, of course. It’s
nice to see you again.” I grabbed her hand, shook it real fast, and tried to seem
happy to see her. She looked so eerily similar to Melanie that she could have
been her twin. At least at the funeral the girl had worn her hair a little
shorter; now her hair was exactly the same length Melanie’s had been the
weekend of her death.
“So, special occasion?” she
asked.
I stared at her, bewildered.
I had no idea what she was talking about. But then she pointed to the top of my
head.
“Oh!” I took off my stupid
hat. “Yeah, it’s my birthday.”
“Oh really? Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” I tapped the hat
against my side. I wanted to get back to the table, but she had me
cornered.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.” I faked a smile.
She took a step closer to me
and flashed a big grin, like she wanted my autograph. “Twenty-
one
, how cool is that! Are you here with
your friends?” She took the hat from me, caressed the flimsy thing with her
sharp fingernails.
“Yeah. My roommate and his
boyfriend. And also my…” I stopped. My mouth hung open for a second. I couldn’t
tell her about Evan, no way. At least not yet. “I'm just here with some friends.
And actually, I should be heading back. They’re probably wondering what the
hell I’m doing in here.”
“Tell them you needed to get
a good scream off your chest,” Michelle said, with a creepy smile.
I nodded, but narrowed my
eyes a little. What an odd thing to say. “Well, it was nice seeing you. Are you
holding up okay?” I immediately hated myself for asking the question. Now I
would probably never get back to the group.
“Yeah, I've been okay. It's
been a tough summer, but it's getting better. What about you?”
I pursed my lips. “It’s been
hard. Melanie and I, we... well...
we weren't super close, but I cared about her. A lot.”
“I know. She cared about you,
too. She talked about you
all
the
time.”
I crossed my arms. Suddenly I
was in no rush to leave the restroom. “She did?”
“Mmm hmm,” she said. “She
said you were one of her best friends. That no one else got her the way you
did.”