Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2) (5 page)

Uh oh.
I shook my head, hoping Liesel would stop.
Not now. Please, no.

The table
started rumbling, and the glasses on top started tilting back and forth.
Everyone, particularly my grandparents, looked about two seconds away from
screaming at the top of their lungs.

“Yes!
Yes! A hundred times, yes!”
 

And then, the
shaking stopped.

“What the hell…”
my dad said.

Two tears
dropped down Liesel’s cheeks as she put her appropriate finger out and let me
wrap the ring around it. She leaned forward even further, kissed me on the
lips, and wrapped her arms around me. “Cameron, I love you… I love you so
much…”

It wasn’t until
I made my way back up to my feet that I noticed the lack of enthusiasm from
others at the table—they all seemed to be in a daze from the momentary
shaking, which everyone probably assumed was some brief earthquake, and not the
simple result of Liesel becoming a bit overjoyed. Kimber was politely clapping,
teary-eyed, and Darlene seemed happy for me. But my mom and dad looked in a
daze, like I had just smacked them across their faces with a ping-pong mallet.

“This cake looks
amazing, Mom,” I said, returning to my seat at the dinner table.

---

“They
didn’t take it well, huh?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, at least
you were able to deliver a blow that matched or exceeded that disease you had
last spring.”

Wesley removed
his sunglasses and fastened them to the top of his tight black shirt. My best
friend since elementary school, he was tanner and leaner than ever. I hadn’t
seen him since we bid each other adieu last August, with me staying in Reno as
he departed for USC film school in Los Angeles. I couldn’t believe in four
short months he had already changed his appearance to such a drastic degree. He
didn’t look like Wesley anymore. He had lost his hippie dreadlocks, as well as
that famous pair of brown pants he wore three-hundred-and-fifty-seven days out
of the year. His tight black jeans, matched with the black shirt, made him look
so Hollywood.

He grabbed his
gingerbread latte and sat down across a small table from me, crossing his legs
in a way that suggested he was a celebrity, or, at least, the most important
person in this small coffee shop. “You look good, Cam.”

“So do you.”

“I mean, you
look a whole lot better now than you did at the end of our senior year, that’s
for sure!”

I didn’t try to
laugh.

“Sorry,” he
said. “Is it too soon to joke about everything that happened?”

I shrugged. “No,
I mean, after all the time that’s passed it almost feels like it never
did
happen.”

He smiled. “Well
that’s good, I guess. How’s your family doing?”

“They’re fine.”

“And Liesel?”

“She’s the
greatest.”

Wesley tapped
his already half-empty cup against the table and shook his head. “I can’t
believe you’re getting married. Settling down already, huh?”

“I don’t really
look at it as
settling down
. I look
at it as starting afresh, a whole new life, with the person I love.”

“But we’re
eighteen. You don’t want to have sex with anyone else the rest of your life?”

I cracked my
knuckles and took a sip of my hot tea. “You’re one to talk. Please tell me,
Wes, that you’ve finally gotten some.”

“You’ll be happy
to know I have.”

“Good.”

“But you won’t
want to know who to.”

I was stumped.
Isn’t Wes the only person I know in L.A.?
“Tell me you didn’t screw Paris Hilton.”

“Nope. Tried.
She doesn’t go for hot geeks.”

I pondered.
“Mary Kate Olsen?”

He shook his
head. “I hooked up with Charisma.”

I thought my brain
would explode. “Come again?”

“You heard me.”

“Uhh… how…
what…”

“It’s a long
story. She messaged me on Facebook. Wanted to make a good impression on me,
since she’s trying to get her whole acting thing off the ground. Let’s just say
I couldn’t keep my hands off her.”

I started
massaging my forehead. “Wes, I dated Charisma for almost all of senior year,
and she never gave it up for me. You’re telling me she gave it up for you in
one day
?”

“Gave it up?
Cam, I hate to break it to you. The girl’s gotten around.”

I put my hands
up in the air. I wanted to change the subject. “I don’t want to talk about
Charisma.”

Wesley
re-arranged himself in his chair. “You don’t still have feelings for her, do
you?”

“Of course not.
I haven’t thought about her in forever. That girl was a total bitch. She had no
sympathy for me. At all.”

Wesley nodded.
“Yeah, I guess when you were going through all that you saw who your true
friends were, didn’t you?”

 
“Yeah… you know, Wes… about that…”

“What?”

“I never
properly thanked you… you know… for what you did for me.”

He took a sip of
his latte and eyed me with anticipation for what I was to say next. “What did I
do?”

“You know. That
video you made for me. The photo montage. You didn’t exploit my disease. You
easily could’ve…”

He shook his
head and put his hand out to stop me. “Cam, if there’s anything four months at
USC has taught me, it’s that to get ahead in life, you have to be merciless
with others, including your friends. Last spring I was devastated by what
happened to you. I really was. And I wasn’t about to turn in a video for my
film class, or to you, that showed the horrors of your final days. That
would’ve been too traumatic… at the time.”

“Yes, thank
you,” I said. “I just think it showed a lot about your character—”

“But, you know…
some time has passed now…”

I didn’t know
where he was going with this. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I waited
until I got to L.A… when I could really clear my head, you know?”

I shook my head.
No, I don’t know.

“And then I
looked at my footage again. You know, there was some great stuff in there.”

“Footage from
what? When I was getting older?”

“Yeah, and
enough time had passed that I was able to bring a fresh eye to the material,
and to the kind of film I initially intended to make—”

I scooted my
chair back. I couldn’t believe my ears. “What are you saying, Wes?”

He bit down on
his tongue. “Cam, don’t freak out. I haven’t done anything yet. But I just
wanted to see… you know… if I could get your permission to make the movie I
originally intended to make… the story of those hellish two-and-a-half months.”

“
What?
I thought we were past this.”

“Plus, now
there’s an ending.”

“What ending?” I
was upset, to say the least. I didn’t realize how loud I was being until I eyed
at least five customers behind Wesley staring at the two of us with obvious
frustration.

He smiled. “You
and Liesel floated up in the air at graduation for nearly thirty seconds. The
two of you said it was a special effect, some kind of optical illusion with
invisible wires…”

I stood up from
my chair. At this moment I felt two things—one, that Los Angeles had
completely robbed Wesley of any humanity he had left, and two, that I didn’t
want to ever see him again. “I’m outta here.”

“Cam… hold on a
sec…”

I stormed out of
the coffee shop, and he followed close behind.

“Cam, don’t get
mad.”

“Mad? Why would
I be mad? My best friend has turned into an egomaniacal piece of shit. And
you’ve only been in L.A. for
four
months!
I shudder to think what you’ll be like four
years
from now…”

“I just want to
know what happened, Cam. Something happened that night, didn’t it? At
graduation?”

I unlocked my
car door and jumped inside. I turned on the ignition and looked out the window.

Wesley stopped,
calmly put on his sunglasses, and lightly tapped on the windshield. My face was
red with anger but I decided to roll the window down. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I
got carried away.”

“Yes, you did.”
I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel. Unexpectedly I started to tear
up. “Please… Wes. Please
destroy that
footage
. I don’t want to ever see it. All I’ve been trying to do these last
few months is forget what happened. If you bring it all back… I don’t know if
I’ll ever be able to recover…”

Wesley removed
his sunglasses. I could see in his eyes that the mind-numbing time in L.A.
slowly turning him into a total douchebag finally started to erase itself from
his face. “You’re right… you’re totally right.”

“Promise me you
won’t do it.”

“I promise. I’m…
I’m sorry. Forget I mentioned it.”

“OK.”

“OK.”

“Put
it in the fire,” I said, “and just let it burn.”

---

The alcohol was
flowing through the house, and not even my parents seemed to mind. The one nice
thing about having younger parents, ones still in their early forties, is that
they weren’t much sticklers about my consuming alcohol, especially around the
holidays. And when they did strike up a fuss, I had to always remind them that
I’d technically already turned twenty-one, and that it had been legal for me to
drink for months now.

Liesel appeared
before me in the downstairs family room area, as I exited the bathroom. Kimber
stood up behind her. “Did you go number one or number two?”

“Number three,”
I said, kissing Liesel on the cheek and peering down to see that they had been
playing the board game Clue. “Was it Professor Plum or Miss Scarlett?”

“It was both,”
Kimber said. “They’re in love.”

“That’s not how
the game works,” a cracking voice said from the couch in the back of the room.
Kimber’s new on-and-off boyfriend Tommy, who looked a bit like Wesley but with
blond hair, tiptoed up to her before he started tickling her. I still couldn’t
get over the bizarreness of seeing my little sister trade kisses with a member
of the opposite sex.

“It is midnight
yet?” I asked, pulling Liesel close to me. “I really, really want this year to
be over.”

“Thirty more
minutes.”

“You’re not
gonna turn me into a mouse when the clock strikes twelve, are you?”

Tommy and
especially Kimber gave me confused glances.

“I’ll try not
to,” she said with an awkward smile before turning around. “What do you say,
Kimber? Another round?”

“Nah, I’m bored.
Come on, Tommy. Let’s go hang out in my room.”

I stopped the
two lovebirds in their tracks, holding my right arm out like it was a gated
fence. “No way in hell. You guys are staying where I can see you.”

But Kimber
catapulted herself through my arm before I could stop her. “You’re one to talk,
Cam. You just turned eighteen and you’re already getting
married
!”

I didn’t say
anything back as Kimber pulled Tommy into her bedroom down the hall and slammed
the door behind her.

I smiled at
Liesel. “They’ll be fine.”

She nodded.
“Sure they will.”

We made our way
upstairs, where my parents were watching the countdown on one of the local news
stations, drunk from a couple of bottles of white wine.

My mom shifted
in her seat, petting our cockapoo Cinder on her lap, and smiled at the two of
us. “You guys ready? It’s almost midnight.”

“More than
you’ll ever know, Mom.”

My dad turned
toward Liesel and me and furrowed his eyebrows, suggesting he was disgusted
with the wine, the television program, or the two of us. “Hey you two.”

“Hey Dad.”

Liesel crossed
her arms and took a few steps back. “I’m gonna use the bathroom,” she said and
made her way down the hallway.

“I’ll just be
here!” I shouted.

“Cameron, can I
ask you a question?” my dad asked, pouring himself his umpteenth glass of wine.
My mom stared at him with trepidation.

“What, Dad?”

“You know I love
you, and you know I want you to be happy,” he said, drinking his wine more like
he would a glass of water. “But come on… Cam…
marriage
?”

“Honey, let’s
talk about this later,” my mom said, raising her voice, my dog jumping up on
her lap like she could tell the mood around her was turning sour.

“I know you’ve
been through a lot,” my dad continued. “I mean, we all have. But you’re barely
eighteen. It’s a little premature, don’t you think?”

I just shook my
head. I couldn’t believe my dad was talking to me this way minutes before New
Year’s. Liesel and I had crashed a party an hour earlier at the house of a guy
named Clark, but police broke it up before the clock struck eleven. Wesley
alerted me to a party downtown, but Liesel and I decided to just trek back up
to my place, a decision that I was at this moment regretting.