may

“Let’s go!” Dad cried. He clapped his hands with evil glee. “Wake up!”

The light was harsh and yellow and I hated him for a second. “I hate you,” I muttered into the mattress. It was the day I was to visit Josh.

“What?” he said. “Did you say you want to take a shower? Okay!”

He practically ran down the hall, and I heard the shower turn on.

“The shower’s on! Don’t waste water! Go! Go!”

I sighed, squinted at him, and trudged to the bathroom and got in the shower, feeling heavy and sickly. As I got dressed, I smelled bacony goodness below, which drew me downstairs despite myself.

“A good breakfast to start your day,” Dad said, placing a plate in front of me. It was still a little dark out, and gray like the day before. The kitchen blared with bright light and NPR.

“The directions are pretty easy,” Dad said, handing me a printout as I dug into a bacon-and-egg smiley-face man. He had even bought the hazelnut-flavored cream that I liked. I turned the coffee nearly white and added about three pounds of sugar to it. “I also put a copy in the car and one in your coat pocket, just in case. And I put a roll of quarters in the car so you will have money for the tolls in case for some reason the E-ZPass doesn’t work.”

“Thanks,” I said, sopping up egg yolk with a bite of toast.

“There’s also a first-aid kit in the glove compartment in case of emergency,” he said. “And if you get pulled over, don’t get out of the car. Keep the windows rolled up until the cop shows you some I.D.”

“Dad, I’ve taken driver’s ed. I even did well! I have this thing called a driver’s license. It’s like an award they give you when you finish.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Go brush your teeth!” He whisked the plate from under my chin. There was still one tiny drip of yolk left, but he put it on the floor, where Superhero cleaned it with one wipe. “Go!”

I ran upstairs to brush my teeth. I grabbed my duffel bag and went back downstairs. It was time to go.

“Cecily! Wait!” Dad came hoofing down the driveway before I even backed out onto the street. “Give this to your brother. It’s for dinner and other stuff. I will be checking with him that he received the full amount.” He handed me a wad of money. “And I love you. And I hope . . . ah . . . I hope you have fun.”

“Okay, Dad,” I said. “You know, I’m not going to China.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m glad to be rid of you for a few days. You stink.”

It was time to go.

 

 

Within a few hours, I emerged in good old Wisconsin. I followed Dad’s directions until I reached a small lake and a dome appeared on the horizon. I drove toward it and suddenly, after traveling the cold veins of the highway and passing roadside oases and crappy chain restaurants, I was spit out into a small town, with cute restaurants, cute theaters, cute stores, and young people strolling around. This was it. I turned right and found a parking space. I pulled out my cell phone.

After I’d described where I had put the car (somewhere near a bar, and a store, and a coffee shop), Josh found me and helped me with my stuff. I didn’t recognize him until he came up to the car; he wore a maroon sweatshirt and his hair had gotten a little longer, curly and unrulier on top than usual, plus he had a few days’ beard.

“Hey,” I said, getting out of the car. I wasn’t sure whether we should hug. We typically only hugged when we were expected to.

“Hey,” he said. “Pop the trunk.” Instead of hugging, he went to help with my stuff, which was more efficient anyway.

We walked down the street, turning and heading past a church, then some houses that looked like they should have been condemned, except that they all had neon beer signs in the windows, indicating to me that they were indeed occupied, either by college students or people who worked for the Miller factory.

Josh led me to a brick building, and we hiked up two flights of stairs. “Here we are.” He opened the door. It had never really occurred to me that Josh could be living anywhere other than our house. Whenever I had heard about his freshman-year dorm, I just imagined a version of his room at home, only with a roommate. This was an actual apartment. The living room was carpeted in dingy brown, and the window looked out across the alley, so we had a good view of his neighbor’s truck on cinder blocks. Josh flipped on a television, and soon the room was illuminated. It obviously provided the main source of light for the place.

“Jesus, Josh. How big is that thing?”

“You like it? It’s a plasma screen. Oh, you should call Dad, probably,” Josh said, handing me the phone. “He only told me, like, ninety times to have you call when you got in.”

“Hi, love,” said Dad after I called, and immediately, I heard Germaine screaming in the background about whether I had gone into her bathroom.

“Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I made it and I’m alive. Josh does not live in a hellhole and I drove the speed limit the entire time.”

“Hold on a second,” Dad said, his voice rising with annoyance. “I can’t hear you because your sister is home and she’s speaking right now.” I heard the phone rattle and then “WOULD YOU SHUT UP?” I smirked at the phone.

“Okay, well, I’m glad to hear that everything is fine,” he said, getting back on the phone. “Did you give Josh that cash?”

“I spent it at a strip club off the highway,” I said, pulling the wad out of my pocket and handing it to Josh, who didn’t seem to find it weird that I was handing him a bunch of money.

“Nice,” said Dad. “Put your brother on the phone, please. Have fun this weekend, okay? I want you to look around at the campus and talk to people, but I want you to have fun, too.”

Josh took the phone and asked Dad about a paper he was working on for class. I looked out the window. A couple of girls were lying on towels in the grubby yard across the street, listening to iPods, their tank tops folded up to show their blindingly white stomachs. It was only May, and it was cloudy.

“Well,” Josh said when he got off the phone, “do you want a little tour of the campus?”

“Sure. Oh, before I forget, Germaine said she wanted a something Bucky shirt.”

“Fuck ’em Bucky?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

He snorted. “What is she going to do with a Fuck ’em Bucky shirt?”

“I don’t know, maybe she wants to give it to Conrad. Anyway, I’ve heard so much about these famous Fuck ’em Bucky shirts and I still have no idea what they are, so I’m just curious now what it is we’re talking about.”

“I’ll show you,” Josh said. “I’ll buy Germaine’s and I’ll get one for you, too.”

We walked down the street and turned onto the main drag, which was lined with bars, restaurants, and head shops, which had small clumps of dingy-looking kids gathered in front. We turned into one of the numerous college apparel stores named things like Badger Bin and Madison Madhouse. The store was brightly lit, and racks and racks of T-shirts and sweatshirts and shorts and mugs stretched to the back of the store. Clothing hung from round displays, on the walls, on shelves. It had the smell of fresh sweatshirts and iron-on decals. A local radio station blared a weird mix of heavy metal and hip-hop.

The university name was printed on everything, from underwear to child-size cheerleading uniforms to gigantic beer steins. My favorite was a T-shirt that said UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN on it over a pattern of Hawaiian-looking waves, as if surf was always up in the Midwest.

We reached the back of the store, and Josh pointed up on the wall. A handful of T-shirts featured a crabby-looking badger puffing out his chest, wearing a turtleneck sweater and turning up his middle finger (claw?) at the wearer. And they said FUCK ’EM BUCKY!

“Bucky?” I was dismayed to see a cute animal behaving so rudely.

We strolled around campus. I liked that there were some wooded areas and was intrigued by a hill that Josh said students used cafeteria trays to go sledding down when it snowed. He kept pointing out buildings that I instantly forgot the name and purpose of. The library, the arts building, the gym, the bad dorms, the good dorms, the frat houses. They were all nice, but frankly I didn’t care that much about where people took their science classes or didn’t.

“So what do you think?” Josh asked as we stopped in front of some hulking building so I could tie my shoe.

“It’s very nice. Brick,” I said. I hoped he wasn’t going to give me a quiz like Dad, because I wasn’t sure what this one was, even though he had just told me. The astrology building?

“No, I mean, you know. Overall.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It looks like campus back home, only different.” This was true. It was even on a lake, although one inferior to Lake Michigan. “It’s more spread out. But otherwise the same.”

“Yeah,” said Josh. “In a lot of ways, they’re all sort of the same.”

“That kind of sucks,” I said.

He shrugged. I wished I were home.

 

 

Later, after we’d seen most of campus, Angie met us on the patio of the student union for dinner. It was still a little chilly and gray, but with our jackets on, it wasn’t too bad out. It was nice sitting on the lake, even if it was a lesser lake than what I was used to. Groups of students, adults, and families with little kids clustered around the metal tables scattered about, enjoying the tolerable weather. I had to admit, I had been looking forward to seeing Angie. I had simply given up on trying not to like her.

“So, Cecily,” said Angie, “do you think you might want to go here?”

“I probably won’t—I didn’t apply anywhere else, and it looks like Kenyon will take me back if, you know, everything works out. But I don’t see why I wouldn’t otherwise. What are the people like? Is it, like, a big party school?” I cringed saying that phrase.

“Sure,” said Josh.

“It’s not annoying?”

“Sometimes it is,” Josh said. “But I just think that you can’t really get away with a lot of the same stuff once you graduate, so I enjoy it. I mean, I hope I don’t become one of those guys who is a college guy after college or anything.”

“You probably will be,” I said.

“Thanks,” Josh said.

 

 

The next morning I woke up in Josh’s bed and briefly panicked when I couldn’t remember where I was. Then, when I did, I panicked again, realizing I still had another day to spend here, away from home. The room felt stuffy and hot. It was sure to be a long day.

After I showered (with the tiny dried-up sliver of the only thing in the bathroom that resembled soap), I stood in the steamy bathroom, almost crying from exhaustion as I tried to comb out my hair. I had forgotten a hairbrush, and the only thing available in the bathroom was a tiny black plastic comb, the kind they give out on class picture day. It was totally inefficient in my hair, which could be so thick sometimes that I was convinced a family of birds could live in it with no problem. I wondered if it would be acceptable just for me to leave the comb in there. Finally, I half combed it out with my fingers and pulled it back with a rubber band. By the time I was done, I was hot and sweaty.

Josh was sitting on the couch watching TV when I got out of the bathroom.

“You look uncomfortable,” he said.

“I am,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

“Well, I went and got us bagels while you were in the shower,” he said. “One of the perks of getting up early on a Saturday: you get first pick, since everyone is still sleeping it off.” He heaved himself off the ugly plaid couch to grab a coffee off the counter. Slightly mollified, I picked an everything bagel from the paper bag.

“Sorry to keep you from going out and getting hammered,” I said.

“Well, I don’t do it that much anyway,” Josh said. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I didn’t really know that was an option in college,” I said.

“What?”

“Not drinking.”

“Well,” Josh said, stirring his coffee.

“But you drink.”

“Sure. But not so much now that I’m dating Angie. We’re not really the get-shitfaced-together kind of couple.”

“What did you do before Angie?” I crammed bagel halves into the toaster and prayed that they wouldn’t get stuck and catch on fire.

“Sure, I went out. I bought a fake I.D. It was the worst. It was from Wyoming, supposedly. The photo didn’t even fit into the frame that well. There was a little space of just clear plastic to the side.”

“Did you like it?”

“The I.D.?”

“No, going out.”

“Sure. Why not? But after a while it feels like a routine, I guess. The same people going to the same places, dancing to the same songs. And I only really went out on the weekends; some people go out more than they stay in, so I don’t know what that was like for them.”

“What do you do when you don’t go out and drink?”

“There are things to do on campus. Cheap movie night. Concerts. Some big bands and comedians come in.” We settled on the couch and finished our bagels in silence as Josh channel-flipped on the huge TV. Part of me wanted to know if this is what I came for—hanging out on the couch, which I could just as easily do at home—but at least I was watching TV in a different state. That had to count for something.

After breakfast, Angie came by. She and Josh were going to multitask—showing me more of Madison while simultaneously buying supplies for the party that was to come tonight, the one that would inevitably publicly reveal my many issues and probably scar me for life. “Are you having fun so far?” asked Angie as we headed to the car.

“I haven’t done much so far,” I said. “But sure, I’m having a good time.”

“Cecily isn’t doing anything at home anyway,” said Josh. “So this isn’t much of a vacation for her. It’s like a weekend-long playdate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “And anyway, screw you. I’ve been working and going to class. I haven’t just been sitting around.” We had reached the car. Angie was standing in front of it, and Josh and I were standing by the driver’s side. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I figured I could drive,” he said.

“I drove up here,” I said. “I know how to fucking drive a car.” My face felt hot and I was embarrassed to be doing this in front of Angie.

“I know,” he said. He stopped and tried again in a quieter voice. “I know. But I know the town better than you, and it might be easier if I’m driving than us yelling directions at you and stressing you out.”

I looked over at Angie, who was carefully studying the hood of the car.

“Fine,” I said, and handed him the keys.

I was ready to have a good, babyish mope in the backseat, but Angie wouldn’t let me sit there.

“You kids are fun to hang out with,” she said.

“Do you have roommates, Angie?” I asked as Josh backed out of the parking spot.

“Yeah,” she said. “I live with five other girls. It’s hell on earth.”

“Jeez,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It sucks unbelievably. And the thing is, they’re all—well, they’re mostly—all my good friends,” she said, “and we still are. But we just can’t live together.”

“How come?” I said.

“Oh you know,” said Josh. “They’re always stealing one another’s boyfriends and being prettier and thinner than one another.”

“I wish that was all bullshit,” she said. “But that’s some of it.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“I think it’s a little easier when you are just in a dorm room, because there’s less to worry about. It’s one room,” she said. “But when you’re in an apartment, there are more common areas. There are groceries to worry about, and the kitchen. And some people don’t know how to do dishes, which is fucking pathetic when you’re twenty years old. Like, wouldn’t you think it was bad to put dishes away when they still had food stuck to them?”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.

“Also,” she said, “if you saw that the garbage hadn’t been taken out for weeks, and there were bugs walking around the garbage, would you take it out? Or would you ignore it until somebody else did it?” Her voice was getting louder.

“I will have to think that one over,” I said.

“I think girls think that living together is going to be this nonstop slumber party. You know, hanging out and doing each other’s nails and eating chocolate and watching sappy movies and holding each other’s hair back when we throw up. But it’s not like that at all. The pressure gets to you, so instead of dealing with it a normal way—the way a guy would, to say, ‘Dude, take out the trash’—girls get really passive-aggressive. I do it, too. I don’t take the garbage out, either. You know why? Because I’m making a statement that I won’t do it. Nobody is noticing it, of course, so it just makes me mad instead. And then, when somebody borrows my curling iron without asking, I blow up at them because I’m so pissed at them already.”

“Then,” said Josh, “there are the groceries.”

“Oh yeah. My roommate Christie is the only one with a car, so we have to go with her every time we go to the store,” said Angie. “Look, by the way, there it is.” We circled around the Capitol, which looked like every other capitol building in the country: it had a dome.

“Whoo,” I said.

“Anyway,” Angie continued, “it’s a big hassle and everybody goes their separate ways once we get to the store and we always end up buying too much stuff to fit in the car. And then people eat one another’s groceries and get into fights.”

“They each have to buy their own milk,” said Josh.

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” she said. “Because God forbid that somebody drink Lola’s special soy milk. Or somebody touch Evelyn’s two percent milk. And then for those of us who drink whole milk, somebody always leaves like a milligram at the bottom and doesn’t replace it.”

“So you drink whole milk?” I said. “Gross.”

“No, I am totally off milk because of all that,” said Angie. “I pour water on my cereal and I drink beer with my cookies.”

 

 

After shopping and lunch, Angie went to the library to get some work done, and Josh and I collapsed on the couch and found a marathon of shows on TV that educated us on how great the seventies were. He promptly fell asleep. I watched a few episodes, learned a lot more about Wonder Woman than I had ever before. I dozed off sometime during 1976 and woke up to my brother pressing a cold can against the back of my neck.

“Beer!” he yelled. I wished I could just go back to sleep and let the party happen around me. I could be very good at pretending to sleep. I felt too warm, too cozy, too nice and safe for a party.

“You know, Josh, I’m not planning on getting all crazy,” I said, sitting up. “I’m not going to dance on the table or break something or make out with a bunch of guys or throw up or take my clothes off or something. So you can stop making the googly party-girl eyes at me because even though I’m the fun sister, I’m sorry, I’m just not that much fun.”

“Are you mad that I’m throwing you a party?” His voice didn’t sound that angry, but the clang the beer can made when he put it down on the fake wood coffee table did.

“It’s for me? Seriously? I never asked for a party, Josh.” I thought of the coming-out parties that I imagined occurred all the time in the South. I don’t know why it was only the South, but that was how it was always in my head. Sixteen-year-old girls emerging from Tara in elbow-length gloves and beehive hairdos and saying, “So nice to meet you, Mistah Smith,” and then getting engaged. That was the abbreviated version. The long version involved dancing Virginia reels and drinking punch and much more dialogue.

Josh snorted and turned the TV to a basketball game. I had that horrible sibling moment where you force yourself to say something nice even though you don’t want to.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I am excited. I guess I’m also nervous to meet all your friends. And I’m nervous that if I don’t do something right I’m going to have a terrible time and embarrass you.”

“Cess,” he said. “I’m going to be honest with you. Dad told me it was really important to show you a good time this weekend. Really important. It’s a party. It’s not a test or anything. I might stress out just because it’s my party, but don’t let that affect you. Don’t worry about it so much, okay? You’ve been overthinking everything lately, or something.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re nicer about this than Germaine is.”

“Why, she’s been giving you shit?”

“Eh, kind of. I dunno. I can’t tell if she’s mad that I’m taking a year off. Or just that I’m around.”

“She’s just hating because she would have wanted a year off.”

“Well, she should have taken one.”

“I don’t think Dad would have let her,” said Josh. “Me, either, for that matter.”

“Really?”

“I think he was tougher on Germaine,” Josh said. “I mean, what do I know, but I get that impression. She might be, I dunno, bitter.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Yeah. Drink your beer,” he said. We heard some shouting outside. “Freshmen are always the first ones out,” said Josh. “I remember when I got here, the first weeks of freshman year, sort of drifting around at night desperately trying to get into whatever parties upperclassmen were throwing. I mean, it was only two years ago, but it feels like it was forever ago. It’s kind of embarrassing. Nine hundred of us would go outside and meet up with nine hundred other freshmen and drift around like a swarm of gnats. We’d hear there was a party at one house, go over there and all act like we knew whoever was throwing the party, real suave-like, and run over to the keg and practically suck out whatever foam was left in there.

“We all looked like jerks, I’m sure, because the freshmen this year look like jerks. But I remember not really enjoying the experience: not enjoying the people I was with, or trying to sneak into parties, and certainly not begging for crappy beer. But I think I thought that if I didn’t go out, then nobody would know who I was and I would have no friends, and that I would have lost my one shot. Is that totally lame? It is, isn’t it?” he said, taking a drink from his can. “I guess my advice to you is, when you go to school, don’t go out just because you feel like you won’t be cool if you don’t. Because you probably won’t have a good time, and you’ll just feel stupid, I think.” I hoped I wouldn’t feel that way tonight.

I went to the refrigerator for a refill and headed to the bathroom with beer in hand to shower again before the party. What was my problem? This was going to be fun. I was witty and weird and fun and so was my brother, and everyone was going to be delighted to meet me. I allowed myself to sing a little in the shower.

Afterward, I went into Josh’s room to put on some fresh jeans while he headed into the shower. I came back into the main room and wondered if it would be greedy to get a third beer. Even if I wasn’t actually having a good time, I was doing a good job of convincing myself that it was a possibility, and I didn’t want it to go away.

Somebody then came out of the bathroom who sort of bore a resemblance to my brother, only a lot gayer. He wore dark jeans that looked expensive and a navy striped button-down shirt that was open a little bit at the top but with no undershirt. And he had shaved and put something in his hair. He was wearing cologne. Not a lot, but I could definitely smell it.

I fell off the couch laughing.

“What’s so funny?” asked Josh.

“You’re very pretty, that’s all,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “And you smell like a manly forest in autumn. Very nice.”

“Don’t hate,” he said.

There was a knock at the door.

Angie had on tight, dark jeans; sexy heels; and a low-cut, deep purple top. She was wearing eye shadow and lipstick and looked like a completely different person. She looked good. But I think I probably would have taken a few hours to trust her if she was dressed like this when I first met her. It was a little intimidating. I realized I looked like crap.

“Have you guys been pregaming?” asked Angie.

“Cecily refuses to call it that,” Josh said. “But yes. Do you want a beer?”

“Sure. What have you been up to?” she asked, sitting down. She sparkled and shined and smelled good. I wanted to throw up.

“Nothing. I’m wearing the wrong outfit,” I told her. I was pretty much wearing what I’d been wearing all day long: a variation of what I usually wore to work, a black sweater and jeans. It hadn’t occurred to me to seriously change outfits. Probably because Josh’s apartment didn’t look like it was about to have a party in it, other than the booze and the few bowls of snacks he was starting to put out. Also, I didn’t know that you dressed up for a party at somebody’s house. I should have asked Kate where she had bought her black pants and tank top.

“Aw, you’re fine,” said Angie.

“No,” I said. “Help me.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “What have you got?”

“Not much,” I said. “Help me. I don’t need to look sexy. I need to not look stupid.”

“You don’t look stupid,” she said.

“Come on,” I said. “Please.”

“All right, all right,” Angie said, taking me by the hand and leading me back to Josh’s room. She grabbed an extra beer from the fridge.

“The boots are fine,” she said, taking one of them out of my duffel bag. “Actually, they’re kind of hot. And the jeans will do.”

She dug around in the bag. “Boy, you’re organized. How about this?” She pulled out a basic black tank top.

“I usually just wear that under sweaters or whatever. It’s not very special or anything.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Seriously, you don’t need to worry about this so much.”

“I just don’t want to look like . . . I don’t know. I want to blend in, I guess. You have to know that as we speak, you’re seeing the side of me that makes me very weird, the reason why I’m not in college. So I apologize. I hope you don’t hate me now. I don’t always act like this.” My face burned.

She laughed. “You’re fine. Believe me, I’d rather be helping you out with this stuff than hearing my roommate complain about her yeast infection.”

“For real? Ech.”

“For real,” she said.

“Just don’t make me look like a freak,” I said as we headed to the bathroom. I don’t know why I was trusting Angie with all this. What did I know about her anyway? She was dating my brother. What did that make her an expert in? Well, she did have a boyfriend, was going to parties, and was in college, so things were obviously working out better for her than they were for me.

“Oh, first you want me to help you, now you think I’m going to make you look like a freak?”

“No,” I said. “Look at my hair. Just look at my hair. It’s pathetic.”

“Drink this,” she said, handing me the beer. “Pull out your ponytail holder.”

“My hair’s wet,” I said. “And I don’t have a hair dryer or a straightener gel or pomade or whatever the hell I’m supposed to have.”

“I didn’t know you had such cute curly hair!” she said, fluffing it around my face.

I made a face in the mirror. “It’s stupid,” I said. “That’s why I usually pull it back.” My hair made me look like eighties Cher.

“You never wear it down?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I never got used to it. I had straight hair until I was about eleven or twelve and then boing! It just got like that. I don’t know why. I never figured out what was up with it, and I don’t care to. Sometimes I straighten it, but only when I have four or five hours to kill.”

“I would die for this,” she said.

“You can have it.”

“Hold on.” She opened up the cabinet and got out a little jar.

“What’s that?”

“It’s your brother’s. It’s what he uses to keep his own lovely locks looking so curly and cute.” Angie took a few fingerfuls of goop and ran it through my hair. It smelled like grapefruit.

“All right. So just don’t comb your hair. Or touch it. It’s going to look adorable.”

“Okay,” I said. “What about my face?”

“Well, we can’t do anything about that, I’m afraid,” said Angie. “We’ll just cover it up with a bag and hope everything goes all right.”

“You’re hilarious. Okay, so I stole some makeup from Germaine. I have no idea what I took, though.”

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” she said, poking in the makeup bag, which was decorated very stupidly with little high-heeled shoes and sunglasses and lipsticks. Like a makeup bag was so inherently butch that somebody really needed to dress it up to look feminine.

“This will be good,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

I did and felt her patting something on my eyelids, gently but purposefully.

“You’re good at that,” I said. “I think.”

“Mmm,” she said, concentrating. “Okay, I’m going to put some eyeliner on, so I’m going to stretch your eyelid. Don’t freak.”

“Just don’t stab me in the eye.” She placed a fingertip on the corner of my eye and pulled it to the side slightly, and I felt the pencil on my eyelid.

“I gotta say, if Germaine was my sister, I’d be stealing makeup from her also,” said Angie. “She’s got good stuff. Okay, mascara. Open and look up.”

I opened up my eyes, and she came at me with the wand. I caught sight of us in the mirror and started cracking up.

“What’s so funny? I almost swiped this all across your face.”

“I don’t know.” We could pass for friends going out for the night, normal girls who did normal girly things together, like getting ready for a night out. It was fun but somehow embarrassing.

“Cecily, I can’t tell if you like it or you don’t.”

“I do like it. I haven’t . . . I don’t know.” I couldn’t take my eyes off myself, actually. The eye shadow was a silvery charcoal that was smoky without being too dark and made my eyes look intriguing. I hadn’t seen my bare arms since the summertime, and it looked like my sporadic trips to the gym had helped. And I was pleased with my hair: it was still voluminous but looked under control. And it felt so good to spend fifteen minutes with someone and not fight or talk about college or myself. But I felt strangely bashful and was wary of assuming that Angie was my new best friend all of a sudden. Maybe I should call it a night while the going was good, before I messed anything up.

“You look cute. Not too done up. But cute.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I have to admit it.”

“Give it up,” she said. “Give it up for Cecily. Give it up for me.”

“I’m giving it up,” I said.

We heard some voices in the next room and some thumping around. “Sounds like the guys are here with the keg,” Angie said. “Are you ready to break some hearts?”

“Shut up,” I said. “You’re going to make me self-conscious. I’m trying to act natural.”

We opened the door, but there was no ta da! sound; life did not change to slow-motion so that the guys in the living room messing around with the beat-up keg could stand up and ogle me as I confidently, unself-consciously glided out of the room. I almost tripped when I came out, actually, which was fine because the guys still didn’t look up until Josh introduced me.

“Guys, my sister Cecily,” said Josh. “Cecily, that’s Paulie, George, and Dave.” One was bald; one had longish, greasy hair; and one was cute. In that order. The guys were impressive, sort of scary. They reminded me of the senior football players from when I was a freshman in high school. Like having a herd of buffalo pass by you a few times a day, they were intimidating and interesting, yet I knew I’d never get to know them. But here they were, talking to me.

“Hiya,” said George.

“Aww, you and your brother look alike,” Dave said after shaking my hand. He looked like he could have been Mike’s hunky older football-playing brother. I bet if I asked him to carry me around the rest of the night, he could and wouldn’t get tired. I wondered if he would.

“Hi, boss,” said Paulie to Angie. “How’s Christie? Is she coming by later?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Paulie is in love with Angie’s roommate,” Dave explained to me.

“Seriously, dude, the next time you sleep on our couch, keep your pants on,” Angie said.

“I get hot,” he said.

Josh opened the door, and I heard a piercing scream. I nearly had to cover my ears. I had forgotten that sound, the sound of girls who scream. If I had to say one good thing about my sister, it was that she wasn’t a screamer. I hadn’t heard that noise since high school graduation, when we all did it.

“Hey, bitches!” said the screamer, a short, skinny girl whose movement into the room I could only describe as “bopping.” She bopped into the room. She was wearing an extremely short black skirt and a bright yellow tube top. Her hair was long and straight. It was somehow not blond but not brown, either. It was blah.

“Dave, you are such a dick,” she said, pointing at him. “And you know why.” Before he had time to respond, she asked Josh, “Is Sharky coming tonight?”

“I believe so,” said Josh. I looked at Angie. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen her look anything other than pleasant.

“Yes!” squealed the girl. “Sharky! Have you ever met Sharky?” she asked, suddenly turning to me.

“No,” I said. “I have not.”

“Well, you’ll love him. He’s such a fucking riot!” I didn’t know who this girl was, so I had no idea how she might think I might like this person, but I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t intrigued.

“What’s so great about Sharky?” I asked.

“Who is this bitch?” asked the girl, pointing at me but smiling.

“Beth, this is my baby sis, Cecily,” Josh said.

“Aww, the baby! How old are you?”

“I’m twelve years old,” I said, feeling only twelve when introduced that way.

“Shut up!” said Beth. “Are you really?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “But I was, once.” She doubled over, laughing. Either I was drunk or I was the funniest girl in the Midwest. Maybe both.

“I’m going to piss myself!” she screamed.

“Well, who exactly is Sharky, then?” I asked, feeling exhausted.

“Sharky’s a lot of fun,” said Angie, smiling at me. “He’s a, um, character.”

“I was going to live with Sharky until I found out that he had a problem peeing in people’s closets,” said Josh. “That’s sort of the first thing you’ll learn about him.”

“Gross,” I said.

“Sharky’s really generous, though. He found that chair in his alley and brought it here for us,” said Josh, pointing to a ratty-looking armchair that I had been avoiding all weekend.

“When he’s really drunk, he break-dances,” said George.

“If you’re lucky, he’ll dance with you!” said Beth.

“Great,” I said. This night was getting extremely silly, and it was still early.

I heard a heavy knock, and Paulie opened the door. On the other side, approximately nine thousand people were all waiting to get inside, get drunk, talk to my brother, dance to music, make out, get sweaty, and possibly touch my things.

“Ow!” cried Josh. “What are you doing?”

Without knowing, I had gripped his arm as the door opened. I guess I gripped it kind of hard.

“Can I go?” I whispered. “I can find a coffee shop or a bookstore or something and hang out until the party is over.”

Josh laughed, as people poured in the general vicinity of the keg and the unceremonial stacks of red plastic cups. “No way,” he said. “Sharky’s here!”

I looked over to the doorway, expecting to see Paul Bunyan or the Jolly Green Giant or at least somebody who looked mythical and larger than life, but instead I saw a short, stout guy, built like a fire hydrant. He carried a bottle of what even I recognized to be cheap whiskey. His body was a perfect rectangle. His face resembled a bulldog’s, flat and sort of mean-looking. I didn’t care how fun he was supposed to be; he looked scary to me.

“Cecily, this is Sharky. Sharky, this is my sister—” Josh said. But before I could say anything, I was looking down at the party. Sharky, despite his shortness, had picked me up and lifted me over his head. I felt the breath pushed out of my stomach and for a second I had reconciled myself to the fact that I was going to barf on this guy’s head.

“Put . . . me . . . down,” I tried to say, but I could only whisper.

Finally, he pretty much dropped me on the floor, and I had to act like it didn’t hurt too much, although it did.

“He’s sort of a human tornado,” said Dave, flashing a perfect white grin and all-American good-lookingness in his navy polo shirt and thick brown hair. “Impressive to observe but painful to get in the way of.” He extended a hand toward me to help me up. I was sort of getting a little crush on him.

To their credit, neither Josh nor Angie left me alone during the party, which had been my greatest fear. One or both of them was next to me at all times, introducing me to people. And I had to admit it, most of the people were nice. They actually seemed excited to meet me, excited to tell me about funny things Josh had done, excited to see if I was going to go to Madison. They looked like normal people. Were they actually this nice, or were they just drunk? I couldn’t tell.

Speaking of drunk, I wasn’t. Too much, anyway. I felt a nice, warm buzz, which seemed to indicate that more beer would be even more fun, but Josh wouldn’t let me drink that much more. Which was a shame when Dave, who continued to be cute, tried to get me to do a shot of tequila with him. “You smell nice, you know that?” he said. Borrowing Germaine’s lotion was totally worth it.

“I think she can wait and do it on her own time,” said Josh, drinking the shot himself. “She wouldn’t appreciate it.”

 

 

The party was hardly the all-night experience I thought it was going to be. After a few hours, the keg was finished. About half the people had left the party, but the half who stayed started hitting the hard alcohol. Some had paired up doing gross grindy dances. Paulie was playing some sort of card game with some other guys. I turned into the kitchen to see if I could steal a beer from the fridge. There was Dave, making out with Beth. I stood there for a second and realized that I was staring at two people kissing, so I stuck my head in the refrigerator, pretending that I was looking hard for something. Failing to find what I was not looking for, I split. Neither one of them had even noticed that I was in the vicinity.

This, I realized, was one of those times where it would be good to have a female friend around. Someone who was my friend, who actually knew me, not one I had borrowed from my brother. Had I thought that Dave was going to kiss me? Be my boyfriend? Fall in love with me? No. But I still felt upset. I had let myself have a teeny, tiny one-night crush on a boy, probably the first time I’d done that since Mike. (Who was I kidding? I had been in love with him all along. This party was almost over, and it was time to get real.) And it ended up as nothing. I figured that another girl would understand that sort of thing.

I had been a little tipsy earlier, but I suddenly lost the feeling and now was sick of this place. Where was all the fun? I went to go find Josh. I stepped over Sharky, who was lying on the floor on his back, still clutching his enormous bottle. I thought he was unconscious, but as I walked over him, he grabbed my leg.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yes?”

“You look so good it hurts,” he said, and to demonstrate, he put his hand over his heart.

“Thanks,” I said, and pulled my leg free.

I walked back toward Josh’s room, and the stink of the apartment, smoke and beer and sweat, started to get to me. Everything I saw was irritating me. The ugly carpeting, the scratchy used furniture, the striped shirts the guys were wearing. There was nowhere to go but this place and nothing else to do but just be here.

Germaine had told me: I had no choice, I was going to have to join these people. I’d have to leave home, spend Dad’s money, start dating some idiot, have friends who always found things to shriek about, and move on through adult-hood. It sounded like such bullshit.

“You look like you’re having a lot of fun,” said a voice. I turned around and saw Angie.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Kind of weird.”

“Pooped out?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to get some food?”

“That sounds like the greatest idea ever,” I said. “What about Josh?”

“He can tend to his party, as long as we bring him something,” said Angie. “I’ll go tell him we’re going out. Go get a coat.”

 

 

“You okay?” asked Angie as we walked down the street back to Josh’s apartment, eating big floppy pieces of pizza on paper plates. We’d gone to a pizzeria that served slices with different kinds of pasta on them. Mine was topped with macaroni and cheese, and I hoped the moment would never end.

“Yes, I’m better. So, like, I guess. What do you do here? You know. You seem like a normal person. What’s your life like?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t know. Do you belong to a sorority?”

Angie snorted. “Hell no. Like I need one more thing in the world to piss me off: a bunch of girls I don’t even want to be friends with turning me down from living in their nasty house. If you want to meet someone who is in a sorority, you can talk to Beth. Beth is in SDT,” she said. “That’s a sorority, and everyone jokes that it stands for ‘Spending Daddy’s Trillions, ’ but I don’t know what it really stands for. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. What about clubs? Are you in any clubs?”

“Clubs?” Angie thought for a second. “Oh yeah. I guess there are clubs here, aren’t there? No, not those, either.”

“Oh,” I said.

“College isn’t really like high school,” said Angie. “Mostly you just do whatever you’re really interested in, you know? Sometimes I go on community service trips or something like that, help do food collections and stuff. But I’m not doing it so that when I graduate, I can say on my résumé that I did that. I don’t think people really care about that when they’re giving you a job. I think that college is training wheels for real life. You’re more independent than you are in high school, but you sort of still have people looking after you, unlike when you get to the real world and you’re on your own.”

“Hmm,” I said. I couldn’t tell if that sounded good or bad.

“For the first time, you can do whatever you want as long as it feels like you’re doing it because it’s you. It takes a while to find out what that really means, of course. Sometimes you think you’re doing something because you think it’s fun, but you realize you’re just supposed to. So it’s cool when you realize what you really want to do and what things just aren’t your scene. But it’s not, like, mind-blowing or anything. I won’t lie, when I left for school, my dad was like, ‘Have fun, because these are the best days of your life.’And I am having a lot of fun, but that’s pretty depressing if these are the best days of my life. I think my older sister is having the best days of her life. She lives in New York in a shitty little apartment and has a job that’s killing her, but it seems awesome.” She smiled and was quiet for a second. “I’m really relieved that we get along,” she said.

“Oh whatever,” I said, getting shy all of a sudden.

“I think Josh was excited to show you a good time. And I think he was nervous, too. I think your dad might have put some pressure on him to, you know, show you around and all that.”

“I guess that makes sense.” I felt embarrassed, realizing what an idiot I must have looked like to Angie. And yet she still liked me, or seemed to. “I’m just nervous. I don’t know about what, even. And that’s what worries me, that I should have had stuff figured out by now. I feel like a big baby.”

“Cecily, everyone feels that way when they start school. I mean, yes, it’s exciting, and you should look forward to it. But it’s also scary as hell. Anybody who acts like they’re not scared or that they have any idea what they’re doing at first is totally lying. Things will be awkward for you probably at times, but they are for everyone—that’s the best thing I can tell you, that you might feel out of place at first but so does everybody else. And things just get more fun after that.”

“They’d better,” I said. But I had to admit it: I was having fun on a college campus with a few people who actually seemed to have personalities, and it didn’t hurt too much.

We then heard some screaming, and three naked guys came racing down the street and into the night.

“Ah, college,” said Angie, and something in her voice sounded affectionate and yet embarrassed at the same time. I started laughing, and laughed hard.