Emily held her breath and kept her eyes on the road as she made a right turn a few blocks before the freeway on-ramp. Ana was making a playlist on her phone while doing her patented brand of seat dancing, and talking through the pros and cons of a bikini versus a one-piece swimsuit for later tonight in the Steins’ hot tub.
Maybe she won’t notice, Emily thought.
Naturally, at that exact moment Ana stopped midsentence. “Hey . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Where are you going?”
Emily braced her hands against the leather of the steering wheel, and in her brightest you’re-going-to-love-this voice said, “One last stop!” From the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow cross Ana’s face as she peered at the houses on this residential street, then whirled back toward Emily.
“Oh, hell no.”
“What?” Emily started to panic, but this was the moment of truth.
“Don’t you play stupid with me. You are a double-crossing gringa and you know it.” Ana started pulling her bags out of the back seat. “You need to stop this car and let me out right here.”
Emily sped up slightly. She could see Brandon’s house. Third down on the left. She knew Ana hadn’t spoken to Brandon since they’d broken up at the beginning of school last fall. It had been awkward for everyone for the past nine months, and Emily had to admit that this was the shadiest part of her plan for the perfect weekend. She was taking a calculated risk.
Emily had known Brandon since they were six years old, when he moved in next door to her. She’d known the feisty Latina girl in the passenger seat would be their third musketeer the moment Ana pirouetted into Brandon with a full tray of spaghetti on the first day of seventh grade. She’d also known it would be an unmitigated disaster when Ana and Brandon announced they were going out at the beginning of sophomore year.
Emily had begged and pleaded. She’d actually prayed. On her knees. To the capital G God her grandmother believed in. All of this was to no avail. Emily knew the googly eyes of August would turn into stress over commitment when it was time to pick out Christmas presents. She knew that Ana would drive Brandon one kind of crazy in the backseat of his car, and a different kind of crazy in the front seat. This was oil and water, and there was no way the two of them would mix, but that wasn’t the chemistry about which Ana and Brandon were concerned. They had kissed under the Labor Day fireworks in the park at the beginning of sophomore year, but by the time Valentine’s Day rolled around, the explosive on-again/off-again nature of things was taking its toll.
By the time Ana and Brandon had broken up over July Fourth weekend last summer, Emily had learned to hang out with them separately. She was Switzerland, the neutral party, the no-man’s-land, the friend happily yodeling with her fingers in her ears while she waited for them to finally make up.
Until today.
Today Emily couldn’t take it any longer. She wanted both Ana and Brandon at this party. After a school year of stress at being pulled back and forth between them, and homework, and Kyle, and her dad’s midlife crisis, she was done playing it safe.
She knew both of them wanted to be at this party.
She knew both of them loved her.
She knew that if she could make it to Brandon’s driveway, and he was waiting on the steps as she’d asked him to do, that Ana would be too mortified to get out of the car.
Emily popped into Brandon’s driveway a little too hot and screeched to a stop. He was waiting for them on the porch, according to plan, waving like a little kid at a parade. “Don’t be mad!” she said to Ana. It came out as more of a command than a plea.
Ana snorted. “Mad? Oh please. Mad does not begin to express the rage that I feel at this moment.”
Brandon loped down the stairs, his backpack slung over his shoulder. He swept his shaggy brown bangs out of his eyes, and told Emily to pop the trunk.
He tossed in his backpack, closed the trunk, then slid his lanky frame into the backseat, and reached over to close the door. Ana had sunk so far down in her seat she was at eye level with the glove compartment. She was muttering words in Spanish that Emily was not familiar with, but they sounded scary.
Emily didn’t wait for Brandon to close the door. She backed out of the driveway and sped toward the freeway. She knew, or maybe just hoped, that Ana would hesitate to kill her if the car was in motion.
“Whoa! Head’s up, speed demon,” Brandon said as he buckled his seat belt. “We in a hurry?”
Emily glanced at the clock. 11:55. “Nope!” she said. “We’re right on schedule.”
“Are you trying to tell me that I am going to be trapped in a car for the next four-and-a-half hours with this pendejo?” Ana was spitting her words like a machine gun.
“It might be closer to six hours, depending on how long we stop for lunch,” Emily said sheepishly.
The sound Ana made in response was not pleasant, but she didn’t throw herself from the moving car, so Emily decided to call it a win.
“Lunch sounds good,” Brandon piped up from the backseat. “I could use a couple burgers.”
“You could use a good kick in the nuts,” Ana muttered.
Something snapped inside of Emily, and she pulled over to the curb and slammed on the breaks. Their seat belts almost cut them in half.
“ENOUGH.” Emily’s voice was like a foghorn. Ana’s eyes went wide, but her mouth stayed closed. Emily put the car in park and turned in her seat. “I can’t handle it anymore. I was the one who said this would be a disaster from the beginning, but no one would listen to me. And I was right.”
Ana flipped her hair over her shoulder. “But—”
“But nothing!” Emily grabbed Ana’s knee and squeezed. “Did you listen to me when I said ‘Don’t start dating Brandon because it will ruin everything’?”
Ana shook her head. Emily turned to Brandon in the backseat.
“And you! Did you listen to me when I said, ‘Don’t start dating Ana because it will ruin everything’?”
Brandon held up both hands in surrender. “She beguiled me with her feminine charms. Evil woman witchcraft.”
“Aaaaargh!” Ana clenched her fists and shook them in the air. “Em, why are you doing this to me?”
“This isn’t something I’m doing to you, it’s something you’re doing to me,” Emily said. “I’ve had to put up with both of you this whole year since you broke up. Besides being a huge pain in my ass emotionally, it has been a scheduling nightmare. I’m done. I’ve had it. I want both of you at this party. I want both of you to ride up with me. After what I’ve dealt with for the past nine months, the two of you can deal with it for the next six hours.”
Suddenly, unexpectedly, there were tears in Emily’s eyes, and she whirled back to face the windshield. But it was too late. Ana caught a glimpse and reached out to put a hand on her arm.
“I just want my friends back,” Emily said, brushing her tears away before they could make her mascara run. “Is that too much to ask?”
Ana glanced into the backseat at Brandon, who shot her the mischievous grin that had won her over in an instant, then tormented her for a year. She sighed and turned back to Emily. “I’ll do my best, but only because I love you and you’re my best friend. Just as long as he leaves me alone.”
Emily adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see Brandon. “Brandon? Can you handle that?”
Brandon smirked at her in the mirror. “Yeah, sure. I can handle that.”
Ana turned up the music. Emily put the car in drive, merged into traffic, then made a quick right turn. As she pulled up the on-ramp onto the highway, the clock on the dash flipped from 11:59 to 12:00, and she smiled. Finally, they were on the right track. Ana must have felt it too, because she began dancing right there in the front seat, and then Brandon was singing at the top of his lungs, and as Emily merged into traffic she couldn’t help singing along. The tension of the past few minutes, and the past few months, started to melt away from her neck and shoulders. The worst was over, and Emily knew it’d be nothing but a good time for the rest of the weekend.