Page 57 of The Way I Used to Be
She throws her arms up in the air. “No fucking idea, Edy. I swear to God! He’s driving me crazy. Sometimes I think he likes me just as a friend. Other times I feel like he’s about to kiss me! I don’t know, I don’t know, I just don’t know!” she yells.
“Yeah, it kind of seemed like he liked you—the way he was talking to you and looking at you at the piercing place. And how he’s had to come and find you every single day just to ask how your nose is doing. But then he doesn’t ask you out or anything?”
“Exactly!” she shouts, swinging her car door open. “Well, I’m done waiting for him. He’s had almost two years to figure it out—two years!” she tells me, looking across the hood of the car at me, this fire in her eyes.
“Okay,” I tell her carefully. “That’s good, Mara. You don’t have to wait for anyone.”
“Exactly!” she says again, except this time with conviction as she slams her door shut.
“Are you okay to be driving?” I ask her, confused by this sudden anger.
“Oh, I’m more than okay—I’m great!” She laughs, shifting the car into drive.
I’m not sure if I should be laughing or concerned, so I just quietly say, “Okay.”
“Maybe I want to go out with this Alex person. See what he thinks of that!” She looks at me when I don’t respond. “Right?”
“Right. I guess. But—” I begin.
“But what?” she interrupts.
“But it just seems like those guys are, I don’t know, probably fun to hang out with or whatever, but I mean, they’re big-time stoners. Obviously not boyfriend material. For you.” She looks at me like I’m crushing all her dreams. “Probably. I mean, I don’t know them. Maybe not.”
“But we’ll go to the party, right?”
“Sure.”
“Good.”
She smiles and turns on the radio.
WE MAKE FIFTY WRONGturns getting to this house in the middle of nowhere. As we walk up the driveway the noise spills out. It’s a huge house—at least three stories—with light shining from every window.
“So this is a real party, huh?” Mara asks, holding on to my arm as we walk up the front steps in our skirts and skimpy shirts.
“We’ll find out.”
We push through the open door and the smell of alcohol envelops us. We stand in what was formerly a living room but now looks to be a foundation for a landfill. The wood floors are covered in litter—potato chips, popcorn, pizza, glass bottles, plastic cups. Music, bodies, yelling, pushing. It’s like the animals escaped from the zoo.
Mara and I look at each other, neither of us really knowing what we’re supposed to do next. We had only been to the kind of parties at skating rinks and Chuck E. Cheese’s.
“Text Troy, Edy. Let them know we’re here,” Mara tells me.
I take my phone out, but some guy shoves another guy into me, nearly knocking me over, and I drop my phone. “Watch it!” Mara yells after the guy, but I can barely even hear her over the blaring music.
“You all right?” Someone shouts from behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I turn around quickly, and this guy grabs each of my hands, holds my arms out to my sides, and looks me over. “You look good to me,” this guy with a smooth voice and a dangerous smile says as he picks my phone up off the floor and hands it to me.
I turn to Mara, who’s ogling this mystery guy. Obviously attractive, obviously older than us. He smiles as I turn back to him. A smile that seems to mean a lot. Mara comes closer and yells, “We’re looking for Alex and Troy?”
This guy looks back and forth between Mara and me, confused. “Why would you be looking for them?” he says with a laugh, steering us farther into the house with one hand on my back and the other on Mara’s shoulder.
“They invited us,” Mara explains as we’re herded through the living room and into a kitchen that’s been turned into one huge bar, with a keg and an endless supply of bottled beer.
“They invited you?” he asks, coming to a halt, looking at us alternately, repeating himself with exactly the same intonation as the first time. “Wait. They invited you?”
“Yes,” Mara tells him innocently. And he just starts laughing.
“All right,” he says, shaking his head. “Gotta give ’em props for that!”
