She nodded at her brother, passed out on the table. “Some girls have all the luck.”
“So why don’t you go to Fayer?”
“Oh, it was decided long ago I’m not private school material. Red or blue?”
“Whichever’s bigger,” Jason said, though of course he knew the cups were the same size.
“You like ’em big?” she said.
“Always have.”
Peter was left out of these kinds of provocative, senseless exchanges. He couldn’t respond to them any better than he could initiate them. As if sensing this, Scott’s sister handed Peter a blue cup without a word and poured. Other people, even girls, even now Jason, exuded something he did not. He was as bland as water, as unremarkable as air. He and his cup of foam moved on while Jason stayed at the keg bantering with the sister.
Peter had no choice but to head to the room of tenth graders. He took the long way around, glancing into the dining room. At the far end of the long table was Kristina with two guys he’d never seen before, older guys, maybe even older than seniors. She was holding a small pleated paper cup, the kind you rinse with at the dentist’s, up to the mouth of a bottle with a fancy gold necklace around it. When it was full, she knocked back the liquor in one swallow. Her throat was much paler than her face and arms. The guys were smiling at each other. Peter knew what they were after; probably Kristina knew, too. She wouldn’t want him to intervene. Although the sight disgusted him, something — that oval of pale skin, the already drunken shape of her lips — aroused him and he tugged down the front of his sweatshirt over the tightening of his pants.
He tried to imagine Stuart at this party, standing with his perfect posture. He’d drink water instead of beer and make it seem cool. In a half hour he’d be able to get any girl he wanted. Trying to invoke Stuart’s spirit through the meditative techniques he’d taught him, Peter straightened his spine, became aware of his organs, and dissolved his tension. He took a long deep breath, a long gulp of beer, and vowed he’d fool around with someone, nearly anyone (it didn’t have to be Kristina — it could never be Kristina), tonight.
When he turned away from the dining room, he noticed that the three most lusted-after junior girls were watching him. He tried to look at them the way Stuart looked at his girls through the window, pleased but unsurprised. They buckled, all three of them, to the floor in heaves of laughter. He retreated immediately to the den, grateful for the flat chests and sympathetic voices of the unpopular girls.
Jenny Mead made room for him in the circle. She asked about the game yesterday, and about the French test he’d barely passed. As she listened, she ran a finger around the lip of her cup. Did she have a thing for him? He could see her searching for another topic.
“Your mom’s the hardest English teacher I’ve ever had,” she said at last.
Everyone said this to him. “Really?” he said, stretching his spine as high as it would go. She was tall, and her bushy hair didn’t help.
“I don’t understand what she’s talking about half the time.” But Jenny had clear blue-green eyes and a small nose like a fawn’s. It wouldn’t be awful, kissing her.
“She probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about either.”
Jenny snorted, her upper lip revealing too much gum. He looked away, at a funny kind of sofa across the room. It was like a figure eight, with the two cushioned seats facing in opposite directions.
“Are you close, you and your mom?”
Girls loved to ask him this. “I guess,” he said. Then he looked at the little sofa as if he were just noticing it for the first time. “The guy who made that must have lost his job pretty quick.”
Jenny laughed, though he could tell it was fake. “It’s a Victorian love seat.”
He’d been about to ask her if she wanted to sit in it, but he couldn’t now that she’d used the word love. They stood there staring at it.
“Should we try it out?” she said. In the end, girls were so much braver.
Peter chose the seat that faced the doorway, in case Kristina walked by. It was far more comfortable than it looked.
“Hey.” Jenny’s face was unnaturally close. It was a Victorian make-out couch. Stuart would kiss her right now. Right now. But Peter couldn’t.
Disappointed but not discouraged, she asked, “What kind of things do you talk about?”
“When?”
“With your mom?”
“Let’s see.” He knew it had to be provocative. “Marijuana, condoms, pornography — the usual topics.”
She flung her head back, leaving her mouth wide open. He couldn’t tell if she was really laughing now or just putting together all the elements of laughing — except the sound. When she tipped her head forward again, she said, “No, really. Does she ever talk about what she was like when she was our age? I mean, some teachers you can completely imagine as teenagers, but your mom …” Jenny’s clear eyes widened as if she were staring into the pitch dark. “No amount of rationality can convince you that she was ever young.”
He’d forgotten that if you talked to Jenny Mead long enough, her sentences would start getting weird.
He looked around the room for other possibilities. The handful of other girls were either unobtainable or unthinkable. He had this awful feeling that Kristina had left the party with those two guys. It was Jenny Mead or nothing. The thought of hinting to Stuart when he got home that he had gotten some action spurred him on.
“Of course my mother was young once. She was wild. She grew up in Skaneateles, New York.”
“I thought she was from the South. She has that accent.”
“She was born in New York, then moved away later. Her parents were so strict they wouldn’t let her go to any parties, so she had to sneak out onto the roof and shimmy down a rope she hid up there.”
“Why wouldn’t her parents let her go out?”
“They were Christian Scientists.” He couldn’t remember exactly what Stuart had said.
“They go to parties. They just don’t go to the hospital.”
“Mormon. Sorry. Mormon.”
“But—”
“Do you want to talk about religion or hear about my mother?”
He meant to be playful but it came out snippy, the way Fran was to him sometimes. He wondered if she, too, didn’t always mean her snips. He remembered his conversation with Tom this afternoon, and his stomach rolled over. It wasn’t just a little chat; it was a warning.
He saw the extent of Jenny Mead’s interest and excitement only as it drained out of her face. Just as he was about to apologize, Kristina came into the den and flopped sideways in an armchair. Alone. Not just her lips but all around her mouth was red, like someone had been scrubbing it clean. Her cheeks were flushed in two bright splotches and her eyes moved around the room without latching onto anything. She was smashed. He remembered a time when she wasn’t like this, when at parties they made lemonade from scratch and had cookie-eating competitions. He remembered Stephen Ball’s birthday party and how she asked to be Peter’s partner in the three-legged race and how when they’d fallen her hair had gone in his mouth and it tasted like pizza he’d said and they’d laughed because she’d actually had three slices of pizza for breakfast. He ached with a love for her that had existed for as long as he could remember.
“It was nice talking to you, Peter,” Jenny said bitterly and rejoined her clique in the corner.
Peter remained in his side of the love seat, pretending to read the spines of the hardcover mysteries on the wall. He tried to catch Kristina’s eye for a sort of comradely shrug about being alone in chairs at a party. But her eyes were three-quarters closed. He didn’t know if she was actually seeing through the quarter that was left, though he remained prepared for anything.