Carter #2
display, but she’s still deep in it with Shana.
Nothing will top twerking, so I leap off the cabinet to get other people involved.
The first person I see is Cute Lizzy from the Keg.
I dance up next to her, and she laughs. Then I recognize her also-cute friend as Tatiana Who I Procured Edibles For.
I shimmy my shoulders in her direction. She smirks and shimmies back at me, and I start walking her into the dance circle.
Tatiana trips and says “Whoa!” and falls into me.
I catch her and suavely transition us into some kind of bizarre tango, one hand on her back, the other interlocking with hers, extended out to the side.
For reasons unknown, I sing “La laaaa!” as we march around the room like that. Tatiana cracks up into my shoulder.
Other kids join the dance circle. Chris Colasurdo passes me the flask again and tells me to kill it, and I’m thinking that
probably means I’m about to drink Chris Colasurdo’s backwash, but I drink it anyway, and it’s definitely not backwash, or
at least not all backwash, unless Chris Colasurdo has burning demon saliva. I don’t like this song as much as the last one, but I’m dancing
anyway, and Robbie passes me a beer. I drink the beer, and the room is gently spinning, but in a nice way, and then the seas
part again.
And there’s Maggie.
She’s only like twenty steps away, so I’m going to talk to her. Just straight-up ask if we ever knew each other.
But oh! She’s shaking the hand of some superhot guy. He looks like an adult. Like my dad. No, not that old. Maybe like my
older cousin Ben. But still. He’s very adulty. With very defined cheekbones. And glowing adult skin.
I stop walking.
I’m intimidated. But I shouldn’t be. Because technically I’m probably the same age as that guy! I am technically adulty!
But my skin doesn’t glow like that.
Something large and soft collides with my head. It appears to be a beige couch pillow.
“Yo, keep it going!” Amir shouts with a confusing amount of urgency. It takes me a full five seconds to understand that he
wants me to pick up the couch pillow and throw it into the air again. Which I do.
Somehow I drift with the crowd to the other side of the family room, so I again can’t see Maggie. Why do I care? I’m not really sure, but I peel myself from the blob of people and climb back up onto the twerking cabinet.
I spot Maggie Spear again. Glowy Adult Dude has his hand on the small of her back as they walk toward the kitchen. I take
a step to follow them and walk straight into a big white speaker. I lose my balance and topple off the side of the cabinet.
So does the speaker. Everyone in the room goes “Ohhhhhhhh!”
I’m on my side on the rug. So is the speaker. Somehow it’s still blasting music.
“Oh no, my dude!” Bodhi says, concerned but laughing, one of many people leaning over me. “You wiped out, you okay?”
“I know Maggie’s here,” I say, inexplicably choosing to express that rather than the twenty-five other options, for example
that my knee is throbbing and the palms of my hands feel raw and rug-burned.
“Okay,” Bodhi says with a shrug. “Can I help you get up?”
“Guys, seriously!” Shana says, pushing through the crowd. “That speaker is like my dad’s baby, you can’t do shit like—”
She sees that it’s me. I smile big and wave, lifting up onto my elbow.
“Oh god. Carter.”
“It’s a-me!”
“Bodhi!” Shana shoves him in the chest so hard that it sends him backward. A couple of dudes splash their beers in their efforts
to dodge him. “Did I not tell you I would slit your goddamn throat if you messed this up?”
“You did, you did,” Bodhi says, looking genuinely terrified. “But I made sure they were never in the same room!”
“I KNEW IT!” I shout like the detective in the final twenty minutes of a whodunit, leaping up from the floor and then wincing
from the screeching pain in my knee. The room is spinning more than ever, like we’re on some rickety ride at a state fair.
“It was evident from the start that the problem wasn’t that we weren’t seniors! I just had to put the final pieces together!”
“Congrats,” Shana says. She takes a deep breath. “Look, it’s fine. Maggie wasn’t even inside to see this. So. It’s all good.
Just be cool. Okay? Everyone be cool. And pick up my dad’s speaker so he doesn’t slit all of our throats.”
“Why do you keep saying that about throats?” Lizzy asks. “It’s so intense.”
“On it, Shay!” Chris Colasurdo says. He lifts the speaker with one hand and tucks it into the crook of his neck, then trips
over the same wrinkle in the rug that Tatiana did and drops the speaker to the floor. “Aw shit, sorry!”
Miraculously, the audio equipment never hits the ground.
Janessa Suher has bounded across the room with arms extended, catching the sleek dinosaur egg like it’s a loose ball.
“YO!” The room explodes, louder than any of the reactions I got for my dance moves.
“That was insane!”
“Did anybody film that?”
“Chris, she saved you from getting your throat slit!”
Soon the walls echo with a chant of Janessa’s name, and I join in too because it really was spectacular, but also I’m feeling a little empty inside, and my knee is still in pain.
Bodhi passes me a new beer, and I drink it fast because maybe it will make me feel better, and it sort of does. Then everything starts to blur.
I’m wandering from the family room to the kitchen, and different people keep asking me to purchase things for them, like not
right now but sometime soon, and I say sure, and it makes them happy, and I think I should keep a list of all that in my phone, but I don’t, and Bodhi and I are laughing about something, and I’m wandering some more, and I don’t even know what I’m looking
for, but of course I know who I’m looking for, but she’s not in the backyard anymore, and then Tatiana is talking to me, I think flirting with me actually,
and she’s really hot, but I don’t even know what’s happening, and then we’re in a new room with lots of books in it, and we’re
kissing, and then I tell her I have to pee, because I do have to pee, and so I do, and it feels like four straight minutes of pee, I’m not even kidding, and when I’m walking out of
the bathroom, I look to my left, and I see the back of Maggie’s cardigan, she’s so stylish, and I’m so glad I finally found
her, so I walk over to say something, but I realize she’s no longer talking to Glowy Adult Guy, she’s MAKING OUT with Glowy
Adult Guy, and I make a surprised monkey noise, which I wish I could take back, how embarrassing, what even was that, and
I walk the other way, and I’m struck by the overwhelming feeling that I don’t belong here, that if I wasn’t a freak with an
authentically old driver’s license I wouldn’t be here, and no one would care that I existed, and that’s hard to face, but it’s the truth, and I need to get out of here,
so I do.