Maggie
I’m out the front door just in time to see Carter stumble across the sidewalk two houses down and hold up his key to unlock
“No!” I shout across two lawns, the same tone of voice you would use to reprimand a dog.
“Huh?” Carter looks up, genuine terror in his eyes.
“That’s not happening.” I slow down as I reach him and rip the key out of his hand.
“Hey, I need that!” Carter says.
“Too bad.”
“You’re stealing my car?!”
“No, idiot. I’m preventing you from driving it.”
“Oh.” Carter takes me in, a small grin growing on his face, and this is already way more interaction than we should be having.
“Because you want me to stay at the party?”
“What? No!” I need to keep this straightforward. Efficient. To the point. I pull out my phone. “You’re drunk, okay? You can’t
drive right now. So I’m getting you a Lyft home.”
“What thinks you make I’m drunk?” Carter asks, wobbling back and forth like a large piece of seaweed.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“Okay. Whatever you say. I’m glad you care, Maggie.” I can tell he’s just saying my name to see how I’ll react.
“It’s not that I care,” I say. “I just don’t like death.”
He’s unnervingly silent, staring at me as I stare at the app scanning for nearby drivers. It’s still quite cold out, and neither
of us is wearing a coat.
“I saw you kissing that handsome adult,” Carter says, flicking his eyebrows up and down really fast. I can’t keep myself from
laughing, goddammit, which makes him grin even bigger than before.
“Please stop talking,” I say.
“What? It’s what I saw!”
“Roberta will be here in four minutes to drive you home,” I say, keeping my eyes on my phone in order to get myself through
this.
“Roberta.”
“Yes.”
“That’s kind of like the name Robert,” Carter says. “I never realized that. Did you? Like a female Robert.”
“I guess.”
“I could do that with my name. Cartera. That’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at Cartera on the balance beam! She’s magnificent.”
I laugh again. Jesus. “And why is she on a balance beam exactly?”
“She loves gymnastics, I guess. I don’t know.” Carter holds on to the side of the car, exhaling a huge puff of white breath
and buzzing his lips together like a horse. “I might do a puke. Make a puke. Puke a puke.”
“Oh god,” I say. “Three minutes till Roberta. Wait, no. Four again. No, okay, it’s back to three.”
“So what’s our deal?”
I freeze. This is my cue to run. I must leave here. I’ve done my part. He can wait for Roberta without me. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean what do I mean? It feels like we have some kind of history. Like, when you looked at me on the first day
of my reboot, and then I thought I saw you crying.”
I stare at my phone. Roberta is still three minutes away, her little car icon stopped at the traffic light on Donner Hill
Road. MOVE, LITTLE CAR, MOVE!!!
“Yeah, I was crying,” I say finally. “Because I felt bad for you. But not because . . . any other reason.”
“You wanna know what I think?” Carter says, grinning more than ever, holding on to the side of his car to stay upright.
“Not really.”
“I think you’re lying.”
I have no idea what to say, so I just shrug. “Roberta’s here in two minutes.”
“Then again, very possible I’m wrong and embarrassing myself. As you are aware, I don’t actually know anything. Unless it
happened more than six years ago. Then I’m solid. Hey, is Taylor Swift still a thing?”
“Well. She’s a woman, not a thing. And yes, she’s like the most popular person on the planet. Some of her new stuff was playing
at the party.”
“I thought that was her! Wow! That’s impressive. Staying famous for so long. That’s, like, a lot of famous. How do you even do that?”
“I know. I think if you work with really good producers, they help you— GAH! I don’t want to be having a conversation with
you!”
“Nevertheless, you are. Hard to stop, right?” He flicks his eyebrows at me again.
“I can stop. I’m stopping right now. And Roberta’s only a minute away. So stopping is easy.”
“We have good chemistry,” Carter says, and my brain thuds onto the street with a dull squish. “Don’t you think we have good
chemistry? Yet another reason why I think you’re lying to—” He interrupts his own sentence to buzz his lips some more.
“Look,” I say after I’ve had a moment to pick up my brain and reinsert it into my skull, “we don’t have chemistry. And we
don’t have history. And we—”
“How about precalc? Do we have precalc?”
“No! We don’t have any of those. And we won’t! Because I’m into Chord now. I just met him, and he’s very mature, and his name
is a musical term, and I like that. A lot!”
“Cord? That’s not a musical term, it’s a wire.”
“No, it has an h in it. Like when you play a—”
Roberta finally pulls up in her blue car, god bless her, and hilariously enough, it is a Honda Accord, just like Carter’s
car, Toro.
“ACCORD!” Carter shouts, staring at it. “Like when you play ACCORD! That is a freaky-ass coincidence. Her car finished your
sentence.” He’s not wrong. “Also freaky because it looks just like my car.” His jaw drops. “Maybe I’m Roberta! Am I Roberta? That would be a cool twist.”
“You are not Roberta.” I pull open the door to the back seat. “You need to get in and go home.”
“But we’re having so much fuuuuuuuuun.”
“Gosh, I know,” I deadpan, even as a small part of me is cringing in shame because I really am having fun.
“How will Roberta even know where to take me?”
“I already gave her your address. That’s how the app works.”
“Aha!” Carter throws a triumphant finger into the air. “You know where I live! Because of our history!”
He should not be this cogent when he’s this drunk! “Just get in the damn vehicle.” I shoo him into the car with the back of
my hands because using my palms seems too intimate and therefore risky. “I have a Chord to make out with.”
“Okay, but make sure it doesn’t get tangled around your neck. That could be dangerous.”
I shut the door and walk around to the driver’s side, where I hand Carter’s key to Roberta and tell her to give it to him
when he leaves the car. I’m impressed that her bob cut looks exactly like it does in her thumbnail, and I almost tell her
that before realizing it’s more of an observation than a compliment. Roberta probably doesn’t need that.
I don’t look back as they drive away, but I do whisper a silent prayer that Carter won’t puke in Roberta’s Accord. Then I
walk back toward the house, wrapping my cardigan tighter around me as I process a confusing mix of joy, shame, and the distinct
feeling that I just did something I absolutely shouldn’t have.