Lilah’s face fell in disbelief. “Are you really asking me that?”
“Like I said, I’m worried about you,” Carter said.
“Well, don’t. I can take care of myself.”
It occurred to Carter that she hadn’t answered his question. “But have you?” he said.
Lilah didn’t answer. In fact, Lilah didn’t say a word to Carter for the rest of the ride to Jeff’s place.
They made their way up Shore Drive past the neon-lit entrances to the glitzy hotels and on to the north side of town, where the beachside mansions and the weathered gates leading to their private beaches paraded past.
When they pulled into Jeff’s circular, crushed-shell driveway, they had to navigate around the tangle of everybody else’s cars, and then seeing that all the good spots were already taken, they looped back out and parked a ways away down the sand-strewn street.
“We’re here,” said Carter.
“Looks like it,” Lilah responded sarcastically.
They sat there, neither of them moving for a moment.
“So, listen,” Carter said. “Before we go in, I want to say—” She was fiddling with the red plastic bracelet she’d been wearing every day since she’d gotten her job as a lifeguard last summer. “Will you look at me a sec?”
She did, and Carter caught her chocolate eyes and held them. She seemed so fragile, so scared, in that moment in the car. He took both her hands in his and held them out in front of himself.
“The girls from the swim team might be here, and—”
Lilah’s head bobbed forward and she covered her face with her hands, but Carter pressed on.
“—I know you think they hate you, but really, they don’t. I promise you. Just … try to relax and let yourself have a good time. And if you can’t, then let me know it’s too much for you and we’ll leave.”
“Okay,” said Lilah, glancing back up at him with a sharp glare. “Are we gonna go in, or what?”
“Yeah. Let’s go in.” Carter carefully tucked a loose strand of wavy light-brown hair behind her ear. He cracked a sad grin. “This is going to be fun. You’ll see.”
Inside Jeff’s house, the party was blazing at full speed. The music—Nelly and Mac Miller and Nas—blasted from the surround speakers mounted in the corners of the cavernous, arch-ceilinged main room, and the whole senior class seemed to have already arrived. People Carter and Lilah recognized and people they didn’t raced barefoot around the swimming pool, pushing one another in, swatting at one another with neon-colored pool noodles.
She squeezed his arm, hoping he’d notice her insecurity and buck her up again like he’d done in the car, but he was preoccupied with searching the faces in the crowd, looking for Jeff, probably.
“I’m gonna go find the drinks table,” she said.
“Lilah,” he said, the concern for her showing all over his face, “you know you can’t mix—”
“I’ll have a Diet Coke, Carter. Stop monitoring me already.”
The worry on his face relaxed. “You’re right,” he said. “Sorry.”
“You want something?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Where will you be?”
“I don’t know—” Carter was up on his tiptoes, ducking his head back and forth to see over the crowd. “Oh, wait, there he is.”
He pointed across the house and out the window, to the backyard patio where Jeff was stationed with a bunch of other guys. He was wearing a pair of gargantuan red sunglasses—each lens must have been six inches tall—and doing some sort of goofy dance that had the other guys hunched over with laughter.
“I’ll be out there,” Carter said.
Before she could say, “Okay, I’ll meet you in a minute,” he was gone from her side, down the marble steps and ducking around people on his way toward the sliding glass door that would lead him outside to his comedian friend.
Lilah made her way into the massive open-plan living room. As she headed toward the kitchen island where the drinks were set up, she saw that a Ping-Pong table had been erected in the corner of the cavernous space, and Kaily and Teresa, her old swim-team friends, were playing a girls versus boys doubles match against two guys from the football team who’d carved their uniform numbers into the sides of their faux hawks.
Her heart sank.
Before she could duck and hide her face with her hair, Teresa saw her. “He-e-ey!” she shouted, her almond-colored face breaking into a smile. She pointed her Ping-Pong paddle out toward Lilah like a gun. “Look who’s decided to grace us with her presence.”
Kaily looked, too. “L to the ah,” she said. “Where’ve you been? Get yourself over here, girl! We need help whipping these guys’ asses!”
Lilah waved. She forced herself to smile. Part of her felt the urge to take Kaily up on the offer.
One of the football guys, number sixty-four, beat his paddle rapidly against the table and said, “Come on. It’s your serve. Are we playing, or what?”
Kaily unleashed her long red hair from its hair band and bent forward to throw it in a wave over her head before rebanding it loosely behind her back again.
“Oh, are we ever playing,” said Teresa. She held the ball up and readied herself to serve. “Zero-six,” she said.
And just like that, both she and Teresa forgot about Lilah. Figures. Lilah knew that they didn’t really want her to join them. They’d been inseparable when they’d all been relay partners together, but they’d barely spoken to or even texted with her in over a year, not since she’d been kicked off the team and gotten so depressed.
Feeling slighted and a little bit humiliated, Lilah slunk over to the drinks table.
She still wasn’t up for this, she realized. She felt totally trapped. And despite Carter’s many reassurances that he wouldn’t be upset if she wanted to stay home, she knew—she just knew—that he would be. She wanted to please him, but the more she tried to do so, the more she resented the effort it took. What if this was the night when everything fell apart for good? She couldn’t bear the thought. But she couldn’t get rid of it, either.
Squeezing through the throng, she pushed herself to the front of the line.
She knew what she was going to do, even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself. She was going to get drunk. If the alcohol mixed wrong with her antidepressants, well, she just didn’t care. Not tonight.
Jeff had really stocked up for this party. There were two kegs of beer and a whole mess of bottles of vodka, rum, gin, and bourbon, along with any mixer she could have possibly wanted. There was even a bottle of Moët champagne.
She poured herself a Captain Morgan and Coke and poked a straw into the cup. Then, knowing she’d need even more fortification, she splashed an extra dose of rum into her cup.
Carter would want beer. He wasn’t a big drinker, and one beer, hidden inside a red cup, could last him for hours.
She staked out a place in the scrum that had formed around the kegs, and waited for Paco Bermudez, a cool kid who was already making money spinning records sometimes and