8. Mina

On Friday, Caplan skips biology to spend my study hall with me in the library. He says it's so he can study for his Spanish final, which is later that day. The irony of skipping to study is lost on him.

"I'm randomly fire at biology," he says, "but I can, like, barely pass English, which is my first language, so."

"You still shouldn't be skipping," I say. "Can't you study at lunch?"

"No, cause it's Hollis's birthday."

"I thought the party was tonight?"

"Yeah, but the girls are, like, bringing balloons to school or something. It'll be a whole thing if I'm not there."

"Okay, but you don't need me. I don't speak Spanish."

"I study better with you sitting there," he says. "What? Am I intruding on you reading Pride and Prejudice for the tenth time?"

I ignore him. Once he goes back to his index cards, I look up.

He's staring at one like he's trying to see straight through it, with his tongue sticking out a tiny bit.

"You're making the face."

He groans, drops his flash cards in a pile, and shoves them toward me, flattening himself out on the table.

"I'm gonna fail."

"You're not gonna fail."

"Okay, I'm not gonna fail, but I have a seventy-nine in this class, so it would be really sick to get, like, an A."

"I don't think it matters at this point," I say.

"Are you not studying for finals, then?"

I narrow my eyes.

He goes back to his flash cards, and I go back to my book. It's Emma, not Pride and Prejudice, but I wasn't as into it.

I feel more than I see someone looking at us from across the room.

"That girl just took a photo of us," I say.

Caplan looks up and waves at the girl like he's the goddamned mayor of the library.

"That's Ruby," he says. "You know Ruby. She's probably just taking photos for yearbook committee."

I do know her, as one of Hollis's minions, but they spend enough time pretending to forget my name, so. Privately, I'm positive that photo was taken to send in a group chat with all those girls to talk about me. I try to return to my book, but can't stop thinking about how ugly it's possible to look from that distance. Phones have good zoom these days. And I have a zit I picked on my chin. Now it's a scab and looks much worse than it did as a zit.

"Want me to read over your final history paper?" I say.

He looks up. His hair's standing straight up from all the times he's run his fingers through it.

"That," he says, "would be amazing. You don't mind?"

"No, I'm bored. Hand it over."

He makes a face.

"What?"

"Okay, honestly, I haven't started."

"Cool, it's definitely due Monday."

"I was wondering if you'd maybe help me, like, outline it?"

"Nope. I'll read it over when you're done."

"Meen—"

"At like, three a.m. on Sunday night, probably, because I'm a giver."

"The bubonic plague just like—doesn't do anything for me."

"I don't think the bubonic plague did it for anyone," I say.

"Just one tiny seed of one of your extra ideas," he says. "Come on, I know you had like ten."

"I did not," I say, "cause it was an awful topic. But even if I did, I wouldn't give them to you, because I will not do your homework for you. We're both better than that."

"You are. I'm not," he huffs, sliding down on his seat. "It would just be more expedient."

"Good word, expedient."

"It's my word of the day."

I look up from my book. "Your word of the day?"

"Yes. I have an app."

"An app that gives you a word for the day?"

"Yes. I downloaded it to better my vocabulary so you'll never get bored of talking to me."

"You're ridiculous."

"You used to be way cooler about cheating. Remember when you would sell book reports in elementary school?"

"How could I forget. My most popular moment to date. And that wasn't real cheating."

"It so was," he says, shaking his head. "And you profited off it. Fifty cents a pop."

"I always made sure you guys had read the book. I would just do the writing part. I felt like I was helping as long as you were all actually reading."

"Hey, no need to defend yourself. If you're going to hell, I'll see you there," he says.

"I'll be near the snacks."

"I never understood how you knew if we had read our books or not," he says then, leaning his chair back on two legs.

"I would ask you guys questions."

"Yes, but you had to have read all the books we read. It was amazing. It was like you read every single book in the elementary school library."

"Not true. I actually had to read Pretty Little Liars for Hollis."

He laughs, slamming back down onto four legs. "I forgot about that!"

"I didn't. It gave me nightmares for weeks. I was really scared of the blind girl."

"Ableist."

"She was only pretending to be blind, so that's actually—whatever. Never mind."

"No neverminds—"

"She was scary as shit. That's all."

"But you read it?"

"Yeah, all twenty-three of them," I say. "Cause Hollis was scarier, even then."

"Yeah, I remember." He smiles. "Twenty-three, jeez. She had you whipped."

"Hollis has us all whipped."

"You're telling me," he says. Then: "Okay. Speaking of. I have to ask you for something."

"Yes?"

"It's sort of a favor."

"All right."

"I know you said you weren't gonna go to Hollis's birthday thing tonight—"

"Caplan, it wasn't a real invitation."

"No, it was," he says. "She brought it up again."

"What do you mean?"

"Like she said she hoped you would come. And I said you probably thought she meant it as a joke—"

"Yeah, cause she did—" I say.

"And then she asked if you thought she was that big of a bitch—"

"Good grief." I put my head in my hands.

"And then she asked if I thought she was a bitch—"

"Of course she did."

"And so," he sighs, plunging on, "I said that I'd been wrong, and you were probably really touched and excited to come."

"Did you, now."

"Yeah. And then she got all pleased."

"What, is she planning to dump pig's blood on me?"

"Is that a reference? I don't get it."

"It's from Carrie."

"Carrie who?"

"Never mind."

"No never—"

"Cap. What are you asking me for?"

"I think she, like, wants you to come. I think she's trying to be nice. Come on, don't raise your eyebrows like that. And I—yeah, I, too, think it would be fun if you came."

"Caplan, why—"

"Because parties are fun. You're fun. I don't get why you have such an aversion to them."

"You should watch Carrie."

"Is it because of your smell thing? With alcohol?"

"No," I say, starting to feel really irritated. "I'm over that. You've seen me around alcohol. We had champagne last night."

"So then come!" He does his unfair face, all dimples, and lays himself out on the table again, hanging on to both my upper arms as I cross them. "Please?"

He sits up suddenly, pulling his hands back.

"Quinn will be happy, too."

"Why would Quinn care?"

"He kind of told me he likes you."

I stare at him.

He stares back. He shrugs.

"Likes me?"

"Like, like likes."

"Are you five years old?"

"Come on. Don't shoot the messenger."

"That. That is so dumb, I'm not even dignifying it with a response," I say.

"People want you around."

"You want me around."

"True," he says, "I do. So will you come?"

"I will consider it."

"Fantastic. Thank you."

I go to mark my page, but it's already folded down, because I haven't read more than a sentence. "Did Quinn really say something about me?"

"Ooooh," he says, standing and cramming the flash cards into his bag. "Now she's curious. Guess you'll have to show up tonight to find out."

"You shouldn't just shove shit into your bag. It's a mess."

"You're a mess." He ruffles my hair.

"You're being weird today," I say. "You high-fived the crossing guard earlier."

"I'm in a good mood," he says, following me out of the library. "Sue me. It smelled like summer this morning. And we're going to a party tonight."

On my way out of the house that night, my mother stops me, which is unusual.

"Where are you off to?"

"Hanging out with Caplan."

"Is it a date?"

"Mom. Why would you even ask that?"

She's at the top of the stairs, looking down at me. "You just look nice, that's all. I was wondering why you're dressed up."

"I'm not dressed up."

"All right, Mina." She sighs and touches the spot above her left eye. She turns to go back to her bedroom.

"I'm going to a party," I say.

"Oh?"

"Yes. With Caplan's friends. It's his girlfriend's birthday."

She smiles at me in this odd way.

I glare back.

"That's nice of them to include you," she says, coming down the stairs. "I remember that happening at the end of high school, people stop caring so much about who's popular or who's in the clique."

"Wow, thanks, Mom."

"Oh no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

I cut her off with a hug. She feels small in my arms, thinner than I am, but she clutches me back.

"I was just teasing," I say into her hair. "I know I'm not Miss High School."

"I kinda like you, though," she says, tugging on my braid. "But why don't you wear your contacts?"

"Okay, now I'm leaving."

"You just look so lovely with your hair back!"

"Good-bye, Mom! Love you!"

"Why hide your face?"

"If I don't wear glasses," I say from the door, "then they will really know I'm trying."

"It's not so bad to try," she says.

"I could say the same to you." I give the tie of her robe a little yank. It makes her laugh. It surprises us both. She looks then like she's about to cry. Instead, she says—

"We should make sure you have a new pair you love. For next fall."

I think, even when my dad was here, she was the more introverted half of the pair. Opposites attract and all that. Now, her only real friend is Julia, and that's just because Julia refused to give up on her and had the advantage of proximity. A long time ago, somewhere in the valley between the blue-flowered nightgown and wherever she lives today, I remember she would have these strange bursts of manic energy. She'd emerge as if from underwater, gasping for air. She was like a time traveler, waking suddenly with no idea what year it was. I remember a mommy-and-me music class that I was humiliatingly too old for. She left me there halfway through the first session, and I found her weeping in the bathroom. I remember a mother-daughter book club with some of her old work colleagues that we joined and never attended. And then, of course, the annual family vacation with my dad's old friends from Yale. All those kids around my age. The grown-up father versions of the laughing young men who put her on their shoulders on the dance floor in their wedding photos. I have strange, beautiful memories of those trips from when he was alive, fragmented and distant through a kaleidoscope, being wrapped up with other tiny bodies in one gigantic, bright, striped beach towel, snug and together, to fall asleep on the sand. Someone else's mother putting sunscreen on my nose.

After he died, they continued to invite us each year. Each year, she would mention it, and I wouldn't dare let myself hope. Each year, the days between Christmas and New Year's came and went, and the trip with it, while we stayed home. I can't think why they kept at it, reaching out to us, when she ignored them for so many years. Either they felt sorry for us, or whatever brotherhood was forged in my dad's freshman year dorm was built to extend beyond anything, past death, through generations, and across families. When I was thirteen, the invitation coincided with one of her erratic surges of life, and so, after five years of social isolation, we went with them to Turks and Caicos. The trip, suffice it to say, did not go well.

She adjusts the tie of her robe and steps away from me, backing up the stairs.

"Go have fun, then, you disrespectful partying teenager," she says.

Once I'm out of the house, I check my phone. I have a text from Caplan—

don't kill me but I went over early to help set up

I start to type, then stop. We planned to walk to Hollis's together. But it is so fair, so reasonable of him, to go early to his own girlfriend's birthday party, and so unfair and unreasonable of me to be incapable of walking into a party, walking into any room ever, without him, that I kick the curb. It really hurts. I sit down and hold my foot as my eyes water, feeling like a fool in my mother's mascara and a sundress from tenth grade. He texts me again.

ur not bailing, I'm coming to get you

I respond:

Don't do that, it's fine.

so ur coming?

I don't answer for a moment.

i'll come meet you out front when you get here