One House Parties

Walking into Justin Tadeo’s house party Friday night is like diving into the deep end of a pool—except this pool is full of empty beer cans and not-quite-empty plastic drink cups and vomit and a few disembodied flower leis all broken apart and various articles of clothing floating on the surface like ocean debris.

I’m not antisocial, but there are plenty of places I’d rather be on a Friday night than here. I barely know Justin, and it doesn’t matter if his parents are out of town, because at the end of the day, we still live in tiny Escondido, Arizona, and trust me, there’s nowhere to hide in this town—not even when the name itself means hidden.

Girls like me don’t usually come to parties like this. Girls like me are more likely to chill at the field hockey captain’s house while her parents are away for the weekend. But the last time I went to a party there, one of the sweepers, I think her name is Naomi, cornered me and tricked me into dancing with her for a minute. Maybe-Naomi was nothing but grip and grope that night, and truthfully, I’m not into that either—the whole hookup thing, where you get with someone you barely know just because you’re at the same party and the music sizzles against the steam in the air. That’s Stella’s game, and man is she good at it.

“Hey,” Stella says, crashing into me. Some of the beer sloshes out of her cup onto my T-shirt, but she just goes, “Don’t worry, it won’t stain. It’s Lite beer.” She snort-laughs at her own joke.

Stella Avila is my best friend. Nothing ever seems to faze her. That’s not me—I’m struggling just to breathe in this sea of bodies, this amorphous current of faces, where pushing through the crowd feels like fighting a riptide everyone just peed in all at the same time.

“Daya, listen, you love me, right?” Stella says.

This is code. She knows it. I know it. We’ve been best friends since we were still in single digits. I know all her tells. Like right now? Her neck is flaming red, the way it gets whenever she’s near her newest crush.

“Of course I love you,” I say, shaking my head against her offer of a sip of beer. “What’s the favor?”

“I need you to distract Edgar Garibay.”

“So you can...?”

We slide our gaze in tandem toward a pair of French doors that open out to the back, and there she is. Yasmin Barroza. I should have known. Stella has been dropping her name into conversation for nearly a week, just because she likes the sound of it. Stella sees a line and looks for a curve, and tonight, she’s convinced Yasmin’s line will bend her way. That’s the whole reason we’re here.

She goes, “I just need five minutes with her.”

“What should I say to him?”

“Tell him your car broke down. And you need a ride.”

“I’m not getting in a car with him, Stells. He’s so shit-faced, he can barely stand up.”

“No, it’s not about the ride, dude,” she says. “There is no ride.”

I’m trying hard to be a good wingwoman because that’s my one job here, but I’m definitely having a hard time tracking this plan of hers. My brain is still on compute as Stella pulls me this way and that way like she knows exactly where she’s going, which she probably does, because Stella Avila has never been anything but absolute. From her take-no-shit attitude to her give-no-shit wardrobe. She knows how to work a room. And that girl always gets what she wants.

She is my polar opposite.

A heavy bass beat pounds out of these massive speakers and ricochets off the walls, puffing up the floor-to-ceiling curtains on the downbeat. But as we walk through the living room, everything slows to a cinematic crawl, from the curve and sway of dancing bodies all the way down to the dust particles floating in beams of colored light.

Because against one wall, Beckett Wild is sitting on a long, crushed-velvet sectional.

Technically, she’s on Cason Price’s lap, while Cason—her boyfriend—is kicked back on the sectional. Beckett has her legs thrown across his, laughing, multicolored hair slow-flipping like the surf spray of an ocean wave for a shampoo commercial filmed in Hawaii.

The couch is blue.

I can totally relate.

My eyes are locked on Beckett Wild as Stella pulls me toward the backyard. My eyes have been locked on Beckett Wild since eighth grade. Three years is a long time to hold a secret, illicit crush. Because super-Christian, über-straight Beckett Wild is the most unavailable girl in school.

At least, unavailable to a girl like me.

The second we hit the patio out back, Stella flashes a smile. Not a smile. The smile. She’s never used it on me, of course. It’s not a best friend smile.

“There’s Edgar,” she says like a ventriloquist, still smiling in Yasmin’s direction. Yasmin seems to notice Stella watching her. “Go, Daya.”

She nudges me with the tips of her fingers, inching me closer to where Edgar and Yasmin are standing near the massive outdoor grill. I shoot another nervous look around the backyard, at all these faces I recognize from school but don’t really know. Except for B’Rad Anderson, who’s sitting on the diving board, dangling his feet into the pool, chatting with a couple of guys bobbing in the water. Back in ninth grade, when he asked me to dance with him at the Fall Fling Dance, he was still going by Brad. Now he calls himself B’Rad, says it’s his new “brand.” Not sure why someone like B’Rad needs a brand, but that’s all him.

B’Rad sees me, lifts his hand, separates his fingers into a live-long-and-prosper configuration. I kick him a nod and smile back. I’d switch places with those guys in the pool in a heartbeat. Ten bucks says B’Rad’s a much better conversationalist than Edgar will ever be, drunk or sober.

Stella gives me another push. “Go.”

“Okay, okay.”

I walk up to Edgar, squeezing between him and Yasmin so Stella has an opening.

“Hey, Edgar,” I say, pushing the hair away from my eyes. They say guys like it when a girl touches her hair, not that it matters to me personally. Besides, mine just keeps falling back over my face.

He goes, “Hey, um...?”

“Daya.”

“Daya. Yeah.”

He has no idea who I am. In fact, he’s so drunk, he’ll probably never remember we had this conversation. If you can call it a conversation. I blank on what to say next.

“So, that car out front? The, um, red one? That’s yours, right?”

His smile slurs together with his words as he says, “Yeah. You want a ride in my red car?”

I look over at Stella. Whatever she’s got going on, she’s working hard for it. Yasmin looks like a tough sell.

I’m still thinking of what to say next when a puff of breath ruffles my hair from behind.

“Boo.”

I spin around.

Sweet Jesus, it’s that girl from the field hockey party over spring break.

I clear my throat and go, “Hey... uh...” Is it Naomi? Natasha? “I mean. Hey.”

Edgar Garibay seizes the opportunity and slides away from me. I try to call him back, but maybe-Naomi jockeys into his spot, and all I know is, I’m sucking at this wingwoman thing right now.

“I’m surprised to see you here, Daya,” she says through a smile. “This doesn’t seem much like your jam.”

I don’t want to talk about my jam with maybe-Naomi. I turn to look for Stella, but she’s gone. Yasmin’s gone too. I’m alone. Alone with maybe-Naomi.

“I’ll be honest, it’s not mine either,” she says. “I was supposed to go to that party up at Cara’s tonight, but you know how those things go. Plus, I promised Justin’s mom I’d be here. Y’know. Just to make sure he doesn’t let things get too out of hand again.”

“Justin’s mom?”

“My aunt. Justin’s my cousin, so.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, not everyone knows that. I sure don’t advertise it.”

My nod is no match for the awkward silence as maybe-Naomi’s gaze singes its way down the entire length of me.

“So... uh.” I scramble for something to say. “Are you thirsty? I’m thirsty.”

“Yeah. I’m thirsty. Why don’t we pick up where we left off at Cara’s last time?” She hooks her fingers into my belt loops. “I can sing ‘Nowhere, Girl’ in your ear, just like that night—”

“You know what? I’ll be right back with two... uh... yeah,” I trail off as I back away from her.

“Limited-time offer,” she calls after me as I spin around, hoping to find somewhere there’s a sink—I need to splash some water on my face or something. Maybe-Naomi has me in an uncomfortable sweat.

I head into the house and down a long hallway, looking for a bathroom. I’m not expecting a door to fly open and Beckett Wild to step out into the hall. We both look equally surprised to see each other standing there as she closes the bathroom door behind her.

She goes, “Oh. I’m sorry. I hope you weren’t waiting too long?”

“No, it’s... it’s fine. Are you okay?” I ask because she doesn’t look okay. Not like she did when we got here, anyway.

“Everything’s fine, yeah, it’s just...” She tries to play it off by rolling her tear-puffed eyes. “Drama, y’know?”

I nod, wishing I could laugh or something, but not in a way that’s dumb or creepy. I run my hand through my hair, push my bangs away from my eyes.

“Do you need a drink?” she says.

“A what?”

She points at my hands. “No cup,” she says. “I was just wondering if—”

“Oh,” I say. This time I do laugh, just a little. It’s not dumb or creepy, but it does read sort of nervous. “No, that’s okay. I don’t... I mean...”

She sighs and goes, “Me neither. I’m not even supposed to be here, technically.” This time, she tries to laugh it off. “I... don’t know why I said that.”

It’s none of my business what she does on a Friday night, not that I haven’t wondered. Still, I fake like I’m clueless, and ask, “How come you’re not supposed to be here?” even though I’m pretty sure I know why Beckett’s not supposed to be at a house party on a Friday night.

“Because technically,” she says, “I’m supposed to be at youth group.”

There it is. Youth group. Otherwise known as the Escondido chapter of The Great Wait. That’s what they call our district-mandated sex-ed program. Which is a joke, because they only talk about straight sex, and they only tell you not to have it. And they never use the word sex, which is also weird. Even weirder is that The Great Wait isn’t just a sex-ed program—it’s this whole way of life in our backward town, thanks to the influence of one megachurch in particular: Grace Redeemer.

Beckett finally speaks into the awkward silence.

“Well... I don’t mean to keep you from...” She nods in the direction of the living room. “Whatever you were doing.”

“Oh. No.” I twist halfway around before turning back. “You’re not. I just got bored, and... decided to look around, I guess.”

She starts walking, and for some reason I follow her—not in the direction of the party, but in the direction of the sweeping stairway just inside the front door. Beckett leans up against the wall that forms the side of the staircase. I put my hands in the front pockets of my jeans, then take them out again. Shift my weight from one leg to the other. Let my gaze trail up the long, curved stairway. I don’t know where to rest my eyes, any more than I know where to put my hands. I just know that looking straight at Beckett Wild would be like looking directly into the sun. This girl leaves a trail of color and light wherever she goes.

She incinerates me.

“Thanks for coming out here with me,” she says. “I’m not ready to go back inside right now.”

“How come?” I ask.

It takes her a moment to answer.

“Sometimes, when Cason’s at a party...”

She blinks a few times, makes a face that’s hard to interpret.

“He’s not supposed to be here either,” she pivots. “He’s definitely not supposed to be drinking.”

I’m not sure why she’s telling me any of this—maybe because all her real friends are at Bible study.

“Can I ask you something?” I say before I chicken out.

“Sure.”

“Why are you at this party when you’re supposed to be at youth group?”

Beckett lifts her hand like she’s not even thinking about it, reaches for a delicate gold cross on a delicate gold chain at the base of her delicate throat. She pulls the cross back and forth along the chain as she stares into nothingness, and I can only guess she’s thinking about how to answer a question like that in a way that wouldn’t invite judgment. Or maybe I’m projecting my own shit onto her, since I constantly worry that everything I do in this town invites judgment. Because that’s the world I live in. I watch her hand as she stands there thinking, her long slender fingers, her nails—cut short and painted lime green, all except for her ring finger, which is painted sky blue. She wears a thin gold band on that finger.

“You know what sucks about striving for perfection?” she blurts.

I’m not sure how this is an answer to my question, but she definitely has my attention.

“What?” I say.

“Failure is literally the only option. I fail my parents every single day, sometimes in ways you would never even believe. There’s no way to be perfect.”

“So, then, you’re just here to...”

She shakes her head so hard that the wild splashes of color in her sun-bleached hair dance around her face. When she stops, her expression is still kind of squinched up, like she’s trying not to think about something.

“I’m just a person, Daya,” she says. “Just like you. I’m just like you.” She whispers this the second time she says it, almost like she needs to convince herself it’s true.

I feel kind of sad for her, but the real truth is, she’s not like me. She’s nothing like me. She lives in Greenville, in a big house with two loving parents and a dog. I know, because I’ve low-key stalked her Instagram a little. She sails through an easy kind of life, taking honors classes, making straight A’s. She has a boyfriend, for fuck’s sake. Nothing’s ever hard in Beckett’s world, and I know I shouldn’t even be standing here talking to someone’s perfect Christian daughter when all I’ve thought about for the last three years is what it would be like to kiss her.

And that’s what makes her not just like me—because Beckett Wild would never think about kissing me. In fact, I’m pretty sure if she knew how I felt about her, she wouldn’t even be talking to me right now.

“Why are you here?” she asks, grabbing the wrought iron banister and swinging around it until she’s sitting on the staircase a few steps up from the bottom. “At a party like this?”

I wait a few beats before coming over and sitting next to her. Not right next to her, but one step below her.

“Truth?” I ask.

“Definitely,” she says.

“I’m here as Stella’s wingwoman.”

She stares at me for a few seconds.

She goes, “Stella?”

I nod.

“That girl you came in with?”

Adrenaline rips through my bloodstream.

“You saw who I came in with?”

“Well, yeah, I mean...” Her hand goes to the cross again, only this time she just touches it. “She’s your girlfriend, right?”

“Uh, no.” I force myself not to laugh. Stella’s like the sister I never had, but even if she wasn’t, we’d never be each other’s type. Stella always goes for girls who drip glam and exude rizz. I need someone more internal, who looks at the world and sees a kaleidoscope—the fractals, the broken bits, the lines and shadows. The negative space. Someone who sees something more than what the world appears to be and wants to dive deeper into it. Someone like...

Beckett nudges me with her shoe. “Come on. I see the two of you at school—you’re inseparable.”

“On the real—best friends, yes. Girlfriends, never in a million years.”

Her mouth pulls to one side.

“So, what’s with the smile?” she says.

“I’m not smiling, you’re smiling.”

Beckett’s cheeks go kind of pink as she says, “I’m totally not smiling.”

I’m totally not either. I am half smiling, but I’m also half not-smiling. And I’m all the way confused. Because this feels like flirt when I know it isn’t, and it feels like heat when I know it can’t be.

It can’t be.

I’m at a straight party with the straightest girl in school—a straight girl who just put her hand on my shoulder while saying I wasn’t making her smile, when I totally was.

So... what is that?

Beckett leans forward, just a fraction, just enough for me to register the warmth coming off her. She reaches out until her hand is almost touching my leg, and says, “Did you change clothes after school? Cuz these aren’t the same doodles from earlier.”

I look down at my jeans, at the series of line faces I drew in Sharpie on my right leg as I waited for Stella to get ready, and try to play off the fact that Beckett noticed I’d changed from what I had on in class today.

“Guilty as charged,” I say.

“I love these. Seriously, you’re so creative.”

“I’m kind of obsessed with Picasso’s minimalist vibe right now,” I say.

Then I hear my actual words.

“Okay, was that too nerdy, or...?” I laugh a little, and so does Beckett, so I add, “That was pretty nerdy.”

Her smile twists a little as she drags out the word: “Maybe.”

“I just feel like his surrealist stuff is almost a prototype for modern street art.” She doesn’t respond to that, so I add, “Who’s your artistic crush, I mean... you do seem like a bold-color person, that’s for sure.”

She touches her hair. “I don’t know. Jackson Pollack? Keith Haring? Did you know if you do a search for which artists should every aspiring artist know, it’s like ninety-nine percent male?”

This surprises me, coming from her.

“With the notable exception of Daya Keane,” she adds, “who uses her jeans like a canvas.” She leans playfully into my shoulder. “I love seeing what you come up with every day.”

I tip forward, let my hair sway over my face to block out any signs of embarrassment on it.

“Thanks,” I say.

“So, you don’t get in trouble for drawing on your—?”

Before she can finish asking, Stella comes whipping around the corner, all breathless.

“There you are!”

She swings from me to Beckett.

“Hey, it’s Sister Mary Margaret. Didn’t expect to see you at a party.”

A blaze of red shoots up from Beckett’s chest into her face.

“We just stopped by for a few minutes,” she says, sitting back up at a ninety-degree angle and smoothing her hands over her hair.

Stella goes, “Yeah, well, I just saw your boyfriend inside, beer ponging for Jesus, so.”

Beckett twists a chunk of her hair around one finger, stalling like she’s trying to decide something.

“I guess I better go get him,” she says without moving.

Stella winks and goes, “Better take his keys too. Just sayin’.”

I look up at Beckett, and Beckett looks down at me, and she’s totally not smiling anymore, and I don’t even know what’s real right now.

I need to get out of here.

“You ready to roll?” Stella asks.

“Definitely,” I answer.

“Good. Let’s do it. They’re expecting us over at Cara’s.”

Beckett slides up the wall. Her face has gone back to the way it looked when she came out of the bathroom.

“See you Monday, Daya,” she tells me, skipping down the three or so steps to the bottom before disappearing into the living room. She doesn’t look back.

My chest feels tight as I watch her walk away.

“Did I interrupt something?” Stella asks.

I shake my head, and she waits a beat or two in case I have more to say about that.

When I don’t, she says, “Good, then. Let’s bounce.”

“You know what, Stells? I don’t feel like going to another party.”

“What? Daya—”

“No, you go. Have fun. Do your thing. Get laid.”

“Okay, you’re starting to sound like your mother now—like Joanna 2.0.”

I make face at her. “Dude. What the fuck?”

“Not the get laid part, obviously, but y’know... My name is Joanna and life is hard, and that’s why I’m so bitter. No, Daya, I’m not going to let that happen to you. Friends don’t let friends turn into their mothers. Come to the party.”

Before I can even accuse Stella of being too drunk to make sense, B’Rad Anderson cruises around the corner and goes, “Daya!”

“Fuck me,” Stella mumbles under her breath.

He nods at her without a greeting, not that it matters. She’d ignore him whether he greeted her or not.

“I was looking everywhere for you,” he tells me. “Edgar said you might need a ride home?”

I lift an eyebrow at Stella, like See?

“Fine,” she says. “I won’t need a wingwoman at Cara’s, anyway.”

“You never need a wingwoman,” I say as she leans in for a hug. “You do know that, right? Girls throwing their panties at you and shit.”

Stella just goes, “Pffft!” before flipping us both off.

B’Rad waits until Stella’s gone before saying, “I don’t know why she doesn’t like me.”

I know why Stella doesn’t like him, but it’s not mine to get into. They’ll work it out someday, or they won’t. For now, I’m so grateful he’s here, I thank him profusely for the get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Trust me,” he says as we walk toward his weird little yellow VW wagon. “It’s a mutual assist tonight. Coming to your rescue gave me a solid reason to leave.”

He doesn’t elaborate, just unlocks and opens the car door and makes sure I’m all the way inside before closing it.

We pull away from the curb onto the tree-lined street, and B’Rad turns the radio on to Christian rock music—the one station that comes in halfway decent up in Greenville. The station starts to ghost out as we head south, and the vibe shifts, too, the farther away we get from Greenville. You always know when you’re hitting the Flats at the south end of town. The houses get smaller, the streets get narrower, more potholes, less shine. It’s easy to see where the money stops and life gets harder. Parts of Escondido can definitely be a little sketchy sometimes, especially at night. Not the part where Justin Tadeo and Cara Morasco live. But for sure the part where Stella and I live.

“You looked kind of miserable tonight,” B’Rad says as we drive. “Or am I making that up?”

“House parties aren’t really my thing,” I say.

“Same.”

I turn from looking out the window to looking at him.

“What are you talking about? You looked right at home out there in the pool.”

He does this kind of snort-laugh. “There’s only one reason a guy like me gets invited to a party like that, and it’s—”

“Here,” I cut in. “Turn on Cortés.”

He swings right and I point to the third house from the corner.

We pull up in front of my place and sit there for a few beats, the soft sounds of the night coming through the open windows of his car. I’m not sad that I left Justin’s party so early, or even that I didn’t go to the other party with Stella. But going home is its own kind of ache.

“Thanks again for doing me a solid,” I say.

“Anytime.”

I wait for his weird little car to sputter away before easing into the kitchen through the back door and going inside. The house is dark except for a chunk of light coming from the living room. Joanna calls out to me from where she’s most likely sprawled on the sofa in front of the TV. She’s watching Murder by Design—I can tell by the sound of the narrator’s voice. And she’s drinking wine. I can tell by the sound of hers.

“Daya,” she calls again.

“I’m not late,” I call back.

“No, I just need you to set an alarm so we can be out of the house early.”

I groan, knowing what this means for my Saturday.

Before I go to my room, I detour into the living room, where Joanna’s exactly as I pictured her: stretched out on the sofa in front of the TV, an empty wineglass on the coffee table. I pull the crocheted blanket off the arm of the couch and cover her up, pick up the wineglass with one deep-purple drop curled into the bottom of it. That wineglass wasn’t always a fixture, but it is these days. Along the way, it became part of the sequence of events. Somewhere between Joanna finding out about my dad and my dad moving out. Or my dad moving out and my mom having the breakdown that cost her her job at the salon in Oviedo. Somewhere in all our shared sadness, that glass of wine showed up and never left. Like a blanket, Joanna calls it. To soften the nights.

I go to my room and set the alarm for her. We used to have fun thrifting together for things like home decor or kitchen utensils. Clothes for both of us. Toys sometimes, when I was a kid. Now Joanna is more interested in oddities, things with weird or morbid backstories. Anything with some tragedy attached to it is high on the list. Maybe it makes her feel better knowing that other people’s stories are sadder than hers, but honestly? I’m afraid one day she’ll break again under the weight of all her carefully curated trauma.

I pull out my phone, text Stella.

U solid?

Better than solid.She adds a few winky emojis, hearts, and four-leaf clovers, plus a pair of kissy-lips at the end. Something tells me Yasmin Barroza is already a distant memory, and that some other lucky girl is making Stella’s neck turn bright red right about now.

Good on her. Stella got lucky in love. And I got lucky avoiding that second party, plus scoring a ride home from B’Rad.

I stretch out on my bed and set my brain to autopilot. The memory dial moves straight to the staircase at Justin Tadeo’s place, on what was arguably the weirdest Friday night I’ve had in a while. It replays every nanosecond of my conversation with Beckett Wild at a house party she wasn’t supposed to be at.

She smiled. At me. At things I said. Genuinely smiled, more than once. Girls like me don’t make girls like her smile.

Girls like me come home and cover their mothers in quilts made by other people’s grandmas, and go to bed dreaming about girls like her until the alarm goes off and reality cracks with the dawn.