I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Benway,” Kat says in her innocent little girl voice.
“Even though we’re outside and your graduation is in a few days, we still need everyone to follow the student handbook,” Ms. Benway says. Regardless of everything, I make eye contact with Kat because there’s no way that statement can escape an eye roll.
“By the way, Miss Rydell,” Ms. Benway continues, “I was very impressed with your prom campaign. It’s heartening seeing young people fighting for their beliefs.”
I regret our mutual eye roll so much now. I regret there’s no one here for me to share a new eye roll with. Seriously . . . beliefs? I’ve never seen someone get so much credit for needing to be the center of attention at any cost.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Benway.” Kat actually places her hand over her own heart. “I feel so fortunate I was at a school like Magnolia Park where we were taken seriously.”
I glance back at Mariana and Sofia, but they look as enthralled with Kat as Ms. Benway. And, of course, that’s why I miss them to begin with. Everything felt so easy then: friendships, boyfriends, the future. But now my feelings are too messy. It’s like something has been rotting from within and now there’s no way to know when it started.
Kat swings around so that her hip knocks against mine. It suddenly feels like us, like James and Kat with no distance, no breakups, no walking separately at graduation. “You’re coming to the grad pre-party at Adrian’s tonight, right?”
I shrug. “I might not.”
“James!” She pulls on her necklaces, the old and new monograms glinting in the sun. “It’s our last high school party. By Saturday night we’ll be freshmen again.”
“Oh, god,” I say. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“It’s terrifying, right? So that solves it. You’re coming.”
For all the parties I’ve managed to avoid this year, I’m not sure why I’m ending the year with one. There was more than a brief moment earlier today when I wanted to just call it off. Even the idea of walking with anyone but Kat at graduation, much less the reality of it . . . Shouldn’t we just admit the friendship had, somehow, run its course? Sure, we might have moments where things feel just like before, but that doesn’t erase the long stretches of time when they don’t.
So of course it might be naive that I’m thinking of tonight’s party invite as a potential magic elixir. You have no idea what you’ll believe until you have to.
At Adrian Vardanyan’s house, I slip past Matty and Co., managing to walk past all of them without any eye contact from Matty, or even from Co. Matty doesn’t seem like the center of attention the way he used to, though, and I figure that’s because the reigning king of a high school class doesn’t do stuff like get hung up for so long on his ex-girlfriend, and definitely doesn’t say ugly, shitty things to her. Not Matty Saves the World Evans, at least.
None of my friends seem to be inside, so I text Kat—Are you here yet? I even add a confetti emoji because I know it’s the kind of thing she’ll like—and head out to the backyard. I spot Hannah, Tobi, and a few others from track, and I step into their circle.
“McCall!” Tobi cheers. She’s wearing a sparkly dress and red heart-shaped sunglasses, even though no one else is dressed up and it’s nighttime. “We’re graduating!”
“She’s had, like, a beer and a half already,” Hannah tells me.
“I thought her body was a temple,” I say.
“Temples have wine and stuff,” Tobi tells me.
Hannah and I exchange a look.
“There’s soda, too,” Hannah says. “And mineral water? You can keep your temple running with Prohibition-era laws.”
“Thank god,” I say, and luckily a sophomore girl scampers off to get beverages for us. Kat’s right; I’ll miss being at the top of the food chain. It’ll be weird to be the babies again, and I mention this to Hannah.
“Oh, I’m grateful for it,” she says, as we accept our bottles of Topo Chico. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Now I can be honest about that again.”
I clink my glass bottle against hers. “Also, we can protect each other.”
“Yes. I’m so glad you changed your mind and accepted—”
“I haven’t really said anything to anyone yet,” I say.
“You nerd,” she says. “Why not? Berkeley’s a great school. It was my dream school!”
I make sure Tobi’s too tipsy to be paying attention. It’s a safe bet. “It’s a long story, but I fucked up some of my application deadlines, and then . . . I liked how it sounded to go as far away as possible, so I kept talking about Michigan. It took me a while to sort out what I actually wanted.”
Hannah nods. “The whole process makes you not want to say anything to anyone, huh?”
I try not to let it show on my face how true that’s been.
“I was so nervous I wouldn’t get in,” Hannah continues. “And everyone would know I already had this dumb Berkley keychain as a good luck . . . whatever.”
“It’s all too public,” I agree.
“You two have to start beering next year,” Tobi says at a very loud volume.
“Beering?” I ask.
“Athletes in college manage not to beer, too,” Hannah says. “We’ll survive.”
I feel something in my chest lighten. It was easy to want to believe that when I got to college I’d have to learn to be a bubbly fun girl everyone wanted to party with. I’d have to be like Kat to survive. But Hannah’s right; I can stay just James. Just James can be enough.
We keep drinking mineral waters while Tobi beers more and loudly outlines her plans for seducing Miguel Carter before graduation. I keep my phone handy but there’s still no response from Kat.
It’s a little hard to believe that despite how much time I’ve spent with my track teammates, I’ve only recently realized I’d have this much fun hanging out with them beyond practices and meets. I wonder how this year—how high school—would have felt had I realized it sooner.
And it seems like with school behind us and only graduation ahead, walls are coming down anyway. Everyone’s talking to everyone, and it matters less who was a drama kid, who cared only about their grades, or who was basically a clichéd asshole. As more people join our group in the backyard, we end up talking about college, and from time to time it hits me how this is all slipping away. By the end of this weekend, we won’t be seniors, and by the end of the summer, most of us won’t even live here anymore.
“Wait,” I find myself saying. The night’s caught up with me and I have no idea how long it’s been since I arrived. I check my phone, but there are still no messages. “Have you guys seen Kat?”
Hannah’s friend Ryan gestures toward the house, so I take a deep breath and walk inside. I’m assuming he’s wrong, because even if it feels like I’m Kat’s lowest priority, I don’t actually believe that it could be true. What about the magic elixir? And while Kat’s more popular and visible than ever, Ryan could be buzzed enough that he spotted someone else with curly hair and not the queen herself.