Big Al gave her a wary look, but he went to the milkshake machine.
The funny thing was, Big Al thought Nardo was the bad influence when, in fact, it was Clay who was constantly leading them over the cliff. Every single stupid thing they’d ever done, from stealing booze to doing drugs to swiping cash and valuables from out-of-state cars, had been Clay’s idea.
And he had never, ever been the one to pay the price.
Ricky said, “Let’s go out back for some air.”
Emily followed her down the long hallway. Tendrils of cold air pulled her along. She could smell the salty sea spray wafting in through the open door. Wind whipped at her hair. The boardwalk rolled like a carpet along the shore.
Ricky took a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket, but Emily shook her head. She still felt queasy, which was nothing new. Lately, any odor set her off, whether it was fresh flowers on the kitchen table or her father’s stinky cigars. She was probably coming down with a stomach virus.
Light flared from the match as Ricky struck the box. She held the flame to the tip of her cigarette. Her cheeks sucked in. She huffed out the smoke with a harsh-sounding cough. Emily thought of something Blake had said the first time his sister had smoked: You look like someone who’s smoking because you think it’s cool, not because you want to.
Emily kept herself upwind, walking to the edge of the boardwalk. She rested her forearms on the railing. Below, the sea swirled around the pilings. She felt a gentle spray of water on her skin. Her cheeks still felt hot from the sensation of Clay holding her so close.
Ricky could always read her mind. “You asked about me and Nardo, but what about you and Clay?”
Emily pressed her lips together. Four years ago, Clay had decided that sex would only complicate the group dynamic. Emily took the edict to mean that he wasn’t interested, because Clay always found a way to get what he wanted.
She told Ricky, “He’ll be in New Mexico this time next year.”
“That’s not so far, is it?”
“It’s almost one thousand nine hundred miles.” Emily had done the calculations using a formula she had found in her father’s Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Ricky coughed on a mouthful of smoke. “How long would that take to drive?”
Emily shrugged, but she knew the answer. “Two or three days, depending on how much you stop.”
“Well, Blake and I will be up the street in Newark at good ol’ UD.” There was a sadness to Ricky’s smile. The only positive that had come out of her parents’ tragic death was a lawsuit that had put in place funding for Ricky and Blake’s college. “Anyway, how many hours away will that be from you?”
Emily felt bad because she hadn’t calculated the distance between Foggy Bottom and the University of Delaware. Still, she hazarded a guess. “Couple of hours at the most.”
“And Nardo will be at Penn if his dad bribes the right people. That’s only a few hours away from UD.” Ricky had clearly done that equation. “So that’s not far at all, is it? You can hop on the train and see us anytime.”
Emily nodded, but she didn’t trust herself to speak. She felt so unbelievably weepy, torn between desperately wanting her life to change and just as desperately wanting to stay safely inside the clique forever.
If Ricky felt the same, she didn’t say. Instead, she smoked in silence. Her foot rested on the bottom rung of the railing as she scowled out to sea. Emily knew that she hated the water. Ricky and Blake’s parents had died in a boating accident when the twins were four. Big Al was a good provider, but he was a reluctant parent. The same could be said for Nardo’s folks, who were always on business trips in New York or vacations in Majorca or at a fundraiser in San Francisco or a golf tournament in Tahoe or anywhere, really, that didn’t involve spending time with Nardo. As for Emily’s parents—well, there wasn’t much to say for Emily’s parents other than that they expected her to succeed.
Weirdly, Clay was the only one who had two stable, loving adults in his life. He’d been adopted by the Morrows after his mother had died. He had four sisters and a brother who were out in the world somewhere, but he never mentioned them, let alone bothered to reach out to them. Probably because the Morrows treated him like a gift bestowed on them by the Lord Jesus Himself. Clay wasn’t one to share.
“Em?” Ricky asked. “What’s going on with you lately?”
“Nothing.” Emily shrugged and shook her head at the same time. “I’m okay.”
Ricky flicked ash into the ocean. She was too good at picking up on Emily’s thoughts. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Like, we’re all on the precipice of starting our lives, but we’re still here, right?”
The railing shook as Ricky stamped her foot, indicating here on this spot outside of her grandfather’s diner. Emily was glad that her best friend was feeling the same sense of fracture. She couldn’t count the number of times they’d sneaked out the back door of the diner while the boys were arguing about which Angel was the hottest or quoting lines from Monty Python or trying to guess which of the freshmen girls at school had gone all the way.
Emily knew that she and Ricky would lose their sense of camaraderie once they’d all been away at college.
“Ugh.” Ricky frowned at her cigarette, which was only half smoked. “I hate these things.”
Emily watched her flick the butt into the ocean. She tried not to think about what it would do to the fish.
Ricky said, “You’ve been different since last month’s party.”
Emily looked away. The weepiness came back. The nausea. The shakiness. She heard the ding a typewriter makes when it gets to the end of the line. The clacks of the carriage sliding back. Then one by one, she imagined the individual typebars popping up, spelling out the words in all capital letters—
THE PARTY.
She had no memory of it. This wasn’t like forgetting where she’d left her keys or blanking on a homework assignment. Emily’s brain gave her context for those minor annoyances. She could imagine herself dropping her keys on the table instead of her purse or zoning out during class or forgetting to write down an assignment. When she tried to recall the night of The Party, her brain only took her so far. Walking up the concrete steps to Nardo’s looming front doors. The umber tiles in the foyer. The sunken living room with its gold chandelier and massive console TV. The large windows overlooking the swimming pool. The hi-fi system that took up an entire wall. The speakers that were almost as tall as Emily.
But those details weren’t from that particular night, the night of The Party. They were from countless nights before when Emily had told her parents she was sleeping over at Ricky’s or studying with a friend she hadn’t spoken to in years because they were all going to Nardo’s to get drunk and play board games or watch movies or smoke Mary Jane and talk about how to fix the screwed-up world they were all about to inherit.
The actual night of The Party was nothing but a black hole.
Emily remembered Nardo opening the front door. She recalled Clay placing a tiny square of paper on her tongue. She remembered sitting on one of the suede couches.
And then she was waking up in her grandmother’s bedroom lying on the floor.
“Oh well.” Ricky heaved a sigh as she turned her back to the waves. Her elbows rested on the railing, pushing her breasts out like a hood ornament. “I don’t know anything about acid, but Clay is right. You shouldn’t let one bad trip spoil things. Hallucinogenics can be really therapeutic. Cary Grant used them to heal his childhood trauma.”