“Why did you invite Ryder?” I ask, jumping onto the front of the cart. I know Andrew hates Ryder as much as I do, and yet he always seems to be everywhere.
“Chase invited him,” Andrew says, pushing me and the bag of cheese down the aisle. “And I can’t just tell Ryder not to show up. Hey, ready for warp speed?” He starts running, pushing the cart faster, building momentum as we go. The aisles at Costco are about the size of city blocks, so there’s plenty of room. As we gain speed, he jumps onto the back. I scream and put a foot down to brake us before we crash into a ceiling-high stack of Chips Ahoy! cookies.
Once we’ve slowed down to a steady roll, I jump off the cart and move around to the back so I’m the one pushing. He jumps off and walks beside me.
“You were downstairs that night, right?” I say as we turn into the refrigerated aisle. We pause in front of the juice.
“What night?”
“My birthday.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“What happened when Danielle and I were still upstairs?” I don’t know why I haven’t thought to ask him before. “How did everybody find out about it? Chase must have said something, right?”
“Somebody could’ve seen Chase and Danielle go into the room together,” he offers.
“But then how did everybody know so fast?”
“Chase isn’t a bad guy,” he says. “If he said something, it was probably because he was excited, not because he was trying to embarrass her.”
I think again of the note Danielle got the other day, someone actually calling her a slut for losing her virginity to a guy she was into. Could Chase have written the note? It doesn’t seem like something he would do. Andrew is right—Chase might be dumb sometimes, but I don’t think he’s the kind of evil to shame a girl he slept with. The note could definitely be from Ryder. But why would Ryder go through the effort of disguising his handwriting if he was going to call her names today in person?
“Ryder called Danielle a slut today,” I tell Andrew. “To her face. How is that okay?”
He stops the cart so fast I bump into it. “It’s not okay. Fucking Ryder.”
“Yeah, but how does he always get away with shit like that?”
“Just wait until next year,” he says. “If someone acts like an asshole in college you can just stop hanging out with them. We just have to get out of high school and it’ll be better.” It’s the mantra we’ve been repeating to ourselves since high school began. I just hope it’s true.
“Hey, Collins, what does this look like to you?” Ryder lifts his taco in my direction.
“It looks like a taco,” I say, sprinkling some cheese onto my own and trying to ignore him. We’re standing at the kitchen counter, the spread of toppings laid out in front of us in various containers. Andrew is on the stool next to me, and Chase is across the counter with Edwin Chang and Ryder’s sidekick, Simon Terst, who might be even worse because he actually looks up to Ryder like he’s some kind of hero.
“Exactly,” Ryder says. “A taco. A muffin. A tuna sandwich.” He waggles his brows. “Get it?”
“No,” I say, my voice flat and sarcastic. “Explain it to me.”
Ryder tilts his head to the side, a smile frozen on his face, and I can see the cogs turning behind his eyes as he tries to figure out if I’m serious.
“She’s got it,” Andrew says.
“Hey, Terst.” Ryder ignores Andrew and turns toward Simon, holding his taco up to Simon’s nose. “Bet you’ve never been this close to a taco. How’s it smell?”
“Fuck you.” Simon swats Ryder’s hand away. “My life is an all-you-can-eat taco buffet.”
Ryder starts laughing at this, and not in the nice way. Simon is small and twitchy and is almost blind without his wire-rimmed glasses. Danielle started referring to him as the Rabbit back in sixth grade, and the nickname kinda stuck.
“Sure, man,” Chase says. “You’re drowning in tacos.”
Simon’s face is red and blotchy. It occurs to me he’s probably a virgin too. This awkward label is something we share. I bite into my taco and chew, trying to distract myself.
“I’m a one taco kind of guy,” Edwin says. He and Molly Moye have been inseparable ever since my birthday. “Molly or nothing.”
“Seriously?” Ryder asks. He raises his hand up to imitate cracking a whip, making sounds with his tongue pressed against his front teeth. “Someone’s whipped.”
“Not whipped,” Edwin says. “Smart. I’ll never do better than Molly. She’s amazing.”
“When you have a girlfriend you can get it whenever you want,” Chase says. “One girl who knows what she’s doing.”
“How about ten girls who know what they’re doing?” Ryder breaks into a wide smile. He turns to Andrew. “Right, Reed?”
Andrew rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. I mean, not at once, but variety is nice.”
Andrew talking about girls as if we’re some sampler platter he’d like to try is so gross that I pick up a handful of shredded cheese and throw it at him. The shreds flutter down into his lap and he brushes them off, unbothered. “Whatever, Drewchebag,” I say. “You don’t even like variety. You like blonds.”
He stops brushing the cheese out of his lap and looks up at me. “What?”
“You seriously need me to point this out? Cecilia and Sophie and Susie Palmer all look pretty much the same. You definitely have a type.”
“I’ve never noticed,” he says. “It’s not on purpose.” The tips of his ears are bright pink.
“Susie Palm-job,” Ryder says. “Worst handy of my life.”
“Worst handy,” Chase says. “Kinda redundant. I mean, any hand job is pointless, isn’t it? Like, I’ve been touching my junk for eighteen years. I know what I’m doing. Any chick that tries is set up for failure.”
Sometimes hearing the guys talk like this makes my anxiety spike. It’s like they think a girl is expected to be a pro the first time she ever sees a penis. I hate that I’m not brave enough to tell them they’re being idiots.
“But this was worse,” Ryder says. “Like she was squeezing out a washcloth. She has sandpaper hands.”
“A sand job,” Edwin adds.
“Aren’t we past the age of hand jobs anyway?” Chase says. “Hand jobs were cool in middle school. Like, in eighth grade, I was super stoked if a girl went anywhere near there. But at this point, I’m over it. I’d rather just do it myself.”