Home > Late to the Party(2)

Late to the Party(2)
Author: Kelly Quindlen

I thought about that conversation for weeks afterward, wondering if it was true, if that was really how other people saw us. Maybe they did. Maybe to them Maritza was just the gawky, outspoken, frizzy-haired dancer, and JaKory was the skinny, neurotic, Tumblr-obsessed black nerd, and I was nothing but the shy, reclusive, practically invisible artist who never raised her hand. Maybe that was why nothing real ever happened to us.

With our junior year behind us, things were supposed to feel big and important and, as JaKory described it no matter how much Maritza and I begged him not to, “pregnant with potential.” But the thing is, nothing felt big or important or bursting with potential to me. We’d gotten older, and taller, and maybe a little less awkward than we’d been the year before, but I’d come to know adolescence as a rolling stretch of hanging out with my friends the same way we always had, without anything new happening.

You know how adults are always talking about teenagers? When I was in fourth grade, my family drove past a house that had been rolled with toilet paper, and my dad shook his head and chuckled Teenagers under his breath. My mom griped about Teenagers every June, when dark figures hung over the monkey bars of the clubhouse playground long after closing hours, but she never actually seemed mad; she seemed wistful. And then there’s all those shows and movies, the ones where thirty-year-old actors pretend to be high schoolers, and they go on dates and drive their fast cars and dance at crazy house parties where their fellow Teenagers swing from chandeliers and barf into synthetic tree stands. You grow up with these ideas about Teenagers, about their wild, vibrant, dramatic lives of breaking rules and making out and Being Alive, and you know that it’s your destiny to become one of them someday, but suddenly you’re seventeen and you’re watching people cannonball into a swimming pool in the pouring rain, and you realize you still haven’t become a real Teenager, and maybe you never will.

 

* * *

 

By two thirty that afternoon, we were dried off and well into our second movie, burrowed down in my basement with a feast of soda, Gushers, and Doritos on the coffee table in front of us. Maritza and I were sharing our Gushers packs because she only liked the red ones and I only liked the blue ones, while JaKory didn’t like them at all because he had “texture issues.”

“Maybe you’ll like them better if you eat them on a Dorito,” Maritza said, shoving one toward him. “Come on, ’Kory, try it.”

“Get behind me, Satan,” JaKory said, flicking her away.

“Aww, come on, JaKory,” I said, offering him a chip and Gusher of my own. “They’re great together. You’ll ‘ship’ them in no time.”

I caught Maritza’s eye, grinning. There was nothing we loved more than teasing JaKory about his obsessive fandom habits.

“Pretty soon you’ll be writing fanfic about them,” Maritza said, her expression mischievous. Oooh, little Gusher guy, you’re so juicy, do that squirty thing for me again.

“Shut your filthy mouth,” JaKory said as I fell back laughing. “You’d be a terrible fic writer.”

Maritza looked genuinely offended. “I’d be a great fic writer.”

“Shouldn’t y’all be focusing on this movie, anyway?” JaKory said. “Or can you finally admit that it’s boring?”

“It’s not boring,” I said, looking at the women on-screen. “Look how beautiful they are.”

“That was literally a shot of her bending over a mailbox,” JaKory said dryly.

“Women look beautiful from an infinite number of angles, JaKory,” Maritza said in her know-it-all voice. “Not that you’d understand.”

“I’m perfectly fine with not understanding that,” JaKory said. “But lesbians or not, this movie is atrocious. Let’s watch something else. How about a gay romance?”

“Ugh,” Maritza and I said together.

“Y’all love to outnumber me on this, but I always watch your stupid girl-meets-girl movies, even the desperate dramas where one of them gets shot or eaten by a sea monster or whatever.”

“This isn’t even a drama,” Maritza said. “It’s a comedy.”

“Yeah, and I’m laughing so hard.”

“Fine,” Maritza said, tossing him the remote. “Pick something else. Give us all the gay.”

 

* * *

 

I guess that was the other part of the equation: the queer thing.

Four months ago, on a bitingly cold January night, we’d been watching Netflix in my basement when Maritza started acting all twitchy and nervous, hardly responding to anything we said.

“What’s with you?” I’d finally asked, pausing the movie.

Maritza opened and closed her mouth, seemingly at a loss for words.

“What?” JaKory asked, his brow furrowed. “Did you poop your pants again?”

“Fuck you,” Maritza snapped, smacking him with a pillow. “That happened one time.”

“What is it?” I asked again, pulling the pillow out of JaKory’s hand before he could retaliate.

“Well … okay,” she said in a shaky voice. “So … you know how I have that crush on Branson?”

“Yeah?”

“I really like him. Seriously, I think he’s so hot—”

“How is this news?” JaKory asked.

“Shut up, ass-wad. The thing is … well, I’ve started having a crush on someone else, too, and … um … it’s not a guy.”

I’d never seen Maritza look so vulnerable. JaKory and I stared at her for a long moment, and then we glanced at each other to check we’d understood correctly. Then JaKory clutched his hands together and started saying all these dramatic things like Thank heavens and Praise Jesus and I’m saved, and it wasn’t until Maritza jabbed him in the stomach that he yelled, “I’m gay, too! Like so gay I can’t even handle it!”

“I’m not gay, JaKory, didn’t you hear what I just said?! I like them both!”

“Bisexual! Whatever!”

The two of them fell forward into a sloppy hug, laughing with relief. Maritza actually kissed JaKory’s forehead in delight, and JaKory couldn’t stop wiping his eyes. I could only sit there, stunned, while the two of them calmed down. JaKory wasn’t exactly a surprise—Maritza and I had speculated for years that he might be gay—but Maritza liking girls was definitely a shock.

I knew it was my turn to say something, but the words got caught in my throat. I sat there with a weird sense of wanting to freeze time, to remember every little detail of the moment, from the happy tear tracks on JaKory’s face to the texture of Maritza’s fuzzy orange socks. I could feel my heart banging with the significance of it all.

After a minute, Maritza said, “Well, I guess we can all talk about boys together.”

That’s when I burst out laughing. Maritza and JaKory stared at me, and I shook my head and the words poured out.

“We can’t,” I said, “because it turns out I like girls.”

The three of us laughed so hard we ended up flat on our backs on my basement floor. Maritza kept squeezing our hands and JaKory kept saying, “What are the odds, though?!” When my mom called us upstairs for dinner, we sat around my family’s kitchen table trying to hide our secret smirks until JaKory choked on his water when my dad asked if he wanted a piece of pork sausage.

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