Who Put This Song On? Read online

  I swallow my gulp and swing an arm around his neck, pulling him close to me. “Forget God.”

  This is the part of the night where every twenty minutes someone says, “So what are we doing?” knowing full well that our plan, our fate, is only this: hanging out. (Hanging out requires no additional guise of activity. We lose hours and hours “hanging out,” trying to decide what to “do” next, and we never regret a second of it.)

  Meg plays Lady Gaga on her phone and dances goofily. James is waving his arms around and shouting the climax of a long story I can barely follow, about how he and Isaiah and the other computer guys predicted the housing market crash. This on the heels of some out-there conspiracy theories about Mitt Romney. James has something to say about everything except himself.

  David trades his empty Budweiser can for a fresh one and presses his shoulder into mine.

  “Hey,” he says into my ear, “let’s go see what the view’s like over there.”

  “Cool.”

  I grab my flannel and the bottle of vodka and apple juice I have marked as my own. I’m starting to feel it: freedom. It’s loose and freshening, my bones and muscles relaxing under my skin, behaving themselves for once. Drinking out here in public with interesting adventurous friends and a cute boy who, for some glorious reason, wants to hang out with me—it’s all so exciting. I want this to be every day, for everyone to see how chill and fun I can be, even for a depressed nerd. For a black girl. Maybe my hex was lifted with summer.

  David grabs my hand as we slip away from the group and head up a small gravelly hill. The palm-side of his hand is buttery and smooth, and its grip is surprisingly muscular. It’s been so long since I’ve held a boy’s hand, I didn’t realize they became guys in the meantime. I’m feeling proudly conspicuous, at once embarrassed and smug that my friends can see me grinning like an idiot and leaning flirtatiously into David. Hot, mysterious, good-natured David. Oh my freaking God, this night is awesome.

  We sit on a boulder and huddle in close to each other. I take a deep meditative breath and look down at the highway view, which is no different than it was a few feet away. David lets go of my hand under the guise of scratching his patchy stubble. We glance at each other, then away, glance at each other, giggle, glance away. I don’t care that it’s excruciatingly awkward, or that we are both clearly blowing it, whatever “it” is. I love just being next to him, tipsy in the quiet night.

  He chuckles a little, then softly hangs his arm around my shoulders. Is this it? (Tell him how you feel!!! Kelly’s rounded handwriting commanded in the Yellow Notebook the other day, which made me roll my eyes and scoff, just annoyed at her nagging to be included and then being super annoying and using too many exclamation points.) But maybe this is it. Vodka and apple juice: courage of the gods.

  “So, uh, thanks for coming tonight. I know it’s sorta dumb. But I’m glad we get to hang out.”

  “For sure.” He takes a drink and I can hear the foamy beer swish around in his mouth. “Thanks for inviting me. This is fun.” He looks at me, almost disturbingly directly, and smiles.

  “Cool.” And this is what I do: I lean my head into the crevice between his chin and shoulder and brush my fingers against his hand. Bold as hell.

  He peeks down at me and lifts an eyebrow with a smirk and I swear to god it is the cutest fucking thing I have ever had the privilege of seeing. It is happening. To me. Bold as hell.

  I crane my face closer to his, bottom lip heavy, breath heavy. Please.

  “Whoa.” His palms are suddenly on my shoulders, pushing me away. The air between us thickens.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I just…ugh, jeez, ignore me.”

  “No, I’m sorry, Morgan, I didn’t think…I mean I sorta thought…” And—he laughs.

  He fucking laughs.

  “I dunno I kinda thought you were…maybe…gay.” Still laughing. “Shoot, maybe I’m drunk. I’m sorry. This is so awkward.”

  “What,” I try to say, but it comes out a deflated puff of air. Pay attention, M, be present, save yourself.

  I force a laugh.

  “That’s so funny! Oh-em-gee!” (Portrait of me doing what I think a hot, feminine girl does, minus the tucking back of shiny thin hair.) “I’m sorry for like, being weird. I’m…totally not, though. Why did you think that?”

  “I mean—”

  “I wasn’t really asking,” I shoot back.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just, I don’t really think of you like that. We’re friends, right?”

  “Yeah!”

  It’s unconvincing and I know it. I showed him my cards and they are not the right cards. I’m not in a Katherine Heigl movie. I’m still just me, unlucky, marked for disappointment.

  “No, really, Morgan, look at me.”

  I obey, wincing. Everything about me is embarrassing.

  “I just don’t want things to be weird, okay? Because I think you’re really awesome. Like, seriously awesome. So, are we cool?”

  And I look that motherfucker in the eye and say “Totally,” knowing full well I’m lying.

  “So, I guess this is a bad time to ask about how the ol’ curse is treating you?”

  “Ha.” (Oh that? See one second ago.) “Actually, I’m kind of getting used to it. Y’know, just riding it out.”

  We laugh mechanically, careful not to look each other in the eyes. I am back onstage. I’ve successfully tucked my shame away, deep under soil, and now I shall water it with booze.

  Eager to change the subject, I announce randomly, “Everything looks so unimportant up here.”

  “Atención!” James wails behind us in clumsy español. “You two cutie pies get your butts over here!”

  Meg’s changed the music to Animal Collective, and as I recognize the opening chords of “Peacebone,” I feel a rush. It’s like a birdcall.

  (This is one of our songs. We love to lose ourselves to our little anthems, jumping and banging our heads and shouting from the depths of our bellies. I’m not conscious of how I look or anything happening around me. On Tilly and the Wall’s “Nights of the Living Dead,” for example, James belts “I feel so alive!” Meg shouts the “shake our asses” part, and I jump up and down like a one-woman mosh pit. I don’t know what I would do without those moments of temporary escape. When I return, the world is always the dumb same.)

  David and I are totally unresolved, but we need to get the hell out of this moment, so we scurry over to them.

  “Gather ’round, my dear ones. I have a gift,” James says, and we all huddle in a circle, as if prepped for a séance. He opens his suit jacket and from an inside pocket produces a fat joint.

  “Weed, really?” says Meg. “I don’t think I want any. Do you guys?”

  James lifts his palm to shush us. “Listen, everyone is in on this. It’s important, okay? We are owning the night! We are marking our friendship and living freely!”

  Then, this dude literally howls at the blanket of sky above us. He’s pretty drunk, and I am all for it. I want his energy, the sparkling night he’s beckoning.

  “Hell yeah.” I nod.

  So what if David totally rejected me? So what if the feeling of said rejection is now settled firmly into my shoulders, my fingers, my spine, eerily familiar? I can handle it. I’ve handled much more.

  “Then, Morgan, you shall take the first hit.” James lights the joint and passes it to me ceremoniously.

  As the joint travels around our circle and back again, I get weird thoughts and use all my brainpower swatting them away.

  David’s looking at me with disgust; No, I’m imagining it; Has he always been so dumb and regular?; Ugh, who can I make out with?; Meg is thinner than usual, I’m just now noticing; Does James have a crush?; Is my medicine working?; Does everyone hate me?; Am I having fun?

  After a while, James is very sto
ned, David’s pretty stoned, I’m settling into a nice combination of full-on drunkenness and marijuana disorientation, and Meg is holding it together with—perhaps I imagine it—mischief behind her eyes. I realize we’ve been standing here for a while looking at smog and traffic, no one talking, just listening to Ben Gibbard tug at our ache and angst.

  Meg’s phone dings. “It’s Kelly,” she dictates: “ ‘Sarah from cheer just told me that a bunch of people are going to a party on the golf course. Come!’ ” She pronounces “exclamation point.”

  “Uh, I’m down!” James tips open his mouth and pours in some vodka, sloshes it around in his cheeks.

  “I don’t know…,” Meg trails. “I am completely sober, and everyone is terrible.”

  “I guess I’m down for whatever.” I’m mostly lying about this. I actually really want to go. Just to see what it’s like and say I was there, for people to see me there. But if I go to the party, I will still be me at the party.

  “Could be fun,” David chimes in, trying to sound relaxed and like whatever about the whole thing. He looks different to me now. Like no one special.

  “I don’t really think I should drive though.” This renders him useless. I wish he would just go home.

  “We don’t have to stay that long,” James says. “And if you’re the DD, Meg, you get to say when we leave.”

  Meg’s acting like she’s a hard sell, but it’s all for show. “Ugh,” she finally acquiesces, “Whatever.”

  I make a goofy face at her—an offering of gratitude and solidarity—and she laughs back.

  James claps his hands together. He looks fantastic in a tux; I briefly wish he wore them every day. “Shall we?” he says, and cocks his hip sloppily, grinding the joint roach into the hard dirt.

  OBVIOUSLY I AM STILL ME AT THE PARTY

  The pulse of a single night can change fast, like unpredictable weather.

  When we get to the golf course people are already pretty wasted, and the only one of us at their level is James, who’s already getting lost in the middle of his own whirling stories. The lawn is littered with girls in Hollister tank tops and boys slapping each other’s butts to impress them. T-Pain blasts from someone’s car. There are a couple kegs and clusters of plastic bottles every few feet. One of Jordan Jacobsen’s little cronies is completely faded and driving a golf cart around in circles. It’s basically a carnival of dumb people making bad decisions.

  It actually looks pretty lame.

  David recognizes someone from his school and says he’ll be right back, to which I reply, distractedly, “Whatever.” He and I are distant but civil.

  James leans into me and whispers, “What happened with D?!”

  “Don’t ask.” I roll my eyes with a pout. He kisses my cheek and goes in search of more substances.

  I look at James with painful clarity, despite my blurry boozy vision. His tux looks silly here, in the parking lot of a bougie golf course where his parents have never stepped foot.

  (Even I have a little butterfly in my chest stepping onto the freshly manicured green, worried I’m too provincial for the setting—we were only invited secondhand. My parents are squarely middle class, but they’re draped in their poor Southern upbringing. They have no privileges to speak of—everything we do and see is for the first time. Plus, we’re black, so by default, we just can’t exist in this universe. These kids, these golf club kids, are casual about designer jeans and tricked-out new trucks. Their parents aren’t forging any new territory. This is just what they were born with, what they deserve.)

  What I decide to do next is get drunk. You’re not supposed to drink on antidepressants, part of me knows. But the reckless part of me—the hurt part—says to drink until all the weird cheap booze swirls around in my belly with my antidepressants and lets me pretend to be a different girl.

  “I’m going to try to get extremely drunk,” I announce to Meg, hands on her shoulders.

  “Excellent. Don’t get sloppy. I’ll see you later—I’m gonna try to find Kelly. Do you have your phone?” This last part she says like a stern parent who knows my phone is always dying or dead. She expects to be disappointed.

  “I think it’s still on?”

  “I’ll just come find you,” she relents, and I blow her a kiss.

  At a makeshift bar area, I run into Jake, one of the football guys who’s uncharacteristically nice to me because he thinks my brother’s funny. He catches me making a face at the few warm Bud Lights bobbing like apples in a plastic cooler.

  “Malcolm’s sister!” he shouts from behind me, loosening himself from a cluster of jocks playing a drinking game. (They are all humongous people. After an away game, this one guy, Mike Something, ate a 16x16 at In-N-Out, and then he even finished a cheerleader’s fries, Kelly told me.)

  “Morgan”—I wave—“but yeah.”

  “I know.” He smiles. “Gimme your cup.”

  Jake Walker is objectively hot, like teen movie hot. I feel like someone else just being so close to him. He smells like soap and new clothes.

  “What is it?”

  He pours me a double shot from a plastic bottle. “Tequila. You ready?”

  “Cheers, I guess.” My face cinches and twists at the sharp taste—if I drink the whole thing in one gulp, I will projectile vomit. I force it down in three swallows.

  “Nice,” Jake laughs easily, pouring the last of the bottle into his cup. He tosses the empty into the murky warm cooler water.

  “Later, Morgan.” He grins.

  I shout a “Thanks” as he wanders off, throwing up a peace sign. It’s a strangely pleasant interaction, like in a John Hughes movie, social castes colliding.

  * * *

  Soon I find myself in a circle of girls from my class, dancing and giggling to several Ludacris songs. Bless everyone’s flailing white hearts. I finagle another shot from someone’s stash, then grab Meg’s hand. We run barefoot across the grass to the artificial lake, screaming Yeah Yeah Yeahs lyrics at the top of our lungs until, like toddlers, we tire ourselves out.

  After spending what feels like hours giggling and bitching about our lives, backs stretched out on the damp grass, we slowly make our way back to the group to collect the boys.

  “I’m sorry the David Santos mission was a fail,” Meg offers, handing me a dandelion she picked.

  I crush it in my fist and blow the flurries into the night air. “Ugh, whatever. I don’t know why I thought he’d be interested. I’ll get over him.”

  “Maybe now he’ll be thinking about it. You, I mean. Obviously, he realizes you are so hot right now.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know, he’s kind of annoying, now that I think about it. Whatever.”

  “It’s okay. Sometimes we fall for pricks. It’s not always our fault.”

  “I know. Ugh, I wish I didn’t have so many feelings. Was your boy here tonight? I didn’t see him.”

  “Nah.”

  “Dang.”

  The party’s dying down now. Jenn Hanson and Kelly collect red cups, scowling at the smell, while Isaiah and Adam trail obediently behind them with trash bags. Most of the Popular Christians have gone home or to a slumber party at church or whatever, leaving only a few clusters of jocks flirting with Hot Girls, and some fake burnouts brooding and smoking a hookah.

  “Oh, look, I see David.” I point, and we go in the direction of his curls, his lovely, lanky lean. He tips his head back to cackle gregariously. And now I see who he’s talking to, whose arm he’s brushing with his fingertips. Marissa. In a cropped T-shirt and low-slung jeans, lip gloss and bone-straight hair twinkling in the night.

  “Oh my god,” Meg gasps as we watch Marissa’s head swim backward with a flirty laugh, stumbling sloppily as she playfully smacks David’s arm.

  Here it is: the part in the movie where Gabrielle Union and Paul Walker tell Laney nobody
really liked her all along. The bucket of pig’s blood on Carrie’s unsuspecting head. The plot of Mean Girls. Marissa ditching me in the parking lot of Carl’s Jr. for Jordan Jacobsen. The prom night scene in 10 Things I Hate About You. The letdown.

  I think I might throw up.

  Suddenly some bottles shatter loudly in the parking lot, and everyone’s attention turns to a slurring voice shouting, “Fuuuck youuu, dude!”

  It’s James’s slurry voice.

  Meg grabs my hand and we rush in his direction, trying to beat the horde.

  James is swaying back and forth, toe to toe with some left-back football guy (Mike Something?) while Jordan’s little army encircles them, tittering at the exchange.

  “Hey! Yo!” Mike baits James, who, to his credit, is trying to disengage but is too wasted and confused to find his way out of the altercation. “You Clay Aiken motherfucker!”

  At the reference, I cock my head and squint.

  Mike Something is also wasted, barely making sense, but he’s aggressive, clenching his abs and doubling over laughing at himself. Everyone but Meg and me is laughing now. Music from somebody’s Ford Focus is playing System of a Down or something, but it stops abruptly.

  “Run along, idiot,” James manages.

  I think briefly of James’s grandmother, a Greek immigrant. I think of the day someone in Drama pointed out a small hole in his shirt collar and how he shrugged it off. The Converses he sways in now, one of the soles almost detached. And watching him, so defenseless and blatant in his difference, I love him. I am him. That’s how I know I can’t help him. He doesn’t need me to.

  “Is it true?” Mike’s obnoxiously loud, and I can tell he’s jonesing for a scandal, something legendary that will last until Monday. “I know it’s true, just admit it. You’re a fag! Faggot! I knew it!”

  “You don’t even know…what you’re talking about…” James’s eyes flutter closed. He hiccups.

  Mike grabs Jordan by the sleeve and leans close to him but doesn’t stop yelling. “Yo! I swear to God, nigga. My mom told me. The fuckin’…the blood thing…”