I\u2019m seventeen years old, sitting with Randy Osterman on his picnic bench.\u00a0 He\u2019s got his dad\u2019s binoculars trained on the bride, but I\u2019m watching the couple in the gazebo stare out across the lake and garden.\u00a0 You can tell they\u2019re talking about the wedding, how expensive and lovely and delicious, what an unusual location.\u00a0 She hands him her champagne glass so she can reach her hand under the hem of her bright pink dress and fix her slip.<\/p>\n
Millionaires, we presume, and we agree that we hate them.<\/p>\n
Randy turns and grins at me with those teeth.\u00a0 The seniors voted him best smile in last year\u2019s annual, even though he was a junior.\u00a0 He could probably have any girl in the school if he weren\u2019t a little short.\u00a0 He parts his thick brown hair far to the side, in what would look like a comb-over if he were twenty years older.\u00a0 He\u2019s been dating a sophomore all year, a tall, freckled blond girl with slim hips and cashmere sweaters who has gone home to Michigan for the summer while he stays here to caddy at the country club and get into trouble.\u00a0 He was the voice of the plant in Little Shop of Horrors<\/em>.\u00a0 He\u2019s already broken the boys\u2019 diving record.\u00a0 I am fairly sure I love him.<\/p>\n He\u2019s wearing a brown leather jacket that looks like it was made to fit him, even though I know he filched it from the dorm lost-and-found at the end of the school year, after all the boarding students went home and before the cleaning crew came in and took all that stuff for themselves.\u00a0 And now the campus is empty, except for these fabulous wedding guests and about ten of us faculty kids, and our exhausted and hibernating parents.\u00a0 In later years, I\u2019ll remember a sense of abandonment that I don\u2019t quite recognize at the time.\u00a0 We tell each other it\u2019s fun to have the campus to ourselves.<\/p>\n Randy says, \u201cThis is good.\u00a0 You see the shape of that guy\u2019s glass?\u201d\u00a0 I do, but I don\u2019t understand its meaning, so I pretend to squint and I shake my head.\u00a0 \u201cHighball,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cHard liquor.\u201d<\/p>\n The school funds its scholarships by renting out the main building and gardens every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night from spring to fall, and filling the dining hall kitchen with a catering staff who push carts of broccoli rabe and poached salmon past the empty, plastic, gum-encrusted chairs and into the marble front hall.\u00a0 These are the society-page events with the fireworks and the bagpipe players and all the blonde people.<\/p>\n Randy and I have been planning this night all June, meeting out at the picnic bench for what he calls \u201creconnaissance.\u201d \u00a0When we were younger we did things together every day, both of us convincing the younger kids to dig for buried treasure in the middle of the faculty co-op garden, or Randy making me sit on his bike while he stood on the pedals and propelled us down the access road.\u00a0 We still talk in the summer, sitting out on the lawn with magazines, and he\u2019ll take his t-shirt off to use as a pillow.\u00a0 But the last time we actually did something together, just the two of us, was the summer we were ten, when we opened every drawer and closet in the deserted dorm, hoping for coins, love letters, or what Randy called \u201cevidence.\u201d\u00a0 We eventually hit the jackpot down in the laundry room: fifty-five cents and a pair of blue, silky boxer shorts that we buried behind the baseball diamond.\u00a0 It feels like that now, like we can forget about not really being friends anymore and slip back into ten years old.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ll do,\u201d Randy says, \u201cis wait about half an hour till they\u2019re completely sloshed and it\u2019s dark out.\u00a0 We come from the garden so it looks like we\u2019ve been there the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDark is good.\u201d<\/p>\n Our goal, naturally, is to procure and drink alcohol, sample any food that\u2019s still out, and eavesdrop on the toasts for later reenactment and mocking.\u00a0 Randy claims he\u2019s done this several times before, but always when some guy he worked Summer Grounds Crew with was bartending.\u00a0 This will be his first \u201craw infiltration,\u201d as he calls it.<\/p>\n Randy\u2019s black lab, Gretchen, is barking at the window behind us, so he puts down the binoculars and lets her out through the patio door, and we walk around the dorm and onto the soccer fields.\u00a0 Gretchen loves running off-leash once the student drivers have left.\u00a0 We can hear more voices filling the garden now, as the guests finish dinner and filter out to watch the sunset. \u00a0Behind all the talking and laughter is string music; they must have put a quartet out on the balcony.\u00a0 By 9:00, the cover band or DJ will start blasting \u201cBrown Eyed Girl\u201d and we\u2019ll both be kept awake in our rooms until 2 a.m., like every warm weekend night of our lives.\u00a0 On Sundays, if you were really lucky, you\u2019d get \u201cHava Nagila.\u201d<\/p>\n Our families\u2019 apartments have their own patios and entrances, but both open at the back onto the commons room of the same boys\u2019 dorm, with its decades of accumulated smells from mold and feet and hockey gear and Ramen.\u00a0 When I was little, I used to run around up and down the hallways in my footy-sleepers when my parents were on duty.\u00a0 Around the time I turned nine, it started feeling uncomfortable to go out there even for Doritos from the machine, and since I started school here I\u2019ve only used our back door to get in and out, never walked through the commons at all.\u00a0 Randy still goes in every night, to study with his friends and watch movies.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been wondering lately what will happen after we graduate this spring, if I\u2019ll come home from college and suddenly feel free to roam the halls again, to bring my father a cup of coffee when it\u2019s 1:00 a.m. on a dance night and he has to stay out on the couch to check in the stragglers.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t occur to me yet that by college I\u2019ll have little interest in sharing oxygen, let alone conversation, with high school boys.<\/p>\n I\u2019m getting hungry. \u00a0\u201cI hope there\u2019s still caviar out,\u201d I say, although I\u2019ve never actually eaten any.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t want cake.\u201d\u00a0 We get the leftovers in the dining hall, every Monday dinner from Prom to College Night.\u00a0 Droopy asparagus, petit-fours, thin slices of white cake with raspberry filling.<\/p>\n \u201cLast time, they left out all the snacks in the Graft Room while they ate dinner.\u00a0 Wilson and I chowed like fiends.\u00a0 Guess how much it costs to rent the place out.\u201d\u00a0 He throws a stick for Gretchen, and she run-hops after it like a fat black rabbit.<\/p>\n \u201cGuess,\u201d he says again.<\/p>\n He clearly wants me to guess low, so I try to think of a number high enough.\u00a0 He can\u2019t hold it in any longer, though.<\/p>\n \u201cI kid you not, it\u2019s twenty thousand<\/em> not even counting the food.\u201d<\/p>\n I nod, like that\u2019s about what I would have thought.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s disgusting,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n \u201cThis guy in catering told me.\u201d<\/p>\n Randy is the kind of person who attracts gossip simply because he already has such a store to trade out, all gleaned from his parents and his various friends in the underbelly.\u00a0 The real reason Mr. DeWeiss got fired, which food service workers have keys to the catering liquor, how the new college counselor spent five years in the Peace Corps just because he was in love with some woman who wouldn\u2019t marry him. \u00a0How Joe Granger and Eleanor Anderson were scamming on the table in the newspaper room when Mrs. Craig walked in, and what she said.\u00a0 He told all the students that the Twinkie his father keeps on a high shelf in the chemistry lab, the one he claims hasn\u2019t gone bad over the fifteen years he\u2019s had it, is actually replaced with a fresh one every fall.<\/p>\n We walk around the track, talking about colleges.\u00a0 Randy wants a big state school just so he can go to the basketball games.\u00a0 I think this is the dumbest thing in the world but don\u2019t say so.\u00a0 I tell him I\u2019m applying early to Smith.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t do it,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ll turn lesbian.\u00a0 You\u2019ll stop shaving your legs and then you\u2019ll come home and be like, \u2018Meet my girlfriend Lesley.\u2019\u00a0 Fucking tragedy.\u00a0 A tragic loss.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a high compliment from Randy, and I\u2019m glad it\u2019s getting too dark out for him to see my cheeks burn.<\/p>\n We walk back to the dorm, Gretchen wheezing between us, and head into our separate apartments to change. \u00a0My parents are out at a play.\u00a0 \u201cWear something mature<\/em>,\u201d Randy says over his shoulder, and I do, zipping on my tight black dress and turning to see myself in the mirror on my closet door.\u00a0 It\u2019s my dress for choir concerts, but it looks good.\u00a0 In the bathroom, I carefully line my lips with a coral pencil, because I am seventeen and it will be another seven years before I realize the best way to appear old enough to drink would be to wipe off the makeup and look bedraggled.\u00a0 I rub my lips together and blot them on a square of toilet paper.\u00a0 I look at least twenty, I decide, and I turn on the porch light as I head out.<\/p>\n Randy\u2019s already back out there, lying down on the seat of the picnic bench.\u00a0 He\u2019s wearing khakis and his school blazer, which is probably fine since no one will be able to read the crest in the dark or through a drunken haze.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look good enough to eat,\u201d he says, sitting up.\u00a0 He\u2019s only started saying things like this since he got a girlfriend.\u00a0 Maybe he thinks it\u2019s safe now because it\u2019s not leading me on, or maybe he\u2019s just gotten bolder since he lost his virginity.\u00a0 My friends have all gone home for the summer, so I\u2019ve had to puzzle it over without their interpretive skills.\u00a0 And I know that if I told them, they\u2019d think I was imagining things.\u00a0 I can imagine what Jessica would say: \u201cLiz, you\u2019re the cutest person, but you have to admit his girlfriend is a goddess<\/em>.\u00a0 Plus, he hangs out with lacrosse players.\u201d\u00a0 And though I hate her for saying things like this, she\u2019s usually right.<\/p>\n The only time Randy and I really talk during the year is when he wants help on homework.\u00a0 He\u2019s smart, but he whips off his work between swim meets and dates and Social Committee, and then he\u2019s surprised to get B\u2019s and C\u2019s.\u00a0 Last year when we were in the same section of sophomore English, he came through the commons and knocked on our door to ask me to read his paper on Macbeth<\/em>.\u00a0 It began, \u201cDeath is something that most people encounter at some point in their life.\u201d<\/p>\n Every school year, Randy slowly fades from my consciousness, partly because I don\u2019t talk about him.\u00a0 I\u2019ll focus on the boys I\u2019m angling for a toga party invite from.\u00a0 Randy and I politely ignore each other in the halls, the way siblings would.\u00a0 And then in the summer with no one else around, I find myself checking if his light is on, if his bike is there, if I can hear his voice as he chases Gretchen around the empty dorm.<\/p>\n Four years later, some late night in college, a bunch of us will all start talking about high school crushes, and as I open my mouth to tell the story of Randy Osterman it will become suddenly and glaringly obvious to me what he was doing that summer: He was bored.\u00a0 He was horny.\u00a0 His girlfriend was in Michigan, and I wasn\u2019t ugly.\u00a0 End of story.\u00a0 But at the time, I believe his motivations must be as deep and confusing as mine.<\/p>\n \u201cAll right,\u201d I say, attempting to sound jokey and suave, like someone with sunglasses in a heist movie, \u201cso if things go south, we knock the cake over and run?\u201d<\/p>\n He looks at me like I asked if there would be sharks in the reflecting pool.\u00a0 \u201cNothing can go wrong.\u00a0 If someone starts asking questions, pretend you\u2019re getting sick.\u201d\u00a0 He thinks a second.\u00a0 \u201cJust don\u2019t do that thing where you play with your hair.\u00a0 It makes you look young.\u201d<\/p>\n Right.<\/p>\n My shoe heels sink in the mud as we cross to the back of the garden, behind the gazebo.\u00a0 Randy runs ahead and grabs two empty champagne flutes from the gazebo steps.\u00a0 \u201cTake this,\u201d he says, thrusting one at me like a flower.\u00a0 \u201cKeep it in your hand when you get up to the bar.\u201d<\/p>\n I can see in the yellow gazebo lights that the rim of the glass is smudgy and the base is opaque with dirt.\u00a0 \u201cThat is vile!\u201d I say.\u00a0 All summer I\u2019ve been saying \u201cvile\u201d instead of \u201cgross.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not drinking out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, just put it down on the bar like you\u2019re returning it.\u00a0 He\u2019ll think you\u2019ve already been served.\u201d\u00a0 Randy leans and kisses me on the cheek before taking off toward the lit-up doors.\u00a0 \u201cWait a minute before you follow, and I\u2019ll find you later.\u00a0 It\u2019s better if we\u2019re separate.\u201d<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t figuring on that, and suddenly it\u2019s a lot less fun.\u00a0 I watch Randy walk through the spots of light on the porch and through the door.\u00a0 He\u2019s holding his glass in the air like F. Scott Fitzgerald, like he\u2019s the host of the whole stupid party.<\/p>\n I count to two hundred.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to go in, but now I\u2019d rather curl up on the couch with a movie.\u00a0 Alone I can\u2019t laugh, so there\u2019s nothing to stop people from laughing at me<\/em>.\u00a0 Without Randy I\u2019m suddenly the twelve-year-old at the high school party, hoping no one catches on and makes me the joke of the night.\u00a0 But I\u2019m pulling my heels out of the mud and going in.<\/p>\n The building is an old convent that the school bought back in the fifties after its first campus burned down.\u00a0 The nuns had all died off or given up, so the trustees bought this gorgeous building on the cheap and kept all the religious statues even though it\u2019s not a Catholic school.\u00a0 Most people said they kept the statues because they were valuable.\u00a0 Randy said it was because they were so heavy it would cost a fortune to truck them all away.\u00a0 The weddings are in the main hall and in the big open rooms with paintings on the walls.\u00a0 But right down below in the basement, there\u2019s a life-sized statue of Mary lifting her arms to the heavens.\u00a0 If you leave your study group to go down for a soda at night, you round the corner and there she stands at the end of the hall waiting for you, the red light of the Coke machine bathing her in a horrible pink glow, the low growl of the refrigeration mechanisms echoing around her like she\u2019s moaning for her lost son and those long-gone nuns.<\/p>\n I squeeze past the broad back of a fat man\u2019s blazer and set my champagne glass on the bar.\u00a0 I realize as I do this that there\u2019s a dead leaf floating in the half-sip left in the bottom, but the bartender doesn\u2019t seem to care. <\/strong>\u201cJesus<\/em>,\u201d his nametag reads, and it takes me a second to read it with a Spanish accent. \u00a0I\u2019m almost glad Randy isn\u2019t here, or we\u2019d both start laughing, especially with the mural of the Holy Mother of God right behind the bar. \u00a0Randy would probably dip his fingers in his drink and anoint me, and then he\u2019d make some joke about how far Jesus had been demoted since the days of the nuns.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBombay and tonic,\u201d I say, and make sure I\u2019m not leaning on the bar.\u00a0 I resist the urge to tuck my hair behind my ear.\u00a0 For a second I worry that\u2019s not an actual drink, wonder if it\u2019s supposed to be Bangkok and tonic, Burma and tonic.\u00a0 But Jesus doesn\u2019t say anything, just starts making it.\u00a0 He\u2019s a tall man with sleepy eyes, and he looks bored as hell. \u00a0I think, if the bride could see his face, it would ruin her reception.<\/p>\n He hands me my drink.\u00a0 It\u2019s too cold in my hand, but I don\u2019t want to look like a kid by wrapping a napkin around it.\u00a0 I decide to drink it quickly so I can put it down, but the first sip is stronger than I expected. \u00a0Randy and I have agreed that getting too<\/em> drunk at the party would be the worst mistake.\u00a0 He\u2019s hoping to grab a bottle of something on the way out, but I don\u2019t want to be there when he tries it.\u00a0 I cross the room, dive between clusters of people, pick up some cashews, and wonder what I\u2019m supposed to do next.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a fountain built into the wall, carved with lilies and swirls.\u00a0 The bowl is made of two large, feminine hands emerging from droopy sleeves, and the absence of a body makes it seem like a woman is trapped inside the wall.\u00a0 My English teacher brought us down to look at it when we read \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper.\u201d\u00a0 The teachers love to make use of the grounds, to remind us how lucky we are.\u00a0 The fountain doesn\u2019t run anymore, so it\u2019s a perfect place to put my glass.\u00a0 I put my hands on the back of my neck to warm them up, and I start scanning the room for Randy. \u00a0I\u2019ve had about five sips, and already I can feel it in my leg muscles.<\/p>\n Finally I see him, talking to one of the bridesmaids.\u00a0 She\u2019s wearing a light green dress with thin straps and a silver wrap.\u00a0 The bridesmaids actually look lovely, like shiny sea-nymphs, which is disappointing.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s always one really fat bridesmaid,\u201d Randy said this afternoon, \u201cevery wedding you see.\u00a0 And then she has to squeeze into the same slinky little dress that looks good on everyone else, like all strapless and hot, but on her there\u2019s this lard <\/em>hanging out.\u201d\u00a0 Scanning the room I can see five bridesmaids, which seems about enough, and all of them are thin and beautiful.\u00a0 The one talking to Randy has red hair and doesn\u2019t look any older than us; she could be the bride\u2019s little sister or younger cousin.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t seen the groom yet, and we only saw the bride through the binoculars.\u00a0 Although really it\u2019s hard to tell, with the men.\u00a0 Any of these men in tuxes could be the groom, even the old guy with silver hair I\u2019ve been presuming is the bride\u2019s father.\u00a0 It would be great if he\u2019s the groom and this is wife number five.<\/p>\n I take my drink out of the fountain and swallow three huge gulps, then wonder if that was too fast.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to hear whether the people around silver-haired tux man are joking about the wedding night or the cost of the reception, when someone touches my elbow.\u00a0 I assume it\u2019s Randy, so I take my time turning around, but it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge,\u201d he says.\u00a0 Not even holding out his hand, just announcing his name.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m one of Peter\u2019s pledge brothers.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s young, maybe in his twenties, so tux man must be the dad after all.\u00a0 George has a round face and floppy dark hair, and he looks pretty drunk, the way he keeps blinking his eyes.\u00a0 \u201cYou a friend of Annie\u2019s?\u201d\u00a0 So there we go.\u00a0 Peter and Annie.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m here with one of her cousins,\u201d I say.\u00a0 I swallow the last of my drink, the ice sliding up to hit my teeth.\u00a0 Randy and the bridesmaid have disappeared.<\/p>\n \u201cListen.\u201d\u00a0 He leans in close to me, and I\u2019m trying to decide whether to get away from him or stick in there for what Randy calls \u201canecdotal value.\u201d\u00a0 He has sour breath.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m dying here,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cYou got smokes?\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t, and I\u2019m about to say so, but it occurs to me that smoking out in the garden would be a way to leave the party for a while and make Randy wonder where I\u2019ve gone, without breaking the rules of the game.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d I say, \u201cbut I could use one myself.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI see my friend Jake there,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll hit him up while you get me another Beam and Coke, okay?\u201d\u00a0 He hands me his glass and goes to slap his arm around Jake.<\/p>\n I get myself another drink while I\u2019m at it.\u00a0 I\u2019m worried it\u2019s too soon to be back for more, but Jesus never even looks at me.\u00a0 As I take a step back from the bar, one drink in each hand, George reaches around my head and sticks an unlit cigarette in my mouth.\u00a0 I must look ridiculous standing there like that, but I can\u2019t do anything about it till we\u2019re outside and he takes his drink from me.\u00a0 He lights me up as we walk.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t smoke often, but Randy and I both started young.\u00a0 The faculty kids follow the students around from the time they can walk, and sooner or later someone thinks it\u2019s funny to give you something.\u00a0 Randy\u2019s little brother Charlie got drunk last year off the Jell-O shots Mike Ferrone and some other juniors were doing in the woods, and he had to have his stomach pumped.\u00a0 Randy punched Mike Ferrone in the gut the next Monday in the middle of the dining hall.\u00a0 Not that Randy didn\u2019t do the same kind of thing himself, giving Charlie those stupid magazines, but it looks all dramatic to be violently protective of your ten-year-old brother.\u00a0 Everyone talked about it for days.<\/p>\n Frat brother George and I lean against the garden wall with our drinks and cigarettes.\u00a0 I\u2019m a little nervous that we\u2019re out of the light now, but we\u2019re still close enough that if he tries something and I scream, people will hear.\u00a0 At least until the band starts up.<\/p>\n \u201cYou said your name was Rachel?\u201d says George.<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d\u00a0 I haven\u2019t, and it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 \u201cMy name is Gretchen,\u201d I lie.<\/p>\n \u201cGretchen.\u00a0 Grrrrrretchennnn.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo,\u201d I say, \u201cmy date hasn\u2019t told me how Peter and Annie met.\u201d\u00a0 At least I\u2019ll have stories for Randy this way.\u00a0 I\u2019m hoping for something ridiculous, like she popped out of his cake or they saw each other from their yachts.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, you weren\u2019t at the ceremony?\u201d \u00a0George is sweaty, and the garden lights are making his forehead glow.<\/p>\n \u201cJust the end.\u00a0 My date and I were late.\u00a0 We got stuck in traffic.\u201d\u00a0 I stop myself with the cigarette.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s okay, they gave a total bullshit version anyway.\u00a0 No, basically it started when she broke up with me<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 He takes a long drink and lowers his voice.\u00a0 \u201cBroke my heart, right, junior year of college, and so I\u2019m out at this bar crying my eyes out, drinking <\/em>my eyes out, whatever, and she comes to my room to apologize.\u00a0 So I\u2019m not there, but my buddy Pete,<\/em> in the next room, he hears her knocking and comes rushing out to comfort her, and then he gives her this speech about deserving someone better.\u00a0 Which means him<\/em>.\u00a0 But hey, cheers, it worked out.\u201d\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t raise his glass so much as pour it down his throat.\u00a0 Randy\u2019s going to love this.\u00a0 \u201cSo.\u00a0 You\u2019re here with her cousin.\u201d<\/p>\n And I realize that if they dated, he probably has some knowledge of her family.\u00a0 She could be a total orphan.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s like her second cousin,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cOr once removed or something.\u00a0 I can\u2019t keep it straight.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m a good liar when I need to be.<\/p>\n \u201cFucked up family, right?\u201d\u00a0 He lights his second cigarette.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even halfway through the first.\u00a0 \u201cYou ever had to watch someone you dated get married, Gretchen?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot yet,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s terrible.\u00a0 It\u2019s god-awful.\u00a0 I mean, first of all, everyone\u2019s watching you when she comes in.\u00a0 And so you have to put this look on your face like you think it\u2019s just fantastic.\u00a0 And the truth is, you\u2019re thinking, there\u2019s my life passing me by.\u00a0 There it goes.\u201d\u00a0 He puts his drink down on top of the wall.\u00a0 \u201cNot to bring you down.\u201d<\/p>\n I have absolutely no idea what to say, what an adult would say to another adult right now.\u00a0 I actually do feel sorry for him.\u00a0 I smoke and close my eyes, try to look like I\u2019m just too mellow to talk.<\/p>\n \u201cListen,\u201d says George, \u201cGretchen.\u00a0 Gretchen.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go take a walk out there.\u201d<\/p>\n I have no idea what he means by \u2018out there,\u2019 but I do know what he means in general.\u00a0 \u201cI really can\u2019t leave my date,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n George is suddenly in my face, grinding his lips onto me.\u00a0 I\u2019ve kissed boys, but not boys with that much stubble on their faces, and it\u2019s tearing up my lips.\u00a0 But I think, hey, good anecdotal value, right?\u00a0 After a second I make sure my face is the one angled back toward the building in case Randy looks out.<\/p>\n \u201cLook, you don\u2019t have a very good date, do you?\u201d he says, pulling away for a second.\u00a0 \u201cTo leave you alone like that.\u00a0 Believe me, you don\u2019t want to get involved in that family.\u00a0 I bet anything your date\u2019s in there boozing it up, finding someone else to go home with.\u00a0 Am I right?\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s on my face again now, so I can\u2019t really answer anyway.<\/p>\n His hand is climbing up my dress, and I\u2019m thinking two things: first, how creepy that this is exactly where Mr. Cervetti used to bring our Latin class on sunny days last year, and second, that the more time I spend here with George the harder it\u2019s going to be to get away.\u00a0 Inside, I see people standing still and all facing the same direction, so I manage to un-suction my lips and say, \u201cI think they\u2019re cutting the cake now.\u00a0 We should go in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, Gretchen, we shouldn\u2019t,\u201d he says.\u00a0 Almost whines.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t think I can bear to watch this.\u00a0 It\u2019s too painful.\u201d<\/p>\n But I\u2019m already walking in the door.\u00a0 He follows behind, but quite a bit behind because he knows now that we\u2019re not going to happen.\u00a0 They are <\/em>cutting the cake.\u00a0 The bride is standing there with the knife ready, its handle wrapped in a ribbon.\u00a0 I think, later I\u2019ll tell Randy she looks like a very posh serial killer.\u00a0 The Ohio Wedding-Knife Stabber, with her ribbons and lace and trail of broken frat-boy hearts.\u00a0 The groom thanks everyone for coming, and it sounds like he\u2019s getting spit on the microphone.\u00a0 I tune him out and decide the bride is the kind of person who wouldn\u2019t be pretty if she hadn\u2019t been born rich.\u00a0 Her eyes are too close together, but she has a great tan and bleached hair and nicely fixed teeth, nice skin.\u00a0 The groom looks boring, but handsomer and taller than George.\u00a0 I can see why she made the switch.<\/p>\n Just as they cut into the cake, Randy\u2019s breath is in my ear.\u00a0 \u201cFollow me now<\/em>,\u201d he whispers.\u00a0 I do, because I see he\u2019s got something hidden under his blazer and I don\u2019t want him to stick around waiting for me.\u00a0 We\u2019re out of the garden and halfway across the soccer field when we both finally slow down and start laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cHere,\u201d says Randy, and hands me a half-empty bottle of wine.\u00a0 He still has something else under there, too.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t carry this!\u201d I say.\u00a0 A pair of headlights is approaching on the access road, plus campus security drive their little golf carts around even in the summer.<\/p>\n \u201cRight.\u201d\u00a0 He puts it back under his blazer and hands me the other thing he was hiding, which turns out to be a present in white paper with a big pink ribbon.<\/p>\n \u201cYou stole a present<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re still walking, I guess towards the football field and track.<\/p>\n \u201cLike they\u2019re gonna miss it.\u00a0 Like they need help setting up their impoverished love-nest, or whatever.\u00a0 I left the card.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you <\/em>want it?\u00a0 It\u2019s probably a set of fish forks or an asparagus cooker.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen I\u2019ll use it to cook asparagus.\u00a0 I\u2019ll invite you for dinner, and we\u2019ll romantically feed each other asparagus.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow sweet.\u201d\u00a0 I say it sarcastically, the only appropriate response to something I don\u2019t really understand.\u00a0 \u201cHey, you get your drink from Jesus the bartender?\u201d<\/p>\n He smiles, but I\u2019m surprised he doesn\u2019t laugh.\u00a0 \u201cRight, right, yeah,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cThat was funny.\u201d\u00a0 I have a joke ready about a Virgin Bloody Mary, but I let it drop.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve gotten back to where we were walking Gretchen, to the track that circles the football field.\u00a0 Randy climbs up on the blue high-jump landing pad between the track and the goalposts, and I take off my shoes and follow him.\u00a0 We both lie on our backs and catch our breath.\u00a0 We stay there a long time, lifting up our heads occasionally to drink from the bottle.\u00a0 Out here, you can see the stars.\u00a0 Not millions, but a few good constellations.\u00a0 The DJ back at the party has turned up the volume now that people are dancing, and it\u2019s not bad, really, lots of swing music.<\/p>\n I stretch out my arms and legs on the mat and pretend to make a snow angel.\u00a0 \u201cSo.\u00a0 That was a bridesmaid you were molesting?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, she was hot.\u00a0 Groom\u2019s little sister.\u00a0 I told her my parents were friends of the bride\u2019s parents, and she totally bought it.\u00a0 She thought I was rich, too, because the bride\u2019s family\u2019s absolutely loaded.\u00a0 Apparently the groom isn\u2019t.\u00a0 They met in Italy and she paid for the rest of his trip because he was so broke.\u00a0 Nice way to meet a girl, right?\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t believe my luck that for once I have more information than Randy.\u00a0 \u201cActually<\/em>,\u201d I say, \u201cthat\u2019s not true.\u00a0 I was talking to this guy named George who was her ex, and the groom stole her from him in college.\u00a0 George was totally heartbroken.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the guy who took you out smoking?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou saw us?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I can smell it on you.\u201d<\/p>\n I kick him in the leg.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s rude.\u201d<\/p>\n He grabs a fistful of my hair, smells it, and pretends to cough. \u00a0\u201cSo wait a minute,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cThis guy tells you the bride broke his poor heart, then takes you out and gives you a cigarette.\u00a0 And then can I assume he tries to get in your pants?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat,\u201d I say, \u201cyou think he was making it up?\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 I think, Don\u2019t people blurt out the truth<\/em> when they\u2019re drunk?<\/p>\n \u201cLet me put it this way.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the <\/em>oldest trick in the book, but it\u2019s, like, right there in the book of old tricks.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done it a million times.\u00a0 You pick out some girl across the room at a party, and you go, \u2018See that girl?\u00a0 She broke my heart.\u00a0 She won\u2019t even look at me.\u2019\u00a0 And next thing, you\u2019ve got someone, like, grooming<\/em> you, wiping away your fake tears.\u201d\u00a0 He reaches over and pretends to wipe tears from my eyes, until I push his hand away.\u00a0 \u201cListen,\u201d he says before I can think of something redeemingly witty, \u201ctell me this: How did you and Mr. Nicotine start talking about breakups to begin with?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just asked him how they met.\u00a0 The bride and groom.\u201d\u00a0 My voice sounds feeble, so I take a drink to thicken it up.<\/p>\n \u201cRight, so you let on that you don\u2019t know, and then he tells you this story.\u00a0 You were so scammed.\u201d<\/p>\n And I believe him, because it does make a horrible kind of sense and because he knows more about these things.\u00a0 I want to tell him that I didn\u2019t care, though, that I only went out there with George to have something to tell Randy, or something for Randy to see, but that doesn\u2019t sound any better.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like I slept <\/em>with him,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cI just took his cigarettes.\u00a0 I scammed him<\/em>, if you think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Randy\u2019s quiet for a while, and then when he laughs and takes a breath I can tell he\u2019s about to say something else, something I probably don\u2019t want to hear right now, so I talk first.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s unwrap the present,\u201d I say.\u00a0 We sit up and make a big joke of scratching it open with our fingernails like wild animals.\u00a0 I take the pink ribbon and tie it in my hair while he lifts the top off the cardboard box.\u00a0 It\u2019s a stack of four ugly yellow plates, each with a different vegetable painted in the middle.<\/p>\n \u201cLook!\u201d says Randy, holding up the bottom one.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s asparagus!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m psychic!\u201d I shout.\u00a0 We both flop down laughing and every time we try to sit up we fall over laughing again until it hurts behind our ears.<\/p>\n He hands me the asparagus plate.\u00a0 \u201cFifty points each, through the goalposts.\u201d<\/p>\n I stand up, trying to get my balance on the landing pad, and chuck the plate like a Frisbee.\u00a0 It goes between the posts and lands on the grass.\u00a0 Randy stands up and throws the artichoke plate, and when they\u2019re all through we jump down onto the field to Frisbee them back the other way.\u00a0 We run back and forth maybe five times, until Randy sets one sailing straight into the goalpost and the plate shatters in every direction like a china firework.\u00a0 Now we aim the other three for destruction, then hurl some of the larger broken shards, and after a few minutes nothing\u2019s left of the present but the little white triangles covering the ground and the landing pad.<\/p>\n It\u2019s midnight, but we aren\u2019t tired.\u00a0 Of course I\u2019ve stayed up later with girlfriends, but it\u2019s new and panicky and intoxicating to be out alone on the grass with Randy when the dew starts in.\u00a0 He turns to me and says, \u201cHey, you\u2019re pretty,\u201d and we grin at each other and start laughing, which is a relief because I don\u2019t know what else to do.\u00a0 There\u2019s a flatness to Randy\u2019s eyes that might be drunkenness or might be indifference, but I choose not to see it.\u00a0 Except I must<\/em>, because years later I\u2019ll be able to remember it, remember the exact look.\u00a0 Maybe because I\u2019ll have seen its counterpart.\u00a0 Maybe because we all become experts.<\/p>\n When we finally walk home, his hand resting feather-light on my waist, we just leave the broken plates there.\u00a0 I almost say we should go back for them, as souvenirs, but I\u2019m scared that if I breathe I\u2019ll make him move his hand.<\/p>\n For some reason, it\u2019s three years before I think to worry that some homesick football-camp freshman sliced his scrawny leg open on those shards.\u00a0 Those three years later, at college, the thought will jolt me awake one early morning, make me restless to find the bride, write a check for the lost present, rush home and scour the field for those microscopic china fragments that stick in your skin and under the edges of your fingernails and make you itch before you see the gathering dots of blood.\u00a0 I will wonder what great-aunt never got a thank-you note and died feeling unappreciated. \u00a0I will even compose half a draft of an apology letter in my head, something about the follies of youth and not remembering what would make me do such a thing, about feeling now a million years away from that moment.<\/p>\n This summer, of course, we\u2019re too busy being seventeen and drunk to think of the bride or that football-camp freshman\u2014even to notice the small cuts forming on our own fingertips.\u00a0 Only the next morning will my thumb start to swell at the corner of the nail.\u00a0 For a short while longer, maybe another year, the world is made only of us, and the people we laugh at, and the people who laugh at us.\u00a0 No room for anyone else in our small, starlit night.\u00a0 I\u2019m busy noticing his hand on my waist, hoping he\u2019ll keep it there the rest of the walk at least.\u00a0 I smile and feel warm and I think, This is what it will be like from now on.\u00a0 This is how the rest of my life will be.<\/p>\n I\u2019m seventeen years old, sitting with Randy Osterman on his picnic bench.\u00a0 He\u2019s got his dad\u2019s binoculars trained on the bride, but I\u2019m watching the couple in the gazebo stare out across the lake and garden.\u00a0 You can tell they\u2019re talking about the wedding, how expensive and lovely and delicious, what an unusual location.\u00a0 She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-Fg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10475,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions\/10475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Rebecca Makkai<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"