“Really?” I say. “Him?”
Preston nods once. Twice.
“Do you want me to find out who he is?” I ask.
Preston shakes his head once. Twice.
A minute later, Dirk Nielson bounds in, car keys dangling in his hand. He looks around, spots James Dean, heads over, and kisses him hello.
“Shit,” Preston says.
“Sorry,” I tell him.
“Well, it was nice for the five seconds it lasted.”
James Dean looks over at us—looks over at me. For a brief second, I feel connection. But then I really look into his eyes and I know: It’s not A. It’s nothing.
I talk to Preston some more, then Rebecca and Ben come join us. I’m telling them about the movie when Stephanie comes tearing out of the kitchen, looking like she’s on fire. Steve follows her for a few feet before stopping and yelling “WHAT THE FUCK?” at least three times at her back.
“Who wants to take this one?” Rebecca asks. When no one else makes a move, she sighs and bolts after Stephanie. Ben and Preston head over to Steve.
I walk around them and find Justin doing shots with Kara Wallace and Lindsay Craig, the girl who was so certain I was up to no good with the guy I was taking around school.
I steel myself and walk over. “So what happened with Steve and Stephanie?” I ask.
I am clearly asking Justin, but Lindsay answers. “She saw him eating pepperoni and said it was really rude of him because she’s been vegetarian for, like, the past three minutes.”
Kara finds this funny. Justin just shrugs at me, like he stopped trying to figure Stephanie and Steve out years ago.
Lindsay’s staring at me in a way that makes me wonder whether I wore the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, or am just the wrong person. I decide not to ask.
Justin seems taken care of, so I head back out of the kitchen. Once again, I find myself wandering around all of the conversations, avoiding all of my friends. I am this body, I think. When my friends see this body, they assume they know a lot about the person inside of it. And when people I don’t know see it, they also make assumptions. No one ever really questions these assumptions. They are this layer of how we live our lives. And I’m no different from them. When I saw James Dean walk in, I felt I knew as much about him as I’m sure he felt he knew about me when he looked my way. It’s like an instant form of reading, the way we define each other.
The house isn’t that big. There’s no dance floor in the basement—I’m not even sure there is a basement. There’s a line for the bathroom off the living room, so I walk upstairs, hoping to find a bathroom there. And also because it’s quieter upstairs.
All of the doors on the hallway are closed. I open the first and see it’s a bedroom. I’m about to close it when a voice says, “Hello? Can I help you?”
I poke my head in and see Daren Johnston cross-legged on his bed, reading The Outsiders.
“Oh, hi, Rhiannon,” he says. “The bathroom’s the second door on the right. I left it open, but I guess someone closed it. I mean, there might be someone in there, so you should probably knock.”
“Thanks,” I say. But I don’t leave. “Why are you up here reading? I mean, it’s your party.”
Daren smiles slightly. “I guess I like thinking about throwing a party more than I actually like having people over. Lesson learned.”
“Why don’t you tell everyone to go home?”
“Because they’re enjoying themselves, I think. They shouldn’t have to suffer just because I’m feeling antisocial. I needed to leave, so I allowed myself to leave.”
I nod to the book. “First time?”
“Nah. More like my twelfth.”
I remember when I read it—Justin and I were in the same English class last year, and we read it together one Sunday afternoon, lying in his bed. It was a race to see who would finish first, but I slowed myself down because I loved the feeling of us turning the pages at the same time, being in the same part of the story. When we were done, he said how he was blown away by the line “Nothing gold can stay”—he really felt it was true. Then he smiled and said, “So I guess we’ll have to be silver,” and he called me Silver for days after.
“Do you think gold can stay?” I ask Daren now.
His smile is different from Justin’s—a little more knowing, a little less eager. “I don’t think anything can stay,” he tells me. “Good or bad. So I think the important part is to not get caught up in worrying about whether something will stay, and instead enjoy it for the time it’s here.”
A door opens in the hallway and a guy calls out, “Daren! Where are you hiding?” He sounds like a construction foreman calling workers back from lunch.
Daren doesn’t move. “For the record,” he says to me, “I’m not hiding.”
“DARRRRRREN!” the voice bellows. Then the door to the bedroom opens wider and James Dean walks in. I had imagined his voice would be…sexier.
“There you are!”
“Here I am,” Daren admits.
“Come party!”
“I will when I’m finished with this book. I only have a hundred pages left.”
James makes a move to manhandle Daren up. Then another voice calls, “Charles! Where are you, Charles?”
“It was so much more enjoyable when people used telegraphs,” Daren says with a sigh.