They Wish They Were Us Read online

  “You’re not like everyone else,” he said.

  “Neither are you.”

  He stroked my feet, closing his fist around each toe. “You should come hang out with me and my friends sometime.”

  “Okay.”

  “They’d love you.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I’ve been telling people about you,” he said.

  A lump formed in my throat. “What do you say?”

  “That you’re the shit.” He laughed and wrapped a whole hand around my foot. I bent it at the arch so he knew I was there. “That you’re one of us.”

  I mulled over his words, unsure of what he meant.

  “I see you looking at lunch,” he said. “The table will be yours one day. Don’t worry.” I felt a tiny prick of moisture and snuck a look at Adam just as he planted his lips on the tender side of my foot. The movement sent a spark through my body and heat rushed to my thighs. I flinched and in an instant, we were both on the ground in a pile of limbs and hair and blades of grass. Adam’s eyes found mine. They were fiercely blue, bloodshot. He wrapped his hand around my wrist.

  “I have a girlfriend,” he whispered.

  I inhaled sharply as my heart cracked open. “I know.” I ducked my head so my hair shielded me from his gaze.

  “We’re friends. You and me.” The way he said it, the word friends, had a cosmic, tender pull, as if there were no greater honor he could bestow.

  “Friends,” I said.

  Adam touched his forefinger to my chin and raised my face to meet his. “Friends.” His lips softened into a smile. Headlights flashed, a signal Mom and Dad were home, and Adam released me. He entered the house and I was left alone.

  THREE

  “BIG PARTY TONIGHT?” Jared leans against the doorway in my bedroom and reaches into his hair, wrapping one of his curls around his pointer finger. They’re the color of ink, just like mine, and in photos we look like twins even though I’ve got three years on him.

  “Over at Nikki’s,” I say, turning my attention to the overflowing sack of makeup in front of me.

  “Yeah. I heard some kids in history talking about it. Your boyfriend invited them.” His voice cracks with the word boyfriend.

  “Henry? He mentioned that.”

  Jared looks down at his hands, and I wonder for a moment if I should stay home with him instead. We could put on pajamas and flop down on the couch with Mom’s extra-cozy blanket, reserved only for movie nights. He just started reading The Catcher in the Rye for Mr. Beaumont’s freshman English class and I really want to convince him Holden is a straight-up asshole before he starts to glorify the smug little guy.

  “Can I ask you something?” Jared says.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can I come one time? To a party?”

  “Why?” I ask. The question pops out before I can stop it and it sounds a little harsher than I meant it. But why would Jared want to come to a Player party? Most of his friends are in the school band with him. They spend Saturdays digging through stacks at the old comic book store downtown or rewatching NBA highlights on YouTube. It was a relief that he hadn’t shown interest in the parties, the desperate, hungry need to let go in the darkness, the urgency that we all felt to destroy something and prove ourselves. I wanted it to stay that way, to keep him safe. “I mean, why do you want to go?”

  A stray curl falls down over his brow. “I don’t know. It sounds fun.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” I regret it immediately. I don’t ever want him to see a Player party. He doesn’t belong there. But Shaila did belong, more than any of us, and look how that ended.

  His face lights up and when I stand, ready to go, he hugs me tight. He is now taller than me and his shoulders are bony where they were once soft. My baby brother is no longer a baby.

  * * *

  —

  Henry walks in front of me, pushing us through the crowd like a bodyguard. A mix of Players and hopeful wannabes scatter as we pass, and a few cocky boys offer him half-hearted high fives or fist bumps. Over the summer, Henry told me Anderson Cooper was his hero because of the way he ingratiates himself with sources, gets them to trust him, and then goes in for the kill, pulling out the best, most shocking pieces of information. Now I wonder if that’s Henry’s strategy for dealing with high school and everyone here.

  Deafening hip-hop streams through the stereo and Nikki’s house already reeks of sticky spilled beer and stale air. Red plastic cups cover the entire dining room table, just barely hiding the chip that Robert kicked into it last summer. Nikki’s parents never said anything, even though it’s made of crystal and was a gift from some famous Swiss artist. She’s not even sure they noticed.

  Now Nikki is hard to miss. Suspended over a keg with her legs up in the air, she’s upside down, grasping the metal handles. Tyler Renford, a quiet kid on the golf team who’s been obsessed with Nikki for years, holds her feet and someone else shoves the spout into her mouth.

  “Ni-kki! Ni-kki! Ni-kki!” the crowd shouts. She’d been a keg stand natural since freshman year. I guess she had a lot of practice, though. She had to do one at every single Player party for an entire semester. That was one of her recurring pops. I slip out of Henry’s grasp and find Marla at the kitchen counter, now covered in half-full bottles and plastic cups.

  “Thank God,” she says when I hug her tight. “This place is overrun with undies. We needed backup. Drink?” she asks, holding up a handle of vodka. It looks deadly.

  I nod and she splashes some into a red cup, topping it off with seltzer and pineapple juice.

  “Bottoms up,” she says.

  “To the final year.” I raise my eyebrows and she lets out her tiny, warm chuckle.

  “At last.”

  The first sip is sharp against my throat. Before I can decide otherwise, I gulp down half the cup. It won’t be long until the familiar feeling of electric warmth courses through my blood. I peer around the dark living room for Nikki, who’s now standing upright.

  “Where’ve you been?” Nikki wraps me tight, resting her cheek against mine. She’s strapped stilettos to her feet so she has to stoop to be at eye level with me. “This vibe is nuts!” she shouts over the music. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs for a bit. Grab everyone.”

  I catch Henry’s eye and motion toward the spiral staircase planted in the middle of the room. Marla points to it and mouths, “Up?” I nod and she grabs Quentin and Robert from the dining room, where they had been trying to organize a game of flip cup.

  The six of us bound up the stairs, leaving the party to itself. Nikki throws open the door to her bedroom and we file in, just like we’ve done hundreds of times. At first it was weird to be down two whole people after nine months of nonstop hanging out. But slowly, we started to fill in the blanks. Nikki began speaking with Shaila’s unfiltered, dry sarcasm and when I got stressed, I tied my hair into a loose knot, just like Shay did when she was buried in a script during rehearsal. Marla even borrowed Shaila’s clomp-style walk that could be heard throughout the Gold Coast halls.

  The boys took nothing from Graham. Not even Robert, who was his best friend. It was like we erased him completely.

  Quentin takes a running leap toward Nikki’s California king bed and lands in the middle, ruining the neat duvet. Nikki turns on her disco ball, giving the room a perfect, cheesy feel.

  “There are tons of people here,” Henry says as he plops down in the velvet purple armchair in the corner. I perch on his lap and he wraps his arms all the way around my waist, hugging me to his hard torso. “I saw the freshmen I invited on the back porch. Think they’re having fun?”

  “Yeah, dude. How could you not enjoy this? It’s all fun and games until we crush them with pops,” says Robert.

  “It’s barely September. We’ve got all the time.�
� Nikki shoves his shoulder and Robert sinks down next to her against the pillows, heaving an arm around her shoulders. “This is going to be the best year of our lives,” Nikki says, and I really want her to be right.

  “I hope so,” Marla says. “We’re finally at the top. We run this shit.” Quentin elbows her and they tumble into Robert.

  Henry rolls his eyes but jumps on top of them, dragging me with him, so we all collapse into a big dog pile. If it’s true that we run this shit, it means we can change it.

  “I love you guys!” Quentin yells, tapping his head to mine.

  “You are way too emo for me right now,” Robert says. “Let’s goooo!”

  Robert moved to Gold Coast from Manhattan in sixth grade and he never really shook the slick city kid vibe. His image was aided by the fact that he could get anyone into any club in SoHo—or so he said—and that he was the first one of us to have a fake ID, copped in some basement in Queens. That’s why he was picked to be a Player. Didn’t hurt that he had an insane streetwear collection or that his dad owned a bunch of resorts in the Caribbean while his mom was a former Miss USA winner. He was overconfident and pretentious, a know-it-all who somehow charmed us into friendship.

  All of this made Robert unpredictable and wild at parties, a feral animal testing the limits of those around him. How far could he push us suburbanites? It’s probably why he volunteered to demonstrate last year’s All-Player Winter Pop.

  “So, it’s gonna go like this,” he’d yelled from the top of Derek Garry’s parents’ staircase. Robert slid a couch cushion under his seat and propelled himself forward, head-first. But before swinging his feet around, he’d slammed his skull straight into the wall with a too-loud thwack, landing himself a sorta-serious concussion and a trip to the hospital. “Fell off my bike,” he told the doctor with an asshole grin.

  “Uh, let’s take a break,” Derek had yelled over the blasting music. For once, we didn’t make anyone else attempt it.

  Robert had appeared at school the next week without a scar. “No pain, no gain!” he said when set his tray down at the Players’ Table. It took us a few weeks to realize he was a little foggy and more cruel than before. The Players brushed that one under the rug. Never spoke about it again.

  Now he leaps up from Nikki’s bed and makes a break for the stairs, bumping into the banister and sloshing liquid onto the rug as he descends.

  Henry and Quentin follow him, racing back to the party. Marla breaks the silence. “Wanna Juul?” She whips her head around and flashes a sly, toothy smile. “Don’t tell Coach.”

  Nikki pretends to zip her mouth. “Colleges don’t want athletes who partake,” Marla said once last year after her habit kicked into high gear. “Star field hockey forwards with 4.0 GPAs on the other hand? Golden.”

  Out on Nikki’s balcony, the three of us stand side by side, our shoulders kissing in the night. The party has spilled out into the backyard and I watch as a few underclassmen dance barefoot in the grass. Nikki’s house sits right against the water and beyond the yard, there’s a rickety wooden walkway that leads down to the beach. When I squint, I can make out two bare butts running into the sea. They must be freshmen trying to prove they’d pass their pops. My eyes move back to the deck where two female undies kiss on a lounge chair by the pool while a group of guys cheer them on, holding their phones up to document. The salty wind picks up above our heads and I lift my eyes to the sky. The Bull. She’s right where I expect her to be, just above Orion. I picture her spindly legs galloping through the darkness, doing cartwheels above her friends. It’s the perfect night to see her.

  “I don’t wanna pick freshmen,” Nikki says. She sips her drink and fiddles with the sliver of rose quartz that hangs around her neck. She got super into crystals after Shaila died. “I’m not ready to be the oldest.”

  “I know what you mean. It doesn’t feel like it’s time,” Marla says, blowing faint vape smoke into the air. It floats above her like a halo.

  The liquor buzzes in my ears. “Jared wants to be a Player,” I say.

  “And you’re surprised?” Nikki asks, turning toward me. A stray leaf catches in her hair.

  “Your brother?” Marla asks. “So what? He’s kind of cute.”

  “Gross, dude,” I say softly. I wonder if I should have told Nikki alone.

  Marla is one of us, chosen after she made varsity as a freshman and the senior boys dubbed her best ass when she arrived at Gold Coast Prep that year. She grew up with four older brothers and a near-perfect complexion, both of which made her enviable. But she was always a little aloof, off in her own self-contained world. I’ve never even been to her house, don’t even know where it is. She rarely joined our sleepovers, since she preferred, she said, to stay at home with her brothers, who all went to Cartwright and were strictly off-limits. That’s what Marla told us when she caught Nikki drooling over them after a game. They wouldn’t have been interested anyway. They were totally unfazed by Prep, probably because they knew they would never lose her, that Marla just joined the Players to ensure she’d get into Dartmouth. Field hockey would help, she said. So would her stellar math skills. But she’s shockingly bad at standardized tests. The wildly accurate study guides in the Files helped her get a near-perfect SAT score last year.

  As did the morally questionable doctor who diagnosed her with ADHD so she could get extra time on the test. His kid was a Player a few years back.

  Sometimes Marla’s brothers would all come to pick her up from parties, speeding down the winding, wooded Gold Coast roads in their red Jeep Wrangler. When they came to a stop, they would call out in unison from the car, never setting foot inside.

  “Mar-la!” they’d howl until she emerged from whatever hazy doorway she had been inside. “Mar-la!” With a quick wave, Marla would be gone, her white-blonde hair blowing behind her as she sat nestled in the back seat of her protectors’ ride. They were ghosts to us, phantom drivers who rode in on chariots and disappeared into the night. But they couldn’t protect her from everything.

  I wondered if the allegiance I felt toward Jared was burrowed inside of her, but multiplied by four.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “He’s not like us. This isn’t for him. I mean, imagine him dealing with the pops?” I picture his worried little face, confused and distraught.

  Nikki puts her arms around me, hugging me from behind. “It doesn’t have to be like that for him. We’re the seniors. We’re in control now.”

  “I know. I just . . . He’s my brother.”

  “It’s going to be fine,” Marla says. She draws one final deep drag before pocketing the plastic pen. “Like you said, we’re in control.” She pauses. “We’re changing everything.”

  My phone vibrates once, and then again, burrowing itself into my thigh. Jared, I bet. Adam, I hope.

  “I gotta pee,” I say, and slip past them back into the bedroom. I close the door behind me in Nikki’s en suite bathroom and plunk down on the toilet. My phone pulses again and then for a third time. I pull it out, expecting to find a familiar name. Adam, Jared, Mom, Dad. Instead, it’s a number I’ve never seen before.

  I open the text and scan the words quickly but they don’t make sense.

  I know you probably never want to hear from me again, but I have to tell you something.

  Graham didn’t kill Shaila. He’s innocent.

  It’s all so fucked up. Can we talk?

  My stomach is in my throat and Nikki’s bathroom spins around me. The walls are on the floor and the sink is flipped upside down and I think I’m going to puke. Another text appears and my heart nearly stops. I grasp my phone so hard my knuckles turn white.

  It’s Rachel Calloway.

  FOUR

  THERE WAS NEVER going to be a trial. I knew it as soon as I saw Graham Calloway in handcuffs, his face red and puffy, blown up like a balloon. Maybe it was the shock of it all, but he didn’t look
like Graham then. He looked like someone disguised as Graham in pricey basketball sneakers and a Gold Coast Prep lacrosse hoodie. But when the police led him in front of us, so close that I could see the faint little cluster of moles behind his ear, the ones I stared at all through seventh grade history, I knew it was him, that he had killed Shaila.

  Graham and Rachel had both been at Gold Coast since preschool. They were lifers. All the teachers, even the ones they never had, knew their names and their parents. Graham was well-liked in middle school, not because he was kind or funny, but because he just was. His last name guaranteed him entry into everything. When he asked the other boys to come over to his indoor swimming pool or ride sand buggies on the dunes, no one said no. He had big meaty hands that felt vaguely menacing, like he could knock you over with one finger if he didn’t like what you had said. In class he’d make fart noises and blame it on whichever girl had been assigned to sit next to him. He’d knock over test tubes full of chemicals just for fun. Once he even bragged about skinning a dead seagull he found on the beach.

  But all that shit seemed to disappear the summer before high school. That was when Graham and Shaila started dating. I had gotten into an all-expenses-paid science camp in Cape Cod but was feeling unbearably guilty that all I really wanted to do was be at home with Shaila. She sent me handwritten letters diligently. “It’s so much more intense than email,” she said in her first one. “Plus, what if I become famous? Then someone will want to know all about Shaila Arnold: The Early Years.” I devoured those notes like they were Mom’s triple chocolate cake.

  Her letters made it seem like I was away at the exact moment when everything seemed to shift. She and Kara Sullivan, her chic family friend who spent the school year on the Upper East Side, were enrolled in a Model UN course in the Hamptons. When the Calloways found out, they threw Graham in there, too.

  At first Shaila’s letters were filled with stories about Kara, how she was obsessed with artists like Yayoi Kusama, Dan Flavin, and Barbara Kruger, and how Kara showed her how to eat steamers without getting butter all over your face. She seemed impossibly cool. It didn’t help that Kara’s dad grew up with Shaila’s and Graham’s dads, too. They had all spent summers together since birth. They were the same. I was the one on the outside.