The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life (19 page)

“Come on, guys,” Patrick said as he slid our trash off a stack of our trays and handed me the rest of my fries in a bag, which I was happy to take both because I was still hungry and because it was nice of him to deliver them to me and that meant something at this stage of things. “It’s not worth it.”

But it is worth it,
I thought.

We were there.

The
crown
was there.

There was just this one guy standing in our way.

I wanted Carson to just put his wallet away and stop acting so clueless and for Patrick to just go out and wait in the car and not be so rigid for once in his life and I wanted, mostly, for Winter to try to charm the guy or something. But right then Winter was engaged only in the process of sucking her chocolate milk shake out of its tall cup.

“Seriously,” Carson said. “How much are we talking?”

The guy said, “Give it up, dude,” and Carson said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The guy shook his head and said, “You’d never understand.”

“Listen,” I said finally, “you’ve picked the exact wrong
team to withhold the crown from. I mean, this guy—look at him.”

I indicated Patrick. “He’s wearing
suspenders
and knee-highs and got one question wrong on the SAT. He got into Harvard next year, but he can only go if he gets one of a gazillion scholarships he applied for because his parents don’t get what a big deal it is.”

I turned to Winter. “And this one. Her name’s
Winter
. Can you imagine the torture of going through life with the name Winter? Imagine the teasing. The
brrrrrr
whenever she walks by. And her mother spends so much time watching crap TV like the
Real Housewives of New Jersey
that Winter here is pretty much her little sister’s stand-in mother, though she works really really hard to make sure no one ever knows that’s the case.”

I turned, finally, to Carson. “And this guy, he looks like the exact kind of guy you’d hate, but he hardly ever sees his parents and it seeps into everything he does. They bought him that ridiculous car out there, but they weren’t even home to give it to him; and he’d probably give it back if it meant his parents were home to see him in the school play and not vacationing in the South of France
without him
.”

Returning my gaze to the Burger King guy, I said, “And one of our original teammates is in the hospital with a broken wrist because some of the jock assholes doing the same scavenger hunt tonight never stop dogging him about being gay.”

I had to stop to breathe, felt like my brain was swelling inside my head.

“If you want to withhold the crown you withhold it from
them
if they come in here tonight. Because they are going to
take one look at you, working here, and figure your whole life is a waste and not think for a second that maybe you can play the guitar really well or do the Sunday
Times
crossword puzzle in an hour or whatever.
We
get that there’s more to your life than this.”

But when I looked at my teammates for confirmation they were just standing there, staring at me. I took their expressions in, trying to determine which one of them was less mad, and said, “What?” to the group. “It’s true!”

“What about you,” the guy said. “Why should I give it to
you
?”

I had to breathe, had to think.

What was there to say that could be said?

Because I broke my best friend’s heart tonight? Because my other best friend betrayed me? Because the guy I’ve spent years pining for likes her and not me? I couldn’t say any of that, not with them all standing there. I felt my shoulders sink when I said, “Because the King of the Assholes got into Georgetown and I didn’t.”

The guy took a beat and said, “I believe that’s what they call a first-world problem.”

“What’s
that
mean?” I asked, but the guy just pushed the crown across the counter and walked away toward a long row of flame broilers. I took the crown and walked out and the others followed.

When we went to get into the car, Carson pointed to a small stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh on the dashboard of a car whose driver-side window had been left half open. “Isn’t Winnie-the-Pooh on the list?” he said.

“Dude,” Patrick said. “We’re not stealing somebody’s Pooh.”

There was no sign of the car’s owner.

Patrick added, “We’re not stealing anything else tonight. That was the deal.”

I didn’t remember making any such deal but then again, it was sort of unspoken. We hadn’t stolen anything yet that couldn’t be returned and I wasn’t keen on the idea of starting now. Though Pooh was worth a solid 40 points.

“I made no such deal,” Carson said, just as a man approached the car. Carson nodded at the dash and said, “How much for Pooh?”

The guy said, “How much you offering?” He smiled. “I mean, this ain’t no ordinary Pooh. This Pooh is straight from Disney World, man.”

Carson studied the Pooh doll, which was covered in dust and looked seriously inbred, off-market. “Five bucks?”

“Ten,” the guy said, and Carson said, “Fine,” and slid a bill out of his wallet.

The guy reached in through the open window to fetch the doll and handed Carson the Pooh and in a minute we were off again, into the night—windows down—with Pooh sitting on the dashboard looking sad and somehow ominous. I wished Carson had thought to just walk away, or charm the guy out of his Pooh. Money made it, what was the word,
dirty
?

After I added up all our new points—we were at 2535—I realized it had been a while since I had heard from Dez, so I texted him: WHAT’S “FIRST WORLD PROBLEM” MEAN?

Right away, my phone lit, and a bunch of texts came through:

LIKE IF YOUR CAVIAR IS EXPIRED.

OR YOU BROKE A HEEL ON YOUR JIMMY CHOOS

OR HAVE TO WAIT TWO HOURS FOR YOUR LIMO

Then after a pause, he sent this: WHY?

I didn’t have the energy to reply properly so just wrote, WILL EXPLAIN LATER. MRI NEWS?

He said, STILL WAITING.

A text from the Yeti came right on its heels.

It was the text I had been waiting for all night.

Patrick and the others had gotten it, too, and Patrick read it aloud: “If the lake in the sky has been visited by you/you’ve scored yourself a massive clue/just show us the clipper ship’s principal namesake/and three hundred points will be yours to take.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Carson said, and “Me neither”s filled the car.

Patrick said, “God, the poetry just gets worse.”

At Patrick’s we all went in to the living room and Patrick announced our arrival, our time line—we had to be back in the car in fifteen minutes tops—then told his folks why we were all there. For a copy of his cousin’s wedding invitation [80], the Boba Fett action figure [35], the item made of red glass [25], the Superman comic book [50], the Ping-Pong paddle [20], the fan with the remote [40 plus 20], and screwdriver [40].

“That’s it?” his mother said, so he handed his mom the list.

“So, how are we doing?” Patrick’s father came into the room. “You guys going to take home the Yeti?” He went over to Patrick’s mom, stood behind her on the sofa, and started rubbing her shoulders and something about the whole scene made me uncomfortable. There was music playing, and both of Patrick’s parents had wine glasses, and were wearing fuzzy slippers—yes, in June!—and if I wasn’t careful I could see Patrick’s future, the whole of it.

Blissful domestic life.

Me not a part of it.

Why
wasn’t
I in love with him? Would that make things easier?

Carson said, “We’ve got about twenty-five hundred points but we have no idea how anyone else is doing right now. Still, only six teams left and we are clearly the overachievers of the bunch.”

“It’s looking promising,” Patrick said, just as his mother said, “Skinny-dipping?” and raised an eyebrow. Then, suddenly distracted, she said, “Oh! Mary! Prom picture!” She pointed across the room.

Winter was closest to it, a framed photo on a glass table by the front door, and she picked it up to study it. Across the room I could see that Patrick had his arm around me, in my shimmery purple dress, a dress I had loved but which was now burdened with weird memories. Patrick’s mom said, “Such a handsome couple,” and I wanted to tell her to get her priorities in order and to worry less about a prom picture and more about finding money to send her son to Harvard!

“Mom,” Patrick said.

“Well, it’s true,” his mom said, looking at me sort of wistfully.

“That’s my cue,” Patrick said, then he headed for the stairs and started to climb two steps at a time.

I said, “We’ll all come,” and we followed Patrick up the stairs to his room, where he was already looking for the Superman comic book.

“Here,” he said to me, and gave me a box of comics, then he put another in front of Winter and another in front of Carson. “They used to be more organized but they got messed
up. Any Superman you see was from my uncle’s collection and is definitely older than two thousand.”

I sat on the bed, flipping through comics, and thought about all the times I’d hung out with Patrick in this room over the last few years—all the movies watched and conversations had surrounded by baseball cards and weird trophies and medals and guitars and keyboards. What if, after tonight’s declarations and my unimpressive response, Patrick never got on board with the whole friends thing again? What if we all came home for Thanksgiving come fall and he didn’t want to see me? Like, ever?

“Patrick!” His mother’s voice came up the stairs. “There’s a tent in the attic.”

Set up camp somewhere uncampy.

“Somebody come help me,” Patrick said, and since Winter jumped up and said, “I’ll come,” it was obvious to me she didn’t want to be alone with Carson.

That left me and him alone with the comic books, which seemed strange, neither of us being that into comics.

“What are uncampy places?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Carson said. “A rooftop.”

“Nah,” I said. “People love camping out on their roofs. Maybe someplace indoors,” I said. “The mall?”

“Mall’s going to be closed by the time we get to it,” he said, then we were quiet for a minute, until he said, “Just because they’re not around a lot and have money doesn’t make them bad people.”

It took me a second to realize what he was talking about. I said, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Even if you didn’t, I just wanted to say it. Being rich doesn’t make them bad. It doesn’t make me bad either. It doesn’t define who I am or what my life is going to be like.”

“I know,” I said, but I had to work to hide the fact that I wasn’t so sure. And why had I aspired to vacation in Italy with Carson and to become a staple at places like Mohonk if I thought there
was
something wrong with being wealthy enough to do all that? And how was it possible to aspire to all that and also to aspire to, well, not saving the world, exactly, but
serving
? Why did I want
any
of what I wanted and why did I want it so badly?

“What’s going on with you and Patrick tonight?” Carson asked, then, but I didn’t want to tell him and was saved by the image of Superman. I pulled the comic book out of the box and checked the date on the cover and said, “Got it!” then stood.

“He told you, didn’t he?”

And my mind went to the top secret of the night, to his kissing Winter. “No,” I said. “I told him.”

“Wait,” Carson said. “Told him what?

“What are we talking about?” I asked.

“That he’s in love with you,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “No.” Then, “I mean, yes. He told me.”

“And?” He looked at me hopefully and it pained me that he didn’t know, would probably never know, how much space in my mind and heart he’d occupied for the past two years, the hours wasted fantasizing, dreaming, planning, scheming. Or maybe one day he would. Maybe we’d sit at a table together at a reunion twenty years from now at the Shalimar and reminisce about scav hunt and from the comfort of my happy life I’d be able to say, “You know. I always had a thing for you,” and he’d cock his head and say, “Really? I had no idea,” and we’d laugh about it.

“I just don’t feel that way about him,” I said finally.

“Well, that’s too bad,” he said, and I managed only, “Yeah.”

“I’m jealous, you know.” He sat on the bed. “Of what you and Patrick have.”

“What do we have?” I asked.

“You know,”
Carson said. “It’s big, your friendship. It’s more than friendship, even if you don’t want it to be.” He smiled a little bit then said, “He would follow you to the ends of the earth.”

“I know that,” I said, feeling awful that the sentiment made me so uncomfortable. “But I don’t want him to. I want to go there myself.”

He shrugged. “Sounds lonely.”

I said, “Not to me.”

Winter and Patrick came back and we went downstairs and said good-bye to Patrick’s parents—they’d filled a small box with more stuff from the list, including a Bundt pan [30], a completed crossword from yesterday’s paper [75], a can of tuna [3], a picture frame [5], a teapot [30], a bobby pin [30]—then left.

In the car we set out for the meet-up at Rainey, and we all agreed that the others would go by the Cupcake Corral’s Dumpster while I was at the park and also try really really hard to figure out the Flying Cloud clue while finding an uncampy place to pitch a tent.

DON’T BE LATE, said a text from the Yeti. And Carson seemed to drive faster.

“We should talk about this meet-up,” Patrick said, turning to me.

“What’s there to talk about?” I asked.

“What kind of information are you looking for?” Carson said, nodding into the rearview. “What are you willing to divulge? That kind of thing.”

I thought for a moment. “Well, I’m looking for anything having to do with the Flying Cloud clue for starters.”

“What else?” Carson asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, and by this point we’d arrived at the park and the clock on my phone read 8:59. “I think I’m going to have to just wing it.”

The gate to Rainey Park was open and I heard far-off voices.