The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life (7 page)

“What?” I laughed. “That’s what she called it.”

“Bingo,” Dez said, and he shook the tiny half-sphere and set it on the dining room table where we watched white flakes settle slowly around an old version of the New York City skyline, one with the Twin Towers set behind Lady Liberty. Something about the towers there, towers I couldn’t remember ever seeing, though there were pictures, made me feel small like I had at Arlington, too. Small enough to climb into that tiny globe and catch snowflakes with my tiny tongue.

“I never want to get old,” Winter said, sinking into a couch hidden under a teddy bear collection.

“Beats the alternative,” I said. Because that’s what my parents always said.

Winter was waving the tiny American flag absentmindedly. “Sometimes,” she said, “but not always.”

An awful mix of tinny music had begun to cascade down the house’s main staircase. Patrick was up there and had apparently found Eleanor’s music box collection. Amid the cacophony I heard a sort of “Jingle Bells”/”Rock-a-Bye Baby” mash-up and I headed upstairs for more treasure, feeling hotter and sweatier now that the idea of Christmas had flashed through my brain.

“You’re avoiding me,” Patrick said, from his position in the middle of the floor in the sewing room. He was surrounded
by music boxes, most of which had, blessedly, stopped playing. He picked one up then—a small yellow piano with butterflies and dandelions on it—wound it, and “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” started playing in earnest.

I forced a sort of
Ha
sound from my throat. “How could I be avoiding you? We’ve been together for”—I looked at my phone—“an hour.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” He started looking through a box of sheet music then, presumably for a show tune. “Not today, but this week. I mean, I’ve barely seen you since prom.”

I felt caught out; I’d actually found myself ducking around corners in school all week, avoiding Carson and Jill, yes, but also Patrick. I wasn’t proud. And maybe it was the music but I felt, suddenly, full of rainy-day melancholy.

I said, “Well, I’m here now,” and sat down on the brown carpet facing him. “You want to talk about prom, let’s talk.”

He handed me half the sheet music pile, and I started to flip.

“Here’s how I see it,” Patrick said, putting his sheet music stack down. “We’re going away in a few months. And I’ve realized that I want to be with you during that time. I mean, really be with you.”

I froze.

It was the moment I’d been dreading without ever realizing I’d been dreading it because I never thought it would happen. We were pals, Patrick and me.

Buds.

Super close ones, but still.

“Here’s how
I
see it,” I said, my voice vibrating like I was being physically shaken. “It seems sort of dumb to
start something now, when we might mess up what we already have.”

But that came out wrong. It implied that I would consider the idea.

Which I wouldn’t. I was in awe of Patrick, yes, but it was not the right kind of awe. Like whenever I went to church and listened to the folk band Patrick played in—which was awesome, like sixties rock for Mass—I had to work hard to not look at him because it pained me to see how intense he looked. I wondered, every time, whether that was what it felt like when you had a kid and he or she had a recital or a speaking part in a play and it all went horribly wrong and right at the same time. When you wanted to just cry out of pride and embarrassment all at once. I felt a million emotions around Patrick, pretty much on a daily basis, but I’d simply never had the urge to touch his face or hold his hand. I’d never felt desire.

“But I’m saying we’ve already started it.” Patrick’s voice seemed a little shaky, too, and when I looked up she saw that his eyes also seemed to vibrate with intensity. “I feel it.”

It had to be said. No pussyfooting.

“I don’t think I do,” I said sadly.

“But why not?” he pleaded.

“I don’t know.” I sighed and thought,
I wish I did!

“I just don’t.” I put down the sheet music. “We’re wasting time here.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He came closer.

“No,” I said. “I mean, with the sheet music. It’s not worth enough points to spend all this time looking for it.”

He hadn’t stopped coming closer.

“Patrick, come on,” I said. “Let’s just forget about prom, okay?”

“I don’t want to forget,” he said.

And then I wondered what sort of stuff
I
didn’t want to forget, then wondered how much of
any of this
I would remember in the end. Like if I lived to be as old as Eleanor. I sort of hoped that I’d forget most of what I’d already experienced of life. Not because it was so
bad
, but because it was so
ordinary
. I hadn’t ever left the country, or made love, or gotten married, or skydived. Not that I was sure I ever
would
skydive but if I did—if life presented the opportunity and motivation—I hoped I’d remember that when I was old—the feeling of flying, of free-falling, of total liberation—and not this awkward conversation with a boy who was once my best friend. I wanted to remember Italy and Paris, rip cords and parachutes. Love, too. Even loss.

But not this.

Because right then, Patrick leaned in, like he was going to kiss me, and I turned away.

I thought about how he wouldn’t even
want
to kiss me if he knew how I felt about Carson. Then thought about
telling
him how I felt about Carson for that very reason. It seemed cruel.

“You guys having any luck?” Dez said from the hall, then he poked his head into the room.

“Patrick found the music box,” I said, “but we’re striking out on movie sheet music.”

“Wait,” Patrick said. “I got one.” He pulled out sheet music for “The Rose,” from the movie by the same name, starring Bette Midler, and handed it to me.

Winter called out, “We should get moving, Team Lame-Oh! I boxed up the loot that’s down here.”

Patrick picked up the “Raindrops” music box and threw me an I’ll-deal-with-you-later sort of look, and we hurried downstairs and out the door.

We left with a silver bangle [10], an ice-tea spoon [10], a stapler [2], the snow globe [20], the music box [80], the sheet music [20], the flag [25], a yellow leaf (silk, but still) [40], a remote [10], a three-hole punch binder [5], an ice-cream scoop [10], a bottle of shampoo (to be emptied later since we ran out of time) [5], a divided dinner plate [10], a stack of Dixie cups (for Patrick’s icosahedron attempt) [potential for 65], an unopened cable bill [50], a recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Bread [5], and a cleaned-up Mary, shucked from her Half Shell [100].

For a whopping total of 402 actual points.

Which, when added to the Home Depot loot, meant 587.

Like taking candy from a baby.

I locked up behind us and pocketed the keys, which I’d put back later, along with Mary.

“Isn’t your mom going to be mad?” Patrick asked, then. “About the statue?”

I adjusted a few weeds as we left, so that the grotto was obscured from sight again. “They’ll never know she was gone and if they do, they’ll never know it was me.”

Then I turned and headed for the car and saw Tigger and Bounty and Stars and Stripes.

Barbone again.

“What are you, following us?” Dez said as the car pulled in and idled at the curb.

Barbone just looked out from the driver’s seat, across Fitz in the passenger seat, and said, “As if there weren’t enough virgins on your team already.”

Of course Barbone knew the statue was there, weeds and all. We’d all been stuck in this town a long time. But did he have to know I was a virgin? I just looked at my friends and said, “Let’s go, guys.”

“Didn’t appreciate your dad dicking us around, Daphne,” Fitz said.

“Yeah, well,” Dez said. “Them’s the breaks.”

And Barbone’s car took off with a grunt.

“Where to?” I asked after we’d loaded in all our stuff and gotten back in the car, this time with Dez riding shotgun.

“My house?” Winter said, beside me in the backseat, then she accidentally kicked Mary, who was by our feet, so I picked her up and moved her to the little shelf behind our headrests.

“Houses are boring,” Dez said.

“Houses are easy,” Winter said. “But we’d have to sneak in through my window since my mom thinks I’m at the movies.” This was probably wise, but the truth was Winter’s mother barely noticed her when they were in the same room.

“Lamest. Team. Ever,” Dez said, then he started to flip through the list.

“I’m heading for Flying Saucers,” Patrick said, “unless anyone’s got any better ideas.”

“Let’s talk through some of the list,” I said, pulling mine out but then taking a minute to text Winter: PATRICK TRIED TO KISS ME.

“Seriously. My house is a no-brainer,” Winter said, looking up from her list in the backseat. “But we should go later tonight, I think, so the goldfish doesn’t die before final judging.”

Her phone lit up (she’d obviously finally had the good sense to silence it) and she read, then looked over at me, wide-eyed.

“You have a goldfish?” Patrick asked.

A text from the Yeti said: CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT FROM TIFFANY, 25 POINTS, and I wrote it onto the master and said, “Sucks.”

Winter was typing.

“What sucks?” Dez said. “Did Eleanor have a Tiffany ornament?”

My phone lit up again, with Winter saying: YOU SHOULD GO FOR IT!

Looking askance at her I said, “No but my parents totally have one, but there’s no way I could get it.” Then I started to type: BUT I LIKE CARSON! HELLO! I hit send.

“No, my sister has one,” Winter said, still holding her phone.

There were way too many conversations in the car right now, bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls.

“You’re going to steal your sister’s goldfish?” Patrick asked.

And, for the record, Winter’s sister was named neither Autumn, nor Summer, nor Spring, but Poppy. She was all of four years old and Winter was basically raising her.

“I sure as hell am,” Winter said.

I turned to her with a broad smile, while she typed. “I am so proud of you!”

“You’re proud that she wants to steal her sister’s goldfish?” Patrick asked.

“I admire her commitment to the cause to claim the Yeti is all.” I looked out the window to hide the
jeez
in my eyes. I had never said it out loud to anyone but I got the distinct impression that Patrick didn’t entirely approve of my choice of a female best friend. He had never said it out loud either, but he didn’t have to.

Winter’s text to me this time said: BUT HE IS STILL WITH JILL. AND AFTER THAT, NO GUARANTEE.

I looked at her, mystified, then started typing.

“I’ll buy her a new one.” Winter shook her head in Patrick’s
general direction then started ticking off items on her fingers. “So my house has the goldfish, a Ouija board, children’s books, and probably a toy made in the U.S. That’s, like, seventy-five points, I think. Oh, and Pictionary. I can get a Pictionary card.”

“Excellent,” I said, and sent the text that said, HAPPY TO TAKE MY CHANCES.

I had to concentrate. “We should pick up a jar or bottle somewhere so when it’s dusk we’re ready to catch fireflies.”

Winter read my text and shrugged, and I thought about the last time I’d caught fireflies, how I’d been with Patrick. And now that I recalled that night, maybe I should’ve known that a moment like the one in Eleanor’s house was coming, and maybe had been for a long time.

THERE WERE NO ALIENS OUTSIDE THE FLYING
Saucers diner so we had to go in if we were going to take a photograph with an extraterrestrial. Standing in the shade made by the off-kilter spherical building—designed to look like a UFO that crash-landed in the parking lot—I said, “I guess we just walk in acting casual and ask some random person to take our picture, then leave?”

Patrick shook his head. “But we don’t want to tip anyone off to the fact that the hunt is underway.”

It was true that if the owners of Flying Saucers saw a parade of kids coming in and taking pictures and leaving, the gig would be up for sure. They’d call the cops and there’d be cruisers out all over town and the whole thing would eventually get shut down before the victor was named. But I didn’t see any way around that. “What else are we supposed to do?” I asked.

“We could eat something fast,” Dez said. “I’m sort of hungry.”

I said, “Tick-tock, Dez!”

“We just have to do it,” Winter said. “We’re wasting time.”

“But there’s a host who stands right at the front,” Patrick said.

Clearly, he was trying to be difficult.

“We’re here all the time, so it’s probably someone who has seen us before,” I said, “so we’ll be like ‘hey, can we grab a booth’ and just saunter by.”

“All right, Mary,” Patrick said. “Since you seem pretty committed to this plan of yours, I guess we’ll just do it your way.”

“A little early in the day to get snippy,” Winter said, and I was grateful she said it and not me. When Patrick was in a mood, frankly, no one wanted to be around him. Winter had once put it thusly: “He’s like some tortured superhero. Emotion Man.”

“We’re going to get in trouble,” Patrick said, and we all turned. “Just stating that for the record.”

“Duly noted,” Dez said, then he turned to me and smiled and said, “Take us to your leader.”

I headed for the front doors, feeling a tinge of nausea in my gut. Because it was possible we
would
get in trouble, but we weren’t going to win if we were worried about…what, exactly? Losing our diner rights? They couldn’t exactly call the cops and arrest us for trespassing. It was a
diner
. And if we couldn’t do this—something so dumb, really—even at the risk of outing the hunt, well then it was true that we were the lamest scav hunt team ever, which maybe seemed inevitable since we were the good kids, or so everybody always said.

But I wasn’t
that
good. Not if you really knew me. Like if you read my mind. Or looked at my web browser history. Or saw straight into my heart the way Patrick sometimes seemed to.