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Eighteen
Somehow, using the same we’re-adults-you-have-to-treat-us-that-way argument from the Beer Dinner, plus promising to hire a hotel-approved taxi for the entire night, Melanie and I manage to procure parental permission to go to that New Year’s Eve party. It’s being held on a narrow crescent of sand, all lit up with tiki torches, and at ten o’clock, it’s already slamming. There is a low stage on which the touted Mexican reggae band will play, though right now a d.j. is playing techno.
There are several giant piles of discarded shoes. Melanie tosses off her bright-orange flip-flops. I hesitate before taking off my less conspicuous black leather sandals, hoping I’ll find them again, because if I lose anything else, I swear I will never hear the end of it.
“Quite the bacchanal,” Melanie says approvingly, nodding to the guys in swim trunks holding bottles of tequila by the neck, the girls in sarongs with their hair freshly cornrowed. There are even actual Mexicans here, the guys smartly dressed in sheer white shirts, hair slicked back, and the girls in fancy party dresses, cut up to there, legs long and brown.
“Dance first or drink first?”
I don’t want to dance. So I say drink. We line up at the packed bar. Behind us is a group of French-speaking people, which makes me do a double take. There’s hardly anyone but Americans at our hotel, but of course people from everywhere come to Mexico.
“Here.” Melanie shoves a drink into my hand. It’s in a hollowed-out piece of pineapple. I take a sniff. It smells like suntan lotion. It is sweet and warm and burns slightly going down. “Good girl.”
I think of Ms. Foley. “Don’t call me that.”
“Bad girl.”
“I’m not that either.”
She looks peeved. “Nothing girl.”
We drink our drinks in silence, taking in the growing party. “Let’s dance,” Melanie says, yanking me toward the ring of sand that has been allocated as the dance floor.
I shake my head. “Maybe later.”
And there’s that sigh again. “Are you going to be like this all night?”
“Like what?” I think of what she called me on the tour—adventure averse—and what she said at the pool. “So like me? I thought that’s what you loved about me.”
“What is your problem? You’ve had a stick up your ass this whole trip! It’s not my fault your mom is Study-Hall Nazi.”
“No, but it is your fault for making me feel like crap because I don’t want to dance. I hate techno. I have always hated techno, so you should know that, what with me being so reliably me.”
“Fine. Why don’t you be reliably you and sit on the sidelines while I dance.”
“Fine.”
She leaves me on the perimeter of the circle and goes off and just starts dancing with random people. First she dances with some guy with dreadlocks and then turns and dances with a girl with super-short hair. She seems to be having a fine time out there, swirling, twirling, and it strikes me that if I didn’t already know her, she would no longer be someone I would know.
I watch her for at least twenty minutes. In between the monotonous techno songs, she talks to other people, laughs. After a half hour, I’m getting a headache. I try to catch her eye, but I eventually give up and slip away.
The party stretches all the way down the curve of the water—and into it—where a bunch of people are skinny-dipping in the moonlit sea. A little way’s farther down, it gets more mellow, with a bonfire and people around it playing guitar. I plant myself a few feet away from the bonfire, close enough to feel its heat and hear the crackle of wood. I dig my feet into the sand; the top layer is cool, but underneath it’s still warm from the day’s sunshine.
Down the beach, the techno stops, and the reggae band takes the stage. The more mellow bump-bump-thump is nice. In the water, a girl starts dancing on a guy’s shoulder, pulls off her bikini top, and stands there, half naked like a moonshine mermaid, before diving in with a quiet splash. Behind me, the guys on guitars start up with “Stairway to Heaven.” It mingles strangely well with the reggae.
I lie down in the sand and look up at the sky. From this vantage point, it’s like I have the beach all to myself. The band finishes a song, and the singer announces that it’s a half hour until the New Year. “New Year. Año nuevo. It’s a tabula rasa. Time to hacer borrón y cuenta nueva,” he chants. “One chance to wipe the board clean.”
Can you really do that? Wipe the board clean? Would I even want to? Would I wipe all of last year away if I could?
“Tabula rasa,” the singer repeats. “A new chance to start over. Start fresh, baby. Make amends. Make ch-ch-changes. To be who you want to be. Come the stroke of midnight, before you kiss your amor, save un beso para tí. Close your eyes, think of the year ahead. This is your chance. This can be the day it all changes.”
Really? It’s a nice idea, but why January first? You might as well say April nineteenth is the day that everything changes. A day is a day is a day. It means nothing.
“At the stroke of midnight, make your wish. Qué es tu deseo? For yourself. For the world.”
It’s New Year’s. Not a birthday cake. And I’m not eight anymore. I don’t believe in wishes coming true. But if I did, what would I wish for? To undo that day? To see him again?
Normally I have such willpower. Like a dieter resisting a cookie, I don’t even let myself go there. But for the briefest second, I do. I picture him right here, walking down the beach, hair reflecting in the flames, eyes dark and light and full of teasing, and of so many other things. And for a second, I almost see him.
