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Sure, right now, the stars don’t align, but one day, they will. I have patience. I can wait for the right moment.
Tonight, I only want one thing: to offer her a gift. It is her birthday, after all. Who wouldn’t want a four-panel birthday card? I’ve been working on it for the past two weeks, making sure every line and color is perfect.
I stand, stretch, change out of my wrinkled Star Trek shirt into something more appropriate for a Huntington party: cargo pants and a short-sleeved plaid button-up. For me, this is as formal as it gets.
I can’t see what’s happening inside, but outside my window, the party is already humming. At least a dozen people gather by the Huntingtons’ enormous pool, sipping punch and admiring the fake waterfall on the other side of the backyard. And it’s quite the backyard.
The Huntington estate sprawls over half our block. Their pool is as big as our house. Their house is the size of a department store. The rest of their backyard is, well, the parking lot of a department store.
Obscene for the neighborhood, but then the city is named after their great-grandfather.
Usually, I resent the inequality of it. But it’s hard to complain about anything that keeps me this close to the sun.
For a few minutes, I study the party from above, as if locked away in a tower. The fashion, the posture, the music. Something popular on the radio. One of those girl-power pop artists Grandma loves.
Grandma…
Grandma doesn’t want me to go.
Grandma doesn’t appreciate my crush on Lexi. She thinks Lexi will end up hurting me.
But has the sun ever hurt the earth? Okay, never mind, that’s a bad metaphor. I suck at metaphors. That isn’t the point. The point is I don’t believe Lexi would ever hurt me.
Which means I need to sneak out, now. I press my ear to the door, to make sure the coast is clear, then I grab the envelope I packed for Lexi, and I sneak into the carpeted hallway. I creep down the stairs, into the mid-sized living room.
Thankfully, Grandma isn’t sitting on the worn-leather couch. She isn’t watching TV or sipping red wine or reading. She’s not in the messy kitchen, either.
“She’s in her office,” my cousin Fern says, stepping into the kitchen from the backyard.
Fern is more of an older sister than a cousin, really. My mom bailed when I was a teenager, so I grew up here with Grandma, and Fern spent summers in the room next to mine. She took me under her wing, since I was two years younger and infinitely less cool. Her (really,our) older sister looks out for me, too, but she isn’t here now because she’s taking courses at UC Berkeley.
“Let’s sneak out and go to the party,” I say.
“You read my mind.” Fern grins. “No sneakingin, though. We’re invited, remember?”
Well, not specifically, but I know what she means. We have an open invitation from Mr. Huntington tocome by anytime.
Fern checks her outfit—a pair of high-waisted jeans and one of Grandma’s button-up silk blouses—and nods her approval. “How’s my hair?” She tosses back her dark brown hair as if the natural-looking waves are, in fact, natural. “Do I need a makeover?” She doesn’t wait for a response, just dives into her romance novel–inspired daydream. “Can you imagine that scene? A makeover before a party at the Huntingtons’ place? I could slide down the stairs in a backless gown and silver heels, with my hair pinned up on my head.”
“A backless gown?” I raise a skeptical eyebrow.
She nods and continues watching the scene in her mind, a far-off, dreamy look in her eyes.
“To a high school party?” I press.
“It’s a Huntington party, River. There will be someone in a backless gown.”
“Lexi?” My blood pumps faster, imagining Lexi Huntington draped in a piece of silk, the pink fabric cutting a long line down her elegant back.
Fern laughs as I drift into fantasy land. Which is ridiculous. She lives in her imagination even more than I do.
“Come on,” she says, pulling me firmly from my mind, back into the small space of the kitchen. “Let’s get there in time for the birthday girl to make her entrance.”
I take her hand and follow her out of the kitchen. We cross the grass in our tiny backyard, into the side yard, the one that connects our house to the Huntingtons’.
As usual, the tall wooden gate is wide open, allowing anyone and everyone into the party—well, anyone and everyoneinvited.
The music grows louder as we step into their backyard. Now that I’m closer, I can see the people around the pool are mostly adults. Friends of Mr. Huntington. They’re in suits and cocktail dresses, sipping clear liquor from martini glasses or bubbly liquid from champagne flutes.
