on, Dave feeling like a shitty friend for being unreachable, for maybe causing her to worry. Then the mood of the party settled back into his bones and he pocketed the phone, sure that Julia was elsewhere in the house, enjoying herself in just the same way he was.
He’d ended up in the den, where he stared at the hundreds of books in the Kapoors’ library, turning his head slightly to read the spines.
“I do that, too,” a girl’s voice said.
He looked up to find Gretchen, a girl from his AP Chemistry class. Her back was to him, but he could recognize her by her hair, which was wavy enough to maybe be considered curly. It was dark blond, lightening up toward the ends, though he didn’t know enough about her or her hair to know if the blonder tips were natural or the evidence of a past dye job.
She turned to look at him, big brown eyes and the hint of a smile. At a glimpse, he could tell that her bottom teeth were slightly crooked. The world was full of details he’d failed to notice before.
“Do what?” he said.
“Check out bookshelves at strangers’ houses,” she answered, stepping up next to him and looking at the books as if to prove she wasn’t lying. “I’m usually a bit awkward in houses that I haven’t been to before, so it’s a way to not look weird. If I find something I’ve read before it automatically makes me more comfortable.”
He looked over at Gretchen, who fixed her eyes on the books. She was in a simple blue dress and—Dave couldn’t help the thought—looked lovely. “Is that what you’re doing now?”
She met his eyes for just a moment and turned them away again, trying to hide a grin. “Oh, I don’t know how to read.”
She was laughing as she said it, showing another glimpse of her crooked lower teeth. They weren’t unsightly, just imperfect. Dave liked the look of them, for some reason.
Dave chuckled. “That was one of the worst attempts at a lie I’ve ever seen.”
“Dammit, I know.” She blushed a little and rolled her eyes at herself. “I’ve been trying to get better, but I smile every time. I think I could be one of the greatest pranksters of our generation, but my mouth just doesn’t want any part of it. Stupid smile.”
“I’m Dave. We have AP—”
“AP Chem, I know. Come on, Dave, I live, like, a block away from you. We were in the same lab group that one time.”
“Right. Sorry, I just usually assume people don’t know me.”
“I know you,” she said. A lock of blond hair fell in front of her face and she pulled on it, examining the lighter ends for a few seconds before letting it drop against her dress. “So, have you read any of these?”
“All of them,” Dave said. A silent, funny look passed between them, acknowledging the fact that he’d delivered the line with a straight face.
Gretchen reached over and pulled a maroon book out at random. “What’s this one about?” She turned the book over and pretended to read the back copy, though there wasn’t any. She furrowed her brow and concentrated, but the corners of her mouth twitched anyway, begging to smile.
He took a step closer to her and pulled the book up to read the title, California Real Estate Law 1987–1992. At this distance, it was hard not to notice Gretchen in her entirety. He’d always seen her out of the corner of his eyes, blond locks and not much more, talkative, active at school in the way that he and Julia inherently disapproved of. Her legs were tan from soccer practices in the sun, and she wore scuffed beige sneakers that didn’t really go with her dress. “This one’s an adventure-slash-love story,” he said, looking at the faint dimple in her chin.
“Ooh, that’s my favorite genre! And here I was judging the book by its cover.”
“What was your guess? Judging by the cover.”
“Erotica,” she said, nodding. “I would have definitely thought hard-core erotica.”
He laughed, the image of her reforming itself, starting to fill up with color.
“So tell me about this adventure-slash-love story.”
Maybe for the first time, he looked at her and saw more than just her face. The words that he would have used to describe her yesterday—that she was just another popular pretty girl, a soccer player who maybe ran for student council or worked on the yearbook or something like that—suddenly seemed to lack any real description. That was true of many of the people at the party, he realized. It was like he’d been carrying around a coloring book that hadn’t yet been drawn in. He and Julia knew the outlines of people, but not much more.
“Well,” he said, and he took a seat on the leather couch behind them. Gretchen sat down next to him, the space between them hard to distinguish because of how her dress fell onto his jeans. “It’s about this guy named...” He struggled for a name, then grabbed the book from Gretchen’s hand and flipped to a random page. “A guy named Californian Tort Law.”
“He sounds cute.”
“So cute.”
“Is there a girl?”
Dave smiled at her, at the way she’d positioned herself to face him, at the way she was smiling back, at all the unexpected turns his night had taken, normal as it may have been to everyone else at the Kapoor house. He wondered only briefly about how Julia’s night had gone since they’d split, whether she’d discovered some of the same things he had about their classmates.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to give it away. You’ll just have to read it yourself.”
“No! Don’t be like that. I want to hear the whole story tonight.”
“I don’t think there’s much left of tonight,” Dave said, looking back toward the living room, which had definitely quieted down. The party was emptying out. Julia must have left to go home by now, and he should probably do the same soon.
“Come on. Tell me about the girl. What was her name?”
“Her name,” Dave said, looking down at the open book in his lap, “was Section 16520 of the Family Code.”
“Interesting name.”
“Swedish,” Dave explained.
Gretchen beamed a smile at him and gave him a head nod to continue. With a quick, appreciative thought for the Nevers list he’d found stuck in his locker, Dave continued his story.
o o o
When Dave walked out of the Kapoor house, it was past three in the morning. Tiredness was starting to dull the edges around the thrill of the night, a faint headache building up as payback for all that beer. He was so ready to go to bed that he almost missed Julia sitting on the curb in front of the house, her head on her knees, arms curled around herself. He leaned over and could hear her softly breathing, asleep.
“Julia,” he said, putting an arm on her shoulder. When she stirred, eyes darting, confused, he asked her how long she’d been waiting for him.
“I don’t know. An hour, maybe. Where the hell did you run off to?”
“Nowhere. I was in the den downstairs.”
“You weren’t answering my calls.” She put her hands on either side of her and stretched her back out. “What gives?”
“My phone died, sorry.”
“Fuck, Dave, you couldn’t have come to tell me that?”
“I tried.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them. He hated making her upset. “I couldn’t find you anywhere, so I thought you’d left.”
“Without you? Please.” She yawned. “You know you’re an awful human being for letting your phone run out of battery. Come on, David Montgomery Burns, it’s the twenty-first century. Stay