clown or a giant cereal box. It’s disorienting and leaves me slightly seasick. Everyone is disguised, and everyone wants to be noticed. Not that I’m any different.
I turn away from them and lean out over the backyard as I pull my phone from my pocket. It’s too late in the year for fireflies, but the lawn is dotted with glowing tips of cigarettes and joints clustered in twos and threes, and the effect is not so different. The manicured backyard extends into low bushes and then the gently sloping fields beyond. The nearest neighbors on this cul-de-sac aren’t visible from this angle, but off to the left there’s a twinkling of lights from town, the view partially blocked by the twinned hulking forms of Donnelly and Lonsanto corporate headquarters. On sunny days, their curved, mirrored surfaces catch the sunlight and reflect the clouds and green and gold corn fields, but tonight, picking up the orange glow from the town’s streetlights, they look almost eerie.
“Lulu! You cannot abandon me like that.”
My cousin Camila’s voice nearly startles my phone out of my hand. She’s the only reason I even came tonight—these red-cup ragers are really not my scene. When I first started at London High, I used to hit the local scene with Camila pretty regularly. For a while it was fun and exciting to drink our way through the town’s liquor cabinets and hook up with different boys every weekend, but I lost interest in that stuff pretty quickly. People wonder these days what Camila and I see in each other, and if we weren’t family, I’m not sure we’d see much. We don’t move in the same circles or listen to the same music, and while she’s practically famous in the party circuit around here, I prefer nights curled up in my pj’s, marathoning old TV shows. But she’ll be graduating this spring and starting work, and she acts like this means we’ll never see each other again. I know she’s just being dramatic, but I let her talk me into coming out again with her anyway, “for old time’s sake.”
Tonight she’s dressed as a jockey, which is probably an excuse to wear tight pants and carry a riding crop.
“Sorry,” I say. “Thought you were right behind me.”
“I was, but I got distracted by the guy in the horse mask.” She fondles her riding crop appreciatively. “Apparently he’s been very bad.”
Camila lifts her chin in my direction, as if daring me to make a comment about her shamelessness, but I just shrug. She’s picked up this kind of talk from the rich kids who throw these keggers—they think it makes them sound sophisticated—but she’ll have to try harder if she wants to shock me. I may spend more time at home with my books than hooking up with boys, but that doesn’t mean I’m a prude.
“Sounds promising,” I tell her instead.
“I thought so, but he wouldn’t take off the mask and I got weirded out. What if he’s ugly?”
“He’s wearing a horse mask,” I say, glancing back down at my phone. “Got to be hiding something.”
Camila snaps the phone out of my hand.
“You’re at a kegger with the entire junior and senior classes,” she says over my objection. “Not to mention your favorite cousin. Who could you possibly be texting?” She scrolls through my messages. “I knew it.” She holds up the phone triumphantly. “Can’t take even one night off from the boyfriend.”
“Jek’s not my boyfriend,” I mumble as she hands me the phone back. “He said he might come tonight. No way I’d find him in this mob scene, so I was just—”
“Jek, at a costume party?” Camila giggles. “Now that’d be something. What would he dress up as? A chemical equation?”
I decide not to mention that Jek went as a water molecule to his eighth birthday party.
“I told him he didn’t have to wear a costume.”
Camila swats me lightly with her crop. “Of course you did, spoilsport. All you cared about was him seeing you in yours.” She eyes the plunging neckline of my lab coat meaningfully.
My phone buzzes.
Camila raises her eyebrows. “Well? Is he here?”
I check the message.
“No need to answer,” she says. “The disappointment is written all over your face.”
“He’s watching a movie.” I slide my phone into my pocket. “Might stop by later.”
“That translates to ripping bong-loads, right? Something tells me he won’t be peeling himself off his couch anytime soon. Remind me, why are you so into this loser?”
“Stop it. You could not be more wrong about him.”
“Oh, I see,” she says sarcastically. “So he’s not a huge pothead?”
The truth is, Jek has all but given up weed. But since he’s mostly replaced it with even stronger substances, I’m not eager to argue the point.
“He’s not just a pothead, all right? He’s also a genius. I’ve seen both of you high, and I only remember one of you poring over an advanced neurochemistry text.”
“Fine, fine. I get it. But you’ve been hung up on Jek ever since you were kids, and he still looks at you like you’re his sister. I think it’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to make a move, Lulu. Make a move or move on.”
“What do you think I was doing, inviting him here tonight?”
Camila snorts. “He may be a genius, but he needs some things spelled out a little more clearly. Why are you wasting time at this party when you could be over at his house, stripping off that lab coat and unzipping his pants? Even Jek couldn’t miss that signal. Probably.”
“Camila! Geez.” I wrap my lab coat more tightly around me. “It’s not like that, okay? We’re best friends, we always have been, and...and if that’s all he wants, that’s fine. I’m not going to force myself on him.”
“You wouldn’t be forcing him. There isn’t a boy in the world who would turn down that offer. Unless...”
“What?”
“I don’t know...maybe he’s gay.”
“He’s not gay,” I say, maybe a little too sharply. Camila gives me a look and I let out a sigh. “Or, I don’t know. I guess he could be.”
“You of all people should know. Doesn’t he tell you everything?”
I shake my head. “We don’t talk about stuff like that.”
“So that’s it, then,” she muses, leaning back against the railing. “That explains a lot, really. But in that case, Lulu, you should really give it up and focus on the fine-looking boys in front of you.” She gestures at the throng inside the party.
“But how can you be so sure? He’s never shown any interest in me, but he’s never shown interest in anyone else, either. Of any gender. I think his brain just doesn’t work like that.”
Camila gives me a sidelong glance. “It’s not the brain I’m talking about.”
“Shut up. What I mean is, yeah, I’ve known him for ages and yeah I kind of like him, but all he cares about is science.”
“Science and getting high.”
I ignore her. “He’s not like the other boys in this town. Doesn’t have his mind in the gutter all the time. He’s got other interests.” Camila wraps her arms around herself, looking dubious, but I don’t let that stop me. “Chemistry is his one true love,” I explain, “and nothing else will ever compare for him. You want to know why I’m interested in him, well...that’s why. I love his passion.”
“Lulu, honey,” says Camila with something like pity. “Wouldn’t you rather have a boy who’s passionate about you?”
I shrug and