a choice, do I?” Brett took a swig from his beer. He’d just turned twenty-one, which was a huge relief for their dad, who’d been letting Brett drink for a while now. After their mom had died, Brett had helped take care of Dave, and in his dad’s eyes, that earned him the right to do anything he wanted. “So what’s with the baking?”
“It’s rude to show up empty-handed,” Dave offered.
Brett laughed.
“Okay, then. Good luck with that.” He lingered by the fridge for a few minutes, finishing his beer. “How are there still Kapoor brothers going to that school? I thought the youngest one graduated the same year I did.”
“The triplets are juniors,” Dave said, pouring sugar and cream into a mixing bowl for the frosting. “And I think there was an oops baby that’s in junior high now.”
“I heard a rumor that the Kapoor parents only procreate because they’re building up an army,” Julia said. In the few minutes since they’d started working on the cupcakes, Julia had managed to get herself covered in cupcake mix. It coated her brown hair and the tip of her nose, and there was a smear of batter on her chin. Dave had to resist the urge to take a picture of her or call her adorable. “They’ve been planning to take over San Luis Obispo for generations.”
“I could actually see that,” Brett said, tossing his beer into the recycling bin and grabbing another can, letting loose a burp that sounded less like a burp and more like a bass line. “Dad, you want a beer?” he called out into the living room, where their dad was likely watching college basketball. There was a grunt of a response, so Brett grabbed another one and set it on the counter next to him.
“Don’t open that,” Dave said to Brett. “We need a ride to the party.”
Brett popped open the new beer defiantly, sucking up the foam that hissed out. “You really need to get your license already. You’re eighteen.”
“This is more of a situation where we intend to, as you and your brainless friends would call it, ‘get wasted,’ and less of a Dave-not-having-a-license thing,” Julia said. “I could have driven if I wanted to.”
Brett shook his head. “You two are so codependent.”
Dave blushed, but Julia kept on mixing cupcake batter without missing a beat. “It’s not codependence, it’s attachment,” she said.
“Attached at the hip, maybe,” Brett said, drinking from his beer. “You should take it easy on the booze; you two probably share a liver. You won’t last an hour at that party.”
Julia scowled at him, then clapped cupcake mix off her hands in front of his face. “Why the hell not?”
Brett coughed, brushing the white cloud away from his face. “You’re too... I don’t know. Artsy.”
Julia laughed. “I don’t paint, write, sculpt, or play any music. I don’t think you know what artsy means.”
“I think he’s trying to call you intelligent, but in a derogatory way,” Dave said.
“I mean that you go to parties ironically, barefoot, and you bring cupcakes.” He took another drink, mulling something over in his head. “You’re right, artsy was the wrong word. I should have said clueless. The Kapoor parties are legendary for being wild. I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourselves into.”
“I’m sure the beer-pong tournament will be really intimidating,” Julia said, turning back to the cupcake batter. “You know, I had second thoughts of going before you came in. But now I’m sure it’ll be a blast. I can’t wait until I see that glimmer in someone’s eyes when they start thinking high school days are the glory days. Like the look in your eyes, Brett.”
Brett looked around the kitchen, giving his derisive laugh that was more like a snort. Dave could tell he was trying to think of a comeback. After a while, Brett scowled, muttered something about cupcakes, and then went into the living room to rejoin their dad. Watching TV was their favorite thing to do. They did so silently, never acknowledging that it drew them together. Sometimes Dave felt like joining them, but it seemed to belong just to the two of them. Dave didn’t mind so much; he had his own silent way of feeling close to his dad: They cooked for each other, meals that Dave’s mom used to make for all of them.
“You have to teach me how to do that. I never get the last word with him,” Dave said, dipping a finger into the frosting to taste it. There was something delightful about watching Julia move about the kitchen recklessly, a trail of batter and eggshells in her wake. The tiled floor was a mess when she was done with it, polka-dotted with vanilla extract. Her fingerprints were all over the black cabinets and on the stove. A pile of dishes sat in the sink, way more of them than she had needed. On his own, Dave was a bit of a neat freak. But when Julia was nearby, messes seemed beautiful, life’s untidiness easier to comprehend.
“So this is how tradition falls,” he said, taking a seat on one of the stools at the breakfast counter. “With cupcakes and the Kapoor army.”
“Better a bang than a whimper,” she said, easing onto the stool next to him. She reached over and brushed something off his shoulder, as if he were the one covered in ingredients. “Plus, don’t be so dramatic. It doesn’t suit you. We’ll watch a movie next Friday, when we get bored of this. And them.”
Dave nodded, understanding what she was getting at, though maybe not in the exact way she’d meant it. Julia kept mostly to herself at school, and by extension he did, too. He was friendly enough with classmates, though, especially when Julia wasn’t around to draw his attention. There were a couple of guys he might even go so far as to call friends, though he never really spoke to them outside of school. Once or twice he’d hung out with them, gone to lunch and then played video games in a curtain-drawn den. There’d been dog hair on every surface, a stale smell of Doritos in the air. Their conversations had bored him, and within an hour or so he’d found himself longing for Julia’s company, an urge so sharp it felt like homesickness. He had no trouble being alone. But if he was around anyone, he wanted it to be Julia.
“You’re right,” Dave said, the worry over the party melting away. “I might even try breaking the promise to never go streaking while we’re at it.”
“I’ll make sure that the picture goes viral and you live the rest of your life in regret and shame.”
“You’re such a good friend.” Dave put a hand on top of her head and shook lightly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Show up to parties empty-handed, for one.”
Dave chuckled, dipping another finger into the frosting. “You have to admit it’s kind of weird, though. Doing this after avoiding it for so long.”
Julia shrugged, using her pinky to steal the frosting from his finger before he could lick it away. “I don’t think it’ll be that bad. Just see it as a brief social experiment.” She hopped off the stool and went to the oven, peering in through the glass to check on the cupcakes. “My mom did this once.”
“Went to a Kapoor party?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “No, goof. She came back to the States, got a regular job. This was when I was around nine or so. She worked at a bank, tried to go back to school. She calls it her ‘social experiment with the sheep.’ Six months later, she’d taken off again, even happier to return to her unordinary life.”
Julia leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms in front of her chest, not really meeting Dave’s gaze. She knew she was being transparent, but she’d never been good at hiding her feelings when it came to her mom.
“I see what you’re doing. You’re drawing parallels between us and your mom so I will feel as cool as she is.”
Julia smiled and tossed a towel at him. “If it is too lame we’ll just leave. We can even have a secret signal.”
Dave groaned. “Why a secret