The After Party Read Online Free Page B

lipstick—any heavier and Mary might notice.
    Joan, as a sophomore at Lamar High School, had already been asked to be on the homecoming court. She was a cheerleader, too, one of two underclassmen on the squad. She ate at the center tableof the cafeteria, surrounded by the football team. She was invited to every party, every dance. Without Joan I would have been no one, a girl on the fringes of the popular group by virtue of the fact that her family had money, that she lived in River Oaks: a girl with a forgettable face, a forgettable name. But I was saved from this fate because I was Joan’s best friend. I ate lunch with her, went to parties with her, generally benefited from standing at her side. I might have been jealous but I didn’t want the spotlight, didn’t need it. I needed Joan, and I had her.
    Puberty struck some girls like a match. At fourteen years old, a freshman, Joan had breasts the size of melons. That’s what I’d overheard a boy saying, one day after school. She was already the most beautiful, the richest, the most charming, the most everything. Now she had a figure like Carole Landis, too. A figure most of us knew, even then, we would never come close to having.
    Joan had grown right into her body. Other girls who developed early stooped their shoulders, carried their books in front of their chests, but Joan? Our first day of high school Joan wore a brassiere with pointed cups, like the movie stars did. She hid it in her purse and changed in the bathroom.
    This particular night she wore a familiar dress, baby blue with a flared skirt. I’d never seen her necklace before, though. It was a tiny gold star with a diamond chip in its center. It hung in the dip between her collarbones like a glimmer.
    I touched it on the doorstep of the house where Fred had deposited us.
    â€œWhat’s this?” I asked.
    â€œOh,” she said, “Daddy gave it to me.”
    â€œFor what?”
    She shrugged, and I understood she was embarrassed, to have a father who gave her gifts for no reason—for being Joan—when my own father, for all intents and purposes, might as well have not existed.
    Joan rang the bell. When nobody came to the door, she finally opened it, revealing a throng of high schoolers. A boy Joan had been seeing, Fitz, snagged her and they headed upstairs almost as soon as we were inside, while I stood by the punch bowl until I mercifully spotted Ciela. We chatted about nothing and tried to pretend we weren’t watching to see who was watching us.
    â€œJoan’s been up there for a long time,” Ciela said. She was wearing a short-sleeved plaid dress with a collar. It almost looked like a school uniform, except it was skintight. Ciela dressed like a siren but wouldn’t even let her boyfriend, a senior, touch beneath her bra. I felt a little flare of jealousy—she looked like Lana Turner tonight.
    I was drunk on grenadine and whiskey; the house, in Tanglewood, was gauche and brand-new. You could practically feel the light blue rug turning brown beneath all our feet.
    â€œShe and Fitzy are talking,” I said.
    Ciela eyed me. “You really don’t know what they’re doing up there?”
    â€œThey’re doing whatever they want,” I said. “Joan’s doing whatever she wants.” Defending Joan was a sharp reflex.
    Ciela nodded, took a measured sip of her punch. “She sure is,” she said finally. She smiled at me. “She sure is.”
    Just then Fitz appeared at the head of the stairs and motioned to me; I left Ciela there like we hadn’t been in the middle of a conversation.
    â€œJoanie’s a little upset,” he said when I reached him. I grabbed the stair rail for balance—I was drunker than I thought—and watched Fitz run a hand through his thick black hair, lick his chapped lips. This close I could see little bits of dead skin clinging to them.
    â€œWhere is she?” I asked.
    He