Chapter 28 The Party and The Game

Chapter 28 The Party and The Game
First period passed the way first period always passed when something social had happened the day before, in a low hum of sideways glances and reconstructed whispers that I had learned to tune out the way you tune out a refrigerator running in the next room.

I sat between Maya and Sarah in AP English and took notes on Their Eyes Were Watching God with the focused calm of someone who had decided that literature was a more reliable subject than her own life, which it currently was.

Mr. Patterson was midway through a discussion on Janie's search for self-determination when the classroom door opened and three girls came in late: Priya Sharma, Olivia Reyes, and Devon Walsh.

They were not in our usual social orbit. They were not in Tiffany's orbit either. They existed in that middle layer of Oakwood's social ecosystem that was too self-possessed to chase popularity and too socially aware to be invisible.

They slid into their seats. Priya caught my eye across the room and smiled.

I smiled back on reflex, then turned back to Mr. Patterson, mildly confused.



The confusion resolved itself at the end of first period when all three of them appeared at my desk before I had finished packing my notebooks.

"Daisy," Priya said. She had the confident warmth of someone who had decided to do a thing and was simply doing it. "I've been meaning to talk to you."

"Okay," I said.

"My birthday party is next Saturday." She handed me a small card, actual physical card stock, which meant she had prepared for this conversation. "It's at my house. Seven o'clock. Nothing huge, just like forty people, good music, good food." She smiled. "You should come."

I looked at the card. Then at Priya. Then I looked at Maya, who was standing slightly behind me with an expression that said this is a good thing and you should not talk yourself out of it.

"That's really nice of you," I said carefully. "Can I ask—why?"

Priya tilted her head. "What do you mean why?"

"I mean—" I searched for the diplomatic version of "we have never spoken and I am currently the school's most controversial topic and I want to understand the social calculation here." We don't really know each other."

"I know," Priya said, completely unbothered. "That's why I'm inviting you. I've seen you in the halls for three years, and you always seemed like someone interesting who I never got around to talking to." She shrugged.

"Also, you eviscerated Brooke Castellano in the hallway yesterday with like eight words, and I respect that enormously."

Olivia nodded solemnly. "It was genuinely impressive."

"You heard about that?" I said.

"Everyone heard about that," Devon said. "She had it coming."

I looked at the card in my hand. Small and cream-colored with Priya's address printed in the center. Forty people. Music. Food.

A party. An actual party that someone had invited me to on purpose.

"I'm not sure I have anything to wear," I said, which was both true and the closest thing to an excuse I could manufacture on short notice.

"That's what shopping is for," Sarah said from directly beside me, with the focused energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this opening.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"She'll be there," Sarah said simultaneously.

Priya smiled. "Great. Bring your friends." She looked at Maya and Sarah. "All of you." She picked up her bag. "See you Saturday, Daisy."

They left. I looked at the card. I looked at Sarah.

"I said I'd think about it," I said.

"And I translated that in real time," Sarah said. "You're going."

"I don't have anything to wear."

"We'll go Thursday after school. Maya has a car."

"I do have a car," Maya confirmed. "I would like the record to show I'm staying neutral on the attendance question."

"You're driving us Thursday," Sarah told her.

"Neutrally," Maya said.

I looked at the invitation card one more time. Something about the clean simplicity of its name, address, and time and the assumption that I would simply show up and belong there felt like a door I hadn't expected to find.

I put it in the front pocket of my notebook.

"Fine," I said. "But I'm picking what I wear."

Sarah made a sound of contained triumph.

"We'll see," she said.



By lunch the invitation had settled into the background of my thinking, which was currently occupied with AP History reading, the integration problems I needed to prepare for tonight's session, and the circled word that was still sitting in my notebook like an unanswered question.

I was three pages into the history chapter when Maya set her salad down across from me and said, "Are you going to the game tonight?"

I looked up. "What game?"

"The game," Sarah said, dropping into her chair. "Oakwood versus Riverside. It's a home game. Half the school is going." She unwrapped her sandwich. "Are you going?"

"No," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because I have integration problems to prepare and a history chapter to finish and I don't particularly like sports."

"You live with the quarterback," Sarah said.

"That doesn't mean I inherited his interests."

"Chloe goes to every game," Maya observed, which was a neutral statement of fact and therefore technically not pressure.

"Chloe is his sister," I said. "I'm his—" I paused at the word, the way I always paused at the word. "I'm his tutor."

"And his girlfriend," Sarah said.

"Fake girlfriend."

"The school doesn't know that."

"Which is exactly why I don't need to be at every game," I said. "The arrangement doesn't require me to attend sporting events."

"Hm," Sarah said.

I looked at her. "What does 'hm' mean?"

"It means 'hm.'" She took a bite of her sandwich with the studied casualness of someone who was building to something. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just interesting."

"What's interesting?"

"That you're not worried about it at all."

"About what?"

"About Tiffany," Sarah said it lightly. "Since you're not going to the game. Since you don't care."

I looked at my history chapter. "I don't care."

"Totally," Sarah said. "That's very healthy. Very mature. Very secure." She took another bite. "It's just that Tiffany is definitely going to be there.

Since she's head cheerleader. Since she cheers at every home game. " She paused. "And since Liam plays at every home game."

"Sarah—"

"I'm not saying anything. I'm just noting the factual circumstances."

"The factual circumstances are irrelevant because I trust the situation," I said, which was approximately forty percent true.

"Totally," Sarah said again, in the same tone as before. "And I'm sure the situation doesn't include Tiffany spending the entire third quarter finding reasons to stand near the bench where Liam is standing. Or the post-game huddle where she's literally required by her role to be on the field." She looked at her sandwich.

"Or the victory lap where the players and the cheerleaders have that whole—" she waved her hand, "—traditional celebration thing."

I turned a page in my history chapter.