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9

Nice Costume

Tessa

At midnight, I’m in the middle of the Theta house basement with my hands in the air, and I am having the time of my life.

The music is so loud I can feel it in my sternum, a second heartbeat that isn’t mine, and the ceiling is low and sweating, and somebody has strung colored lights along the pipes, so everything flashes red and blue and green and back to dark. It smells like beer and body spray. There are too many people. Somebody’s elbow keeps finding my ribs. I don’t care. My hair is down, all of it, heavy and warm against my back, and it swings when I turn, and I keep turning just to feel it.

I’ve had three drinks. Maybe three and a half. Whatever’s in the red cups out of the cooler by the stairs tastes like fruit punch and regret, and it’s made everything in my body go loose and warm, but not sloppy. I know where my feet are. I know where the stairs are. I just don’t care about either of them.

I checked my phone once, at ten. His dot was a long way south, sitting on top of a building I’ve never heard of, the kind of place on the map that doesn’t even list a name, just a little gray square near a park. Nowhere near here. Nowhere near campus. An hour of highway between us, minimum.

So I put my phone in my back pocket and haven’t taken it out since.

I can’t remember the last time I was this far away from him. Not in miles. In my body. Every part of me that usually listens for him, the back of my neck and the top of my spine and that place under my ribs that goes tight when the air changes, has shut off. There’s nothing to listen for. He isn’t here. He can’t be here. For one night, I don’t have to know where Rafferty Waleska is, because I already know, and it’s somewhere else.

There’s a voicemail on my phone from my grandma. She called at nine-fifty, while I was getting ready with Kylie. I watched her name come up on the screen, and I let it ring, and then the little red number came up, and I turned the phone face down on Kylie’s desk. I know what it is. If she’s calling at ten on a Saturday night, it isn’t to talk. And I know that if I listen to it, the whole night is going to tip over, and I’ll be back on my bed with the phone on my chest, doing math.

So I don’t. Not tonight. Just for one night. I finish my drink.

The boy I’m dancing with is tall, and he’s wearing a backward hat. I don’t know his name. He told me. I didn’t catch it. He came up beside me three songs ago and smiled with a lot of teeth and said something I couldn’t hear, and I laughed, and now we’re dancing. He isn’t a bad dancer. He doesn’t grab. He keeps his hands mostly on my waist, and when he spins me, I let him, and the lights go around, and it feels like being on a ride at a fair.

And then the song changes, and he leans down, and I see his face coming toward mine, his eyes half closed, his mouth slightly open.

I put my hand over my mouth, the way you’d cover a sneeze.

He stops about two inches away and blinks at my knuckles.

I shake my head. Small. Polite. No, thank you.

Then I turn around and walk off the dance floor, still holding my hand over my mouth, and I don’t stop until I get to Kylie, who’s by the cooler with her phone held up close to her face, typing with both thumbs and grinning.

“Nash is on his way,” she says without looking up. “They won. He scored the winner, Tess. He’s coming here.” She looks up. Her face changes. “Why are you covering your mouth?”

I take my hand away. “No reason.”

“Tessa.”

“You know I was at the hockey game with you, right?”

She nods slowly and laughs. “How drunk am I?”

I take the drink from her hand and sip.

A deep voice from behind me says, “Come dance with me.”

I turn. It’s the boy with the backward hat. He’s standing right behind me now, smiling, holding out his hand like I’m going to take it.

I shake my head and hook my arm through Kylie’s and hold on.

Kylie looks at him. Then at me. Then at him again, and her whole face goes flat.

“She’s done dancing,” she says. “So, fuck off.”

“Whoa.” He laughs. He puts both hands up, but he doesn’t leave. “We were just having fun. Come on. One more song.” He looks at me. “We were having fun.”

“She was,” Kylie says. “And now she’s not.”