If He Had Been with Me

The party is at my house, because it is big and so my parents can meet Jamie before they go to The Office’s New Year’s Eve party.

Jamie was good with my parents. He shook hands, made eye contact, and didn’t smell like any kind of smoke. Dad was satisfied. Mom was pleased, and I have a nagging feeling that it is because Jamie is so good-looking, as if she can now rest assured that I am not too uncool at school.

Sasha, Brooke, and Angie are going to spend the night. Alex’s mom is going to pick up the boys after midnight. Until then, we are alone.

Brooke has stolen a champagne bottle from her parents’ party. It’s wrapped up in her sleeping bag, and it will only be after it is too late that we will realize it was safe to put it in the fridge.

We eat pizza and watch a movie. The movie is not great. The boys crack jokes and try to be the one to make the girls laugh the most. Jamie is winning, of course. I lean back in the leather couch and feel like a consort.

Afterward, we sit around and talk, and everyone is trying to be funny now. Mostly we talk about the other kids at school. Eventually the conversation turns to sex, as I am learning all conversations eventually will. None of us have had sex, and we are young enough that this is not embarrassing; it is simply a fact that time will remedy. We tease each other and exchange stories of who at school has done what where. We laugh and throw pillows at each other. Sex is something to joke about. Sex seems as possible, as real, as the world ending at midnight.

Midnight. I am as excited for the kiss with Jamie as if it were our first. I’ve only been kissed at midnight once before, and I am eager for this kiss to replace that kiss, to be a kiss that I will remember forever.

At eleven-fifty, we raid the kitchen for pots and pans. At eleven fifty-five, we stand at the front door and ask Jamie for the time every thirty seconds. For some reason we have decided that his phone is the most reliable.

And then, as it always does, the moment comes and passes, and even as part of me is once again surprised that I feel no different than I did a moment before, I am running across the lawn with the others, banging my pot and looking up at the stars and illegal fireworks my neighbors are setting off. We scream as if we have heard wonderful news. We shout a happy new year to each other and the trees and the others we cannot see out there, shouting at the sky like us. We scream as if this display of joy will frighten all our fears away, as if we already know nothing bad will happen to us this year, and are happy for it.

“Jamie, come kiss me!” I shout. I toss my pot and wooden spoon on the grass and hold my arms out to him. He swaggers over and pulls me to him by my hips. The others bang their pots. It is a good kiss, just like all our other kisses. The others drop their pots and exchange their own kisses. I pick up my pot and spoon again, and during the relative quiet before we begin to bang again, I realize we are not alone.

Thirty feet away, Finny and Sylvie and Alexis and Jack and all the others are banging on their pots and laughing at the sky too. Finny and I meet eyes, and he looks both ways before waving at me surreptitiously. I wave back, my hand no higher than my hip, terrified one of his friends will think I am waving to them. At that exact moment, everyone else seems to notice the others, for we are immediately in a competition that no one will ever acknowledge out loud. We are having more fun than they are. We love each other more. We are louder. We have more to look forward to this year than they do. We scream and shout and kiss some more. The boys begin their a cappella impression, and we hold out our arms and spin in the street.

And of course, we are having so much fun that we don’t even notice them standing over there.

Then Jamie does something that proves once again why he is our leader.

“Time for the champagne!” he shouts, and we scream a chorus of agreement that drowns the street in our elation. We run up the lawn laughing before they can retaliate. We are so over banging pots in the street; we have way cooler things to do inside.

We drink the warm champagne out of water glasses and act like it is no big deal.

Tipsy for the first time in our lives, we begin to dare each other to kiss. Brooke and Angie kiss. I kiss Noah. Sasha kisses Jamie. And then we decide that each of us must kiss all of the others in order to seal our eternal bonds of friendship. We giggle and cluster together. Did I kiss you? Have we kissed yet? Oh my god, I kissed Alex twice.

Afterward we wash all the glasses twice. Jamie and the boys take on the manly task of smashing the bottle on the driveway and sweeping up the pieces. When they come back inside, we all take breath strips and stand together in the kitchen. The girlfriends stand with their boyfriends in preparation of the impending separation. We hold hands and lay our heads on their shoulders, sighing how sleepy we are. The boyfriends smile at us indulgently. Angie sits at the kitchen table and endures as she always does.

“Hey, did Finn Smith wave at us?” Noah says. Brooke opens her eyes and lifts her head up.

“Yeah, I saw that,” she says.

“He was probably waving at Autumn,” Sasha says.

“Why?” Angie and Noah say at the same time.

“They used to be, like, best friends,” Sasha says. Everyone looks at me.

“He lives next door,” I say. “Our moms are friends. Really close friends.”

“They spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together,” Sasha says. “Every year.”

“Oh my God, that is weird,” Brooke says.

“We’re like cousins,” I say. “If Jamie was one of the popular kids, you’d still have to see him, right, Brooke?”

“Me?” Jamie says. Everyone laughs.

“Still, it is weird,” Sasha says. “For a little while in middle school, you guys still hung out sometimes, right? I mean you guys could still be friends even—”

“Hey, I’m not the one who tried out for cheerleading,” I say, and I am no longer the center of attention.

“You did what?” Alex says, as if she has betrayed him. Sasha begs for mercy, pleading her youth, her inexperience, her naiveté.

“I knew not what I did,” she says, her hands clasped in front of her. We listen to her case, and after she has been sufficiently melodramatic, Jamie pronounces her forgiven and we all hug her as Alex’s mom knocks on the door.

The subject of our pasts is dropped for the night, and we unroll our sleeping bags and huddle together on the living room floor. We talk about our boys and which of the popular girls is the snottiest. We all disagree, each choosing the one we feel is our counterpart.

“Sylvie always looks so smug,” I say. “I hate that.”

“But Victoria glares at me,” Angie says. “I mean, seriously. Like this.” We all laugh at her impression, which resembles Popeye more than Victoria. Sasha and I are even more delighted, because we had both always thought her grimace was funny, even when she was our friend.

My parents come home before we have fallen asleep. They are arguing and trying to be quiet about it, and the other girls pretend not to notice. After a few minutes, I hear my father go upstairs. A moment later, my mother pokes her head into the living room.

“Did you girls have a good New Year’s?” she asks brightly. All the girls nod and say, “Yes, ma’am.” She looks directly at me. “Did you, honey?” she says. I nod, but she looks at me strangely and leaves us.

Sasha probably would have added, if I had not stopped her, that Finny and I used to spend every New Year’s together too.