“No, your hair smells sweet,” I tell her, but the truth is the fragrance de vomit is a little on the overpowering side.
From behind me, Kendra shrieks, “Sutter Keely! When they told me what happened out here, I should’ve known you’d be involved. I hope you know you’re going to pay for this table, Sutter.”
“That’s cool,” I say, completely calm and dignified. “Just send me the bill.”
She’s not done, though. “And I want you and your wasted girlfriend out of here. Now!” She’s boiling over with all the self-righteous anger of somebody’s mom.
“Why should we leave? I said I’d pay for your stupid table.”
“Why should you leave?” She surveys the patio and pool as if she’s an insurance adjuster showing up after Hurricane Katrina. “Here’s a couple of reasons: First, you got everyone in the pool when I said they weren’t supposed to, and now little miss binge drinker causes a big stupid scene, slaps my best friend for no reason, and breaks a two-hundred-dollar table.”
“Hey, it’s a party. Things happen.”
“No, Sutter. A party is for fun. You don’t know how to have fun like a normal person.”
“Me? Are you kidding? Look at everybody in the pool. You think they’re not having fun? Which do you think they’re going to remember more, playing some little game around the dining room table with you or laughing and swimming with their clothes on?”
Before Kendra can shoot back some lame reply, Cassidy steps up and takes my arm. “Sutter.” She stares me straight in the eye, giving me her best serious expression. I know it all too well. It’s not mean or accusatory or anything like that. She’s just letting me know there’s no room for jokes now. “It’s time to take Aimee home. She doesn’t want to be here like this.”
And she’s right, of course. Aimee’s sitting there all pale, looking like she could puke again at any second. This isn’t how she wants people to know her, and it’s not how I want them to know her.
“She’s not usually like this,” I say. “She’s just not used to partying so much. I guess she needs a little more practice, you know?”
Cassidy pats my back. “Take her home.”
Aimee’s leaning so far forward in the chair now, it looks like she might fall over on her face, but she doesn’t. She throws up again instead.
“Jesus,” someone says. “Look at the puke machine.”
I kneel down by her and pull back her hair. “Come on, baby,” I say softly. “It’s time to leave. You’ll be all right. Everything will be fine.”
Chapter 55
So, all in all, I’d say, despite the two-day hangover, the prom was a golden success. For days afterward, I have people coming up and congratulating me on my Dean Martin medley and my near-perfect, fully clothed flip into Kendra’s swimming pool.
On the down side, a few idiots have started calling Aimee Puke-a-reena. Guys like Chad Lammel pass by in the hall and go, “Hey, Sutter, where’s Puke-a-reena,” or “Has Puke-a-reena busted up any more lawn furniture lately?” Aimee says that in English, just as she’s sitting down, some dude goes, “Hey, Puke-a-reena, don’t break the desk.”
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “Screw that guy. We’ll see what he has to say someday when you’re a hotshot at NASA, and he’s working at some poultry plant cutting off chicken heads for a living.”
Aimee’s not so preoccupied with NASA anymore these days, though. Now she’s all about how we’re going to locate my dad and move off to St. Louis, like it’s a package deal. I’d kind of hoped that was just the vodka talking, but no such luck. She’s already told her sister we’re coming.
We sit down for lunch at Mickey D’s one day and the first thing she says is, “Have you talked to your mom about finding your dad?” Second day in a row she’s asked that.
“No, I decided I’d better talk to my sister about it instead. Only I have to approach it just right. My sister and I don’t get along so great.”
“I can’t wait to meet him,” she says. “I think this will be a really, really great thing for you. But we don’t have a whole bunch of time. Ambith’s expecting us to come pretty much right after graduation.”
“Don’t worry. I told you I’d do it, and you know me—I do what I say I will.”
Of course, the truth is that—regardless of how I’ve come to feel about her—I still expect Aimee to dump me. The signs are piling up. Just like all my other girlfriends, she’s starting to look for that certain something more in me that I don’t quite seem to have—whatever it is.
But time is running out if she’s going to break up with me before the day we’re supposed to move to St. Louis. In fact, now that the prom’s over, it seems like the school year’s pretty much finished too. We’re all just going through the motions, biding our time till graduation.
Unfortunately, for some of us, graduation might be postponed a tad. I haven’t told Aimee, but Mr. Asterhole has it in for me now. Apparently, according to him, it seems that I have to get at least a C on the last test to pass his class.
“And if you don’t,” he says, all stern and self-important, “it seems like I’ll be seeing you in summer school, young man.”
There he goes with the “young man” business.
I guess I could’ve had Aimee do more of my homework for me, but I didn’t want to run the risk of making her think that’s the only reason I was hanging out with her.