The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life (25 page)

Mullin’s attention was already back on the television. A baseball game on the West Coast. Bottom of the 13
^th
. “Oh, right,” he said, waving us off. “Great. Thanks.”

We went outside and walked calmly down the now-empty drive and down the street to where the Flying Cloud was hitched to Jill’s dad’s truck. When we were close, we took off into a run, with laughter chasing us then catching up and overtaking us. Mike was in the truck with Carson—whose car we were abandoning there—and Jill and Heather were in the Flying Cloud so the rest of us climbed up and in. We were all sort of winded and quiet until Patrick started laughing and said, “We are in some serious trouble now.”

Carson took a wide turn and we all swayed and grabbed onto things and then settled into seats and couches. It was
all so organized in there—not an inch was wasted—that it made me feel even more scattered, more all over the map, and I liked it, that feeling of not being so neat all the time. Then my eyes fell on a photograph—of Mullin and a woman, perhaps a wife or girlfriend, smiling in front of a waterfall. I’d never thought much about the fact that Mullin was “single” but whoever she was must have left him or died and I had a thought about life being messy, no matter who you were.

I felt tears forming—I couldn’t believe we’d actually pulled it off—and thought that yes, this was worth risking being grounded all summer.

This was worth whatever punishment was coming from Mullin, though I had a feeling he wasn’t going to do much of anything.

What was there left to do, really, with so few days left to the school year? And what could he do to me—to any of us—that really mattered in the grand scheme of things?

Jill was looking at her watch as the Flying Cloud took another floaty turn. “We’re not going to make it.”

“We have to,” I said, but as soon as I said it I realized I wasn’t sure it was true. Not anymore. I said, “Or maybe we don’t.”

Because we’d already won, hadn’t we?

I sure felt we had.

And what did it matter, the official title? The Yeti? The stamp of approval from Barbone? Who really cared what any of those guys thought anyway? The thought of having to see them all again actually ruined the mood.

But we were almost there.

So close.

I could see the entrance to The Pines—the shadowy trees,
and the dim glow of the lights of school beyond it. Carson was heading there at full tilt.

HOLD UP, said the text I sent to Carson, and the Flying Cloud stopped and everyone said, “What’s going on?” and then Carson and Mike came over to the trailer door and I hung out of it and I pointed to The Pines and said, “Look at it over there.”

Loud music blared and a few tipsy girls were shouting and dancing on cars.

I said, “I couldn’t think of any place I would rather be less.”

“You want to just give up?” Jill asked.
“Now?”

“It’s not giving up,” I said, shaking my head. “We do what we came to do and show them the Flying Cloud but we don’t stop. We do a drive-by—a victory lap—and we take this trailer and hit the road and see where we land.”

“Works for me,” Dez said, then he pulled as many of us as he could into a hug and said, “You turned out to be the best scav hunt team ever.”

Patrick said, “Let’s get this show on the road,” and we all laughed.

So Carson got back into the truck and drove us into The Pines and it all seemed to happen in slow motion, then.

I saw the heads start to turn our way, one by one, like some kind of stadium wave.

And then jaws started dropping and mouths starting moving and saying this:

Holy.

Shit.

And then the look on Barbone’s face, the look of defeat and disappointment, and maybe something else, too, though it was hard to say what it was. Was he maybe even a little bit impressed?

And then our circle of the lot was complete, and I saw Leticia Farrice and the Yeti and Lucas Wells—smiling and nodding at me—and I waved a small wave and we headed back out into the night.

I plopped down on one of the small benchlike sofas, between Patrick and Dez—Winter and Mike and Heather had settled at the kitchen table—and everything felt right.

We parked the trailer by the beach end of Rainey Park where there was a small stretch of sand down by the river.

“I don’t want things to always be so weird between us,” I said to Patrick, when we sat down apart from the others on the sand, with the lights from inside the Flying Cloud illuminating the scene.

“They won’t be,” he said. “I promise. I will get over it. Over you, I mean.”

“Good,” I said. “Because there are plenty of girls out there who’d kill to be with you.”

“Mary, stop,” he said.

“No, it’s—”

“Just stop, okay?” He sounded serious that time.

“Okay,” I said, then really fast—before he could even interrupt—I said, “You’ll find some Harvard hottie and you’ll never think about me that way again.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Patrick said, and I just nodded.

“What do you think you’ll remember most about all this?” I asked him. “About high school?”

I knew now that I’d remember Patrick’s bubble-fro in front of the Shalimar, and Dez singing “The Rose” on the way to Mohonk, and the look on Winter’s face when we stole
Poppy’s Pillow Pet from right under her sleeping head. I’d remember all of it any time I ever saw an umlaut or heard the Blue Öyster Cult on the radio and I’d sing along to “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” and mean it.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Because the stuff I want to remember most is stuff I’m not leaving behind, if that makes any sense.”

It didn’t. “Not really.”

“I won’t have to remember
you
, for example, because you’re still going to be a part of my life. A different part, for sure, but we’ll e-mail and see each other on break and during summers.” He thought some more. “I’ll miss band, I guess, and probably other stuff that I don’t even know I’m going to miss until I go away and realize I do.”

Carson was laughing loudly at something Winter was doing and I said, “What about Carson?”

“Yeah,” Patrick said reluctantly. “I’m going to miss Carson. I mean, I love the guy, warts and all. But I don’t know…”

“What?” I thought I knew what he meant. “You can say it.”

“I think there’s another best friend—best guy friend—in my future. Probably a lot of them.”

“Life is long,” I said, and I nodded.

Patrick said, “If you’re lucky.”

There was talk then, about taking one joy ride or road trip, before returning the Flying Cloud to its rightful owner. But where to go? We couldn’t decide. It didn’t seem worth the bother. This spot was pretty nice, felt pretty perfect. Especially when Dez popped inside the Flying Cloud with his iPod and started blasting music.

“I’m sort of dying to know who they gave the Yeti to,” Dez said when he came back out and sat beside me on the sand.

I just shrugged.

He elbowed me. “Oh, now all of a sudden you don’t care?”

“This is better than winning.” I nodded. “We won the moral victory.”

“You think?” he said.

“I think,” I said, and marveled at how much had happened since Hayhenge, since the origami sheep in the ER waiting room. “Hey, why were you mad today? At the hospital. When we were talking about Barbone and Fitz?”

Dez scooped some sand and let it run through his fingers and I realized we never got a chance to play Pictionary with the judges, never got to draw a picture of a duck or a fire hydrant or a moat. He said, “It just seemed like you all thought Barbone was some hero by not messing with the fag.”

“But you know we don’t feel that way,” I said, maybe a little too knee-jerk before I let the accusation set in.

“But how
do
you feel?” he said wearily. “I mean, none of you really messes with me either. I’m handled with kid gloves. Nobody has ever even asked me if I’m gay.”

“Well,
are
you?”

“It’s so like you to miss the point, Mary.” He sighed. “Of course I am. I mean, have you
met me
? I just mean we’ve never talked about it. Why is that?”

“I figured you’d talk about it if you wanted to.”

“I want to!”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”

“I don’t know.” He was wiping sand from his palms now. “Why should I have to? Why doesn’t it just happen naturally? We talk about everyone else’s lame crushes ad nauseam, but never mine.”

“Who is it?” I pinched his leg through his jeans. “Tell me!”

“Not now, you idiot.” He swatted my hand away. “But let’s say we open a dialogue.”

“I love it when you talk diplomat,” I said, and felt pretty sure that Dez could walk right over the bridge and to the city tonight, without a second thought. Then I saw a figure walking down the beach.

Leticia Farrice.

“What’s she doing here?” I said. And then I saw what she was carrying, what she had hugged to her chest in front of her.

The Yeti.

And Lucas Wells was walking behind her.

They came to where we were sitting, and Leticia put the Yeti down so that its feet sunk slightly into the sand. He looked for a second like he might make a break for it—maybe dive into the water and swim to the opposite shore—but of course I was probably projecting.

“Well played,” Leticia said. “Here you go.”

“But we didn’t turn up for judging,” I said, bewildered.

“Well, you pulled into the parking lot, so technically you did,” Lucas said. “And I happen to be the Head Judge for Special Points and I awarded you enough of them to win the whole thing.”

“How’d that go over?” Patrick asked.

Leticia said, “Honestly, I think they were all too impressed to even try to argue.”

“It was pretty unbelievable,” Lucas said.

“Well you were the ones who came up with the marvelous dare,” I said.

“We only called it that because it rhymed,” Lucas said. “It never occurred to us someone would read that much into it.”

Dez and I exchanged a look and then we high-fived each other and started laughing. “How did you even find us?” I asked.

Lucas said, “I just asked myself where I’d go if I’d pulled off something so entirely awesome.”

“I’ve got to take off,” Leticia said. “But you guys are in charge of the hunt next year. It’s more work than you think it is, so get started early.”

I had already started. I was going to have a ton of fun messing with the minds of Grace and her classmates come next June. Though it was going to take a while to come up with something like the Flying Cloud and all the requisite clues.

“I also have this for you,” Lucas said, and he unzipped his backpack and pulled out Mary on the Half Shell.

“Oh my God.” I rushed forward to hug her—and him, which felt weird and also not weird at all. “Where
was
she?”

“It was the strangest thing,” he said. “It was like one minute she wasn’t there and the next she was. Right next to the Yeti in The Pines. Like someone wanted her to be found. Maybe an hour ago.”

He seemed to be looking over my shoulder and I turned and saw Carson there, looking caught out.

“It was
you
?” I said.

“I can explain,” he said.

“This ought to be good,” Dez said.

“Privately,” Carson said, and I wasn’t sure whether I even cared what he had to say because I was so relieved to have Mary back, but I followed him down to the water anyway.

“What the hell?” I said, still clutching Mary, whose robe was coarse like fine sandpaper.

He took a deep breath then let it out and said, “Sometimes
you just seem a little harsh and sort of, I don’t know, judgmental.”

I was about to say, “You’re joking, right?” but I bit my tongue and waited.

“And I knew you were going to make me feel bad about what Winter and I had done and make
her
feel bad and I guess I just wanted to get back at you somehow. But I didn’t know about the history of the statue and I wanted to come clean earlier but then I knew how it would look.”

“It looks pretty bad,” I said.

“Well, I’m not perfect,” he said, and I said, “Well neither am I, but still.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, but I knew something had changed that wouldn’t change back.

We took a bunch of pictures, then, of us with the Yeti on the beach. And the Yeti and Mary on the Half Shell together.

And the Yeti and Mary in the Flying Cloud.

And then each of us leaning against the Flying Cloud.

I made sure that there were some of Winter and me—not joined at the hip, but close—and then some of all four of us, the original Also-Rans, and then a picture with just me and Patrick and the Yeti. I thought for a minute—hard—about taking a picture of Winter and Carson, but somehow, it didn’t seem necessary, or even right. I had a feeling that they weren’t even going to get together in any real way.

It didn’t matter.

Carson wasn’t the one for me. He wasn’t even the one for right now. My life would hopefully have its great love story but this wasn’t it. It would happen in D.C. in the next four years or it would happen in Africa, if I ever got there, or in Sienna or, for all I knew, Kentucky or Timbuktu.

Life
was
long.

And people only really had great love affairs in high school in the movies. And maybe during world wars. But this was not a movie and not a war, even if it sometimes felt that way. It was only high school and it was almost over with anyway.

“So why’d he do it?” Winter asked me, in a quiet moment.

“He said he knew I was going to make you feel bad for cheating, and that he was going to give it back, but then it sort of escalated.”

Winter nodded. “That’s pretty lame.”

“Yeah,” I said, and I felt bad for her that her great romance wasn’t so great either, then I nudged her. “I think this would have been a pretty okay teen comedy in the end.”

“Comedy?” Winter laughed. “More like tragedy!”

“Tragedy
is
comedy,” I said. “Didn’t someone famous say that once?”

“Um.” Winter laughed. “Like I’d know.”

“I think you wouldn’t have minded playing yourself in this movie, though.” I nudged her.