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Okay, so: picture this.
It’s Friday night, like eleven thirty, at a house party on Langdon. On the party scale from Funeral to Rager it’s pretty low, totaling maybe forty people, but there’s free booze and shelter if it rains. The house belongs to a guy from their class, Cory something. He’s on the baseball team, so he roped Jeff Sadecki into coming, so Jeff roped Jackie into coming, so now they’re all here.
Nat was ambivalent about it. She arrived around ten-thirty. after pre-drinks and a couple of joints with Rich and Kevyn in the park, and did a quick survey of the kitchen and lounge before settling outside to smoke a cigarette, which is where she is now—and she’s minding her own fucking business, she wants that on record—when Jackie stumbles outside, totally graceless.
“Shauna?” the team captain calls out, very predictably. She turns and registers that Nat is there, takes a minute to focus her eyes, and walks a couple of loose steps toward her. “Have you seen Shauna?” she asks.
Nat shakes her head and Jackie turns and heads back inside, only to return five seconds later and approach Nat with an outreached hand.
“I’m sorry, that was rude,” she says, kind of slurring. “How are you, Nat? Are you having a good night?”
The girl’s wide eyes stare intently at her like it’s suddenly really important whether or not Nat is having a good night, and she puts her right hand awkwardly to its matching shoulder, a nervous contortion made in haste.
Being Jackie Taylor, Natalie thinks (not that she thinks about it a lot or anything), must be fucking exhausting. Even at a party she’s not hosting, that social engine of hers never stops ticking. If Nat had to smile as much as Jackie does she’d need an ice pack for her face.
“Yeah, Jackie,” she answers. “I’m aces.”
Jackie giggles a little. “Aces,” she repeats, and settles against the wall next to her, seemingly having forgotten that she was looking for Shauna.
There’s a lot of people outside with them, all talking over each other and the music. It’s a pretty big back yard, although Cory whoever still doesn’t qualify as rich in Wiskayok, not while Lottie is around.
“What about you, you good?” Nat asks, mostly just being polite.
“Ugh,” Jackie puts a hand to her forehead. “No. I’ve had the worst night. Shauna is being weird.”
Nat takes another drag on her cigarette, telling herself to stay out of it. “I thought that was kind of her thing,” she says noncommittally.
Jackie turns to face her with startling speed, and says a little too loudly, “Yeah, but she’s being weird weird. And Jeff is being…” she gestures “…Jeff, and summer break was supposed to be this big thing but now it’s nearly here and high school’s nearly over and it’s like— you know?”
“I actually do,” muses Nat, surprised.
“It sucks.” Jackie slumps against the wall, and yeah, she’s drunk off her ass. She’s always been a bit of a lightweight, and it’s also kind of an open secret that she doesn’t eat enough. Nat would have probably said something about it by now if she didn’t think Jackie would get defensive and hurtful, hurl the word slut at her without ever quite saying it.
That’s the thing with Jackie. She has this reflexive, regressive meanness that just leaks out sometimes.
Not that Nat would know anything about that.
“Can I borrow a cigarette?” asks Jackie suddenly. She’s straightened up onto her tiptoes and is peering hopefully at the lit cigarette with just the most disgustingly adorable kitten face you’ve ever seen, and Nat has to smile despite herself.
“Promise you’ll give it back?” she jokes. She pulls the pack out of her jacket and flicks it open.
“Mmm-hmmm,” Jackie promises earnestly.
She takes the offered cigarette from Nat’s hand gingerly and places it in her mouth. Nat busts out her zippo lighter and ignites it.
“That thing’s so cool,” Jackie lilts, and tucks her hair back as she leans in to light up.
She’s not a smoker, which you could tell even if you’d never met her. She takes these tiny, cautious puffs, barely inhaling, and halfway through she literally does try to give it back, the burning cigarette held upright by the filter between pinched, manicured fingers. “Here you go.”
“Jackie, I was kidding,” Nat says, maybe smirking a little. “You can have it.”
She looks at it dumbly for a long minute, and Nat goes about her business (which, again, she was minding) of smoking and looking out at the crowd of kids, and then, like it makes sense, like they’re in a middle of a conversation and not a slightly awkward silence in the backyard of some guy neither of them know, Jackie turns to her and says, “How do you do it, Nat?”
“How do I do what?” asks Nat, shaking her head to signify bewilderment.
“It,” Jackie waves her hands around. “Your whole thing. I mean, look at you!”
Jackie’s eyes dart up and down Nat’s body and she feels a weird flush in her cheeks. “You’re drunk,” she says, a little dismissively.
The other girl either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t think the remark is worth acknowledging. “Guys lose their minds over you,” she states.
Nat turns her head away and gives the dying ember of her smoke a scrutinous eye. “Screw guys.”
“I can’t!” The girl throws her arms up. “It’s not fair.”
With a sigh, Nat extinguishes her cigarette on the heel of her boot. “Listen,” she says. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I don’t get laid every night or anything.”
“You could,” comes Jackie’s mumbled reply.
“So could you, if you wanted.” Nat shrugs.
“No, that’s the thing. I couldn’t.” Jackie looks imploringly to the stars, like she’s Juliet or some shit. “Nobody wants girls like me when there’s girls like you. I’m like the salad they order because they want to look healthy, and you’re like the cheese-steak they wolf down…”
“Okay, you know what?” Nat pushes herself away from the wall, angry now. “I didn’t come to this party to get insulted. So go find Shauna and leave me alone.”
“I didn’t…” Jackie swallows, blinks her big eyes. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“You’re salad and I’m cheese-steak in some war over who the guys at our school want to fuck?” she barks. “You think that makes me feel good?”
The girl looks down guiltily, her drunkenness pathetically evident. She literally wasn’t even thinking about what she was saying, Nat realizes in disbelief.
“I’m sorry.” Jackie steps forward and throws her arms over Natalie’s shoulders sloppily, pulls herself forward into a tight, one-way embrace. “I’m sorry. You’re salad. You’re so salad. Don’t feel bad, okay? You’re great. You’re perfect.”
Nat sighs under the weight of the girl’s drunken repentance, already cooled down. “Alright,” she mutters. “Whatever.”
“You’re perfect,” Jackie repeats.
“Yeah, I heard you.”
“Mmm. And pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“So pretty.” Jackie reaches up on her toes and nuzzles her neck softly.
Nat’s heart skips a beat and her chest grows tight.
Fuck.
“Jackie…” she warns.
Jackie sniffs her, something that should be gross but isn’t, and inches higher. “You’re so pretty,” she mouths.
Natalie steps back and pushes her gently away. “I can tell you’re like, in a state or whatever,” she says. “So I’m gonna go, okay? You should… I don’t know, find Shauna. Or go home. Drink some water.”
Jackie’s brow wrinkles. “Shauna,” she says. “Right. Have you seen her?”
“No,” Nat says, and leaves.
It wasn’t a great party anyway.