I was impressed by the smoothness of the lie, the note of regretful sincerity in his voice. And that look on his face, so anxious and innocent, like he didn’t want to be a party pooper, but couldn’t help it.
“Fuck the SATs!” Capaldo hauled off and punched him in the arm, pretty hard. “You only turn seventeen once!”
Jake frowned and rubbed his shoulder. Some guys started chanting, Birthday shot! Birthday shot! Birthday shot!
“Really,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Come on,” Dontay taunted. “Don’t be a pussy.”
I turned back to Iris, shaking my head like I couldn’t believe what a bunch of immature assholes they were, but she wasn’t even looking at them.
“Just so you know,” she said in this melancholy, thoughtful voice. “I don’t hate you anymore.”
I laughed, though it didn’t sound like she was joking.
“Why would you hate me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You came to my house, you fucked me, and then you left. You never said anything nice, never took me out, never called to ask how I was doing. You acted like it was your job or something.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “That was your idea. You wanted to keep it casual.”
“I know.” She nodded for a long time, accepting her responsibility. “But you weren’t even grateful.”
Drunk as I was, I knew she was right, knew that I owed her an apology. But for some reason I was looking at Jake again, watching as he accepted his birthday shot from Casey with an attitude of reluctant surrender, a good guy defeated by peer pressure. Smiling sheepishly, he toasted the onlookers and tossed it back to widespread applause.
“He really shouldn’t be doing that,” I said, but Iris was already slipping past me, shaking her head in disgust as she veered toward the hallway.
I WAS a conscientious employee, you have to give me that much. Even with a splitting headache and a broken heart, I managed to drag myself out of bed at six-fifteen the next morning, force down two Advil and a cup of black coffee, and drive out to the Brackett Academy, an exclusive prep school that had a nicer campus than some of the colleges I’d visited. I trudged into Winthrop Hall and joined a long line of nervous-looking kids waiting to take the most important test of their lives.
Getting through security wasn’t a problem. The proctor just made the usual cursory inspection of my ticket and ID before waving me inside. When the room was full, he passed out the test booklets, recited the rules and regulations, and told us to get started. My forehead was clammy and there was an ominous sloshing sensation in my stomach; I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it through the next three hours without passing out or throwing up.
I’d known that fifth shot was a mistake even as I was bringing it to my lips, but by then I didn’t care. I’d already realized what was happening between Jake and Sarabeth, seen the way she’d chosen him, the way she pressed her body against his arm and whispered in his ear, the way he laughed at whatever it was she told him. All I could do was watch from across the room, my face burning with a rage that felt like shame, or a shame that felt like rage.
Fuck my life, I thought, and I swallowed that last gulp of poison.
At least it got me out of the kitchen. They had just started kissing when I rushed for the door and staggered out into the fresh night air. I wanted to make it to the grass, but it was too far away, so I barfed on the slate patio, right in front of a group of weed-smoking juniors who thought it was hilarious and couldn’t stop marveling at the amount of awfulness that was spewing out of me.
SICK AS I was, my mouth still sour from last night’s vomit, I could still manage the test without too much trouble. Most of the questions were ridiculously easy, as if they’d been designed for idiots. For example, Question #1 in the Critical Reading section was a sentence — A man of _____, he never went back on his word — that we were supposed to complete with one of the following options:
(A) hypocrisy
(B) integrity
(C) flexibility
(D) inconsistency
(E) solidarity
The correct answer was obviously B, but Jake Harlowe, fool that he was, chose D. And he kept doing that, question after question, always picking the wrong answer, often the wrongest one possible. But it served him right, I thought, going to a party the night before a big test, getting drunk and hooking up with a girl he didn’t even deserve.
I knew Kyle would be furious, but I didn’t care about him. I was just sorry we’d ever met, sorry I’d accepted his job offer, sorry I’d let him turn me into the kind of person I’d become.
I wasn’t all that worried about Jake, either. He’d get another shot at the SATs in September, and I was sure he’d do better the next time around. Maybe not good enough to get into Amherst like his brother, but so what? There were a lot of schools out there. In the meantime, he was going to have to suffer through that humiliating moment when his scores arrived; they were going to be a big disappointment. I could imagine the sense of helpless failure that would overwhelm him, the knowledge that something terrible and unfair had happened that he couldn’t even complain about. I thought it might do him some good, just this once, to feel the way I’d felt the night before, the way I was feeling at that very moment, darkening those bubbles with my Number Two pencil, making one stupid mistake after another.
The All-Night Party 
LIZ GOT SUCKERED INTO TAKING the graveyard shift at the All-Night Party the same way she’d gotten suckered into every other thankless task in her long parental career — organizing soccer banquets, soliciting donations for the Dahlkamper Elementary School Auction, canvassing against the perennial threat of budget cuts and teacher layoffs, feeding her friends’ cats and turtles and babysitting their kids while they went off on business trips to Vegas or second honeymoons to St. Bart’s. She could’ve just said no, of course — she was a working mother with way too much on her plate — but she could never escape the feeling that everything depended on her, that if she didn’t do it, it simply wouldn’t get done. There would be no money for championship jackets, class size would skyrocket, marriages would crumble, beloved pets would starve. And maybe somebody somewhere would think it was her fault and decide that she was a bad mother, a bad neighbor, a bad citizen. Liz didn’t know why that possibility bothered her so much, but it did.
The All-Night Party Committee knew exactly how to push her buttons. First, they’d softened her up with a never-ending barrage of e-mails, the tone friendly and inspirational in March (Let’s Uphold a Great Tradition; Please Help Keep Our Seniors Safe on Graduation Night), turning mildly reproachful in April (Don’t Leave Us in the Lurch!; Junior Parents, It’s Time to Step Up and Do Your Part!), before reaching a fever pitch of hectoring intensity as May edged into June (ALL-NIGHT PARTY IN DESPERATE NEED OF VOLUNTEERS! NO MORE EXCUSES!! THIS MEANS YOU!!!).
Liz had felt her resolve weakening throughout the spring, but she was determined not to give in. She was swamped at work, she was feeling down (the reality of the divorce finally beginning to sink in), and still nurturing resentment from the soccer season, during which she’d done more than her fair share of the heavy lifting, hosting two team dinners, supervising the sale and distribution of eight hundred boxes of frozen cookie dough for the Booster Club fund-raiser, even manning the ticket booth in a couple of emergencies. And now that Dana had been elected captain for next year, Liz’s responsibilities on that front would only increase. So just this once, couldn’t they leave her alone and throw the goddam party without her? Was that too much to ask?