Oola. Brittany Newell

flattered to have been jotted down at all. The fact that we’d each spent at least an hour beforehand appraising our worth in the mirror (and still hopped off to the bathroom to do so every now and again) was brought to the fore by Tay’s counterfeit midnights. Yes, we were predators, eyeing all thighs, but we also just wanted to cuddle. In the minutes between Tay’s exclamations, even the most hammered partygoers were hyperaware of their whereabouts, shuffling across the carpet like chess pieces, scheming their way toward a particular ponytail so that when the time came and Tay started banging his pot, one could glance incidentally to the left and catch that particular eye as if to say, God, this is stupid. But if we must …

      And if this body was taken, there was always the next round and this OK-looking person beside you, whose mouth you could sample, and perhaps have a chat with, before spying a memorized sweater pass out of the room and suddenly finding yourself needing to pee very badly; you could pursue these hallowed scapulae over the dance floor, down the hall, while you whispered under your breath not the words you would say to her but a countdown to midnight that Tay, draped over an ottoman, had yet to begin. You would pray that the timing would link up, that the last-train apprehension in your gut would resolve in a swooshing open of lips and/or doors, shunting you homeward, toward any bed. Tay announced: It was all a joke, this thing we based our lives on. I thought about you on the train ride here; I wore this dress for you alone, just as I wear my skin for you; but in the humid center of this shit show, let’s laugh while we kiss, because the Moment is a construct and we all get a bit dimply in the end.

      I, for the most part, was curious: What would it be like to kiss a fat girl? What about a young techie, with facial hair that I normally found inexcusable? At 11:17 p.m., I got my answer. Afterward he patted my wrist and said, “Awesome.” I drifted back to my corner, like a fish having fed.

      “The man, the man!” Tay erupted from the crowd and threw his arms around my neck. “Having fun?”

      “Always.” My words were muffled by his sweater. “Where’s Pumpkin?”

      “Mono.”

      “Oh.” I tested myself for disappointment: none. “Tough break. So how’d you come up with this theme?”

      “The Internet, obviously.” He pulled away but leaned on me to keep his balance; he smelled like a medicine cabinet. I hoped, for a moment, that he would call midnight right then and there. He acted so differently now, with a new swagger, new accent; would he still taste the same? He squinted at me. “It’s a good one, right? Very educational.”

      I nodded.

      “You never get to kiss your friends,” he said, taking on the pensive but authoritative tone of a professor. “Well, you can.” He giggled, as if to say, We would know. “But after a certain age, it gets tricky. Kissing means, like, marking territory. It becomes an act that freezes instead of … unleashes. But what if I just want to tell you I’ll miss you? Wouldn’t it be easier to do it like this?” He grabbed me by the collar and thrust me up against a wall, clockface bumping between our chests. I was laughing and splashing my drink on the ground; he released me before I could catch my breath. “Tonight,” he went on, “I feel absolved of responsibility. I kiss and tell! I kiss and text.” He paused to think, grinning. He was as pretty and pretentious as I remembered. “Honestly, I kind of feel like a Hare Krishna, passing out pamphlets.”

      “The Way of Tay.” I considered. “It does have a nice ring to it. Maybe I’ll enlist.”

      “Uh-oh.” He smiled. “I can see you mean business.”

      He adjusted his headband with a gesture I interpreted as nervous. I flashed back to a similar moment, when he and I were sixteen. We were in his car, knee-deep in fast-food wrappers that never stopped smelling delicious, driving, it would be safe to assume, in circles. I’d made a joke about a girl that Tay was crushing on, a shy salutatorian named Sophie. They’d hooked up once, when she was moderately tipsy, and now he fretted over the likelihood of getting to third base.

      “Would poppers help?”

      I had laughed aloud. “This isn’t San Francisco.”

      He shrugged. “I found some in the medicine cabinet. I think they were my uncle’s. Well, what about weed? I think she’ll let me if she feels relaxed.”

      “Fat chance,” I said, not really even listening. I was more interested in the joint that I was rolling on my knee. “If I didn’t really wanna, what makes you think she would? She’s, like, in the choir.”

      He’d stopped fiddling with the radio and looked at me sideways. “That was different. We were bored.” His expression was not unkind, but his tight eyes and lowered tone still stung.

      I was caught off guard. I focused on the joint.

      I knew that I loved Tay; I just wasn’t sure if I was in love with him. I didn’t etch his name into the flesh of my thighs or wonder at the smell of his shit, as if such an angel couldn’t possibly empty his innards of anything other than peach pits and warm wishes. That was the way that we talked about our crushes: as if they were mystical, the lambent coat-hangers upon which life’s true meaning hung to air. Tay made my bed smell bad even if all we did was watch TV; I alone was the expert of his unseemly wetness. Nothing I’d yet read described love like this—as routine, as shambly. I thought love was what grew, weirdly soft, over voids; it could only affect one body at a time, that of the wanter, alone in a room. But having known him nearly my whole life, having been on the swim team with him and seen him naked and dripping twice a day, every day, my access to Tay seemed total. As best friends, we were basically already dating.

      Resting my elbow on the grease-yellowed window, my knee two inches from his, I trod carefully. “You don’t have to tell me,” I’d said, and forced a laugh. “She probably has a planner for this sort of thing.” I finished rolling my joint and the conversation quickly returned, as it so often did that season, to the particular translucence of Sophie’s hair in homeroom lighting.

      Back at the party, I resorted to the same feigned nonchalance and bottomed my drink. “You know me. Always looking for a lifestyle change. So how many others have you recruited tonight?”

      Tay smiled guiltily, becoming expansive again. “I’m not exactly sure. Fifteen, maybe? My cult rejects math.” He was momentarily distracted by a girl across the room. He jabbed a finger in her direction. “Perfect example! Take Lilith. D’ya know Lilith? I don’t want to sleep with her. But I’ve dreamed about her once or twice. In one dream we baked a fruitcake and rode on it toboggan-style while Donald Trump applauded. I don’t know her well enough to tell her this. But tonight I’m gonna kiss her. And that will be that. Lilith! C’mere!”

      I turned to see where he was pointing and was struck by the numbing beauty of a pair of shoulder blades.

      Thinking this was Lilith’s back, I waited for it to approach. I stared at her unmoving form, oblivious to the real Lilith’s arrival (a delightful dyke in denim on denim) and to her and Tay’s shrill conversation, until the point of my attention must have sensed me watching, browning under the microwaves of scrutiny, and twisted around, one arm wrapped across her waist, the other holding her drink to the hollow of her throat in a posture of deep thought or not-unpleasant boredom.

      “Hey!” Tay shouted something that I didn’t realize was a name until its owner wiggled through the crowd, drink still poised against her throat like the center of a circle whose circumference was unclear to me, and grabbed hold of his nipple with her free hand. He made the sound again, pursing his lips and forming the vowels of a doo-wop background singer. “Oola, you dog.”

      Oola. A word that sounded funny when you repeated it, like any word said too many times. I used to do this as a kid, repeating my name or the words book, bread, breasts, until these most basic things (human rights, I told myself) sounded foreign and I could barely remember what they meant. Oola similarly cracked open on the tongue, like something cream-filled, a necessary embarrassment, like gasping oh! during a scary movie or hissing slightly when kissed hard. It made one’s mouth suddenly suspect. I practiced reciting