Tarquin Gould’s parents were out of town, so he had to throw a party, those were the rules. The news circulated like a virus: it was uncertain who had started it, but by the time the weekend came around it had been received by everyone who needed to receive it. April Wittman didn’t know Tarquin at all. She hadn’t even met him. He was what she called a friend-in-law, someone related to your circle by a degree or two but not close enough to call a personal friend.
She got ready for the party with her friend Tori Allard. Tori was pretty in a boyish way, with her short glossy hair and square jaw, and her parents were much better off than April’s, so that summer Tori had been able to buy an entire jungle-print outfit at the mall: a leopard-print t-shirt, khaki Capri pants, tiger-striped sneakers, a flouncy mini-skirt that rustled when she moved her thighs. April was miserably jealous because the most she’d been able to afford was a plastic tiger-striped head-band whose markings were already beginning to flake off. Still, she felt powerful that night when she looked in Tori’s full-length mirror. (Another unimaginable luxury: at home, April had to make do with a small, cheap wooden-framed mirror barely bigger than her face, and even that she had to share with two fractious younger sisters.) Her tongue darted out to pass over lips coated with a new pale pink lipstick Tori had let her use. She had clumped the mascara on too heavily, but it didn’t matter, did it? Some people said her big sad eyes were her best feature. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and fussily rearranged her bangs. She could never get them right.
By the time they arrived, the party was already on its way. April could feel it in the air, a tension that could draw a tight knot in your gut. The muffled thud of music was audible through the closed front door with its huge, ornate brass knocker that was so preposterously grand and truly of some other unattainable world the sight of it almost convinced April they should leave without ever stepping foot inside. But then Dustin McNeil, a boy from the neighboring school, flung the door open and made a big deal of ushering them in as though he were an old-timey butler, pointing out paintings and pieces of furniture in an exaggerated high-pitched voice. He was one of those annoying kids who would prefer you roll your eyes at his clowning than ignore him. April had expected Tarquin to be somewhere in the greeting zone, but she didn’t see him, or at least anyone she knew to resemble the description and the unfocused photos she’d seen of him; he wasn’t in the intimidating hallway or in the kitchen, which was already crowded with perspiring teenagers unsteady on their feet and wild with bravado, nor finally in the yard, an expanse of lawn and shadowy tropical trees that exuded the atmosphere of a golf course or some other exclusive space. Small lights twinkled from the foliage, flashing little promises.
As they moved through the house they were greeted or ignored by various people familiar to April. In the hallway, Cece Storier-Conlan, a short, shy, blonde girl who sometimes flitted around the periphery of April and Tori’s loose-knit friendship group, and her sister Jane Storier-Conlan, who was the polar opposite of her sibling—tall and straight-backed, a field hockey-playing, foul-mouthed brunette beauty who seemed destined to be propelled through the entire school experience and delivered into the adult world without ever being affected in any way by her childhood: to use Jane’s own parlance, like an attacker guiding the ball all the way down a clear field, through the striking circle and into the goal, without anyone trying to stop her. The idea of possessing such carefree grace made April feel dizzy.
“Hey, ladies,” said Jane. Her whole affect was studied politeness bordering on sarcasm.
“Oh hey, Jane,” said Tori, trying to be nonchalant and cool. “Hey, Cece.”
“Well, have fun, sis,” said Jane, and April realized with a tiny flicker of disappointment that Jane had just deposited Cece at the party and was now leaving. This felt like a subtle indictment on the party, as if its value had been downgraded by a respected appraiser as not worth the effort. April fiddled with her bangs again. She could feel her forehead sweating beneath the curtain of hair.
In one corner of the kitchen, April saw Jamie Duguid, Angelo Marini, and Sasha Pavlovic, another set of friends-in-law, who were resting their hulking teenage bodies on the island bench, passing around a squishy pack of cigarettes.
“Thank you, don’t mind if I do,” said Jamie as Angelo offered him the pack.
“Sasha, won’t you join us in the gentlemanly art of smoking,” said Angelo, turning to Sasha, who made an elaborate ritual of extracting the cigarette, rolling it appreciatively between his thumb and forefinger, sniffing along the paper like a bloodhound, then sticking the cigarette behind his left ear, where it stayed, as far as April could tell, the rest of the evening. That was the big thing that year, especially among the boys, pretending to be some sort of toff, speaking with a vaguely British accent and treating friends with an exaggerated politeness, like they were players in some period drama set in a Victorian drawing-room. April found these performances tedious, but the main thing was to pretend to find it amusing when the boys did it.
All of them were waiting around to be grown up, a state they had once been confident would finally wrench them free of the humiliations and boredom and prickly doubt about whether things would actually get any better. But then they looked at their own parents and a shadow of uncertainty passed over this sunny surety. Because weren’t their own parents, each and every one, a severe fuckup in their own special way? The kids saw with a quiet horror that the humiliation never went away, and for some of them this realization became the cynical lodestar they would use to steer the rest of their lives.
April and Tori flopped down on the grass, tucking their legs underneath them, and both sighed theatrically, as if it were all too much. April tried to think of something clever to say but her mind was blank. One of their friends, Cristina Davio, approached, waving a bottle of some kind of clear liquor. She had long curly hair to her waist that some people claimed was the result of a perm, but April wasn’t sure, it looked natural to her.
“It’s very important that you start drinking now,” Cristina said, handing them both red solo cups with the wobbly solemnity of someone already several beverages in. Tori sniffed the contents of the cup and wrinkled her nose. “That’s gross. I’m going to find some mixer.” She stood up and headed back to the kitchen, reappearing a few minutes later wearing a triumphant, goofy smile and with a carton of some kind of fruit juice clamped between her knees, lurching awkwardly across the lawn as if engaged in a one-woman three-legged race.
“You moron,” said April, laughing. Tori removed the screw-top from the juice carton with her teeth and topped up April’s cup, and April took a sip. The liquor went straight to her heart, a jolt of queasy warmth. Gazing around the shadowy garden, she spotted Simon Williams laughing with his team-mate Jake Weisman in front of some sort of shrubbery. April had had her eye on Simon for a few months now, but she knew there was no way anything was going to happen. Simon wasn’t particularly cute apart from his black floppy hair, but he had confidence, and that mattered more. He wasn’t waiting for someone to tell him he was desirable.
She pulled her gaze away to the wooden shed at the bottom of the yard, where a DJ table had been set up with two decks, huge speakers, and cardboard boxes tightly packed with albums. Willow Doyle and Isabelle Chan were there, heads pressed together, flipping through records. They were extremely cool girls, which must have been why Tarquin let them anywhere near the DJ table. Music at parties was strictly the province of guys, like barbecues were for their fathers, and girls were only tolerated in the vicinity if they had exceptionally high social or sexual value. Willow and Isabelle had both, so no one was shooing them away like chickens as they would have otherwise. April watched for a while, hoping the mysterious Tarquin might make an appearance, but he didn’t, and she soon got bored. She gulped down the rest of the repulsive drink and held her cup out for more. Cristina filled it almost to the top. Stop, April protested weakly. She went back to scanning the scene.
The night got fuzzy at the edges. This was the desired state, so April didn’t mind, but it made it hard to keep track of things and whether they were real or not, like when Simon came over and sat cross-legged next to her on the lawn and engaged her in conversation—about what? Lost to the mists of time, alas—and then, a few drinks later, pulled her down onto the grass and began kissing her. She felt the night swoop down and then open up, a galaxy of unrealness above and around her. When Simon came up for air and to smoke a cigarette, she had a chance to smooth her hair down and run her finger beneath her eyes, where she could feel makeup collecting. Still flat on her back, she tilted her head to the side and saw that people kept arriving, but she didn’t know any of them. Everyone she knew was already there.
Halley’s Comet was there too, full of volatile ices and dust, a lonely streaker across the night sky. April, her back pressed into the grass of Tarquin’s parents’ lawn, had an excellent view of the phenomenon that would never again in her lifetime pass earth by.
◆
Halley’s comet is currently beyond the orbit of Neptune, in the constellation Hydra, close to reaching the farthest point of its orbit. April wonders what it has seen. So many years have passed since that party. Does the comet feel their simultaneous weight and lightness as she does?
She has a bad idea that she knows is a bad idea but she does it anyway, she looks up some of the people from that long-ago party to see what’s become of them. It is partly an exercise in self-deception, this looking up of old friends. She already knows what has happened to a few of them, is still friends with some, acquaintances with others, and she is pretending she needs updates on these known people when really there are only two names that matter. The first: Simon Williams. She hasn’t thought about him in years but now the specter of him is back, the accompanying sickness and anger his name evokes resurfacing like bad magic. Not the night itself, there had been something beautiful about the night in spite of its blurred edges. Her first kiss not exactly as she might have imagined but still exhilarating to think about, a secret to hold close to herself like a delicate creature as she rode the bus that Monday morning after the party.
Simon had been on the bus too, standing with his friends a few rows up. There had been jostling, some punching in the arms, laughter gusting back down the bus, the usual aftermath of a big party everyone had attended. The girls would analyze the event in forensic detail for weeks while the boys dealt with it in this way: a few short, sharp jabs and it was gone, never to be thought of again. April didn’t hope to hear her name but maybe she kind of did. Maybe in that good-natured teasing way in which they would usually roast a guy who’d hooked up with one of the pretty girls, or at least a girl he liked. Denial, then laughter, followed by a grudging respect.
She heard her name, but it wasn’t in that way. Another boy, she couldn’t remember who now—it was as though her memory tunneled to remember only the pertinent facts and not any of the players—poked Simon in the chest and asked how long it had taken him to stop throwing up. Simon grimaced and looked down at his shoes, pretending to be chastened.
“Oh man, I puked all day. I was wrecked.”
Surely they were referring to his hangover, that was all. Please let that be all. But then the same friend, or maybe another one, said: “Oh yeah, only all day? I thought it might have lasted until, say…April.”
A beat of silence then the booming of raucous laughter from adolescent chests. April bent down to rummage in her backpack so she wouldn’t have to see if they all looked at her. Of course they did. She could feel their collective eyes burning through the seat back, could hear snickering all down the aisle. She felt like she might be sick herself. When her stop came, she almost fell off the bus in her hurry to get out. The laughter followed, a sentient creature now independent of its hosts.
April typed Simon’s name in the search bar, but even before the photo appeared, she knew she didn’t really care what had become of him. There he was anyway, a pudgy middle-aged consultant with thinning hair, any trace of beauty or charisma he might once have possessed vanished so completely it was as though it had ever only existed in her mind. The only posts on his timeline were terrible clickbait he’d presumably found amusing or thought-provoking. A dullard. She had hated him all this time, but it was impossible to continue hating a dullard. So she typed in the second name. As expected, there were only a few Tarquins; it was an unusual name, after all. No Tarquin Goulds at all. She clicked on some of the others, though she couldn’t have said why. Women changed their names often, but men almost never did. Not unless they were trying to hide from the law or something, although in that case, surely he would have forfeited his striking first name rather than his common last one. Regardless, she could tell none of them were her Tarquin.
When she’d exhausted Facebook she tried the other social media sites, the networking sites, then finally a Google search, but nothing. She laughed out loud. What on earth was she doing? A grown woman who couldn’t get over a slight committed more than thirty years ago. But even when she got up from the table and resumed her day it stayed with her, a little thorn pricking at her happiness.
Where is he, this Tarquin Gould? She has never met him, didn’t even see him that night of the party, but it is somehow his fault, all of it—the years spent swinging between panic eating and starving; the terrible boyfriends; the failure to stand up for herself in meetings; the small fortune spent on fixing her face and body that still, shockingly, doesn’t add up to the kind of immunity that girls like Jane and Isabelle and Willow received at birth. What does she expect from him, this stranger? Well, a short message, say, insisting he knows what it feels like to be treated like you were nothing. Maybe an offer to meet for coffee so they can take the sting out of the old days by laughing at them. Even just a brief apology would be nice.
But Tarquin is nowhere to be found. He may as well be in another constellation, as far away from her in his orbit as he can possibly be. Drifting lonely through the universe, unassailable. Blameless.