Up All Night Read online

  Senior year is supposed to be full of nostalgia. When you look back on your childhood and friendships through a sepia-toned filter.

  This sleepover is my Hail Mary.

  The knock on my front door sends my house into chaos. Our three dogs go wild. They’re three disparate mutts who, all together, look like a joke about dogs.

  “Calm down, freaks!” I maneuver around them. “Mom! Can you get a handle on the dogs please?”

  My mom wanders leisurely into the living room. Her dark hair is pulled up into a messy high bun tied with a scarf. Her tortoiseshell glasses askew, a dreamy expression on her face. Alma calls her the world’s first Manic Pixie Korean Mom.

  When I open the door, Britt and Alma are both standing on the doorstep with sleeping bags tucked under their arms, a strained air between them.

  Great. Somehow they arrived at the same exact time? And from their expressions, in that very short trip from their cars to my front doorstop, something deeply petty had already been stirred.

  “Hi!” The cold sweat that breaks out under my pits surprises me. Pit sweat is usually for class presentations or having a hot guy get too close to my face. Not my best friends of twelve years.

  Britt gives me a tight smile and Alma kneels down to coo at the dogs. Our black Lab mix immediately wriggles his butt in front of her face, his big tail smacking her on the cheek. I don’t even bother getting mad. Ed Ruscha is impossible to control, and Alma loves him.

  “You’re riling them up,” Britt says. Our chunky dachshund mix, Frida Kahlo, is running in tight circles at her feet. Leonardo da Vinci, a shaggy dog who looks like he should be perpetually popping out of a trash can, is eating his red bandana in the corner.

  I feel Alma’s biting response before it comes so I look up and yell, “Mom!”

  “Okay, okay,” Mom mutters as she corrals them gently into the kitchen. “Hi girls. Sorry, Pepper’s dad is out of town for work. He would have loved to see you guys. It’s been a while, huh?”

  Alma straightens up. “Yeah, but it’s good to see you, too, Mrs. Kang.”

  “Alma, come on,” my mom says with a laugh, standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “I will not do it,” Alma says with a shake of her head.

  “You’re almost eighteen, an adult!”

  “I will not call an adult woman by her first name and that’s the end of that.”

  I laugh at my mom’s expression. “Mom, it’ll never happen.”

  “All right, all right. Your brother’s getting ready for bed, so don’t be too loud.” She blows us a kiss and ducks into the kitchen.

  Britt and Alma stare at me expectantly. It’s been weeks since the three of us were alone together.

  “Why are we here, Pepper?” Alma asks. Always the first to break the silence. To punch her way through awkwardness.

  “For a sleepover,” I say, lifting my arms up a bit to dry the sweat.

  “No shit. But what is this really?” Alma asks, watching me flap my arms. Nothing gets past her.

  Britt drags her hands through her messy, long hair, its light brown dyed black this past year. “God, Alma. Can you stop being so unnecessarily aggressive for like, five seconds.” She doesn’t make eye contact with either of us. She towers over us height-wise, so it isn’t that hard. And eye contact isn’t Britt’s jam. Her conflict style is more insidious and passive—like someone who slowly poisons you over time.

  “No.” Alma swats at the dog fur on her black leggings. “There’s no alternate mode for me.”

  It really shouldn’t have been surprising when Britt and Alma outgrew each other. Their personalities were so mismatched since day one. But their friendship had worked anyway. It wasn’t that they balanced each other out, exactly. If I’m honest with myself, it was that Britt just let Alma do whatever she wanted and then resented it. That resentment eventually boiled over, I guess.

  “Well, it’s not just a sleepover. I planned a scavenger hunt.” I let the words hang in the air for a second. For dramatic effect.

  Britt sighs and drops her sleeping bag on the floor. “Ew, why? Can we just watch a movie or something?”

  Even though it kills her to agree with Britt, Alma nods. “Yeah, I’m not really down for shenanigans tonight.” “Shenanigans” comes with an Irish accent. Ever the thespian.

  This doesn’t discourage me. I had already anticipated their reactions. “Nope. Sorry, my sleepover, my rules.”

  “Pepper—we’re not little kids anymore,” Britt says. Her dark eyes serious. “I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work, okay?”

  It’s the first time anyone acknowledges our current state of dysfunction. In the middle of all the growing tension between Britt and Alma, Britt dropped a bomb on us—she said she wouldn’t be going to college. And instead was going to work full time to save money for moving in with her twenty-year-old boyfriend, Jason. Neither Alma nor I like Jason that much—he’s one of those beautiful loser types. All cigarettes and bedroom eyes and zero ambition. Britt dotes on him, though. Alma completely lost her shit and unleashed the full force of her judgy fury on her. We were disappointed and shocked at her decision—but it wasn’t really the reason why the friendship was dissolving. It was just the final straw on a heap of problems. When the friendship had worked, we weren’t aware of how fragile it all was.

  “It’s our senior year. Just one night. Please?” I do the thing, play my part. Easygoing Pepper. Mender of fences. Cheerful. Smoother of wrinkles. Best friend to all.

  Both of them soften. The animosity is for each other, not for me. I’m just a casualty of it. But if it isn’t the three of us anymore, would there even be a place for me in either of their lives? We come as a set. When I tried hanging out with them just one-on-one, it just wasn’t the same. The easy conversation that flowed between the three of us was stilted, unnatural. Filled with gaps of silence. Laughs felt forced. I don’t know if it’s because we always felt the void of the missing third person or if it’s because I just didn’t know how to be friends with them that way. One-on-one.

  Alma drops her sleeping bag, too. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. Should I keep my shoes on or what?”

  I smile. “Keep them on. And get out your headlamps.”

  “This makes zero sense.”

  The flatness of Alma’s voice booms in the quiet hush of night. We’re standing in my front yard. Someone’s burning a bonfire in the neighborhood, the scent cozy in the cool October night.

  Alma’s staring down at the piece of paper in her hand. My headlamp’s lighting it—of course Alma and Britt didn’t bring any. It’s the first clue. I had written it out with magazine letter cut-outs like a serial killer and shoved it high in a tree that Britt had climbed to fish out. It read:

  Find me where the drums snare

  and you squint against the glare

  of all the night lights

  where giant boys take flight

  and girls like Pepper

  can take a fright

  Scavenger hunt clues have to rhyme—that’s a thing, right?

  Britt mouths the words then stares into the sky thoughtfully. “Fright? I mean, Pepper’s scared of everything.”

  I huff. “That’s not true.” But it is. I’m the biggest wimp of the bunch. Alma lets out a bark of laughter. The corner of Britt’s mouth lifts into a half smile. That tiny interaction fills me with warmth.

  “Come on, it’s not that hard,” I say. When I had sprained my ankle cheerleading at a football game sophomore year, both of them had run onto the field to carry me off. I’d landed badly on a stunt and it had hurt like hell, and yet it’s one of my favorite memories.

  One of the dogs yelps from inside the house. I turn to look at the living room windows and see Ed Ruscha’s nose pressed against the glass, turning his face into a grotesque pancake with googly eyes.

  Alma and Britt talk it out in hushed tones.

  “Drums? Like, maybe a
concert hall?”

  “But what’s the thing with giant boys? And Pepper taking a fright? Like what is that.”

  “Wait!” Britt exclaims. “It’s about when Pepper broke her leg that one time! Cheerleaders! The football field? The lights on the field?” Everything ends with a question mark, but I feel her excitement. My silence is all the answer they need.

  Alma pulls her car keys out of her jacket pocket. “I’ll drive.” Britt and I run to her BMW hybrid—a model that had been shipped to her from Europe. A perfectly normal birthday gift in Alma’s world.

  On the drive to school, Alma and Britt are silent. I try not to let their lack of enthusiasm sting. The night is young and I will chip away at their resistance, one clue at a time.

  When we get to school, the lights on the football field are blazing.

  “How are we getting in?” Alma asks, hands tucked into her pockets.

  Britt stamps her feet for warmth. It’s like sixty degrees. “We have to go in?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Look carefully.”

  We’re standing at the gate near the concession stands, with a perfect view of the football field. Britt and Alma squint at it.

  “Wait, is that—” Britt points.

  Her question’s drowned out by the sound of drums and horns. A group of people march out into the field. They aren’t recognizable right away without their outfits. But they’re holding instruments. Playing . . .

  “What in the world?! Are they playing ‘Dancing Queen’?” Alma asks, her voice pitched a little high with excitement. She looks at me with wide eyes. It’s the song we had danced to at her quinceañera. “How’d you get them to do this?”

  “They knew it was for Britt.” She’s in marching band. French horn. And she’d been the first one to run out into the field when I sprained my ankle.

  Britt grins and waves at her bandmates while bopping her head along to the music. “You’re such a dork,” she says to me. But she keeps smiling and I start to dance along with her. We’re bad dancers, jerking our limbs around with absolutely no rhythm. Bumping hips, biting down on our lower lips. We like to be extra so that Alma finally explodes and tells us to stop assaulting her eyeballs.

  I wait for that reaction, but instead Alma asks impatiently, “What’s the next clue?” Impatience is just part of her brand so I try not to take it negatively. I lift my chin toward the band. Alma turns to look at them, pressing her hands into the chain-link fence.

  As the members of the band get closer, their clothing grows more visible. All of them are wearing dark green shirts. With writing on them.

  “What in the . . .” Alma’s voice trails off as the band lines up in a row, directly in front of us.

  It was

  here

  that

  we were

  watching

  people

  dancing

  without

  a care

  when

  Alma had

  well . . .

  quite

  the scare

  Never

  could she

  drink

  again

  and not

  prepare

  Britt bursts out laughing. “Oh, god!”

  Alma shakes her head. “You monster.”

  I smile. “You love it.”

  “Yeah,” Alma says. “I love reliving peeing my pants at the movie theater.”

  Britt covers her mouth with her hands. The “oh shit” is muffled under her cupped hands. “What was the movie again?”

  “Magic Mike XXL,” I say smoothly.

  “Of all the movies to hold my pee for,” Alma says with a groan. “Like I give a crap about men dancing.”

  But through Alma’s complaints, I feel it. A slow melting of the iciness between us. She’s even tapping her foot to the song now. ABBA was her favorite band for most of her uncool years.

  Britt shakes her head with wonder. “No, but seriously. How did you get this all set up?”

  As senior class president, I have a lot of privileges. But it still took telling my advisor my friendship tale of woe to convince her to let me use the field. And then getting shirts made for everyone in the right sizes—well, it had taken a lot of time and money. Money I had been saving up for buying cute stuff for the dorm next year. But they don’t need to know that, and I certainly don’t want them to think about the time and effort that went into everything. I just want them to have fun.

  “I have my ways.” I waggle my eyebrows.

  Britt turns away from the field. “So, are we going to the movie theater next?”

  I point at her with double finger guns, knowing it’s the worst. “You got it dude.” Britt and Alma exchange a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it look. It gives me a second of unease. But just a second. Because anything shared between them has to be good.

  I turn on the radio from the passenger seat of Alma’s car. I fiddle around until I hear the opening strains of “Call Me Maybe.”

  Britt groans. “Nooo.”

  I crank it up. “Yes.”

  And because there is no force on earth that can prevent a group of girls in the presence of this song from singing along, we start belting it out.

  We know our parts—each line as familiar to us as the streets we’re driving through. I sing one verse, Alma the next, and then the three of us go all in during the chorus. Britt’s voice is the clearest of all. She sings like she grew up isolated in the Smoky Mountains—a young Dolly Parton somehow reborn in the hills of a Los Angeles suburb.

  Our bodies move in the car, out of sync, but making sense somehow. We had long since perfected dancing while seated. The warmth I felt earlier seeps through me, slowly but surely. I will take this tiny ember of hope and fan it carefully. Make it bigger. Make it last.

  The song fades and we all take a breathless moment to gather ourselves. And when we get out of the car, it almost—almost—feels like it used to.

  At the movie theater, a girl in a burgundy vest opens the door for us.

  “Hey Lisa,” I say, giving her a fist bump. “Thanks for getting us in.” The theater had just closed, the last showing ending at midnight.

  She darts her eyes around. “Get in quick, my manager’s in the back office.”

  I wave Alma and Britt in. Lisa’s on yearbook with me and I had to bribe her with free ad space for her parents’ gushing senior tribute.

  She nods. “Go to theater five.”

  Alma winks at her. “Thanks, darlin’.” In last year’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Alma had perfected what she called the “Southern charmer.” And from the flush on Lisa’s freckled cheeks, it’s freaking effective.

  “Don’t lead her on,” I whisper to Alma as we walk away through the carpeted halls.

  “Who said I was?” she says in a loud, completely unmodulated voice.

  We arrive at theater five without a fight and I consider that a small victory.

  It’s dark and empty. “Let’s sit in the middle,” I say, heading toward the seats.

  “This is getting so elaborate,” Britt says, the corner of her mouth hitching up. She props her high-tops onto the headrest in front of her.

  Alma sits down next to me, the seat squeaking loudly as she throws herself into it. “What humiliation do you have in store for us now?”

  Before I can respond, the screen lights up. I dig my fingernails into the seat rest.

  A little girl’s voice starts playing on the speakers over a video of a My Little Pony figure floating in water.

  “This is a tragedy,” says the voice.

  Alma and Britt both sit up straight. I smile, keeping my eyes on the screen.

  “Pepper . . .” Britt’s voice is questioning. But she knows what’s coming.

  The butter-yellow pony with rainbow-colored hair bobs in the water. Then the camera pans out. The water is pale green and a stainless-steel faucet flashes in
the corner for a second.

  “Not all stories end happy.” The little girl’s voice echoes in the theater.

  Alma and I start laughing. Hard.

  Britt reaches over and punches both of us in the arms. “Jerks!”

  “You were so into this,” Alma says between gasps.

  Another little girl voice comes in. This time with a bad Italian accent. “Oh-my-spaghettio, what a lova-ly day this is for a swim!”

  I let out a peal of laughter and Alma drags her hands down her face.

  “Your first accent,” Britt says with a smirk.

  Alma sniffs. “I think it was pretty good for a third grader.”

  We watch as the poor My Little Pony, named Cassandra-Maria-Francesca, paddles about, my hand visibly moving her around the bathtub. She is blissfully unaware of the horror to come. Suddenly, my hand wrenches the stopper out of the tub, creating a whirlpool. Alma’s voice is breathless as she yelps, “Help-ah me! Help me-ah!”

  Britt’s voiceover: “But some things could not be helped. ’Twas fated to be fated.”

  By the time a half-naked Ken doll splashes into the water, with a regular-sized human pencil taped to his hand, the three of us are gasping, tears running down our faces.

  “Why did he need a pencil?” Britt finally wheezes.

  “Because . . . because he was a reporter, remember?” Alma manages to squeak out, taking large gulps of air.

  Ken attempts to save Cassandra-Maria-Francesca. “My amore!” Alma’s voice booms. Her man voice is near identical to Cassandra-Maria-Francesca’s, but one register lower.

  “I’m gonna pee my pants,” Britt cries, crossing her legs tight.

  Alma groans. “The curse of this theater, apparently.”

  A cardboard shark fin enters from off-screen and Britt’s tiny voice starts singing, “Da-la-da-la-da-la” in a weird, not-quite-right version of the Jaws theme.

  “Your gifts sure took a while to reveal themselves,” Alma says, leaning forward in her seat now, her eyes on the screen.