JULIET

seven

"Sorry," I muttered, passing her a paper plate.

Our hands brushed against each other. Briefly, my lungs seized up.

"It's fine," Juliet said. "I deserved that." She gave me a shy smile, and it disgusted me, almost, how much my heart leapt up my throat.

Hyun had all but abandoned me to go canoodle with a girl—Rachel, I think? By this time I'd begun to breathe out of my mouth more than my nose—and he had spared fifteen solid seconds to give me some words of encouragement as he took a paper plate from me.

"Look at you," he said, "being a gracious host at a party you didn't even host."

"I hate her," I said, morosely. "I hate Juliet."

"Sure you do," he said, and he glanced over at Royce, who was patiently listening to some girl babble his mouth off at him. "Hey, look out. Your new boyfriend might get stolen from under your nose."

"Fuck you."

"I'll pass," he said, amicably. "Try to stay on your feet. You don't look too good."

"I'm feeling peachy."

I wasn't feeling peachy. I felt like I wanted to sit down and have a cool drink of water and some of this weird blood red sugary drink my mother used to make with this syrup she bought from the Pakistani store out of town. I loved that drink. It made me feel like a vampire. My older sister used to have this joke that all Muslims, in Ramadan, turned into vampires. Sleeping all day, staying up all night. When she used to be home and my mother made that red drink—why couldn't I remember the fucking name? I had that drink every year of my miserable life—she used to swirl it around in her glass and affect a Transylvanian accent and Jesus, how badly I wished I was at home, not here, never here, not sitting next to a bunch of people I didn't particularly care for with the muggy air making a film of sweat on my skin and me holding a can of lukewarm Pepsi to my head.

"You okay there?" Royce asked, sitting on the grass next to me.

I sat out in her backyard because the noise—people talking, girls laughing, somebody had pulled out their phone and a speaker and started blasting obnoxious music and some of the guys had started dancing and girls started laughing harder—from the porch was beginning to make my head hurt. Everything about me felt sticky. What did I break my fast with? A charred veggie burger and a Pepsi. I could have thrown up.

"I'm fine," I said. "Why are you here?"

"I feel like throwing up."

I laughed, surprised. "Hey, what a coincidence."

I was feeling woozy enough that I knocked his shoulder, but he wasn't paying attention to me. He was looking at Juliet and Mason, who wore both dancing around each other, laughing. Was he jealous?

"No, no, I'm not—" he snorted, hard—"I'm not jealous." His jaw went tense, and he started threading his fingers through the grass. "Why would I be?"

"Why are you really here?"

"Like I said, I feel like throwing—"

"No," I said, and I shook my head and I regretted it immediately because my brain felt like it was slushing around in my skull. I put up a hand to my temple. "I meant like, here, barbeque. You don't know any of these people, do you?"

"Not really." His shoulders sagged a little. "No."

"So," I said, "why?"