Page 44 of 16 Forever

“To make sure you get a proper entrance!”

Bodhi is a strange person, but meeting him has undeniably made my life better. And if he has a weird thing about needing to be the line leader, I can live with that.

“Turn!” Bodhi says, spinning around to literally grab me by the shoulders and redirect me just as we’re about to pass a snack table that features an unsettlingly massive pile of mozzarella sticks.

“I know this may be surprising,” I say as I shrug his hands off,“but being stuck at age sixteen does not mean I don’t know how to turn while walking.”

“Ha ha ha!” Bodhi laughs in this obviously fake way as he slides behind me and nudges me toward the family room, which has gotten packed in the time we were gone. “Sorry, it’s just a fun game I like to play. It’s called steer your friend!”

“I don’t like that game.”

“Most people don’t!” Bodhi shouts, and then we’re crossing the threshold into the family room. Chris Colasurdo is shouting my name, and everyone’s eyes shift in my direction. A wave of raucous cheer rises up and splashes down on us, and it’s because ofme.

That rad song is still playing, and I start bouncing my head. Chris hands me his flask again, and even though I don’t want any more gasoline juice, I take a swig because it seems like the right thing to do. There’s another eruption of joyful noise, and the vodka doesn’t burn as much this time, and now I’m moving my arms, and people arelovingit.

They’re all drifting to the sides, as if giving me room to show off my stuff, so I guess I gotta show off my stuff! I ask Bodhi to hold my beer, but first I take another chug, which gets another reaction, and look, Robbie and Amir are here too, and if I don’t do something soon, people are gonna get bored of me, so here goes nothing.

I crouch low and take a flying leap into the air, like I’m about to dive into an empty swimming pool, but instead I put out both hands and catch myself, controlling my body and swooping my torso up while my legs ripple like a mermaid fin.

The worm, baby.

I taught it to myself when I was twelve, obsessively practicingin my room until I got it perfect, for vague reasons and motivations unbeknownst to me until right now.

Thisis why I learned how to do the worm.

Everyone in the room freaks out. They completely lose their minds.

So I do it some more.

And some more.

They are chanting my name. Someone says I’m funny as hell.

I need to bring out some other moves.

But the worm is the only move I have.

I try something else, kicking my legs into the air like I’m a skateboarder at the top of a half-pipe. It gets chuckles, not the ecstatic roar I was seeking, so I transition gracefully into a move I’ve seen but never attempted—I get onto my back and hug my knees to my chest, then try to spin myself around like I’m an upside-down turtle balanced on its shell. It makes people crack up, but I think you need to be on an actual dance floor and not a rug to get the proper spin momentum. It probably also helps if you’re an actual turtle.

I spring to my feet, ready to improvise some more Dance Magic, when Robbie leans over to tell Amir something, thereby opening up a gap in the crowd that reveals to me, at the very edge of the room, on the threshold to the kitchen:

Maggie Spear.

She’s here. Iknewshe had to be!

Man, I love being right.

She looks very pretty. Her eyelids, like Shana’s, are literally sparking with glitter. Her lips are sparkling too. She’s wearing a blue cardigan over a T-shirt with a rip near her stomach, and theoverwhelming feeling I have is that she’s infinitely cooler than I’ll ever be.

She and Shana are arguing about something.

Then Robbie goes back to where he’d been standing, and Maggie disappears.

I feel this quick, sharp burst of... sadness? Or maybe just disappointment. Either way, it weirds me the hell out, seeing as I don’t even know Maggie. Or at least Idon’t knowwhat I know about her.

I also don’t know how much time just went by, but everyone’s still looking at me, so I break into this old-school move Uncle Jed did at my bar mitzvah during the hora, squatting and holding my arms like a genie and kicking my legs out one at a time.

It gets the wrong kind of laughs. People are confused.