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18 | Night Times KAITLIN

Sasha turns cotton candy duty into a meet-cute. At least that’s how it looks from the vantage point of the arts and crafts table I’m running, where I’m knee-deep in orange glitter and glue. How does she do that? Everyone knows that job is torture.

But of course she does.

Anger rises in my chest.

After the festival dies down, I check the picture I posted of Ruby in her Marie Antoinette costume on Instagram. Only thirteen likes in three hours. WTF? I spent real time on that thing!

I plaster a friendly look on my face for the other parents and finish packing up. On my way out, I pass Sasha in the schoolyard, carrying a box. We’re walking toward the opposite exits leading to our respective homes. It would be awkward not to acknowledge each other.

“Good job tonight!” I say.

She shoots me a smile, which I return. It’s more genuine than average. “Thanks, Kaitlin! Have a good night!” Sasha seems happy .

Is happy even a thing anymore?

It’s the end of the evening. She looks tired though it’s only 8:00 p.m. We all do. We are parents on a burning planet. This is our idea of a late night. Children are exhausting. Work is exhausting. Staying afloat is exhausting. But there is something in her flushed cheeks that’s energized too. Something shiny in her eyes.

Suddenly, I am bombarded by a memory I had forgotten: Sasha wearing that same expression. For a moment, I can put myself in that place, in my own seventeen-year-old body too.

It was late—or early. We were old enough for life without curfews and, those of us who still had restrictions, slept out. In those days, New York City was a more lawless place. For reasons I can’t begin to fathom, our teenage friends were able to act as full party promoters, throwing massive alcohol-fueled parties at grown-ass clubs.

Assuming you didn’t come up against some terrifying and cruel door girl who barred entry, you’d slide past the gargantuan bouncers in their black leather coats and enter a playground of possibilities. I say playground because everyone there was a child—cute boys, statusy girls. Not a single one of us was of legal drinking age.

Biggie Smalls blasted from the speakers. A Tribe Called Quest. De La Soul. The ground was sticky with cosmopolitans and malt liquor, spilled for fallen homies and by accident. The boys smelled too strongly of Cool Water and Fahrenheit colognes—a crisp and overcompensatory Gillette deodorant scent. These parties were the meat and potatoes of our teenage social life. And this one was a classic.

We danced in a kind of undulating circle with five or six of our mutual girlfriends. The boys—the ones who danced—popped by periodically to freak one of us for a minute, a silent conversation. Any interest? Usually, no. Sometimes, yes.

Eventually, the music propelled us—sweaty and serotonin-flooded—out the doors and up industrial side streets, past warehouses whose graffiti-tagged metal gates waited to be lifted. The sun threatened to rise.

While the most assertive of our group hailed taxis, the rest of us hung back and smoked cigarettes. Some flirted with the boys, playing tag and giggling like elementary school kids. Not it! Sasha leaned against the building’s facade, her eyes hooded from fatigue. She pulled a thin flannel around her shoulders.

We were rarely with the same crowd at this point. And, even then, we barely spoke. But, out of nowhere, she turned to face me. “That was fun. Wasn’t that fun?”

I glanced behind me, looking for the person she was addressing. No one was there. Just a trash-strewn sidewalk. Crushed McDonald’s cups. Cigarette butts. Gray matter.

Part of me wanted to ignore her, walk away. Show her how little I cared. But I still craved her attention too. “Totally.” I nodded. “That was a fun one.”

Her cheeks were pink, flushed from dancing. The rest of us were sweaty, haphazard ponytails frizzing at the hairline. But she looked lit from within. “What a beautiful night.”

I think she was talking about the weather. It was spring, and winter’s spite was finally lifting off the breeze. We were too warm from dancing to care about what was left of the cold, anyway. All endorphins and ego. “Just look at that moon.”

I hadn’t thought to look up. I was too busy navel-gazing. But, when I did, I realized it was enormous. It must have been full.

Full, like we were. Of possibility. Of hope. Of misapprehensions about what the world would offer.

She yawned dreamily. And I opened my mouth to speak, recognizing that this was finally my moment. With Sasha as a captive audience. Something I’d thought about many times before. To remind her of how tight we’d been that one summer. To ask her why she’d been careless with me. Maybe to tell her off.

About ditching me. About ignoring me. About Hugo, who she’d kissed hours after he dumped me.

“Hey, Sasha,” I said.

She turned her gaze on me again. Just then, one of her besties, Rebecca, one of those loyal girls, tugged her by the arm and, of course, loaded her into the first waiting cab.

“Who is that girl, anyway?” Rebecca said loudly enough for me to hear. Definitely on purpose. We’d met plenty of times. Had plenty of friends in common. “Why is she even here?”

The rest of us would wait twenty more minutes before finding our own taxis home, racing uptown without traffic, the buzz of the night wearing thin.

But, through the window, Sasha waved goodbye to me, her fingers fluttering like hummingbird wings. By the time I waved back, she was gone.