Thirteen

The giant orb in the night sky makes our friend’s house look like a doll’s house. One of us mentions this and another of us scoffs, “As if.” We clutch sleeping bags in our arms, plain ones without characters. We borrow them from older siblings, or our parents buy them when they give in to our pleas. Some of us miss our Powerpuff Girls-, Sailor Moon-, or Polly Pocket-themed sleeping bags. None of us admit it. We troop inside and mutter hellos to our friend’s parents, who answer us with great big hellos and usher us upstairs. Our friend has turned thirteen, and we are here to celebrate at her birthday party sleepover.

Everything’s set up in our friend’s bedroom. Candy, chips, more candy, more chips, and liter bottles of caffeinated soda; all are our appetite’s desires. We dump our sleeping bags in corners. A breeze from the window tousles scraps of paper in a glass ashtray set on the floor. The scraps of paper have our noms de sorcières written on them, passed to our friends during the day at school. An orange BIC lighter our friend swiped from her parents rests nearby. We form a circle and sit cross-legged, joining hands. We evoke Hecate, Circe and Vanilla Mieux, Medea, Sabrina, and Hermione Granger. We call to Angela Leon. We call to Morgan le Fay. We ask for their blessing and then we chant our chosen names. Our friend swipes a thumb over the metal wheel on the orange BIC lighter, igniting a holy flame, setting the scraps of paper on fire. We’ve all seen The Craft.

“You better not be smoking!” shouts a parental voice from below. Our laughter floats out the window and down to the patio where our friend’s parents sit smoking Newports. We watch the fire consume our names until there’s nothing more to burn.

Anticlimax. Ennui. Each of us feels the letdown. No transformation presents itself. Our host saves us. “Let’s do our faces!” We take out our makeup, leftover lipsticks moms have given us, Hello Kitty eyeshadow kits, and real eyeshadow kits, stolen from our older sisters. Lipstick goes on lips, eyeshadow goes on eyelids, and blusher goes on cheeks. We go creative after that, beauty marks dot green cheeks, red lipstick smears on eyelids, and eyeliner inks eyebrows as thick as caterpillars, as black as soot sprites.

We test our magical powers. One of us volunteers and lies down in the middle of the room. We each place a finger underneath and chant, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” Our friend swears she lifts off the floor. Our power proves itself. “Now, do me!” insists another.

We grab the Ouija spirit board, daring each other to ask. “Does he like me?” Some of us replace the spoken pronoun “he” with a silent “she.” “Yes,” “No,” “Good Bye,” we hold our tender hearts in our hands until we get the answer.

“Music Time!” shrieks the birthday girl, pressing the power button on a birthday-present boom box. Two round speakers protrude from a yellow CD player. Yellow CD player eyes fill the room with sound, and we dance, careless of its gaze. Arms stretch, hands reach, torsos twist, hips gyrate. We follow the beat, the rhythm guides us. One of us grabs an empty Pringles can, an instant microphone, and lip-syncs to a sultry song. “Crank it up!” so loud we barely hear our friend’s parents say, “This is positively The Last Sleepover.” It makes us laugh all the harder.

Mardi Gras necklaces jangle against our chests as we jump and writhe. One of us leaps onto the bed and quirks a Britney hip thrust. Our friend’s little toy poodle yaps and runs in counterclockwise circles. Black barrettes on curly white poodle fur hop and skip and come loose. Our laughter explodes. One of us spills soda on the carpet. The little toy poodle laps it up and all of us shriek.

“I’m going up there.”

“Let them have the night.”

Our night. Seven best friends who are, finally, all of us, thirteen.

One last game before it’s lights out, a new game we’ve all just heard about, not yet named, described in whispered conversations in school hallways and the girl’s changing room. “Shh!” says our host, and we obey, exchanging half smiles, suppressing half giggles. Our host empties the snack bowl, and we tumble in our treasures, booty from medicine chests, bedside tables, and pocketbooks. Our friend rotates a spoon around the bowl; ovals, oblongs, and circles, white, pink, and peach, rattle together. A blindfold goes around our friend’s eyes—the birthday girl goes first and closes a hand over a pill. The blindfold passes from hand to hand, and we all do the same. With a show of hands, pop go the treasures into waiting mouths. A soda swig and a swallow, and now we wait.

Not for long. We dance the dance of goddesses, of sorceresses, of mages. Pores sweat, hearts pound, heads buzz, eyes divine. We’re walking on sunshine. We’ve got the power. We have the touch, the music is in us. We commune with the cosmos and feel every particle. One of us floats to the ground. One of us falls off the bed. We lie on the floor and watch the ceiling sparkle with colors, race with contrails. One of us will haunt these kinds of parties, Skittles parties, a sweet candy name, a fun name. One of us wants to have more fun, to fly above the fog of despair thickening each day. One of us will plummet into addiction. But on this birthday night, all of us fly together over a hunter’s moon, all of us dreaming, none of us knowing.