“I can’t believe you surprised me,” Tera shouted at Redge. “I’m never surprised.”
Teracita felt like an open blood vessel. Everyone’s eyes were on them. Don’t look at me, she thought after the shock wore off.
Everything was buzzing; everyone was there.
Quickly, the sunset slipped into the beginning of the night. Blue hour had begun. If only she had a pair of sunglasses — just for a moment — to shield her eyes from the attention.
The crowd became a chorus, and everyone sang an impromptu Happy Birthday. Teracita gave a bashful bow with her hands clasped at her chest.
Redge mouthed to Tera: Parents leave at 8. Gotcha, she nodded.
Tera moved toward her parents with open arms. Her mom, Judy, had her Nikon in hand and snapped a few shots as Tera approached—always the paparazzi. Some things were just genetic.
Her sister Caroline had left work early, still in her gray skirt and white button-up. She hadn’t had time to change, and Tera saw it as a quiet expression of love, knowing she was pulling 60-hour weeks at Frank, Mill, and Price as a Junior Associate. She was strange, her sister: Beautiful, obsessive, disciplined. At the moment, she was emotionally attached to her hair extensions, sporting clip-in bangs tonight, with the rest of her thick blonde hair pulled back taut into a sock bun. But Tera knew Caroline wouldn’t let the night pass by without blowing off some steam. Her sister was like a tea kettle; it had been months since she whistled.
Her dad, Ron, stood at the grill, having half-conversations with everyone who came up to him.
“Happy birthday, kid!” he called, waving his tongs in the air.
Really, they were just going to go get tacos?
Redge reached for Tera as she turned toward familiar faces from St. Cece’s. He looped an arm around her shoulder, fitting perfectly into the crook of her neck.
Best friends forever, she thought.
“Don’t hate me. I just had to invite everyone — 25 is big, dude!” Redge said.
“I’m still buffering,” a safe word they shared to let them know when they’re feeling overwhelmed.
“And hey,” she chimed, turning to him, “I still want to see this new trick you’ve been talking about.”
“You will—but, hello? What do you think this was?” His hands gesturing around the background, a proud grin on his face. “This might be my best trick yet.”
“And you got us a DJ?”
“That’s Cal!” Redge shouted over the music.
Tera scanned the backyard and the blur of motion dialed into focus. It looked like they’d jerry-rigged a bazillion extension cords to power everything. An electric squid, she thought, noting how the cords snaked from Craig’s workshop to the speakers. The uneven ground she stood on? Cords taped to the cement with blue masking tape.
The sound was clear, though, and the mixer sat neatly beneath Cal’s MacBook.
At that moment, Cal looked up from his makeshift DJ booth, his focus softening into a smile.
Big mouth, Tera thought.
“I’m not kidding,” Redge said. “When I picked him up at SFO, he brought more equipment than clothes. Come on, let me finally introduce you.”
Redge grabbed Tera’s hand again, weaving her through the throng of friends and neighbors. She knew she’d need to make the rounds to say hello to everyone, but for now, this was what mattered.
“Cal Hsieh, meet my other best friend, Teracita Sullivan.”
Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth jumpstarted everything, the drums picked up.
“Happy birthday, Teracita,” Cal said with a smile from behind the laptop. Teracita felt her stomach dip as she stepped aside on the uneven concrete. “I bet this is your favorite song.” Well, how did he know?
“You’re right,” she said cooly.
“Well, Redge told me,” Cal shrugged. “He’s told me so much.”
Redge appeared holding three Solo cups in a triangle, the perfect physics.
“Oh so you’ve done this before?” Tera says, gesturing toward Redge’s balancing act. He laughs and continues to nestle into the triad, looking up to Cal: “Tera forced me to listen to this song probably 100 times on that roadmap from three summers ago. Try as you might, you eventually have to capitulate to the force. There's no stopping her when she’s on one of her music loops.”
They all laugh, but Tera still swats his arm.
“And after being waterboarded by this song for hours and hours, I can confidently say I think this guy has a pretty good voice,” Redge says as he dramatically twitches one eye, “Not grating whatsoever.”
“Stab me with a spoon,” Tera defends herself, “Do you think I’m going to withstand such ridicule for liking Clap Your Hands Say Yeah?”
Caroline stepped into the inner circle: “Oh, don’t get me started with Tera’s horrible music choices,” her blonde bangs attached surgically to her widow’s peak. “Redge, you had to withstand her playlists on that road trip. Meanwhile, I had to live with her for 18 years. Did she tell you about her Ani Di Franco and Alanis Morissette phase in middle school?”
By this point, Redge was bent over laughing, remembering, beet red like he always gets after a few jungle juices.
“What were you so angry about, Tera. You were 12.” Caroline laughed.
“Is this my birthday party or an intervention on what I’d argue to be perfect taste?” Tera’s learned not to fold to defeat.
Caroline and Redge continued to laugh like surrogate siblings, always in their two-person club with the sole and successful mission to tease Teracita.
Cal said to her defense, “Alright, I have to side with Tera here — Alanis Moirsette is dope.” The four of them clicked into the night. The honey lights tracing the backyard made everyone glow. A crowd began congregating closer to Tera, and she wanted to greet everyone. But then she saw her mom approaching, holding a giant, white-frosted cake with a constellation of Marachino cherries punctuating the curves of each layer.
“Judy, your work has never been better,” Caroline said flamboyantly to her mother in sweet adoration of her mother’s novice baking skills.
“My favorite,” Tera said to her mom. “Vanilla boxed cake with homemade Swiss Meringue Buttercream.” No one likes the cherries, but they’re just so cute. Ron stood alongside his wife, holding up a neatly wrapped gift, the color of sea foam. Caroline must’ve done the wrapping. “This is from all of us,” her dad said as he placed the gift next to the birthday cake on the table.
“Well, no, not really,” Caroline corrects them. “Mom and dad paid for it, but yes, in spirit, yeah, it’s from all of us.”
Then, Caroline took a comically large lighter out from her purse. She must’ve brought that from home and been carrying it all day. They did think of everything.
“Chop, chop, everyone — time to sing!” Caroline conducts the partygoers. Cal lowered the volume of the music. Tera took a deep breath and braced herself.
Feeling all these eyes was hard. Teracita felt more understood behind a filter; the camera was always freeing, like an invisibility cloak. There, could she possibly know everything and be in complete control? She knew this much: it was a safe place to live, but maybe being seen was also part of growing.
The observer must learn to be observed. She heard her dad say this a few years ago during one of his yoga kicks. Tera dropped her crossed arms; her hands were down by her side. She heard the singing begin. She closed her eyes. She smiled and smelled sugar. Happy birthday, dear Tera. Happy birthday to you.
Each candle, a bright hope, Tera had been carrying around for a lifetime. All 25 of them were hers. Tera was going to take this year seriously. This is the year I am going to start again. This year. She blew out all her candles in one try and delicately swiped her index finger along the edge of the cake for a hit of sweetness.
“Open the gift!” Mr. Goldman shouted from the back of the crowd in a Will-Ferrelian manner. Redge gets it from somewhere. They all laughed as Ron guided Tera to the table where the box stood.
Tera pulled the ribbon, and it unraveled. The tape gave way quickly when she ran her hand underneath the crease and lifted the lid. She felt her stomach dip. Inside the box was another box around foam padding. She saw the familiar font.
A lens that made life look better. It was a Canon. The Canon XA10. She’d rent the same model from the equipment library at school. And she had her very own.
Tera let our a little scream and covered her face as she turned to Ron and Judy who wrapped around their daughter.
“You make us so proud,” Judy whispered in her ears.
“You got this,” Ron said adoringly. Thank you, Tera said inside. Thank you, she said to her parents and the small crowd. It felt like her whole world was there — her entire world was beginning. Cal raised the volume of the music back up. Everyone began to melt back into the blur of the evening. Teracita exhaled.
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This is an installment of a fiction project I am writing called THE TERACITA PROJECT. You can subscribe below to support my novel writing journey.