(With assistance from Seuzz)
"That would be great for both us, wouldn't it?" you reply.
Dana's smile falters a little, maybe because she has guessed that you have guessed at her ulterior motive. But it brightens again when you tell her that you'll do it.
"Great!" she exclaims. "We'll have fun!" She touches your arm, which sends shivers all up and down you. "More fun than you'll have here," she adds when there's another shriek of girlish joy from the dining room.
* * * * *
You get plenty of that kind of "fun" before you can leave for the party, though, for it will be nearly nine before you leave for it. So you get dragged into the party games that your mom planned. You wonder that Leila is still willing to go along with them, and you further wonder what her friends think. But they all seem to be enjoying themselves. But you can't even bring yourself to wish that you could too, and you get out of the party as much as you can by volunteering to clean up the kitchen.
By eight o'clock, though, things have died down, and the crowd has shrunk to the quartet that will be sleeping over: Leila and her friends Sarah Pak, Joanna Johnson, Tracey Haverstock and Sarah White. They are settling in to watch a Disney musical when you go upstairs to shower and change.
It's not true to say that you weren't invited to tonight's party. Beth Larter, who plays on the girls' basketball squad with Amanda Connors, invited you out last Wednesday. You had told her that sounded great, but then conveniently "forgot" about it. There was a gleam in Beth's eye that you didn't much like, and if you can't spend time with Dana at Amanda's, you will look for someone else to get close to so Beth doesn't have a chance to do more than "gleam" at you.
So since it's just a high school party, and not one you're too enthusiastic about, you don't dress up too pretty, contenting yourself with fresh jeans and t-shirt, and a dark-green hoodie. In the bathroom you brush your teeth and gargle long and deeply with the Listerine, on the chance that you get your mouth close to a girl's. You study yourself in the mirror for flaws and blemishes.
You're not a bad-looking son of a bitch (if you say so yourself) with your blonde hair and even brows; and you've gotten enough attention from girls from middle school on that you know that's not just wishful thinking. You're not the prettiest boy in school, and you're not athletic, and you're not stylish either; and it depresses you a little that you look much the same now, when you're just shy of eighteen, as when you were sixteen, even as other guys in the senior class have so bloomed that you wonder if they even still need their fake IDs to buy alcohol. Your expression also has a tendency to settle into a scowl.
On the other hand, you've also been told by some girls that you look "intense" or even "scary," and one girl at an early-summer party down by the river told you that she bet you'd be a great "mad fuck." When you asked what she meant, she gave you a long, smoldering look and said, I mean, you'd fuck a girl like you were mad at her, and one of her friends took you aside later to tell you that "Justine is into dark energy" and that maybe you should be careful of that. Nevertheless, you went looking for her, but she had gone off by then, and you haven't seen her around since.
And when you go downstairs you are conscious that you get a sidelong, trailing look from Tracey as you pass through the living room on your way to the den, where your parents will be watching a second TV.
"I'm going out with Dana," you tell them as you pick up the keys to the family SUV from the tray. "I'll be back ... I dunno."
"Where are you going?" your mom asks.
"Party at Amanda Connors' house," you reply. It's a perfectly safe reply to give, for your mom instinctively believes that a party at someone's "house" is chaperoned and probably features nothing more risque than brownie baking.
"Well, don't stay out too late."
"I won't." And you never do, not because you are ever home early but because "late" (to your parents, when that's all they say) only means "sometime before we wake up in the morning."
* * * * *
Dana is in a white shift when you pick her up, and you compliment her on it. "Thanks," she says, and doesn't say anything about your looks. "You want to pick anyone else up?"
"Like who?"
"Like whoever you'd like to. Like, who did you hang out with this summer?"
"They'll probably be at the party anyway," you murmur. At least that segues the conversation into something easier, like speculations about who will be out there.
There's a dozen cars at least parked on the street when you arrive, which is either a sign that you're seriously late, or that things are going to get really busy later on. Amanda's house hasn't got a porch out front, but the garage door is up and has been emptied of its automobiles, and some guys are playing ping-pong at the table that's been set up in their place. They're basketball players—Connor Nilsson and Scott Bridges with the paddles; Brett Dutoit and Timothy Johnson watching—and they greet your cheerily. Almost pointedly (it seems to you) Dana doesn't ask about Shawn Gregory while asking if others from the team are inside.
"Hey, I'll meet up with you later," she says after exhausting that topic with them. "I'm gonna go inside, scope things out." You nod, and linger with the guys until she's had a decent chance to escape from you.
Look at me, what a nice guy I am, you sneer at yourself.
You take a turn at the ping-pong table, playing against Timothy, and lose (but not spectacularly so) before going inside to mingle. It's the kind of crowd you would have expected at a party thrown by a member of the girls' basketball squad. Lots of jocks and jockettes, but also a mix of social heavy-hitters from the country-club and AP class sets, and a couple of drama people as well. Most of the faces are friendly, and not for a minute do you feel out of place.
Because although you are not Mr. Popularity, you are not an outcast, either. You go to lots of parties; you chat with lots of girls; you are pretty comfortable with most of the guys. You talk with Eddie Wasnowski about getting together for tennis sometime soon; and you chat with Doug Watts and his new girlfriend, April Schofield, about some new Playstation games that are due for release soon.
About the only people here you really feel shy of are Kyle Lakewood and Jenny Taylor, the acknowledged king and queen of EHS. They are both blonde, both beautiful, both soccer players who captain their respective teams. But neither one, you're pretty sure, has any idea who you are, which would make it awkward to talk to them one-on-one; and being Mr. and Mrs. Super-Popular, they are always talking to someone else.
And tonight you're further daunted by the fact that they are hanging out with Catherine Muskov, the gorgeous Eastman—turned—Westside runner who's gone from track star to star of some of your most fervid squeeze-and-sploodge fantasies. Not that you wouldn't talk to her, but it could be weird considering how many of those fantasies involve looking at the top of her head rather than at her face.
But you're not so much at ease with the top-tier of EHS society that you effortlessly bob along at the top with them. So it's no surprise to you when you find yourself seemingly stuck with Sawyer Harrison and Ethan Gilkey for company.
Although, come to think of it, what are they even doing here?
"Fuck you, man, acting like you all belong here too," Ethan sneers when you ask them. "If I can walk into a department store without getting hassled—" He trails off as he cranes his neck to follow the ass of Ashley Stricker as she walks by.
Sawyer is looser. "Yeah, you're the first's asked us," he snickers. "But if we get thrown out, you get thrown out too."
"No one's throwing you out," you tell them. "No one gives a shit."
"Wait'll we get obnoxious." Sawyer snickers again.
Too late, you sourly think. You were born that way.
Sawyer and Ethan belong to no group or set at school, though you do hear they run with some rich twat who goes to the private academy west of town. They are troublemakers, though of neither the dangerous nor the entertaining kind. They're the sort who lurk in corners and sneer; who tease with cruel, small-minded nicknames; who taunt girls with obscene suggestions, and whisper even more obscene come-ons in their ears.
So when Beth Lartner comes up to you with a smile a little later, Ethan holds out his bottled Coke to her. "How about you take your pants off and try getting this bottle top off for me," he says.
She titters like she didn't understand what he said. Considering how glassy her eyes are, maybe she didn't.
"Hey Sawyer," she says. "What's up?"
Sawyer says, "I am."
"I'm glad you made it out," she tells you. With what looks like careful concentration, she lifts her bottle of water to her lips and chugs a good portion of it down. "It's kind of hot in here, don't you think?"
Sawyer and Ethan are so bowled over by the thousands of possibilities there that they can only collapse against each other, silently.
"It's a little warm," you allow.
"We should go outside," she suggests, and tugs at the front of your hoodie. "We can cool off out there."
"And if you get too cold, man," Sawyer says, "you can use her ass cheeks as hand warmers."
That finally does get a rise from Beth, and she clucks her tongue at him.
Beth is not bad looking, not by a mile, and if she's wasted then that's an opportunity of some kind. But you spot Dana over her shoulder, talking to Shawn, and that's kind of a killer.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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