“I’ll take it,” Meg says, and then she blows us a kiss and worms her way through the crowd. I doubt she’ll be coming back to join us anytime soon.
I’m now waving my shoes in the air and receiving glares from the people by my side, mostly because I keep almost whacking them in the face, but I feel too free and too on top of the world to apologize. Miraculously, I find myself dancing: wild and crazed dancing, but still dancing, which is rare for me. The DJ on the stage is playing house music and everyone has a hand bobbing in the air and my head feels fuzzy and even the ocean is starting to roll to one side.
I’m enjoying myself, jumping on the sand and waving my shoes in the air, when Tiffani grabs my and Rachael’s arms and draws us toward her. She doesn’t look to be having as much fun as we are, and I can’t tell if it’s because she didn’t drink as much or if it’s because she thinks the event sucks.
“I’m gonna go find Tyler,” she says loudly, and when she takes a step back, I can just about make out that she looks pissed off.
“Nooooo!” Rachael protests. “Stay with us!”
“I need to keep an eye on him after what happened last year,” she says with a shake of her head.
I narrow my eyes at her, my laces still tangled around my fingers, and I blow some hair out of my face. The evening sun is scorching. “What happened last year?”
Tiffani only glances sideways at me with an annoyed and disapproving look in her eyes. “Eden, please stop waving those things around.” She reaches for my shoes and pulls them away from me, pulling a face at the lyrics written along the side before sighing and handing them back to me. “You look stupid, so try and act a little normal. Now have fun, you two.”
Rachael gives me a drunken shrug as Tiffani elbows her way out of the crowd. She’s out of breath and so am I.
“What happened last year?” I ask again once my breathing is restored. Rachael’s outline is slightly blurred, so I squint at her in order to see her better, but it doesn’t help. My body feels like it’s rolling from one side to the other, like the ocean.
“Tyler took some sketchy stuff,” she says quietly into my ear as she leans in, careful that no one hears us, even though everyone is too busy partying, “and then he passed out and we all thought he died, but then he had a seizure and we were like, ‘Oh shit, he’s not dead,’ and yeah. We all dragged him back to Tiffani’s place and she cried all night about how he made her look stupid in front of everyone. She locked herself in her bathroom and wouldn’t come out, so the rest of us stayed over to make sure he was okay and he ended up being totally fine. It was super scary at the time, and now Tiffani’s paranoid that he’ll do something like that again.” She’s out of breath again by the time she stops talking and so she takes a dramatic gulp of air and then exhales.
I know for a fact that if I were sober, I’d be concerned and I’d probably go and look for Tyler myself, but I’m too drunk to do any of that right now. I might also be mad at Tiffani for caring more about her reputation than Tyler’s life, but I just pull a face and return to swaying, and eventually Rachael does too.
The thing about being drunk is that you seem to lose not only your senses but also track of time. It feels like it takes only ten minutes for me and Rachael to force our way to the front of the stage, but when I look up and see the darkening sky, I realize much more time must have gone by. I’m sweating by now, and when I look to my right, I realize I’m suddenly alone. Rachael has disappeared.
“Oh,” I say. A laugh escapes my lips, and I turn around and begin to dance my way out of the crowd, feeling slightly claustrophobic now. People are looking down on me with odd expressions. It’s so obvious that I’m half a decade away from being old enough to be here.
Away from the stage, people are milling around on the sand, some socializing and others trying their hardest to pick up girls. The crowd of people is thinner back here, so I stop and take a moment to breathe. I don’t feel as energetic anymore, and the booze high that I seemed to be on is wearing off as the night goes on, but I’m still past tipsy and I’m still enjoying every second of it. A fight breaks out near me, and the security guards come bounding over, barking demands and breaking up the scuffle, dragging the two troublemakers away from the event.