So then I whip my tee off and I’m just standing in jeans and a bra, as I have a hundred million times before, and before I can put my fancy Armani shirt on, Danny groans, covers his eyes emphatically with his hands and says, “Jesus, Iz, do you have to do that here?”
Ajita’s glued eye pings open in shock. “What are you on about, dude? You’ve seen her shirtless before. Hell, you saw me shirtless about ten seconds ago. What’s the big deal?”
He drops his hands into his lap and stares at his grubby fingernails, cheeks burning as fuchsia as Betty’s nail polish. But before he has to reply, I save his awkward ass.
“S’all right,” I say quickly. “I’ll go next door.”
He shoots me a grateful look that tells me everything I need to know.
Shit. We’re in trouble.
10.53 p.m.
Update from the front line: Danny is off chatting up one of the cheerleaders, who looks like Michelle Obama’s younger sister, but he keeps glancing over at me to make sure I’m witnessing his superb flirtatious finesse. I just nod encouragingly for lack of anything better to do, trying to ignore the fact that to the untrained eye I look like a creepy uncle lurking on the edge of the dance floor and supporting his lecherous nephew’s efforts to get laid for the first time.
Ajita and I are chilling on a lime-green sofa in the living room. The house is rammed with sweaty teenage bodies, which are completely incongruous with the immaculate decor. The lighting is low and the music is loud, and everyone’s drinking beer out of plastic cups, spilling it all over the wooden floorboards. That’s gonna stink in the morning.
My best friend, bless her heart, is completely unperturbed by the fact I’m updating my blog while at a party. At this point in our friendship she’s pretty used to me tapping furiously on my phone’s touch screen as she chugs her beer and observes the teenage drama unfolding in full flow around us.
Baxter’s house is actually super nice, probably because his mom launched this tech start-up a couple years back and it’s really taken off. They used to live in a low-income housing community like mine, with metal bars over the windows to prevent break-ins, but now they’re firmly in the fancy part of town, where every mansion has at least three cars in the driveway. One of which is usually a Range Rover, let’s be real.
Inside, the house is like something out of an interiors magazine, with bold printed wallpaper, metallic sculptures and glass coffee tables. They’ve mixed it with that industrial chic look that’s so big now, all exposed brickwork and factory-style lighting. I’ll give it to them, it looks pretty cool. And thanks to my fancy shirt I don’t feel as out of place as I usually do.
“Fancy a game of beer pong?” I ask Ajita, who’s curled into the corner of the sofa with her shoes kicked off, hugging a black-and-white chevron-print cushion. She’s pretty buzzed after just two beers, on account of her severe tinyness.
“Nah, that requires moving,” she practically yawns. She’s a sleepy drunk. We haven’t seen either Carson or Carlie yet, but it’s possible they’re in another room. Judging by my best pal’s apathy toward the concept of physical activity, I guess we shall never know.
“Good point, well made,” I concede. “In that case, can I get you another bottle?”
“Now you’re talkin’.” She winks at me like some sort of gangster. I mean, gangsters probably don’t wink at each other all that much. But you know what I mean.
Oh God, Vaughan just arrived with his oily entourage. His hair is slicked back and his Abercrombie shirt is way too tight, and he has a swastika tattooed on his exposed chest. [I made that last bit up as I have a tendency to do.]
And now he’s scanning the room, probably scoping me out like those birds that hover in the air above their prey until they’re ready to strike. I don’t really know what kind of bird this is, but I swear I saw it on some nature documentary, or in real life, or on one of the rare occasions I was paying attention in class. It’s hard to distinguish at this point. Anyway, the analogy made perfect sense when I started typing, and I’ve committed now so I’ll stick to it.
I’m a worm. Or something. A drunk little worm trying to wriggle away from its gross predator.
BRB, off to dig a hole in the dirt and stay there until he goes away.
11.48 p.m.
Yeah I slept with Vaughan.
Sunday 18 September
9.18 a.m.
Last night went up in flames. Seriously, I make such unbelievably bad life choices. Can I blame this on the tragic orphan thing again? No?
Sigh. Here we go.
So Vaughan tracks me down in my little wormhole, a.k.a. the sofa, because I’m not sufficiently committed to my role as a creature of the dirt, and offers to get me a drink. I oblige on account of the fact our crate of beer is running low and I’m losing my buzz quite rapidly, and I think we have established at this point that I am utterly shameless in an impressive spectrum of ways.
En route to the fridge, he makes some actually rather astute observations about our surroundings, such as: “Wow, there are, like, so many people here,” and “Baxter is an embarrassment at beer pong,” and “If Kenan Mitchell were green, he would basically be Shrek.” I agree good-naturedly because I am very thirsty. [Not like that. Stop snickering.]
Of course my respiratory system chooses this precise moment to start evicting a metric fuck-ton of phlegm from my body, and I cough like a maniac for several decades. Vaughan says, “Yeah, it’s really smoky in here. Let’s get some fresh air.” Literally not one individual is smoking a cigarette or any other substance in our immediate proximity, which does seem statistically unlikely and yet is true at this precise moment, but like an idiot I follow him outside anyway because a) he is carrying my beer and b) fresh air doesn’t actually sound too horrible thanks to the general scent of teenage boy in the living room.
We sit on one of those fancy swinging bench things only rich people ever have. The garden is pitch-black, meaning I don’t have to look at his overgelled hair, which is perhaps why I temporarily forget I’m talking to Zachary Vaughan (don’t call him Zach; he gets upset for reasons I cannot begin to understand). I half expect there to be long stretches of awkward silence, but he just hands me my beer and asks me a nice question about my grandma. This is one of many signs that I have somehow fallen through a wormhole and landed in an alternate universe, and thus cannot be held responsible for my own actions. Or something.
“So how’s your dad’s campaign going?” I ask him, once I’ve finished telling him about how, when Dumbledore the Dog dies, we’re going to get another dachshund and call it Voldemort, and pretend to our house guests that the Dark Lord has risen once again and killed all our other pets, including Luna and Neville the goldfish and Hermione the hamster (none of which ever existed, but the story works best if Voldemort commits mass homicide as an opening act). Betty and I both feel this is exactly what Dumbledore the Dog would want. Vaughan appears completely unperturbed by this idea, which you sort of have to admire.
But at the mention of his dad he immediately stiffens. [Again, not like that. What’s wrong with you?]
“Do we have to talk about it?” he snaps, swigging from his plastic cup. We can almost hear the babble of laughter and the low pounding of house music, but the double glazing is doing a pretty good job of keeping the garden quiet. Which is unfortunate because right now I could really do with something cutting through the awkward silence.
Hastily I explain how I don’t give one singular shit about his father’s campaign and only brought it up because conversational protocol dictates that I ask him a question, and I know absolutely nothing else about him.
“You’re cute when you babble,” he says to my total horror and disgust, because unlike the popular noughties rock band, cute is never what I aim for.