“Uh-oh!” a skinny guy in a parka yelled at him, pointing in my direction. “Watch out, Grass. You’re busted!”
The big guy turned sloppily, and looked at me. “Sorry!” he called out cheerfully. “You’re cool, though, right?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, other than I was probably going to be needing a broom and a trash bag. Before I could answer, though, a redheaded girl in a puffy jacket walked out into the side yard between our two houses, holding a beer. She popped the cap, then handed it to him and whispered something in his ear. A moment later, he was coming back my way, holding it out like a peace offering.
“For you,” he said, doing a weird almost curtsy and practically falling down in the process. Someone hooted from behind him. “My lady.”
More laughter. I reached out, taking the can, but didn’t respond.
“See?” he said, pointing at me. “I knew it. Cool.”
So I was cool. Apparently. I watched him make his way back to his friends, pushing through the pack and going back inside. I was about to pour the beer into the bushes and go look for that trash bag when I thought of the house on the other side, with the sad, older couple, and reconsidered. My names always chose me, and what followed were always the details of the girl who would have that name, whoever she was. Beth or Lizbet or Eliza wouldn’t ever have considered joining a party of strangers. But Liz Sweet might be just that kind of girl. So I ducked back inside, grabbed my jacket, and went to find out.
“Jackson High?” The blonde at the keg rolled her eyes, sighing dramatically. “You poor thing. You’ll hate it.”
“It’s a prison,” added her boyfriend, who was in a black T-shirt and trench coat, sporting a hoop hanging from both nostrils. “Like the Gulag, but with bells.”
“Really,” I said, taking a tiny sip of my beer.
“Totally.” The girl, who was small and curvy, wearing the meteorologically incongruous outfit of slip dress, sheepskin boots, and heavy parka, adjusted her ample cleavage. “The only way to survive is with a deep sense of irony and good friends. Without either of those, you’re screwed.”
I nodded, not saying anything. We were in the kitchen of the white house, where I’d ended up after making my way through the crowds packed on the porch and in the living room. Judging by the décor—U Basketball stickers covering the fridge, stolen street signs on the walls—the residents were college students, although many in the assembled crowd were my age. In the kitchen, there wasn’t much except the keg, which had crumpled cups all around it, and a beat-up table and chairs. The only other décor was a row of paper grocery bags, overflowing with beer cartons and pizza boxes, and a cardboard cutout of a bodybuilder holding an energy drink. Someone had drawn a beard on his face, big nipples on his chest, and something I didn’t even want to look too closely at on his nether regions. Nice.
“If I were you,” the blonde advised as another group of people came in from the side door, bringing a burst of cold and noise with them, “I’d beg my parents to enroll me in the Fountain School.”
“The Fountain School?” I said.
“It’s, like, this totally free-form alternative charter school,” the guy in the trench explained. “You can take meditation for gym. And all the teachers are old hippies. No bells there, man. They play a flute to recommend you switch classes.”
I didn’t know what to say to this.
“I loved the Fountain School,” the blonde sighed, taking a swig off her beer.
“You went there?” I asked her.
“We met there,” the guy said, sliding his arm around her waist. She snuggled into him, pulling her parka closer around her skimpy dress. “But then there was this, like, total Big Brother–style shakedown and she got kicked out.”
“All that talk about respecting others and their choices,” the girl said, “and they have the nerve to search my purse for drugs. I mean, what is that?”
“You did pass out in the Trust Circle,” the guy pointed out.
“The Trust Circle,” she said. “Where’s the trust in that?”
I glanced around, thinking it might be time to look for other conversation options. The only other people in the kitchen, though, were two guys taking tequila shots and a girl leaning against the fridge having a weepy, drunk conversation on her cell phone. Unless I wanted to go outside, I was stuck.
The door banged open again behind me, and I felt another burst of cold air. A moment later, the girl in the puffy jacket who’d been responsible for me getting my beer was stepping up beside me, pulling a bottled water out of her pocket, and twisting the top off.
“Hey, Riley,” the girl in the slip dress said to her. She cocked a thum me. “She’s new. Starts Jackson on Monday.”
Riley was thin with blue eyes, her hair pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she had silver rings on almost every finger. She smiled at me sympathetically and said, “It’s not as bad as they’ve told you, I promise.”