The room was a wall-to-wall, throbbing mass of bodies. They writhed synchronously around us as we pushed our way in shoulder-to-shoulder. The level of undress was truly impressive; a handful of whorish angels, devils, and fairies teetered toward the bar in stilettos, sucking in their torsos and puffing out their twinkling cleavage. Much to my dismay, I spotted Anna among them. She had shed her usually wholesome ensemble for a staggeringly sparse angel getup with the requisite halo and wings. She overdid it on the makeup, the push-up bra, and the heels, and looked well on her way to ending up as some accountant’s midlife crisis. I grabbed my brother by the arm and he steered us to the other side of the bar where we were supposed to meet his crush.
As we waited, I recognized the song being sampled in the remix that thrummed from the speakers and smiled to myself. Daniel tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes later, and I followed his eyes until he smiled at a petite blond girl dressed in overalls with fake greasepaint smudged on her face. She mouthed or screamed my brother’s name—it was impossible to tell. The music swallowed up every other sound in the space.
Her short hair bounced and swayed under her chin as she made her way over. When she reached us, Daniel leaned into her ear to introduce us.
“This is Sophie!” he shouted.
I nodded and smiled at her. She was cute. Daniel did nicely.
“Nice to meet you!” I screamed.
“What?” she screamed back.
“Nice to meet you!”
The look on her face revealed that she still couldn’t hear me. All righty then.
The music changed to a slower rhythmic beat and Sophie started to pull Daniel away from me and into the throng of people. He turned to me—for approval, I assumed—and I waved him on. When he was gone, though, I began to feel awkward. I pressed into the bar that wouldn’t serve me, with no discernible purpose or reason for being there. What did I expect? I came to dance, and I came with my brother who was meeting someone else. I should have asked Jamie. I was stupid. Now I had no choice but to just plunge into the crowd and start gyrating. Because that wouldn’t be weird.
I lolled my head back in hopelessness and leaned back into the dull edge of the metal bar. When I righted myself, two guys—one in a Miami Heat jersey and the other in what I hoped was an ironic portrayal of a perpetually shirtless, moronic reality TV person—made eye contact. Completely not interested. I looked away, but in my peripheral vision saw that they were edging themselves closer. I gracelessly darted into the crowd and only narrowly avoided being elbowed in the face by a girl attired in what could only be described as “slutty Gryffindor” apparel. So wrong.
When I finally reached the far wall, my eyes swept the crowd, absorbing the near-naked bodies and the costumes and trying to see if I recognized anyone not heinous from school.
I did.
Noah was fully clothed and, as far as I could tell, uncostumed. He wore dark jeans and a hoodie, apparently, despite the heat. And he was talking to a girl.
A stunningly beautiful slip of a girl, all legs crowned by a tiny, twinkling dress and fairy wings. She looked oddly familiar but I couldn’t place her; she probably went to our school. Noah listened raptly to whatever she was saying, and a semicircle of costumed girls surrounded her; a devil, a cat, an angel, and … a carrot? Huh. I liked vegetable girl, but the rest of them I hated.
At precisely that moment, Noah’s head lifted and he saw me staring. I couldn’t read his expression, even as he leaned over to the fairy and said something in her ear. She turned to look at me; Noah reached out to stop her but not before my eyes met hers. She giggled and covered her mouth before turning back around.
Noah was making fun of me. Humiliation spread from the pit of my stomach and lodged in my throat. I twisted around and pushed my way through the bodies that had encroached into my bubble of personal space. As badly as I had wanted to come tonight, I now wanted to leave.
I found Daniel and screamed in his ear that I wasn’t feeling well and asked Sophie if she could give him a ride back. Daniel was worried; he insisted on driving me home but I wasn’t having it. I told him I just needed to get some air, and eventually he handed me the keys and let me go.
I bit back my embarrassment and hurried toward the exit. As I pushed through the throng, I thought I heard my name shouted behind me. I stopped, swallowed, and against my better judgment, turned around.
No one was there.
21
BY THE TIME I ARRIVED BACK AT THE HOUSE, I’d composed myself. Coming home with a tear-streaked face, and without Daniel, would not help my situation with my mother, and we were just starting to make some progress. But when I pulled into the driveway, her car wasn’t there. Neither was my father’s. The lights inside the house were off too. Where were they? I went to the front door and reached out to unlock it.
The door swung in. Before I touched it.
I stood there, my fingers mere inches from the handle. I stared, my heart in my throat, and raised my eyes slowly up the length of the door. Nothing unusual. Maybe they just forgot to lock it.