“And another thing!” shouts a voice from above, but then we never get to hear a word about the other thing, because a moment later the owner of the voice—an editor on the student paper named Stephanie—falls down the stairs, her body tumbling between the couples’ arguments, then landing, really impressively, with most of her beer unspilt. She goes for the extra point by proceeding to take a sip from her cup while waiting for someone to help her up, so she can tell them the other thing.
One unexpected thing about being a little bit drunk at a party in my parents’ house while they’re out of town is that it turns me into a neurotic mother hen whose mind is filled with guilty, fearful thoughts and imaginations of the most awful possible outcomes of the night. Thoughts like how this is maybe a terrible idea that will only end in tears, with the house burning to the ground, and Callie the bride in a shotgun wedding. Or like realizations about how much you hate the idea of disappointing your parents, or being disappointed in yourself for worrying about disappointing your parents. Or about how you could just walk away into the night, right behind the beer-soaked a cappella guy, and start a new life somewhere in, like, New Jersey, where nobody would ever go to find you, because who would ever want to go to New Jersey? But of course I won’t go to New Jersey—Callie would hate it there, and we’d have to find her an all-new doctor and an all-new Jane—so the only thing I can do is say to myself, “Be cool.”
A kind of quiet LCD Soundsystem song comes on, Dave’s favorite, and I know he must have plugged his music into the speakers. The varsity lacrosse goalie tries to change the song, and Dave runs over and tackles him. I go to high-five Dave and I kiss him on his neck, which is no longer helmeted, and the song picks up right where it left off. It isn’t quiet anymore, and as it crescendos I try to press myself against him as closely as I can, and everyone is dancing.
In between two weirdly synchronized dancers, I spot a kid sitting on the floor by the fireplace reading Infinite Jest. Ugh, how pretentious. Not to be reading Infinite Jest, I get that that book is important to a lot of people, but to be doing it at a party is just . . . ugh.
“Stay home next time, kid!” I shout at him. He looks up at me and then around the room, like he’s startled, like he didn’t realize there were people here and a party here and that these things were literally all around him, and then goes right back to his place in the book.
For some reason the sight of this guy doing something so out of place at a party causes the mother hen mode to kick in again, and now instead of focusing on dancing with Dave, I’m trying so hard to ignore the constant rattling off of things that could go wrong. Shut up, Lorna! We’re having fun! So much fun! Fun like . . . damaged-furniture and cracked-picture-frames fun. Or shameless-strangers-going-upstairs-to-hook-up-in-my-parents’-room fun, or in-my-room or in-Callie’s-room fun. I keep dancing, but my heart’s not in it, because now all my worries are focused squarely on Callie, even though I know she is still in the greenhouse, with Mimi. But I know I’m still going to go check on her soon because now all I can think about is what if some jerk like Adam or Rick or Dan—oh God, please not Dan, who has not once in his life brushed his teeth—makes a pass at Callie, and then Callie freaks out, and then Adam or Rick or—ugh, God, please not Dan—calls her a freak, or freaks out, or other worse things than that? Or what if some other, even more massive jerk tries to get aggressive with Callie, Callie who can’t consent to anything in any way and maybe doesn’t even understand at all the sorts of things being asked of her . . . and then I stop thinking about anything at all, because I see Mimi on the other side of the room, dancing close with her crush when she’s supposed to be with Callie.
I stop dancing and shout in Dave’s ear. “Where the hell is Callie?”
“Huh?” says Dave, not hearing over the noise on the dance floor, which has gotten wild and crowded.
“Callie!” I scream, trying to make my way toward Mimi.
“Oh, shoot, I forgot to tell you,” says Dave, pulling me out of the living room and into a quieter hallway. “She’s with Mark! Mimi told me to tell you, but I totally forgot. I’m so sorry, Lorna.”
I sigh and press my palm to my racing heart, feeling a little relieved but not quite calm yet. Mark is a very nice guy, and since he brought the booze and is the only one here who’s technically an adult, he’s more or less our chaperone tonight.
Dave goes to get me some water, and then the song changes to the highly danceable anthem everyone’s been belting out of their cars all summer. The dance floor is really flooded now, louder and sweatier than I ever thought my parents’ living room could get.
And then I hear someone shout: “WHOA, WHAT THE HELL!”
And the whole night is shattered.