The front door opened and a wave of noise crashed out to meet us. The Castle was crammed with people, some drinking, some dancing, sparkling in their party clothes. (The boys didn’t look too terribly different from usual—only better dressed, better groomed—but the girls were hardly recognizable. Night had fallen, and with it came short slinky dresses and dark mascara and satin lipstick, transforming them from mere girls to a coven of bewitching nocturnal creatures.) The welcoming roar washed over us; hands reached out to snatch our clothes and drag us helplessly inside.
Two kegs sweated in the downstairs bathtub, tightly packed in with ice and bottles of water. Stacks of Solo cups cluttered the kitchen counter, while handles of cheap rum, vodka, and whiskey were arranged in a bowling-pin pyramid on the stove (mostly paid for by Meredith’s exorbitant monthly allowance, with more modest contributions from the rest of us). The good stuff was stashed in Alexander’s bedroom. As soon as we arrived, Filippa nipped upstairs and returned with a Scotch and soda for each of us. Immediately thereafter, James and Alexander both disappeared, sucked away into the crowd. Most of the theatre students had assembled in the kitchen, where they talked and laughed twice as loudly as they needed to, still performing, observed by less obnoxious onlookers from the art, language, and philosophy departments. Choral and orchestral students eager to criticize the music selection and dancers eager to show off had filled the dining room, which was so poorly lit that they either had only a dim idea who they were dancing with or simply didn’t care. Music thundered through the floorboards, every bass note a tiny earthquake, the footstep of a slow-approaching dinosaur. The surface of my drink shivered and vibrated until Filippa threw a handful of ice in it.
“Thanks,” I said. Her expression was distant, distracted. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, with a pained sort of smile. “Got a wicked bruise but not where anyone will see.”
“You look good to me,” I said, lamely. She wore a short blue something that showed off her long legs. Mercifully, she wasn’t too made-up and still looked human.
“It happens every now and then,” she said, exhaling, allowing herself to relax. “Where’ve you been?”
“Outside. Alexander rolled you a spliff if you want it.”
“God bless the filthy hedonist. Where is he now?”
“On the dance floor,” I said, “prowling for first-years who don’t know they’re gay yet.”
“Where else?” she said, and left the kitchen, deftly weaving between the people at the counter fighting to get a hold of the rapidly diminishing mixers. I took a long drink of Scotch and soda, wondering how long the cross-fade would take. Colin and several other third-years paused on their way out to the driveway—where people would be smoking and chatting and waiting for their eardrums to stop throbbing—to congratulate me on a good show. I thanked them, and when they filed out, Colin hovered on the threshold. I bent my head close to his to hear him.
“Three-One went off the rails today,” he said. “Everything all right?”
“I think so,” I said. “Pip got knocked around a bit, but she’s tough. Have you seen Richard?”
“He’s upstairs, throwing back whiskey like it’s keeping him alive.”
We shared a look that was one part disdain, one part concern. We both remembered all too well what had happened the last time Richard drank too much.
“What about Meredith?” I asked, wondering if she might be a contributing factor to Richard’s foul mood, or if James and Alexander and I were solely to blame.
“Holding court in the garden,” Colin said. “She hung all the lights out there. I think she’s watching to make sure no one tears them down.”
“Sounds about right.”
He grinned. (Though we had originally compared him to Richard, the comparison didn’t stick. He played the same bombastic roles, but offstage his cockiness was endearing more than infuriating.) “Want to come out for a smoke?” he said.
“I’ve had one, but you should find Pip in the yard.”
“Great,” he said, and stepped out after his friends. I turned to scan the kitchen, wondering where James had gotten to.
For maybe an hour, maybe longer, I wandered from room to room, conversation to conversation, accepting drinks and congratulations with polite disinterest. The music in the dining room was so loud I could hardly hear what anyone said. The dull red light and constant surge and sway of bodies exacerbated my state of intoxication, and when I began to feel dizzy, I ventured out into the driveway. As soon as I set foot outside, the same flirtatious girl from Halloween spotted me. I did an abrupt 180 and escaped around the side of the building to the garden.
The garden—less an actual garden than a small plot of grass bordered on three sides by trees—wasn’t as crowded. People stood in clumps of three or four, talking and laughing or gazing up at the string lights, which had been painstakingly stretched from tree to tree. The yard twinkled as though several hundred obliging fireflies had decided to attend the party. Meredith sat on the table in the middle with her legs crossed at the knee, a drink in one hand and a toothpick speared through two olives in the other. (She, apparently, was sipping martinis while everyone else made do with well liquor and Coke.) I hovered uncertainly at the edge of the yard. We hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since the dressing room incident, and I wasn’t sure where we stood. Before long I found myself staring at her legs. Her calves tapered perfectly to slender ankles and black pumps with five-inch heels. I considered the possibility that she was sitting on the table because she couldn’t stand on the soft ground without sinking into it.
When she realized I was there she smiled—without resentment, it seemed. (The boy beside her—he played cello with the orchestral students, though I didn’t know which year he was—carried on talking, unaware that her attention had shifted.) A little ripple of relief went through me. She turned toward the cellist again but looked down into her drink, stirring slowly with her olives.
I was about to go back inside when I felt an arm slide around my waist.
“Hello, you,” Wren said, with the cuddly, kittenish affection she always displayed when she’d been drinking. She was wearing something pale green and floaty that made her look like Tinker Bell.