IN NO TIME, the party had taken on a life of its own. A few dozen people were packed into the living room, draped across the couches, clustered around the alcohol, leaning against every available wall space. Hip-hop blared from the TV, which Liv had hooked up to her laptop, and Eunice, Lolly, and Maple were dancing awkwardly in the space where the coffee table had been, swaying and half-heartedly ass-bumping each other while trying not to spill their drinks. In the kitchen, a bunch of art kids were sitting on the counters, playing some budget version of beer pong where they tried to toss grapes into cups full of malt liquor; the floor was already covered in a sticky film of booze and dirt. And Liv’s room had the door closed, with a towel stuffed in the crack underneath. She’d taped a sheet of paper outside, hand-lettered with the words smoking lounge in Sharpie. The Os had winky faces and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.
You and Ethan had been the first ones to show up—you took pity on him and brought him back to your house for dinner since he lived so far away and didn’t have time to go home first—but then it had started filling up and Liv had gotten distracted and you’d taken over door duties, hugging the girls and high-fiving the guys, showing them where to dump their coats and pointing them toward the makeshift bar. Since you and Liv were busy being Mr. and Ms. Hospitality for the night, that meant that I, by default, was Ethan’s new best friend. We stood by the pretzels on the kitchen pass-through, talking about his favorite subject.
“She’s just so good,” he said, staring longingly at the hallway that Liv had disappeared down with Dave a few minutes earlier. After all of that cheerleading, she’d barely given me a chance to say hello to him before she’d whisked him away to introduce him to “the people you NEED to know.” Given the fact that Liv hadn’t brought him back yet, it seemed like I didn’t fall into that category. OK, maybe that was unfair—I knew Liv was already drunk, and she always bounced around during parties, trying to talk to everyone—but being flat-out ignored was slowly curdling my pent-up anxiety into anger. I sipped my warm Coke and nodded, more to the song that was playing than anything else.
“She’s got this . . . depth, you know?” Ethan went on. “And real vulnerability. You can’t teach that stuff.” He tipped back his cup and swallowed, wincing. Behind his glasses, his eyes watered.
“Do you even like that?” I asked.
“Gin was Tennessee Williams’s drink,” he coughed.
“And Snoop Dogg’s,” I said. Ethan pretended not to hear me.
“Did she say anything?” he asked. “About the audition?”
“Not really.” I looked across the living room to where you were hanging out with Theo and Dominic, some of the other ballet boys. I tried to send you a telepathic SOS.
“Because we’ve never really worked together as director and actress,” Ethan said. “We’ve just been friends, so this will be like a whole different”—he took another painful-looking sip—“relationship.”
Just then, Liv and Dave came back into the living room. She was beaming and a little off-balance, while he was grimacing self-consciously down at the floor, in that way people did when they were moving through a crowd and just wanted to get the hell out without anyone noticing. Everyone’s eyes followed him, and some people openly pointed and whispered as he passed by. This was the first time a lot of the Janus student body was seeing Dave in the flesh, so it was kind of like we were all on safari, catching a thrilling glimpse of him in the wild—wearing a knit cap indoors, no less, like some lost hipster DJ.
I felt bad for Dave, and not just because of the hat choice. No doubt Liv had promised him it would be an intimate gathering (“a select group of dope people,” my ass), and now she was parading him around when he would probably rather be standing unobtrusively by the food, like any normal person.
As Liv started talking to one of Jasper’s friends—she’d shunned him but invited his crew, of course, since otherwise no one would report back to him on how good she looked—Dave glanced up and locked eyes with me, and I gave him a half-smile of commiseration. I knew from experience what it was like to follow Liv around all night. I was debating whether or not to take matters into my own hands and beckon him over when Ethan started up again.
“Roth’s pretty good, too. He told me he hasn’t done anything lately except some failed pilots and commercials, but he’s got this really understated”—gulp, wince—“gravitas. I don’t know why he hasn’t been cast in more movies.”
I watched Dave’s face as Liv thrust him upon a clique of drama girls, who smiled so hard it looked possible their cheeks might rupture. He seemed tense and uncomfortable, like he didn’t belong. Or didn’t want to belong.