Or I could take Clayton up on his invitation.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m tugging a fleece over my head and smudging on some makeup, digging a flavored ChapStick I tossed twenty minutes ago out of the garbage and slicking it over my lips. I pause in front of the mirror in the hallway, twisting my reddish hair around my fingertips in the hopes of it looking more “effortlessly curly” and less “before picture in a Frizz Ease ad.”
“Not getting any better than this,” I mutter, and thump down the stairs into the living room.
My parents are sitting on the sofa watching a CSI rerun on cable, which is frankly exactly the kind of programming I might have joined them for on a normal evening. Nonna is parked in her easy chair, working a cross-stich that reads Smash the Patriarchy in precise, scrolling script. “You ready?” my mom asks, sliding her feet out of the slippers she’s wearing with her jeans and button-down and glancing around for her sneakers.
I shake my head. “Can we rain-check for tomorrow?” I ask, suddenly embarrassed. “Turns out I actually…have plans.”
“Of course.” She tilts her head to the side, curious. Nonna has looked up, interest written all over her face. “You going somewhere?”
“Some people are hanging out,” I explain, trying to sound casual. “I thought I might stop by.”
Mom stares at me for a long moment, like I just told her I was going to go hang gliding or model for a photoshoot involving bikinis and muscle cars. “Okay,” she says finally, remembering herself. “That sounds great. You need a ride somewhere?”
I shake my head. “I can walk.”
“Your phone is charged?”
“Yup,” I promise.
“And you’ll call us if anything—”
“Mom!” I laugh a little. “I’m on the fence about this anyway, okay? Don’t make me rethink it any more than I already am.”
“Go!” Nonna hollers, waving her cross-stitch at me like a flag at a drag race. “Be young. Have fun.”
I wave goodbye, bounding out the door and down the front steps before I can talk myself out of it. I don’t have to look back to know both she and my mom are watching me from the front window. I try to ignore them, and the butterflies in my stomach, as I head down the street in the pink summer twilight—toward my first high school party, and whatever might be waiting for me there.
I’m a little more than two blocks away from Spencer Thomas’s house when the doubt in my head gets loud enough to drown out even the cheeriest of Paula Prescott’s frothy affirmations. Holy crap, what am I doing? Am I really just about to stroll into this stranger’s house—completely solo—like I’m a person who belongs there in any capacity whatsoever? I might as well walk into freaking Mordor. I should just turn back now. If I hurry, I can still catch the end of CSI.
But then I remember: Clayton invited me. And I’m a yes person now.
I’m just rounding the corner onto Lilac Court when someone calls out behind me: “Yo, Jacobs!” I turn around to see Ethan Watson, another soccer player, trailing me onto the cul-de-sac. “Oh,” he says, cocking his head when he realizes it’s me instead. “Sorry. Thought you were someone else.” His gaze flicks to Spencer’s house, then back at me. “You going to Spence’s?”
This is it. No turning back.
“Um…yes?” I try.
I’m fully expecting a weird look or even a flat-out “Why?” but Ethan only nods. “Sweet,” he says, falling into step beside me. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a University of Michigan hoodie, an immaculate pair of sneakers glowing almost blindingly white against his dark brown skin. “Hey, good job yesterday.”
“Thanks,” I say, surprised.
“I would have fully shat my pants if I had to get up and talk in front of all those people.” He opens the front door of Spencer’s house with easy authority, ushering me grandly inside. “After you.”
I’ve actually been to Spencer’s house once before, to work on a group project sophomore year—a health class presentation on the dangers of smoking for which I put together a fifteen-minute PowerPoint that was, in retrospect, possibly a little overwrought. “You don’t think this is…a lot?” I remember Spencer asking, squinting at my laptop screen as Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” played mournfully over pictures of calcified lungs and regretful-looking emphysemics. But you know what? I got us all an A.
In any case, the house is somehow even bigger than I remember it: new construction with a massive foyer and tons of windows, the rooms all flowing graciously into one another instead of crowding in at weird angles, like they do at my house. I stand awkwardly at the foot of the curving staircase for a moment, my eyes raking over the huge abstract paintings and the space-age chandelier. Ethan’s halfway into the dining room before he realizes I’m not behind him. “Yo,” he says again, pulling a six-pack of Bud Light out of his backpack. “You coming or what?”
I blink. “Yes!” I repeat—it comes out easier this time—and follow him toward the back of the house.
Ethan leads me through the kitchen, which is straight out of a home renovation show, and down a carpeted staircase into the giant basement. I came here fully anticipating a rager, a hundred strangers doing kegstands and throwing up into potted plants like something out of the opening montage of a ’90s teen movie, but I’m surprised to find only about a dozen people scattered throughout the cavernous space, which boasts at least two bedrooms plus a living area with a leather sectional the size of an aircraft carrier and an entire second kitchen. Tricia Whitman and a couple of her friends cluster around the pool table, where Spencer and Trevor Cheng are arguing mildly over which one of them is cheating. Sierra Woodfolk and Joanna Green are making pizza rolls under the broiler while a couple of soccer bros play Warcraft on the big-screen TV.
In theory, the whole scene should ease my raging anxiety—after all, isn’t a chill, mellow hangout easier to navigate than the alternative?—but instead I just feel like I’m sticking out way more than I would have at Bethany’s last night. These people are all friends with each other. And I’m…
What, exactly?
I glance around for Clayton—I’ve been glancing around for Clayton since the second I walked through the door—but I don’t see him. I’m wondering if maybe I should look upstairs, if maybe there’s another group of people around here somewhere, when James Chemaly ambles over in basketball shorts and a T-shirt, red plastic cup in one hand. “Yo, E!” he says to Ethan, his vowels just a little bit loose. He looks at me, squinting a little. “And…other girl.”