Trapped in Forever

11 ~ The Angels of Pity and Sexiness

A/N: The first brand new chapter :) It might not be as exciting as you hoped but the next chapter brings a big twist. And Orion. And Juliette and Grady? If you noticed like a sudden change in the writing here it's because I wrote a coule paragraphs of this chapter, went on hiatus for around 6 months, and then started back up :P Anyway, I really, really, really hope you enjoy it and thanks so much to Noelle for the banner! I love it so much!

Somehow, in the midst of stumbling college students, excited and drunk high school students, and pounding music that felt as if it were vibrating my brain, and bright flashes of rainbow colored T-shirts being flown and tossed left and right before the now shirtless person would jump onto an oak coffee table in the center of the room and start making thrusting motions (a guy, sounding panicked and anxious, kept shouting “Get off the furniture! Now!”), I ended up being pulled up a large, granite stairwell, fingers tightly grasping my wrist and turning the tips of my fingers purple, with two people, whose names I barely caught, following us.

                                                                          . . .

I stood there, in the middle of the doorway, squeezing my fingers tightly into my palm while they were tucked into my jean pockets, staring down at the tiger knitted across my chest, the girl with the bright blue eyes’ shoes out of focus and kicked out, black nail polish adorning her toes to match her heels and top. After making that comment about my sweater, she still stood there; eyeing everyone who walked past us and into what I guessed was the living room, sometimes smirking at built guys, pants hanging low on their hips, struggling to walk a straight line. And then, having five minutes of silence from both of us, she piped up, “I’m sorry but that sweater really is ugly.”

I blinked, feeling the heat in my cheeks rise up again after I thought I was back to normal (pale, freckled, plain.) “Yeah,” I replied dully, “you said that already.”

“I mean,” she said, ignoring this, and I let out an inaudible sigh through my nose, turning away from her and the smile tugging on her lips and instead turning to look out at a lampshade, titled way over to the right, a gray and white sock hanging off the side above a crumpled, but standing, can of beer, “who let you dress like that?”

After hearing a small, but definitely there, giggle escape her lips, plump and glossed bright red, I couldn’t help but mumble, “Maybe my grandmother.”

I didn’t expect, or want, her to hear that, but as soon as the words rolled off my tongue, the giggling stopped, so abrupt that for a moment I thought she might have died or something. I thought for a moment that I offended her, somehow, but when I turned to look at her, a sly smile was plastered on her lips. “What?”

I shrugged, uneasily, as a heavy guy in a pair of large Tighty Whities and combat boots (and nothing else) burst through the double wide doors, shouting something incoherently, with his stomach and thigh flab jiggling and bouncing as he ran through the hallway, revealing an unbelievably hairy backside, and in front of me, the girl cringed and shook her head. “You said it looks like something a grandmother knit so . . .”

One perfectly plucked brunette eyebrow (arched against her white, ashen skin, completely pimple and blemish free) inched closer to her summer sky blue eyes, mirroring the reflection of the ocean, and her lips, glossed and coral pink, pressed and wrinkled together into a face that looked similar to someone puckering, waiting for the kiss. “I know,” she muttered, eyes still squinted. “Who are you again?”

The scent of a cigarette wafted past me in a faint cloud of gray smoke, twisting and coiling in the air like a weightless, transparent snake, as someone wearing something slick (like the silk knockoffs Roxanne began wearing after her father declared over meatloaf that they were on a budget a few hours before she snuck out through her bathroom window, picked up Orion, and swung around to my neighborhood and tossed tiny pebbles against my window, mouthing the word fireworks up to me—when Orion offered to grab us a couple of popsicles, dusting the grass off of his bare knees,  she leaned over and said the word budget like she did Mom) brushed past me, muttering something that almost sounded like an apology. I turned in the direction of whoever past me, just as distraction from answering the girl with perfect eyebrows, but the person was already merging into the crowd of swaying bodies and bobbing heads, shouting out the lyrics to a Taylor Swift single about some boy, making her cry, as if that’s the worst a boy could ever do.