AUGUST 23RD : THE PARTY
I wasn't the partying type. But for this occasion, I allowed my best friends to drag me along with them, and I had managed to majorly fuck up everything in a matter of minutes.
The enormous house reeked of all varieties of body odor and the hardwood floor was sticky in most places from all the drinks spilled. I didn't know whose house we were in this time, but if I had to take an educated guess, I'd say it was probably one of Rodger's football buddies that always threw parties like this before each school year started. At that point, I had been effectively berated by both of my friends and my t-shirt was sticking to my body in every uncomfortable way imaginable.
Despite the discomfort, I continued scanning the crowd of teenagers for a shock of electric blue hair. I'd bumped into her earlier and spilled half of my beer on the ground, the other half down her shirt. Now, with a stinging cheek and a shirt smelling like whatever fruity alcoholic beverage she'd been sipping from, I was determined to find the girl and apologize.
I wished I hadn't recognized her. It might have made it easier to apologize and accept the surprisingly hard smack to the face. But I did, inevitably, recognize her. The reason we'd even collided in the first place was because I'd recognized her from across the room and I was trying to find my over to her to make sure. Of course, she was right under my nose and I nearly ran her over, effectively ruining both of our outfits for the night.
It was a big party in a big house with a lot of big people that weren't fond of being pushed out of the way. The struggle to find the top of her head was an intense one, despite my numerous attempts at saying, "excuse me, please," at different volumes and levels of assertiveness. Three more drinks were spilled down the front of my t-shirt that had started out white but was starting to look really gross tie-dye.
I headed upstairs where the music was substantially less deafening and the crowd wasn't as dense, defeated. I was in search of a bathroom and finding it was a lot more difficult than it should have been. The house was huge so cavernous and never-ending that I was starting to wonder if rich people even used bathrooms.
The fourth door I tried opened into a master bedroom, empty except for one person and lit only by a bedside lamp.
Shut the door and walk away. God damn it, just shut the door and walk away. Don't be a fucking creep, dude!
My hand tightened around the doorknob and I was sure that my feet were moving to back out of the room, but my body wasn't going anywhere. The girl looked up from the drawer she was currently rummaging through and rolled her eyes so hard that I thought they might fall out.
"Oh, great! It's you." She picked out a black t-shirt and shimmied it over her head. "Are you armed? Did you bring another drink with you?"
Heat flooded first over my cheeks and then washed down my entire body. I knew what she was asking and I knew she mocking me, but I was still stuck on words, so I just started asking questions I already knew the answers to.
"Is this your house?"
"Obviously not. Not my bedroom, either." She straightened the t-shirt she'd just pulled on. It was too long for her and it covered her jean shorts. It probably belonged to the father of whoever's house we were in. I shuddered. "Can I actually help you with anything, or were you just coming to spill something else on me?"
I ran a hand through my hair and cleared my throat, trying to work through the whirlwind of information that was coming back to me. God, had it really been two years? How could it have been two years? "I... Um—"
She scoffed, her hands settling at her hips. "Do you have a name?"
"Scout." The answer always came out automatically, and upon seeing her single raised eyebrow, I decided to revise it. "It's... Andrew, actually. Scout sticks better, I think. At least that's... That's, um, what my friends tell me."
"Mm."
"How old are you?" Again, more questions I already knew answers to. Could anyone really blame me for being so flustered? She was beautiful in that edgy, potentially dangerous way. She always had been.
"Nineteen." She sighed, clearly uninterested. My silence wasn't doing anything for her or for the conversation. "Sorry, is that off-putting? Do you only go for seniors in cheerleading uniforms?"
"Wh—I—"
"That would be a joke, Andy. You're fine. Your friends on the other hand—"
"You know my friends?" She made something closer to eye contact and I immediately looked down at my shoes. There was a sticky sheen of someone's drink across both of them. At least they were black. Still, they were easier to look at than seeing what she thought about Keith and Rodger.
I knew what she thought about them because I knew what I thought about them. I wasn't proud to have been attached to them for the past four years, but they were two people I could never separate myself from. She seemed to hesitate, and I almost looked back up.
"Of course. Every time I see them they make their presence... known."
My hands went to my pockets and my eyes remained on my soiled shoes. It was tenth grade all over again and I was suffocating. I couldn't make eye contact, couldn't speak in coherent sentences. I couldn't even apologize for the actions of the two people closest to me because I knew exactly what she meant by known.
Keith and Rodger were notorious for harassing girls. It was a sort of badge of honor amongst them and their other... friends. I looked up to see her pushing her hair to one shoulder before flipping the mass of it behind her. I glanced around the room, becoming more and more aware of the fact that I had no idea whose house this was or whose bedroom I was trespassing in.
"Well." I jumped at her voice, but still didn't look at her, like maybe I'd turn to stone or something. "It's getting late and I have some business I need to attend to."
"Yeah. Yes, of course." I nodded stiffly and moved out of the doorway and into the hall.
She slid past me in a cloud of nicotine that lingered even after she reached the stairs. Any other time, I found the smell of cigarettes grossly unflattering and it turned my stomach. But for some reason, with Junior, it made me want to follow after her, see what "business" she had going on. I could take some guesses, but there was no way to be sure. There never was.
Instead, I went back to my friends. I didn't ask what I missed and they didn't fill me in, hadn't even noticed I'd been gone. The rest of the night went by in a blur. All I really remember is crawling into bed, sore and smelling of a gross variety of liquor and smoke.
And I couldn't think of a single thing except her.
I was getting ready for my final year of high school. I'd started out the night ecstatic, excited—ready for whatever the future would bring even though I knew I was terribly unprepared. And, by the end of that night, I was lying in bed, restless, feeling the same way I'd felt on my way out of sophomore year: confused, lost, and endlessly fascinated by a girl who I'd only ever known as Junior.
