In Your Words

Chapter One

The echoed beat of New Order's 'Blue Monday' fills my ears and pulsates through muscle and flesh. The Edinburgh air is earthy and bitter - certainly not pure and fresh like the cool, clean sea air I'm used to in Brighton. People my age stumble around me, some draping themselves on one another like a vulture feasting on roadkill and others stand in gaggles, roaring with laughter and slopping their cheap lager.

This is a party I tell myself.

I'm only in the hallway for three and a half seconds before I'm approached by a guy that looks as if he's never seen a girl before in his life. I would deem myself exciting and new but taking one scan to the right of me to the lounge full of girls that seem to look and dress very similar and noting his droopy eyes that tell me he's ten cans too far gone, I know that all I am to him is fresh meat.

Nobody knows me here.

I am a complete stranger that has walked into someone's party in a city so far from my own just to feel some new-fangled sense of belonging. But it's not all as exciting as it sounds. I haven't come to Edinburgh (the capital of possibly the bleakest island in the Western world with its enormous cliffs and ancient architecture) by any choice of my own. We've all come here – my entire family. Mum, Dad, Summer, Oscar, Swift the dog and me.

What an exciting and intriguing adventure to begin a new life, I thought sarcastically the very moment I stepped foot on a head-achingly windy and steep street.

If only it was that simple.

"I don't know you." He slurs, stating the very obvious. He's a lot taller than me, towering over me with a stare both terrifyingly intense and distantly vacant.

"Don't you?" I smirk.

I'm getting off on this, aren't I.

He looks bemused.

"Whose friend are you?" He drones in his thick Scottish drawl.

"Yours, if you want."

I have no idea why I find myself flirting so uncontrollably, he's a million miles away from the type of guy I'd ever be remotely interested in. But I'm thrilled by my own brave audacity. I've walked into a party knowing I'm the exotic stranger and I can't help but feel a delicious cocktail of nerves and thrill. He's wearing a stained and un-ironed Joy Division t-shirt with Hawaiian shorts and smells of stale Doritos, cheap lager and Lynx Africa. I watch him think for a second, narrowing his bloodshot eyes. Then he straightens his spine and raises his shoulders, smiling.

"I'm down with that."

I glance past him, down the hallway. This house is certainly impressive. It clearly belongs to a rich parent – fairly new money I would guess. Judging by the expansive range of current reg' Range Rovers out on the driveway and the occasional worryingly delicate antique vase in the hallway, the parents had no idea this party was going to happen.

The length of the hallway stops about twenty foot ahead of me where the enormous kitchen begins and a fresh pack of marginally less intoxicated teens gathers.

"You got any pills?" the guy says.

Little did I know he was still staring at me whilst I assessed my surroundings.

"No, sorry. I don't deal."

"Oh." He replies, looking even more puzzled than he did before. "Then why are you here alone?"

I smile again and move past him towards the pack of people residing in the kitchen.

"Hey!" he calls after me, "You didn't tell me your name!"