"Hey, honey! Do you come here often?"
I stared at the fifty-something drunk frat guys and sorority girls that twirled around and made out at the party that our target was at. In the middle of the day. In the summer.
Apparently our target, Alex Number 2, was taking summer classes and had a few preseason football games to play in over the summer, not to mention the grueling hours of conditioning and training he had to put in to be able to even play in the games. That was the reason Alex Number 2 didn't get to go home for the summer. We got all of this information from the completely wasted idiot who we stood by in the kitchen, the one who was currently hitting on me.
"She's not interested, buddy," Original Alex told him, stepping closer to me as if to prove the point that I was off limits.
I barely registered their conversation, however. I was looking over the drunk flirt's head, trying to get a good look at all of the people, trying to find the target.
We didn't have any problems getting into the party. Everyone was plenty drunk by the time we'd gotten here, though it was still early in the morning. Who starts drinking this early? I asked myself. Oh, yeah. College kids.
Something else that surprised me, though it probably shouldn't have: this house belonged to Alex Number 2. It was huge, had a pool in the back. The whole nine yards. Everything came together when the drunk flirt told us that Alex was filthy stinking rich, the main reason he got away with big ass parties like this.
I looked at my Alex after Drunk Guy told us this information, which we weaseled out of him pretty easily.
"Daddy's boy," Alex murmured to me.
I nodded, smiling. Getting him back to Toronto was going to be fun.
"Thanks for your help," we told Drunk Guy, trying to move past him to venture deeper into the party.
We almost made it. "Hey, wait. So you two are long lost friends of his?"
I looked at Alex, being as our cover was his idea.
"Yeah," Alex said with a friendly smile. "We go way back. I'm talkin' pre-k."
"Oh, no shit?"
"No shit at all," Alex confirmed, slapping the guy's hand.
I rolled my eyes and went on, making my way through the people. Every few feet, someone bumped into me, making me remember why I hated people my age.
"Watch out!"
"What are you doing?"
"Hey!" people exclaimed as I pushed past them, looking for Alex Number 2. I desperately wanted to pull my stun gun from behind my back and pop every single one of these rats. But I didn't. It stayed uncomfortably in place between my lower back and my jeans, along with a loaded pistol. In order to remain calm, I focused on which gun was which.
"Hey, baby! Want a drink?" Stun on the left, pistol on the right.
I saw a girl look at me, then whisper in her friend's ear. Though it wasn't a whisper. "I would't dare come to Alex's house in jeans and a t-shirt." Stun on the left, pistol on the right.
"No one informed me that there would be stuck up bitches here."
Okay. That one did it.
I turned around to the guy who'd made the comment, a guy with dark hair, a little older than me, who was surrounded by a few other frat guys.
I put on my nicest I-actually-want-you-to-drop-dead smile. "I'm sorry?"
The guy, who was sitting, stood. He was taller than me, making me want to shrink back. I stood my ground, no matter how uncomfortable I felt.
"What's your name?"
"El." I don't know why I didn't hesitate in telling him my name. Maybe it was due to the fact that if, by the off chance, Alex Number 2 wasn't here, he might be able to help us find him. It wasn't looking good so far, as neither Alex Number 1 or I had run into him yet.
"That's a nice name."
You bet your drunk ass it is. I'll have to give the compliment to my parents if I ever see them again, I thought. "Thank you. I'm sure you have a nice name, too?"
"Drew. Why are you here?" Drew asked me.
I gave him a duh look. "To party. Obviously."
"Let's go get you a drink, then!" he yelled, and his comrades yelled with him and raised their cups, spilling beer all over the floor.
I held back a grimace that tried pushing its way onto my face and let Drew take my arm and lead me to the kitchen. My Alex was no where in sight, and neither was the first annoying drunk flirt.
Drew handed me a cup, and I pretended to drink. The tart smell of beer that filled the air already was intensified when I put the cup to my mouth, and it was so disgusting that I wanted to punch something.
"Why are you here?" he asked again. He wasn't too drunk yet, but he was getting that way.
I pretended to drink from the cup again, leaning against the messy kitchen counter. "I want to loosen up, I guess. I need to find a new group of people that, I don't know, make me feel alive."
Drew spread his arms wide, spilling his beer. "I can do that, baby!"
"Really?" I asked with fake interest, which, surprisingly, was extremely hard to do. Sometimes I wasn't so great at poker faces, so it took a lot to hide my disgust.
Drew nodded, slammed his drink on the counter behind me, and took my hand. His hand was slippery with beer, but I reluctantly held to it, following him through the crowd of people. I felt embarrassed for some reason, but the feeling turned to humor when we passed Alex Number 1 on the way to go up the stairs.
He smiled at me, raised his eyebrows. "I'm getting lucky," I said to him. No one heard me due to the music and the fact that most of them were a little more than buzzed.
And I did get lucky. I was so frazzled by being around such annoying people that I had been itching to use one of the weapons tucked into my jeans for the better part of the twenty minutes we'd been here. As soon as Drew closed the door to one of the large bedrooms, leaving the two of us alone, I pulled the stun gun from behind me. Both of the guns, stun and pistol, looked like regular, black glock pistols that the police used, so it was tricky for normal people to tell them apart.
Maybe Drew had had several run ins with the police before, which contributed to the terrified look on his face.
Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. Drew stood a few feet away from me, hands raised. I stood a few feet from him, the gun between us.
"On the bed," I said, waving the gun towards the large bed.
"Oh," Drew raised his eyebrows. "I see how this is going," he purred.
Oh, great. He thinks the gun is fake. Which, technically, it was half fake. It was a gun, it just wouldn't kill him. Unfortunately.
When he got to the bed, he decided to take his shirt off. In the back of my mind, the Asian guy appeared. Drew's body didn't hold a candle to the Asian guy's body. The thought nearly made me laugh, and in a split second I thought back to the note I left for the Americans in Mark's Organic Foods. I hoped they got the note in time.
Of course they'd get to the note in time. They reached us in Tibet in no time at all. In fact, they were probably pulling into Mark's parking lot right now, wondering what the hell I was doing acting like a fourth grader who was passing top secret notes in class.
Drew began taking his pants off, snapping me from my thoughts.
"Whoa, whoa. What are you doing?" I asked him.
He stopped, one pants leg already off so that one side of his red boxer shorts showed. "What you should be doing!" he said, like I'd asked what two plus two was. Like I was an idiot.
"No, I didn't follow you up here to do anything. And this is a real gun."
He scoffed. "Yeah, right."
I was getting angry. I had the feeling that I always felt like people in frats and sororities thought they were above everyone else, like they deserved more in life because they were Greek. It made me even more upset that this guy thought he was doing me a favor by sleeping with me.
I held the stun gun in my left hand and pulled out the pistol with my right hand. The pistol had a silencer on the end, which I was extremely thankful for.
I aimed the pistol at the pillow a couple of inches away from Drew and shot.
The sound of the bullet cutting through the air between us made Drew jump and skitter backwards across the bed, fall off, and take cover on the other side. Unless he was going to hurl himself out of the window, he had no where to go. I kind of wished he would have hurled himself out of the window. It'd be interesting to know if a Greek could fly. They all seemed to think they had magical powers, anyway. Drew needed to be dragged off the pedestal he was perched high up on.
"L-look," Drew stammered, peeking up at me from the side of the bed, "I don't know what you want, b-but... Please don't shoot me!"
"Shut up," I told him, annoyance lining my tone. I tucked the pistol away behind me and kept the stun gun out. I held the gun up to Drew as I walked slowly to the bed to peer over the other side at him. "This is a stun gun. More like a dart gun that shoots electrical pins. In all honesty," I told him with an admiring tone, picking up the pillow that had a bullet hole in it now, "I'd probably want the bullet. The darts will knock you out cold for days."
"What do you want?"
"Where is Alex Number 2—" I caught myself. "Alex Whitman. Where is Alex Whitman?"
"I-I don't know... football practice, maybe?"
I gave him a stupid look. "What? You mean to tell me that this idiot is at football practice? While a party is going on at his house? And he's not—" I stopped myself, placing my index finger and thumb on my nasal bridge. "Where would football practice be?"
He spoke quickly. "The stadium, two miles south. Can't miss it. Please let me live!"
I nodded, the same time I heard the door creak open behind me. I didn't have to turn around to see who it was.
I also knew that we were making good time. There was no reason I couldn't play with this fool.
"Let you live?" I asked incredulously. "Let you live? Ha!" I pointed the gun at him again. Although I didn't have an amazing opening at him due to the fact that he was crouched behind the other side of the bed like a pansy, I still got a good shot at his meaty shoulder.
And down he went.
"Did you have fun?" Alex asked from behind me as he walked in, shutting the door behind him. "You two getting married? Do you think he'd let me be the best man? And, more importantly, can Piper be the flower girl? It'd be hilariously cute to see her in a dress."
"Ha. Joke." I walked around the bed, trying to figure out what to do with Drew's unconscious body.
Alex followed. "I heard the bullet. Didn't know how sexy this party got. Figured it'd be worth it to check things out."
"Please," I told him, my hands on my hips. "Disgusting. Should we just leave him here?"
Alex plucked the dart from Drew's bare shoulder. I noticed that Drew still had one pants leg on and held back my laughter.
Alex looked at me, pointing the dart at my face. "You know what would be fun? If we stuffed him under the bed. He wakes up in a week and a half, everyone thinks he put himself into some kind of alcoholic coma. We read the story in the newspaper about how the Delta Gamma Psi Beta Kappa Lambda Chi chapter of the Omega Douche Fraternity got shut down due to the fact their members drink too much, don't put their education first, jeopardize their future, blah blah blah..."
I laughed, helping him shove Drew under the bed. "I like the way you think."