by Kiley Roache
“He knows someone in it though?”
“Yeah from high school. His old prefect.”
“Oh.” She considers this, turning to look at him again. She snaps her head back toward me. “Prefect?”
I am about to say Yeah, I know! Like Harry Potter! but she charges forward with the conversation.
“So he went to boarding school? Do you know which one? Exeter? St. Paul’s?”
I shake my head. “Sorry, I honestly don’t know.”
She nods, lost in thought again. I look at the wristband fastened where my watch usually is, and then glance at the doorway where people are still petitioning to get on. This is so weird.
I was never popular in high school, or middle school, for that matter. I had some friends for sure, people I cared about and spent time with. Someone to talk to during class or sit with at lunch and hang out with a couple times a month. I think I was liked well enough. But I was no homecoming queen. I didn’t play the cool sports or go to the cool parties. My friends and I had movie nights and got pizza in town like once a month or so; we didn’t sneak out or throw parties in our basements or caravan to music festivals or crash parties at nearby colleges.
Honestly, I was fine with that. I liked that my friends were nice people, and while it might have been fun to do some of the things the cool kids did, I didn’t ever feel the desire to be “cool.” I knew it was totally arbitrary, why some people were considered popular and others not. It was bullshit.
But there was a tiny part of me tonight that felt a thrill when I got to walk past crowds wanting to get into the house and on the bus—wanting to go where I was going. Part of me felt proud when Colleen thanked me for helping her get here too.
I hated that I liked it.
“Sara, you want to help with this?” I look up to see Real Life Percy Weasley—Connor—holding out a bottle of champagne. Excitement surges through me.
“Yes! I’ve always wanted to do that!”
He hands me the bottle. “Okay, you take the little cage thing off, yeah like that, and then twist the cork and pull it out—but don’t aim it at anyone.”
I begin to twist the cork and it shoots off just as the bus jolts forward. I squeal as champagne spews into the party bus full of party people, who laugh and smile at me. So many people are looking at me, and they are not staring, not wondering why this girl is talking so much in class or bossing around the group project. They are looking at me like I am pretty, like I am fun.
I take a sip of the champagne right out of the bottle. It tastes great, like Christmas dinner and New Year’s Eve and weddings. Not sour and bitter like the other alcohol I’ve tried.
It’s much easier to drink when you aren’t cringing at every sip, and by the time we get to the city, I find myself laughing more easily and swaying with the motion of the bus.
We finally arrive at the club and disembark. I thank the driver as I wobble down the stairs, not sure if it’s the champagne or my shoes making it such a problem. I reach for Robbie’s arm, to balance myself.
“Are you all right?” He turns to me with concern in his eyes.
I swallow and nod, suddenly speechless.
We line up at the club. Colleen and Braden somehow make it to the front of the line right away, but Robbie and I hang back, not wanting to cut anyone. We get our hands stamped by a large man in a tight black shirt and head inside. The club is rapidly filling, and colored lights sweep over the dim downstairs dance floor. Across the room is a bar and a DJ stand that is currently emanating a remix of a Drake song while the DJ holds a headphone to his ear with one hand and pushes buttons with the other.
Above my head, a sort of balcony circles the room, accessible by a sweeping staircase at the edge of the dance floor. On the balcony are big leather booths and tables with sparkling chandeliers hanging above them.
People rush by me, some heading straight to the dance floor, others swarming the bar.
I see Braden across the room, and the flash of a credit card being handed over before a bouncer moves to let him upstairs. Colleen is on his arm, and following close behind are a number of girls in similarly tight, short dresses. I guess she’s done with me then. It stings, but what did I really expect, given how she’s treated me these past two weeks?
“Look at Braden,” I turn to Robbie and say.
“Yep.” He shrugs. “Classic. Want to get a drink?”
I follow him through the crowd circling the bar, everyone trying to get the bartender’s attention. He’s a young guy, not much older than us, in a gray T-shirt and tattoos down his arm. Like most bartenders I’ve seen, he’s quite good-looking; I wonder if that’s a requirement for the job.
Then again, most bartenders I’ve seen have been on TV.
I watch him pour translucent gold liquid into a line of shot glasses. Tequila. My stomach turns over just thinking about the smell. I wonder if it’s bad to order wine at a club like this. Or champagne, for that matter. Most of the people around me seem to be taking shots.
“Do you think they have a cocktail menu?” I ask Robbie.
“Hmmm.” He examines the crowd in front of us. At the other corner of the bar, two girls lean forward, extending fistfuls of cash toward the bartender as they try to get his attention, half their chests hanging out of their dresses. “I’m gonna go with probably not.”
The bartender looks toward us as he moves one of those silver shaker things. Robbie waves his hand and smiles. The bartender nods and holds up one finger.
“Oh jeez,” I say. “Decision time. What should I get?”
Robbie laughs and the sound makes me smile. It makes me proud that I am the reason for the laugh, even if I am sincerely a bit worried about ordering. “Well, what do you want?”
“That’s the thing.” I feign an exaggerated look of distress. “I don’t know!”
“Do you want shots? Or a G and T, maybe a Long Island Iced Tea?”
“Iced tea?” I am a huge fan of Arizona cranberry iced tea; I would love an alcoholic drink that delicious and refreshing.
“Yeah, there’s like five different kinds of alcohol and—”
“Oh.” My eyes go wide. “Definitely not that.”
Suddenly, the bartender is in front of us. “What can I get you?” And just like that, time is up. My heart starts to race. It’s like walking into a class and realizing there’s a test you haven’t prepared for. Truly a nightmare scenario.
“I—uh—” I stammer.
“I’ll have a beer.” Robbie swoops in to save me. He names some brand.
The bartender reaches for an amber bottle and pops the top off with expert grace before handing it to him.
“And you?”
I keep my voice as low as I can, considering the blaring music. “Do you have anything that has alcohol but doesn’t taste like it does at all?”
He laughs, but not in a mean or mocking way. More like he thinks I’m a lovable idiot. “I got you.” He starts to fill a glass with ice.
A few seconds later, he hands me something pink and sparkly that costs twelve dollars. I take a sip; it tastes like something they might have served at Libby Lu back in the day. Worth every penny.
Robbie and I lean against the bar, sipping our drinks and watching the revelers. Across the room, I spot Braden and Colleen on the balcony, leaning against the railing and looking down at the dance floor. He taps her shoulder and points. I follow his hand to see a waiter walking toward them with a large bottle of alcohol on a silver tray, a sparkler burning from the top, sending glittering embers into the air, floating for a moment before delicately burning out.
Her eyes light up as Braden gestures to the waiter to hand the sparkling bottle to her. She kisses Braden’s cheek before taking it.
“Do you think she’s with him because he got us in?” I ask.
“What?”
I
turn to Robbie, who’s staring at the DJ stand. “Them.” I nod my head toward the lovers on the balcony.
“Oh. Maybe.” He examines them. “Or maybe it’s because his watch is worth more than our tuition.”
I try to focus on the hardware on Braden’s wrist from across the dance floor. It looks nice, but I can’t imagine how a watch could be that nice.
“Maybe it’s his charming personality.” I take a sip from my drink.
Robbie laughs.
I move the glass away from my lips. “He can be kind of funny though, in a sarcastic way.” I watch him talk to Colleen. “That is, when he’s not making me pull my hair out.” I turn back to Robbie. The colored lights of the club dance across his face in the shadows. I never really noticed how nice a jawline he has. I briefly wonder if he’s ever thought about modeling, or if anyone has ever approached him to sell products on his Instagram. I worry in my tipsiness I’ve been looking for too long.
I set down my glass, now just ice, on the counter.
“Another?” the bartender asks.
“Sure—actually, make it two,” I say, still not knowing what it was. I turn to Robbie. “On me, for being the only teammate I can tolerate.”
“Thanks but...I can’t drink that,” he says.
“Why not? It’s delicious.” The bartender sets two cocktail napkins and then two beautiful pink concoctions in front of us.
“All right.” Robbie sighs and picks up the drink. He takes a sip and raises his eyebrows. “You know, masculine pride is bullshit anyway.”
One frosty pink drink later, I am trying not to blush as people start to grind on the dance floor a few feet away. I look down at the bar. At my hand, which is just inches from Robbie’s. Goose bumps tingle up my arm. I don’t know if it’s the drink, or seeing him outside the library, but I find myself making an effort to remember that Robbie is just my friend and class partner, and it would be inappropriate to hold his hand.
“People are so wild.” I look up. Robbie has evidently not been thinking about, or looking at, me. I turn to see what he is talking about. The dance floor is full of couples and clusters of friends.
A girl in a pink dress so cute that I want to ask her where she got it is dancing with her friends when a dude walks up behind her and grabs her waist. But instead of slapping him in the face or walking away, she giggles and starts grinding on him.
I turn to Robbie and say, “I wish there was a way to meet someone that wasn’t so bullshit. Somewhere besides a party.”
He shrugs. “There’s online dating.”
“Yeah, but, like, how do you know someone’s not a serial killer?” I sip whatever drops of my drink are left among the ice at the bottom of the glass.
“Hey, maybe that could be our start-up,” he says. “A serial-killer-free dating app.” He waves his arm, as if to paint a picture of this visionary idea.
“Ha-ha, quite funny.” I smile and look away, not wanting to get into a conversation about the project, even a facetious one.
Across the dance floor, a large bouncer moves the red velvet rope for a moment to let Braden and Colleen down while fending off the requests of the crowd haggling to get upstairs.
They walk toward us.
“Hey, guys,” Braden says as soon as they are close enough for us to hear. He then turns to Colleen, “Looks like the bathroom’s right over there.”
She smiles and looks past him to me. “Hey, Sara.” She wiggles a hand at me.
I wave back halfheartedly before she disappears toward the ladies’ room.
“Women,” Braden says, like I’m not one. “This girl acts like she can’t make it to the shitter without me.”
“You’re disgusting,” I say.
He doesn’t care. “May as well order while I’m down here.” He waves at the bartender. “Save on tip.”
“I’m pretty sure you still tip if you order at the bar,” Robbie says.
“Why?” Braden asks, not looking up from the bottle service menu. “They barely do anything. Just hand it to me.”
Braden leans over the bar and inquires about ordering another bottle. I overhear the guy saying it’ll be an extra fifty for the sparkler, and Braden countering that the upcharge was only twenty before.
“It’s all so made up,” I say in Robbie’s ear. “Who can go in the house, who can get on the bus, who is a VIP. People are idiots.”
“What’s that?” a voice says.
I turn to Braden. A disco light flashes behind him, shining through the edges of his hair like a halo. A halo on the devil, how ironic.
“I was, um, saying—”
“People aren’t stupid,” he interrupts, seeming to have actually heard me just fine. “They just know the game. You get to sit at the cool kids’ table if you bring the class cookies. You get to go to the prom after-party if you buy the limo. Bottles and tables at clubs, the red rope—they’re just the grown-up version,” he says. “People know there’s value in being wanted, and that it’s the kind of value you can count in Benjamins.”
A waiter taps him on the shoulder, and he signs a bill after barely glancing at it. “Yes, the boundaries are arbitrary,” he says. “But they are real. People sell them.”
Before I can say anything in reply, Colleen is back and they are gone.
“I mean, kind of,” Robbie says to me as they walk away. “They’ve monetized around status but no one has really sold it directly. They sell hair products and perfume and expensive clothes to make you seem wanted, but no one has formalized selling, like, acknowledgment of social status directly.”
“What would that be? A sticker you can put on your forehead, saying you’re a ten?”
He smiles and my heart flutters. “Something like that.”
I just shrug and sip my new drink.
* * *
The sun burns my eyes when I open them the next morning. I guess I forgot to close my blinds when I got home last night. I sit up only to realize I also forgot to change into my pajamas; I’m still wearing the tight black dress. At least I remembered to take off my shoes, even if they are just tossed on the floor and not placed neatly in their spot. In fact, I think I may have taken them off on the walk back with Robbie and Braden, who ended the night with us since Colleen went home with Connor. I shudder when I think about how dirty the sidewalk must have been, but at the time my drunk brain could only think about the pain of my heels.
I rub my eyes, and my hand comes away smeared with black eyeliner. Great. I hope my skin doesn’t break out because of this disruption in my cleansing and moisturizing routine.
I peel off my dress and throw it in the bright pink hamper, then pull on athletic shorts and a Warren sweatshirt. I place my shoes under my bed quietly, so as not to wake the still-snoring Tiff, and head to the main room to make coffee.
The two girls from the other room are early risers, so I’m expecting to see at least one of them when I open the door.
Instead, I see Robbie sitting on my couch, dark circles under his eyes, typing rapidly into a MacBook. Heat rushes to my face, and I cross my arms. My sweatshirt is thick, but I am not wearing a bra. Plus, I’m a wreck. Not that I should care; it’s just Robbie. Robbie, whose eyes look dreamy and romantic, even though he is looking at code on his computer. I don’t know what’s getting into me lately.
“What are you doing here?” He lives in the same dorm as me, so I know how he got in the building, but what’s he doing in my room?
He looks up. “Oh good, you’re up. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“How did you get in here?”
“Your roommates let me in,” he says, a little more duh in his voice than I’d prefer. “I didn’t want to bother you, since you had quite an intense night. So I thought I’d just work until you woke up.” He says all this while still typing, only slightly slower than before. “But I wanted to catch y
ou as soon as you did, so I thought I’d work here.”
I pad across the room and take the spot next to him. “Work on what?”
“This,” he says, turning the laptop toward me. I examine the code. The style is probably less elegant than what I would write, but it’s easy enough to read.
“What exactly did you do...?”
The front door swings open before I can finish my thought, and none other than Braden Hart saunters in, carrying a tray of coffees and a box of doughnuts.
“We formalized it,” he says, holding out a latte to me with that stupid, cute smile plastered across his stupid face.
Chapter Eight
Roberto
“What does that even mean?” Sara looks at me and runs a hand through her blond hair, which is still slightly disheveled. Even with sleep in her eyes and last night’s makeup on her face, she looks beautiful.
She turns to Braden, who is still holding the coffee out to her. She rolls her eyes but takes it.
“Well,” I say. “Last night, after Braden and I walked you back from the frat house, we got to talking about all that social status stuff you and I discussed at the party and—”
“It’s a dating app!” Braden’s eyes glow. “But instead of being for creeps and losers who can’t get dates in the real world—”
“Braden!” Sara looks appalled.
I shake my head and reach for my laptop, hoping that if I show her more of the code she will be less appalled by the way he is pitching it.
“Sorry.” He shrugs. “Instead of being like that, the selling point is that the most desirable people in the area are on it.”
“How?”
“Well, Sara, I’m glad you asked.” He sounds like he’s hosting an infomercial. “Like on Tinder, users of this app can swipe yes or no for the profiles of other users, but unlike Tinder, the rating doesn’t just affect whether they match with the person, but contributes to an overall score, which determines someone’s overall rating—platinum, gold, silver, or unrated.”