by Siera Maley
“I’m not totally sure who’ll be there,” I said, dodging the question. “I just know it shouldn’t be too many people. Want me to text you when I figure out when I’ll be leaving?”
“That’d be perfect.” She finished up and then stood behind me, her hands on my shoulders, and looked at me in the mirror. She gave a reverent sigh. “You really have grown up, haven’t you?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It happens.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I reached for my makeup to distract myself.
“I remember when you were six years old and I let you see my makeup for the first time.” She smiled at the memory and squeezed my shoulders affectionately. “You hated everything about it. Especially the smell. You told me you’d never wear it and you couldn’t be convinced otherwise. You were a stubborn little girl, that’s for sure.” She laughed a little and I blinked at her in the mirror, wondering if this was meant to be some kind of twisted allegory.
“I guess some things change,” I said at last. “Not everything, though.”
“Of course not. You’ll always be my little girl.” She kissed me on the top of my head. “You look great, honey. Have fun tonight.” She departed, and I frowned as I started putting my makeup on.
Chelsea texted me midway through. “Just to warn you, there are a couple of crashers who just showed up. Gina has an ex who’s kind of obnoxious and he brought a friend and a bunch of beer.”
I checked the time on my phone and made a mental note to leave soon. Chelsea’s house was supposed to be just a fifteen-minute drive away, but I didn’t want to arrive much later than everyone else.
“Why not tell them to leave?” I asked her.
“They threatened to call more people.”
I winced at my phone. “Ah. That sucks. I’m sure it’ll be fun anyway, though.”
“Hopefully.”
I let her know that I was leaving soon, finished getting ready, and then sent a quick picture of myself to Skylar before I dug through my closet to find the shoes I wanted. In the process, I stumbled across an old shoebox buried in the corner. It was covered in dust and labeled, quite vaguely, “Zoey’s stuff.”
Curious, I reached out for it and propped the top open. Inside were several keepsakes dating back as far as early elementary school. The CD Chelsea had made me was in there, along with a few Valentines cards from the 3rd grade, a necklace I’d been given for my birthday by an old neighbor who used to babysit me, and a small coin my aunt had brought back from a vacation to Singapore.
I took the coin out and turned it over in my hands, thinking.
I hated Skylar’s bracelet idea, truthfully. I hated the idea of handing that box over to Chelsea and her pulling out some piece of jewelry I hadn’t even been the one to pick out, and I didn’t trust that she’d like it. And if she didn’t, I didn’t want to have to watch her pretend to. And given that she’d known a ring would’ve been coming on too strong, I was surprised that Skylar had thought a bracelet was much better.
The coin had its downsides, too, of course. I wasn’t sure if Chelsea still collected them. It was a regift. And I wasn’t sure if it fit any of Skylar’s criteria. It didn’t seem intimate at all, and it certainly wasn’t romantic. But something told me it was still the better idea.
I put the shoebox back but kept the coin, then pulled my shoes on and went to my purse, where I’d placed the box with the bracelet. I took out the box, removed the bracelet from inside, and replaced it with the coin. Then I left the bracelet in the drawer of my nightstand.
I was ready to go.
It wasn’t difficult navigating to Chelsea’s house. It was difficult to force myself up to the front door, and then to ring the doorbell.
I took in my reflection while I waited for someone to come to the door and quickly fixed my hair. My phone buzzed in my purse and I knew it was Skylar asking if I’d arrived yet. I took it out and turned it off. Skylar and I had a plan, and I knew what to do whether she blew up my phone all night or not. There was no use in having distractions.
Tonight I was supposed to get Chelsea to kiss me. I wasn’t sure how to do it, or when, but Skylar had given me the go-ahead to try. I was nervous, truthfully. I wasn’t sure if I was ready. Talking to Chelsea and knowing in the back of my mind what Skylar wanted me to do to her was one thing. Kissing her—getting the ball rolling—was another. I still wanted to put it off until I got answers. That was my true goal tonight: to get some insight into what Chelsea had been like in her past relationships. Maybe there’d be some sort of clue in her room or her friends would let some anecdote slip. I was determined to leave her party tonight knowing something.
Chelsea was the one to come to the door. Despite her initial pushback about having alcohol, she was holding a beer when she approached.
“Hey!” she greeted me once she’d pulled the door open. She went in for a hug and I obliged, already feeling nervous. She smelled like lavender.
I followed her inside and she explained, “You’re the last one here. Mostly, we’re sticking to the basement, but if you want snacks or anything, feel free to raid the pantry.” She gestured toward the kitchen as we passed it. “We have stuff to eat downstairs but I’m sure the guys will tear through it.” I looked around as we went, slowly recalling the layout of her home. I didn’t remember much about anything that wasn’t the basement, but I spotted a door that was open just a crack and was able to see a twin bed inside. That had to be Chelsea’s room; she didn’t have any siblings.
We went downstairs and I began to hear music playing, and then several people talking and laughing. Something made of glass hit the floor and thankfully didn’t break, and there were a few curses. Chelsea turned to sigh at me and I forced a smile.
Chelsea’s basement had a short hallway at the bottom of the stairs, and when we turned the corner it opened up into two large, open rooms. One housed a flat-screen TV, the same two couches and chair that I recognized from five years ago, and a coffee table with two different video game consoles atop it and an iPhone dock. The other contained a series of stools that surrounded a pool table, where a boy with dark hair bent over, stick in hand, and sent the cue ball flying across the table to break up fifteen others. Another boy stood across from him, waiting for his turn.
On the couches, a third boy and one of the girls I recognized from the party were playing some racing game while her girlfriend, another boy, and a girl I didn’t recognize watched from their seats.
“Guys, pause for a second,” Chelsea said to the couch group, and the video game on the television froze. One of the boys moved to turn the music down, and then everyone turned to look at me as Chelsea announced, “Everyone, this is Zoey. Zoey, these are my friends Ian,” she pointed to the boy on the couch who wasn’t playing the racing game, “Gina,” who had her legs on her girlfriend’s lap, “Xander and Marie,” the two playing the game, “and Sabrina,” the girl I didn’t recognize. Then she gestured haphazardly to the two boys playing pool. “And that’s Cole and Leon, the two asses who weren’t invited.”
The one she’d pointed to as she said “Cole” turned and grinned at me. Behind him, Leon looked me up and down and wiggled his eyebrows, then took a long swig of the beer in his hand.
“So this is girl we’ve been hearing so much about,” said Gina, grinning and taking her legs off of Marie’s lap so she could turn to get a better look at me. “You were right, Chels. She’s hot.”
Marie smacked her on the arm as Chelsea mumbled a quick, “Shut up,” and I tried not to notice her face turning red.
“What?” Gina said to Marie. “I didn’t say she was my type.”
Xander, thankfully, promptly unpaused the game and distracted Marie, and Ian hopped up from the other couch and went to go retrieve a beer from a mini-fridge by the television.
“Want one?” he asked me, reaching for another.
“Sure,” I agreed, just to have something in my hands. Chelsea looked uneasy and Ian sighed at her.
“Relax, Chels.
We’ll clean it all up. Your parents will never know.”
“Just don’t lose track of it, please,” she said to me, and I nodded and accepted the can from Ian. “This is the first time they’ve ever let me have a party without them here. That’s why I’ve kinda been freaking out.”
“Well, you can relax, ‘cause this thing’s been a total snoozer so far,” called out Cole. He took another whack at the cue ball and it nearly popped off the table.
“I’m having fun,” declared Xander without taking his eyes off of the television. Cole ignored him.
“What would you like to do, then?” Chelsea asked Cole. I got the sense that she didn’t really mean it, but he was already answering by the time I’d found my way to a couch and taken a seat next to Sabrina. She shot me a smile and quietly complimented my top, and I smiled back, thanked her just as quietly, and relaxed a little.
“Easy,” Cole was saying from the other room now. “Let’s spice it up a little. Play some Seven Minutes in Heaven, or Truth or Dare, or something. That closet you’ve got is perfect for making out in.”
“Are we twelve?” Gina shot back. “God, and you wonder why I dumped your ass freshman year.”
“Scared seven minutes is all it’d take to send you running back?” Cole asked her. Marie paused the game and started to lean forward like she wanted to stand, but Gina put a hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.
“Can’t you get him to leave?” I heard Marie hiss.
“He only says that shit because he knows it bothers you,” Gina replied in a whisper. Louder, to Cole, she said, “We’ve been done for three years and you’re still hanging around. I think it’s pretty obvious who’s pathetic here.”
“It’s Chelsea’s party,” Ian interjected before Cole could reply. “She should decide what we do.”
“I might have a game,” I said then, trying to sound a lot more confident than I felt. Everyone turned to look at me, and I saw Chelsea raise an eyebrow. I’d planned this beforehand, in case the opportunity for it ever arose. “It’s called Paranoia.”
“Never heard of it,” said Xander. He seemed to want to go back to playing video games.
Chelsea seemed curious, though. “What are the rules?”
So I explained them. Everyone would sit in a circle. We’d start by selecting one person, who’d then ask the person on their right a question about the group by whispering it into their ear. Something like, “Who’d be most likely to skydive?” or, more interestingly, “Who would you most expect to be in jail in three years?” The answerer would announce the name aloud. And then a coin would be flipped. Heads, the question remained a mystery to all but the asker and the answerer. Tails, the asker would announce what the question was.
Though a couple of the boys seemed reluctant, Ian insisted that it would be fun the more we all drank, and so everyone who didn’t already have a beer grabbed one, and we took our places in a circle. I made sure to sit to the left of Marie. I’d planned for her or Gina; whichever I could get to first. Ian sat on my other side; he’d be the one asking me questions. Xander dug through his wallet and then held up a quarter, asking, “Who should go first?”
“Zoey can go,” Chelsea suggested, “since it was her idea.”
“Meaning I ask her a question?” asked Ian. Chelsea nodded. “Alright, let me think of something good.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “Okay, how sexual are we getting here, exactly?”
“Go easy on her, Ian; she’s new,” insisted Marie from my other side. Cole and Leon were already laughing across from me.
“Alright, alright,” said Ian. Then he leaned in close and whispered, “Worst first impression of the group, go.”
“Cole,” I answered immediately, thankful for the softball. A few of the girls laughed, aware that it likely meant something negative, though Cole looked smug. Xander tossed the coin and it landed on heads. The question would remain a secret.
“That’s alright,” Cole said when he saw the result. “I’m pretty sure I know what the question was.”
“You know I’m a lesbian, right?” I asked him, which sent a clearly already tipsy Gina into a giggling fit. I saw Chelsea laughing and resisted smiling myself.
“So he asked you who you’d go straight for,” Cole declared, admittedly recovering more gracefully than I thought he would. And then it was my turn to ask Marie something. I already had my question ready.
“Who goes through boys or girls the fastest?” I whispered to her.
She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then answered, “Leon, maybe? Yeah.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed with that answer or not. I didn’t know Leon well enough to know if it made sense, or what it said about Chelsea, so it didn’t really tell me anything. But on the other hand, the fact that she hadn’t said Chelsea seemed like a good thing.
I got lucky with another heads, and we continued around the circle. Gina answered that she’d most want to enter into a platonic life partnership with Chelsea, Xander answered a mystery question with “Ian,” Leon said he’d want to be stranded on a deserted island with Cole, and Cole said he’d be most willing to lick the bottom of Gina’s foot (but not before he’d looked at Leon, bewildered, and declared, “Gross, dude!”).
And then it was Cole’s turn to ask Chelsea something. She scowled at him after he’d finished asking his question, then answered, “Zoey and…Sabrina.”
The coin was flipped. It landed on tails and Cole grinned as Chelsea sighed and shook her head.
“Threesome choices,” he explained.
Sabrina gave a start. “Me? Why?”
“You’re the only straight girl!” declared Chelsea, who seemed to have recovered once she’d realized that I wasn’t embarrassed. “You’d be most likely to stay out of it.”
That earned a lot of laughter, and Gina cut in, gesturing to herself and Marie, “Hey, what about us? You don’t think we’re faithful?”
The game went on for a while. I learned a little bit about everyone as we went. Ian was a stoner who seemed to have other friends he was closer to beyond Chelsea’s group, but he was nice enough. Marie and Gina were kind of wild, which had already been obvious from the party. They were also both bisexual and both deeply obsessed with each other, with the biggest difference between them being that Marie was quieter and a little bit more of a nerd. Xander was a nerd, even at birth. His parents had named him after the Buffy character. Sab was apparently the shyest of the group, according to Leon, and was going to go to college to be a fashion designer. Cole headed Brooks’ yearbook club and thought it made him way cooler than he actually was, and Leon had a part-time job at his dad’s auto shop and couldn’t keep a steady girlfriend to save his life.
About Chelsea, I learned that Xander thought she’d be most likely to graduate with the highest GPA, and that Ian thought she’d make the best doctor of the group, which was surprising to me, because although she’d always done well on our joint projects in middle school, I’d never heard anything from Skylar about Chelsea being smart or having good grades, and that seemed like something they’d have bonded over. I asked Marie who she thought was the biggest heartbreaker of the group, and again she said Leon. After that, I gave up, worried she’d see a pattern in the kinds of questions I was asking.
And then, just a couple of questions before we called it quits, Gina answered “Chelsea” to a question Marie asked her—an answer which seemed to confuse even Marie—and the coinflip gave us tails.
“Who falls for people the easiest?”
Chelsea laughed and gave Gina a strange look. “What? I do not!”
Gina shrugged and didn’t defend her answer. I didn’t know what to make of their exchange, and no one else seemed to, either. Soon after that, the game ended.
We’d all been drinking for a while now, so after we dispersed, Gina placed her phone on the iPhone dock and cranked the sound up. Then she pulled Marie close, spun her around, and they danced—not intimately, but like giggly, drunk frie
nds. Xander turned on the video game again and Ian stepped outside to smoke. I settled next to Xander to watch him, and Chelsea joined me on my other side a moment later, pressing her lips close to my ear. “How are you doing?” she asked me over the music. “Are you having fun?”
“Of course!” I replied, nodding emphatically in case she couldn’t hear me. I turned my whole body to face her as I added, “Everyone’s really nice!”
She gave me a look and tilted her head in Cole’s direction. He was leaning against the wall in the hallway, downing yet another beer.
“Almost everyone,” I amended, even though I didn’t really have a huge opinion on Cole yet, or at least didn’t dislike him as much as everyone else save Leon seemed to. He seemed like your standard asshole teenage boy, but I was sure there was some history there I wasn’t privy to based on how Gina and Marie acted around him.
“I’m really glad you came,” she said next, and leaned in close again. I felt nervous talking to her like this and hated that I did. I wasn’t used to being nervous.
“Me too,” I said, and when she looked confused and motioned to her ear, I leaned in closer, misjudged the distance, and brushed her ear with my lips as I repeated, “Me too. Your basement still looks the same.”
I felt her let out a small laugh, but she seemed distracted as I pulled away from her ear. She put a hand on my leg and then it was her turn to touch her lips to my ear. I knew I was blushing. “It’s really hard to talk in here.”
I licked my lips as she pulled away to look at me. I saw her eyes drop just a little lower and felt the bass from Gina’s music rumble in my chest. I knew she was looking at my mouth.
A drunken Sab stumbled into Xander next to me and sent him careening into my back, and I threw my hands out to catch myself, planting them on Chelsea’s thighs.
“Sorry,” I said to her, way too quietly for her to hear, even as close as our faces were. Then I added, hastily, “I have to pee!” This time I was sure that she’d understood.
Taking my purse with me, I stumbled my way off the couch and over to the hall that led upstairs, recalling that there wasn’t a bathroom in the basement. I had to pass Cole to do it, who glanced at me as I walked by, and then looked past me to the couch.