by James Rice
It was even more packed than I’d expected. People were squeezed into every corner, slouched in every doorway, perched on every step of the staircase. They laughed, smoked, swigged various coloured liquids from various cans and bottles. They smelt of beer, cigarettes, cherries and sweat. You were nowhere to be seen. It dawned on me that I was overdressed: the girls were dolled up – tight-fitting dresses, the usual Vulture hair and makeup – but the boys were all wearing T-shirt-and-jean combos. A few had styled their hair with gel but that was the only evidence of any pride in their appearance.
I stepped back out into the front garden. I inhaled a couple of lungfuls of icy night air. The beer-buzz seemed to be wearing off and my hands were trembling, rattling my backpack, clinking the bottles inside. I rested the backpack on the doorstep and dragged off my Christmas jumper. I untucked my shirt and ruffled my hair. One of the year tens raised his head and asked if I had a glass of water. I told him I didn’t. I had beer, though.
‘That’ll do.’
I handed him a bottle. He gave me a thumbs up and hugged it to his chest. He lay his face on the gravel. I didn’t want to disturb him with the offer of a bottle-opener so I turned and stepped inside the house again.
I squeezed my way in through the hall crowd. At first the mass body heat was a relief from the cold but it took mere seconds to increase to that uncomfortable neck-sweat stage. I apologised pretty much constantly for the amount of bodily contact I was making but I don’t think anyone could hear me. Miss X was still playing, a new song now, the phrase ‘Pleaser teaser’ or possibly ‘Teaser pleaser’ repeating over and over and over and over and over leaving the partygoers with no communicatory option but to lean in and scream into one another’s ears. All around me were voices but I couldn’t make out a single word they were saying. I searched for your face, the red curls of your hair, but the hall was so dark and the crowd was so vast and I couldn’t find you.
I pressed on to the kitchen. I figured it might be quieter there, I could cool off, catch my bearings, put my beers in the fridge. Only the kitchen was even livelier than the hallway. The fridge was open, its contents spread across the table and floor. Several foodstuffs were smeared up the walls – ketchup, dog food, something white and gloopy, possibly mayonnaise or fresh yoghurt. Most of the crowd congregated at the entrance to the conservatory, surrounding some fat kid who was standing on the pool table. Ian was over by the sink with Angela, pouring green liquid into two eggcups. They linked arms and downed the contents – Angela coughing, Ian laughing and slapping her back. Miss X was still playing, yet another song now, the chorus: ‘Foot fetish / Fetish feet / Give me something good to eat’.
The fat kid on the pool table was Eggy, one of the Oxbridge kids from my class. He was shouting something but it was impossible to distinguish over the music. He lifted an egg high above him, attempting that trick where you squeeze it between your thumb and finger to demonstrate the strength of the shell – only each time Eggy squeezed the egg burst in his hand, spilling yolk down his arm, splattering his shoes and the felt of the pool table. There were stacks of egg boxes piled beside him. People were laughing, shouting things over the music like ‘Go on, Eggy!’ and ‘You can do it, you smelly bastard!’ and a variety of other encouragements. Eggy kept trying, egg after egg after egg, angrier and angrier at each pop and splatter.
I pressed on to a section of unsplattered work-surface in the corner, over by the recycling box. I took a beer from my bag and cracked it open. I sipped, thumb-plugging the bottle to keep it from foaming. The beer was warm. It tasted like fizz. It made me thirsty, which is the opposite of what a beverage should do.
There were two partygoers sitting on the work-surface beside me. Hawaiian shirts, three-quarter-length trousers, sandals. One of them was bald but for a single strip of black hair, running from his forehead to the back of his neck. The other was blond, hair down to his shoulders.
Halfway through my beer I began to make out the odd stray shout of their conversation. They were discussing Lucy Marlowe. The near-bald kid was questioning her attractiveness. He thought her new boobs were too big, they looked out of place. He said Lucy was too short to pull them off. The blond kid disagreed, in his opinion there was no such thing as ‘too big’. I couldn’t help but glance over, following their conversation. The blond kid noticed my glances. Each time he’d catch my eye I’d look away, back over at Eggy and his egg-popping.
Then the blond kid slid from the work-surface, leaning over to scream in my ear.
‘Do I know you, man?’
I shook my head. He squinted at me. He leant over again.
‘What’s your name?’
I leant to his ear and told him.
‘What year are you in?’
I told him.
‘Hey, you in Lucy Marlowe’s class?’
I nodded. He grinned. The near-bald kid screamed ‘What?’ and the blond kid shouted something into his ear. Then the blond kid told me how lucky I am. He explained how attractive Lucy Marlowe is since her breast enhancement surgery. He asked if I’d got a good look at her post-op breasts. I told him I hadn’t. The blond kid advised me to keep an eye out for any breast-glimpse opportunity. He had a friend in the same class as Angela Hargrove and once she’d been running late and got changed for dance practice right in the middle of her Geography class and his friend had seen one of her nipples. I didn’t know how to respond to this. More and more partygoers were forcing their way into the kitchen to watch Eggy. He’d given up popping and was now trying to juggle the eggs. Ian was filling a dog bowl with green liquid. The dog was on the conservatory patio, roaring at the army of intruders in its house, barking a diamond of condensation onto the glass. Miss X was still playing, lyrics indecipherable.
You were still nowhere to be seen.
The blond kid asked who I fancied more, Lucy Marlowe or Angela Hargrove. I said I didn’t know.
‘You’ve got to know! If you don’t know, who does?’
I didn’t want to talk about girls any more so I told him I had a girlfriend. I thought that would stop him asking but he just whit-wooed and winked at the near-bald kid and asked even worse questions, which I won’t repeat here. I told him that what he was referring to was private, between me and my girl. I don’t know what his reaction to this was because by now I was concentrating solely on Eggy. The crowd had bored of his juggling and were hurling stuff at him, other foodstuffs – avocados, rashers of bacon, spoonfuls of the white gloopy substance.
They began to chant: ‘E-ggy! E-ggy! E-ggy!’
‘Wait, I know you!’ the blond kid shouted. ‘You’re that kid in Ian’s class! The psycho!’
The bald kid frowned. The blond kid leant to his ear and shouted something and they both laughed. I sipped my beer. The blond kid leant to my ear.
‘I know who you’re shaggin’! It’s Miss Hayes!’
Ian dropped the dog bowl and began to nibble at Angela’s neck. She laughed and tried to push him away. Eggy was retaliating, launching eggs out into the crowd. One splattered across the window, above the dog, and it leapt to bite at it from the other side of the glass. Miss X seemed to be getting louder and louder. The blond kid was saying something about Miss Hayes, about our weekly meetings. The crowd was still chanting.
You were still nowhere to be seen.
I placed my empty beer bottle in the recycling box, smiled once more at the Hawaiian-shirt kids and stepped out into the hallway. I was shaking so much I could feel the bottles in my backpack, clinking together. One of the bottles had dislodged from its cardboard sleeve and was nuzzling my spine. The Hawaiian-shirt kids were grinning. They may have been laughing, I don’t know – there was laughter everywhere and it was impossible to single out theirs.
I knew I needed to find you. I needed to say what I had to say and get away from Goose’s, before more people noticed me. There were three other doorways across the hall and I squeezed through to each of them in turn. The first was locked. The second led to the dining room
, which was in darkness, empty but for a couple perched on the window seat, kissing aggressively.
The third led to the living room. A gang of year tens were cross-legged in the centre of the room, sitting around a Monopoly board. They’d built a small town out of the game’s green and red plastic buildings and one of them was flooding the town with beer. The rest were rolling cigarettes using £500 notes. The TV was on, a channel with a topless woman who rolls on the floor while speaking into a telephone, but nobody was watching, everyone was drinking and shouting into one another’s ears. Lucy Marlowe and Carly Meadows were over in the corner, stabbing the keys of the Lamberts’ piano, roaring with laughter. It was impossible to hear anything over Miss X, still screeching from the stereo:
L–O–V–E,
It is an accessory
I returned to the dining room. I sat. I figured I’d wait it out. I had to see you eventually. It was impossible to spend the whole night in the house with you and not see you. Fate had thrown us together in the past and it would again. I just had to be patient.
I took my four remaining beers from the plastic Waitrose bag and lined them up on the dining table, along with the cigarettes and box of cooking matches. The kissing couple didn’t notice, or if they did then it didn’t affect the aggressiveness of their kissing. The party hummed around us, the odd Vulture-screech penetrating the music. At one point there was an almighty crash, followed by mass laughter and applause, which I assume was Eggy slipping from the pool table. Eventually the kissers departed, giggling and handholding. Finally the music died. By the time I’d opened my third beer it was 23:07.
The hallway had cleared when I left the dining room. Its carpet was littered with cans and bottles, reams of toilet roll. The partygoers had raided a box of fireworks and were setting them off in the garden – cheering along with their screeches and pops. I wondered how they’d celebrate the stroke of midnight. They’d already trashed the house, already set off the fireworks. The only possible climax was some sort of explosion, destroy the house completely. Some sort of human sacrifice, perhaps.
I needed the toilet. I stepped over to the stairs. As I passed the living room something gasped.
‘Oh my god!’
It was Carly Meadows. She was laid out on the couch, glaring up at me.
‘You’re that guy from class,’ she said.
I nodded. The living room had also pretty much emptied. There was Monopoly money everywhere. A different woman was topless on the TV, sucking a telephone like it was an ice-lolly.
‘Lucy, look,’ Carly said. ‘That guy from English is here.’
Lucy Marlowe sat up from behind the couch. She was chewing gum, clutching a half-drunk bottle of Navy Rum. Her top had slipped down so much that one of her nipples was sticking out. She looked me up and down.
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ she said.
I nodded. I sipped my beer, coughing as I swallowed. I tried not to look at the nipple.
‘That was amazin’ when you ran out of class the other day,’ Carly Meadows said. ‘Wasn’t that amazin’ when he ran out of class the other day, Lucy?’
‘It was amazin’.’
‘Amazin’.’
I thanked them, still nodding, still sipping my beer. Carly and Lucy glared up at me and I sipped until my bottle was empty. Then I picked at the label. The woman on the TV turned and raised her backside to the camera. She reached back and wobbled her bum cheeks.
I asked the girls if they’d seen Ian anywhere. Or Angela. Or even Goose.
They laughed.
‘What the fuck do you want with Angela?’ Carly Meadows said.
I asked if they’d seen you at all. They laughed again.
‘Alith? Have we theen Alith?’
‘Who the fuck’th Alith?’
I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth. Sometimes this helps my lisp. A rocket struck the window, ricocheting into the crowd. The partygoers swarmed in circles, laughing, screaming. The dog bounded between them, howling.
I asked the girls to excuse me. They laughed again.
‘Excuthe me!’
‘Excuthe!’
I stepped back through the hall. Lucy and Carly carried on talking. One of them used the world ‘psycho’ but I ignored it and carried on up the stairs. They were slick with sick and spilt beer and various partygoers were curled in various positions, sleeping in one another’s arms. At the top of the stairs were a guy and girl, huddled, aggressive-kissing. The guy was sucking the girl’s neck, pressing her face into the wall with one hand, thumb-rubbing her nipple with the other. The girl murmured. She clutched a bottle of Lambrini, tipping it too far, hissing a waterfall down the top three stairs.
The girl’s eyes opened.
It was Sarah.
She squealed and pushed the guy from her neck. It was the blond Hawaiian-shirt kid from the kitchen. He smirked. He wiped his mouth. Sarah frowned at me. It was that same frown she used to give the St Peter’s kids when they called her ‘Flake’ in the playground, like she was angry at my very soul.
Sarah excused herself, standing, fixing her top. She dragged me across the landing to the bathroom. The blond kid shouted, ‘Hey, she’s mine!’ but Sarah shushed him and slammed and locked the door.
The bathroom was vast and granite-tiled, adorned with candles, seashells, scented hand soaps. It made me think of Mum. The sink was brimming with water, wadded with toilet paper and some sort of green leafy foodstuff – spinach, maybe, or rocket salad. Sarah dragged me over to the shower. The curtain was pulled right across. It was patterned with little grey ducks.
‘Why are you here?’
I told Sarah that Goose was in my year. I came because of the party. It was New Year’s.
She continued to frown. ‘Who invited you?’
I couldn’t think of any names off the top of my head so I just said, ‘Ian Connor.’
She snorted. ‘As if.’
The shower curtain danced slightly in the breeze. The ducks swayed back and forth. Behind it lay a blurred pink figure. Sarah started to speak again but I had no idea what she was saying – I was too busy trying to work out if the pink figure was in fact a living, breathing, possibly naked person, listening in on our conversation. Sarah stopped talking. She turned her frown to the shower curtain. She turned to me. She tore the curtain back.
There was a woman, slumped in the foot of the shower, skin pink and glistening, mouth lipstick-red and open in an O. She was wearing a shower cap, which was pointless as she was made entirely of plastic and therefore already waterproof. The words ‘Flat-Chested Slut’ were painted across her inflated breasts in Tipp-Ex.
Sarah sighed and grabbed the woman and slung her across the room. She bounced off the door before settling, head wedged beneath the sink. Sarah dragged me into the shower and pulled the curtain across.
‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘you’re not going to fit in here. It’s just not going to happen. Plus Tony said a gang of Pitt kids are coming to trash the place any minute and let’s face it, if anyone’s getting a beating, it’s you.’
I told Sarah that I had to find somebody.
‘Who?’
I couldn’t say.
‘Whatever. Just hurry up and get out of here. If anyone asks, we’re not related, OK?’
I nodded. I thanked Sarah for the warning. She said, ‘Whatever,’ again and stepped out from the shower. After a quick mirror-check she left, slamming the door behind her.
I stepped over to the toilet. I placed my beer on the basin and took a pee. It was the longest pee of my life. Halfway through I noticed the plastic woman, still slumped on the floor, watching me, her mouth still shocked into an O.
By the time I stepped out onto the landing again, Sarah and the blond kid had gone. Out in the garden someone was screaming, possibly a victim of a ricocheted firework. The dog was barking. There were three doors along the landing, all of which were shut. At the far end was another stairway, leading up to some sort of attic room. I could make out giggling.
A lingering chipotle-smoke smell.
I climbed the stairs. The giggling was accompanied by a squeaking. At the top of the stairs was another door, slightly ajar. I could make out Ian, or half of him at least, cross-legged at the foot of a wardrobe, holding his face. His shirt was torn, chin resting on his bare white chest, fringe curled over his knuckles. He was rocking back and forth and at first I thought the squeaking was coming from him, perhaps from his back pressing against the wardrobe behind him. But as I crept closer to the door-crack it was clear the squeaking was coming from the other side of the room, along with Goose’s laughter and a faint repetitive slapping.
I pressed the door open. A TV glared from the wall, broadcasting a blizzard of static. Goose’s bed was over by the window. There was a girl on it. At first I thought it might be you but I quickly recognised Angela. Her head bobbed, hang-mouthed, off the side, chin in the air, hair swaying into a puddle of vomit on the carpet. Goose stood beside her, giggling, tipping a bottle of beer onto her chest. It fizzed over her face, trickling through her hair into the ever-expanding vomit-puddle. Beer bubbles glistened on her forehead and eyelashes. The near-bald Hawaiian-shirt kid was there, hunched halfway down the bed, teeth gritted, gripping the mattress. He was jerking back and forth. His Hawaiian shirt was open, flapping about him. His eyes were closed, tight – his forehead locked into a frown.
Every few seconds Angela’s head turned from side to side, as if by turning her head she could avoid the sticky torrent of beer, but Goose was relentless in his pouring. When the bottle was empty he reached for another from a box beside the bed, cracking the lid with his teeth. I wasn’t sure if he’d noticed me – if any of them had. It didn’t seem to matter. Occasionally Angela would let out a sound – a grunt, or a short sharp intake of breath – and the Hawaiian-shirt kid would repeat the sound, imitate it. I’m not sure if he was aware he was doing this. The static light washed over them all. It danced chaotically, especially on Angela. Shadows flickered over her, like Them, hundreds of Them, swarming on her cold white skin.