really don’t want to go, though,” she admits. “But I don’t want you to go alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” I promise. “I’ll go for a couple hours, scope out the scene and then come back to your place, and we can stay up all night eating ice cream.”
She rolls her eyes. “The ice cream’s all yours. I’m on a crash diet ’til Monday. I need to look hot for my first day of senior year.”
A loud honk comes from the direction of the waiting Jeep. “Yo! Come on!” the driver shouts.
“I’ll see you later, Scar,” I say quickly. “Leave the back door unlocked for me, ’kay?” Then, before she can object, I hurry over to the Jeep. “I’m coming,” I tell the girls, because if I don’t do something outside my parents’ perfectly prescribed routine, I will implode. There won’t be anything left of me but scraps. That’s how I feel right now, actually, like I’m nothing but scraps pasted together by my parents.
“’Bout time,” one of them mutters, while the other blows a bright pink bubble with her gum.
“Beth!” Scarlett calls.
I glance over my shoulder. “Did you change your mind?”
She shakes her head. “Just be safe.”
“I will.” I climb into the back seat next to the blonde. Her friend hops into the passenger seat and whispers something to the driver. I lean over the side to address Scarlett again. “If my parents call, tell them I’m asleep. I’ll be back in a few hours. Promise.”
I blow her a kiss, and, after a beat of hesitation, she pretends to catch it in her hand and smacks it on her cheek. Then she heads for her car, and the boy behind the wheel of the Jeep revs the engine and we tear out of the gas station parking lot.
As the wind snakes under my hair and lifts it up, I count all the sins I’ve just committed.
Accepting a party invite from kids I don’t know.
Going to a party in the next town over, an area that’s not exactly white picket fences and apple trees like my pretty, safe hometown.
Getting into a car with strangers. That’s probably the biggest sin. My parents will ship me off to a convent if they find out about this.
But guess what?
I. Don’t. Fucking. Care.
They’ve already announced that I’m expected to spend my college years with them. We’re at war now.
I feel trapped in my own life, weighed down by their rules and their paranoia and their fears. I’m seventeen years old. I’m supposed to be excited about my senior year. I’m supposed to be surrounded by friends and dating cute guys and having the time of my life right now. People say it’s all downhill from here, and that’s just depressing because if these are supposed to be the best years of my life, exactly how much crappier is life going to get?
“What’s your name anyway?” the blonde girl asks.
“Beth. You?”
“Ashleigh, but you can call me Ash.” She points to the front seat. “That’s Kylie and Max. We all go to Lexington High. Gonna be juniors this year.”
“I’ll be a senior at Darling,” I tell her.
A slight sneer mars her red-lipsticked mouth. “Ah, okay. You’re a Darling girl.”
I bristle at the implication. “Not everyone in Darling is rich, you know.” I’m not lying; my family definitely isn’t as rich as some of the other families in town. Our middle-class suburb is safe and quiet, though.
The party we’re going to is in Lexington Heights—or Lex, as its residents call it—a working-class neighborhood where the houses are smaller, the people are poorer and the kids are rowdier. In Darling, coke and molly are passed around along with hash. In Lex, you’re more likely to be offered meth.
My parents would freak out if they knew I was here. Scarlett nearly had a panic attack when we had to stop for gas in Lexington tonight.
“So whatcha doing over in Lex on a Saturday night?” Kylie twists around from the front seat to voice the question to me. “You looking to score some party favors?”
I offer a shrug. “I just want to have a good time before school starts.”
Max whoops loudly. “Girl after my own heart! What’s your name again, good-time girl?”
“Beth,” I repeat.
“Beth.” Driving one-handed, he reaches his other hand toward me. “Gimme some sugar, Bethie. Time to get our party on.”
I awkwardly slap his hand and manage a smile. I suddenly feel really bad about ditching Scarlett, but I tamp down the guilt until it’s buried deep and forgotten. Besides, she was okay with me going in the end, even though I don’t think she totally gets why I had to go. Scar’s parents are cool. They’re laid-back and hilarious and they give her so much freedom she doesn’t even know what to do with it.
I get it. I really, totally get it. I do. Mom and Dad lost a daughter. I lost a sister. We all loved Rachel and we all miss her, no one more than me. But my sister’s accident was just that—an accident. And the person responsible was punished for it. Isn’t that all we can ask for? Rachel’s never coming back—that’s not how life works. But justice was served, as much as it could’ve been.
And I’m still alive. I’m alive and I want to live.
Is that such a bad thing to want?
“We’re here!” Ashleigh announces.
Max parks across the street from a narrow house with a white clapboard exterior and an overgrown lawn that’s littered with teens. Beer bottles and joints are being passed around right there in the open, like nobody even cares if a police cruiser drives by.
“Who owns this place?” I ask.
“This guy Jack,” Ash answers in an absent tone. She’s too busy waving to some girls on the lawn.
“Are his parents home?”
Kylie snorts. “Um. No.”
Okay then.
We climb out of the Jeep and weave our way through the crowd toward the front door. Kylie and Max disappear the moment we enter the house. Ashleigh sticks close to me. “Let’s grab a drink!” she says.
I can barely hear her over the deafening hip-hop song that’s shaking the walls. The house is crammed with bodies, and the air smells like a combination of perfume, body spray, sweat and stale beer. Not exactly my scene, but the bass line is sick and the kids look friendly enough. I half expected to see bare-knuckle brawls and people screwing against the walls, but it’s mostly just dancing and drinking and very loud conversation.
Ash tugs me into a small kitchen with linoleum counters and outdated wallpaper. Half a dozen boys crowd around the open screen door, smoking a joint.
