“Who drugged me?” I ask, because if he’s already half-drunk and loose-tongued then I may as well get something out of him. “Because clearly someone did.”
“I don’t know, why don’t you ask your friend over here?” he points to Miranda with a black-painted nail, and teases one of the lip rings pierced through either side of his mouth. When I flick my attention her way, the hurt is evident in her expression.
“I would never do something like that,” she spits, and the vehemence in her voice makes me want to believe her. “I don’t know how you guys did it, but you’re lucky Marnye didn’t press charges.” Zayd shrugs his shoulders like he couldn’t care less, and moves past, giving me a patronizing pat on the head before he grabs Anna Kirkpatrick around the waist and hauls her into his arms as she squeals. “Marnye?”
I turn back to find Miranda watching me, and I make myself smile.
“Don’t worry. I know it wasn’t you.” I sit back down as Andrew approaches the table, setting out three glasses of red punch and a plate piled with hors d’oeuvres. Miranda’s still staring at me like she thinks I’m mad at her, but tonight is not about what Becky and whoever else did to me. No, we’re supposed to have fun tonight.
I take a sip of the punch and then raise my eyebrows. It’s clearly spiked. Setting it aside, I rise to my feet, palms on the table.
“Do either of you want to dance with me?”
“I’m not drunk enough yet!” Miranda moans, and Andrew laughs as I yank her to her feet and drag her to the dance floor. Zayd’s already out there, grinding up against Anna. On the opposite side of the room, I see Tristan with his hands all over some third-year wearing a yellow dress. Creed is just lounging at one of the tables, but he’s got a captive audience all to himself.
I ignore them and try to have a good time with Miranda, even when Harper du Pont purposely moves over beside us so she can elbow me and whip me with her hair. Petty crap like that doesn’t bother me anymore. Between the essay and the butchering of my hair, I almost crumbled, but instead I stood tall. Something as silly as this means nothing.
After a while, I trade places with Andrew and grab a bottle of water from the cooler near the front door. That’s when I notice that Zayd, Tristan, Creed, Harper, Becky and Gena are all leaving with an entourage.
They must be off to the lake.
“We should go,” Miranda says, breathless as she comes to stand beside me, her glitter-covered skin soaked with sweat, hand clasped around Andrew’s. She grabs mine, too, and pulls me out into the cool October air before I get a chance to respond.
There are cars everywhere, and students are just piling into them at random. Miranda looks around carefully, and then selects one driven by a fourth-year girl that I don’t know. Smart choice. The girl looks at me and shrugs her shoulders, too close to graduation to care maybe. Either way, we get a ride up to the lake in her blue convertible, winding down the dirt road to a picnic area that’s already strung with lights, littered with kegs, and pounding with a strong bass beat.
Who set this up, I have no idea.
Tonight’s party is so much more colorful than usual, but it’s a little creepy too, with so many students in masks. There’s a graveyard nearby that I can just vaguely see through the trees. I know from the brochure that it’s a family plot for Lucas Burberry, the founder of Burberry Prep, and his descendants. Nobody’s been buried in there since the fifties, but it’s still eerie as hell, dressed in a blanket of salty fog off the bay.
Students are hanging out in there, too, balancing on graves, making out against the sides of mausoleums. Not my thing—though I can appreciate some of the architecture. My eyes wander away from the gothic eeriness of the graveyard, and over to the row of jack-o-lanterns burning on the shore of the lake. It looks dark and endless right now, like one wrong move and you’d go tumbling through the ice-cold depths forever.
A shiver takes over me just seconds before an arm wraps around my waist and yanks me close to a warm, sweaty body.
“You showed up at the after-party,” Zayd crows, clearly already on his way to being drunk. “You’ve got bigger balls than I thought.”
“I hope you didn’t actually think I had balls at all,” I counter, reaching up with a hand to push against his chest. It’s a mistake, putting my bare palm against those hard, inked muscles. My throat gets so tight it’s suddenly hard to breathe. “I have big ovaries, maybe.”
