Page 19 of Hidden

We reach the house, and there’re some students standing outside. Juno takes my hand going up the front steps so we don’t get separated from each other. I let her because I don’t really know anyone here and have no idea where I’m going. We're inside and there’re people everywhere. If I thought the music was loud half a block away, I can barely think inside the house.

I have my camera up within the first five minutes.

Juno pulls Cara onto a makeshift dancefloor in the front room, Cara’s only going along with it on the condition that nobody watches. That’s impossible because they're both immediately the most fun thing happening in that corner. Bree is at the kitchen counter, her elbows resting back, and she’s watching the room with dark, careful eyes.

I shoot all of it. The lighting in here is terrible, and the frames are going to be grainy, but I don't care at all. That's half the point of taking all the photos, this’ll be the real college life. They’re the ones I don’t touch, the ones I just put on my drive.

"Sadie." Juno takes me by the hand. "Come dance."

The front room is fuller now, the music louder, and I give the camera to Bree for safekeeping and let Juno pull me into the middle of it and just move. No routine. No form. No Coach Pearce taking notes on what needs work. Just the music, the room, and the easy, uncomplicated fact of a body that knows how to move when nobody's grading it.

This. This is also mine. This whole ridiculous, loud, spinning evening. I'm laughing at something Juno's doing with her arms when I feel it. It’s the same feeling as at the gym doorway. The back of my neck feels like someone is breathing on me, and I have an awareness of someone watching me.

I turn without meaning to. I see him across the room. He’s far enough that I have to look twice to be sure. He has a dark jacket on, with one hand in his pocket, and the other holding a drink. He's talking to his brother Mason, who is beside him.

Juno grabs both my hands and spins me, and the room goes with her. When I find my footing again and look back across the space, he's turned away, mid-conversation.

I reach for my camera from Bree. I frame the room, the lights and the crowd. I shoot everything except the far corner where I can still feel, without looking, exactly where he's standing.

I press the shutter, and move away from the dance floor.

Juno moves so she stands in front of me. "There's a beer pong table in the garden," she says.

"Okay," I reply, almost questioning why she’s telling me.

"We're playing."

"I've never played beer pong before."

She stares at me. "Sadie."

"I'm just telling you the truth so you can set your expectations accordingly." We will lose, so it’s best she knows now.

"You're a gymnast. You have spatial awareness and upper body control and you're going to be incredible." She's already pulling me by the wrist toward the back of the house. "Cara and Maya both already said no, so you have to be my partner."

"Why did they say no?"

"Maya said, and I quote, ‘I don't play games that conflate athletic skill with alcohol consumption.’"

I burst out laughing because she was the one who wanted to be here. "That's a very Maya sentence."

"It really is."

“Cara just said no,” Juno tells me.

The garden is smaller than the house deserves, strung with lights that someone's thrown over a fence at an angle that shouldn't work but does. The beer pong table is actually a door balanced on two sawhorses, and I respect the commitment to infrastructure.

The two guys standing on the other side are the typical jocks who think they’re the best at every sport. One of them cracks his knuckles, he actually cracks his knuckles before a game of beer pong.

Juno looks at me.

I look at Juno.

"Okay," she says sweetly to the knuckle-cracker. "You go first."

They're good, not exceptional, but good. Clearly, they’ve done this in every social situation for the last two years.

I am, as advertised, a complete beginner.