
Ben’s house is half an hour away by car – two by bus – so Sadie’s mum drives us that Friday evening. Henry’s mum is going to drive us on the way back.
Sadie’s excited. Says she hasn’t been to a party in over half a year.
I haven’t been to a party ever.
Fun times.
Well, not the drinking kind, anyway. I tend to feel uncomfortable around drunk boys with way too high hormone levels. That was supposed to have changed by now. Because everybody’s nice to me and I have a sense of self-respect.
Oh well, the irony.
I decided to come along anyway. I can’t go and hole up in my room just because I don’t agree with reality.
Henry doesn’t usually go to parties either. Both of us were always invited but I usually opted to rather just do something with him. Be that to go out and train or have a lazy night on his bed watching movies, it didn’t really matter.
But now we’re all here.
“How much can you drink?” Henry asks as we enter the town Ben lives in.
Sadie laughs. “I honestly wouldn’t know how my drinking capacity compares to you guys. When I partied with the Germans I definitely couldn’t keep up. Same for Latinos. But in Thailand….”
I frown. “At what age did you start drinking?”
Sadie gives me an innocent look as her mother laughs. “When she was wayyyy too young.”
She doesn’t seem to care much, though. Sadie really has interesting parents.
We arrive and get out. I can hear cheering and low music from the other side of the house.
“How much can you drink?” Sadie asks us.
I shrug. “Never tried more than two beer.”
Henry mirrors me. “We’re not the drinking type, I guess.”
It is Henry who presses the doorbell and it is Kim who opens the door.
“Hey, you guys,” she says with her dazzling smile. “So glad you could make it!”
Like we’re actually doing her a favour. The fact that I suspect she’s actually being honest doesn’t make it much better.
She waves us in and tells us where to put our shoes and then shows us straight to the living room.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks, leaning against a kitchen counter filled to the brim with bottles. There’s everything. Soft drinks, beer, hard alcohol, wine, juices, fruits, sugar, mixers for cocktails, cutting boards. Nobody seems to care that almost all of us are underage.“Olli hasn’t arrived yet,” she says apologetically. “And until he’s there, I’m trying my hand at bartending.”
She gives us an expectant look.
I stare anywhere but at her eyes. If I’ve never been to a party, how am I supposed to know what to drink?
“Passion fruit and vodka, please,” Sadie says from next to me. “eighty-twenty, please.”
Kim gives her an approving nod. “Starting strong.”
Sadie shrugs. “Little boring but I need to get going. I’ll give you something more challenging to mix later.”
Kim is quick. Barely twenty seconds later, she’s looking at us. Henry simply takes a beer and I finally say, “I’ll take passion fruit vodka too, but less vodka please.”
What’s a good percentage?
Kim gives me an understanding nod. There’s a lot less alcohol in my glass.
And then we mingle.
A lot of the others are already there. I suspect that not everybody’s going to show up, though I can’t speak from experience in that regard.
The furniture in the living room has been moved closer to the walls so there’s a large open space in the middle. People are sitting in a circle in the middle of the living room, spinning a bottle. I think they’re playing truth or dare but I can’t say for certain. There’s a beer pong table outside on the terrace. I see Leon and Felix there.
Everybody has drinks.
The music is at a comfortable level right now.
Linea Scot, a friend of Kim’s, looks up as we come closer and quickly scoots over. I’ve never had all that much to do with her, but going off everything I know about her, I like her. She’s nice. Smart.
“Come, sit with us,” she demands. There’s this tipsy glitter in her eyes and her grin is broad. “We’re playing a little to warm up before the real party starts.”
“What is it you’re playing?” I ask, leaning down a little.
She smiles broadly, like I’ve already said yes. “Truth or dare! But we added the rule that if you’re uncomfortable doing something, you can just drink instead and the task or question can’t be re-used.”
I straighten myself, try to decide. I never really liked the game in the past. But what’re the options? Beer pong?
I look at Sadie. “What do you wanna do?”
She shrugs. “I’d like to play truth or dare, if you’re down? But we can also go outside or something.”
I shake my head and sit down next to Linea.
Fuck it. Let’s try this.
Sadie’s quick to sit next to me. Henry leans down and tells me he’ll have a look at beer pong and might join us later.
Linea spins the bottle. It spins and spins and spins and… points at me.
Wow.
But she’s grinning and says, “Truth or dare.”
And I don’t want to be boring so I say, “Dare.”
Her grin broadens, but not in a malicious way. “Drink a third of your drink.”
She’s going easy on me. How nice of her.
I follow the command. The taste of passion fruit swirls around my mouth. It’s a little too warm for my taste. I barely taste the alcohol.
Then I spin the bottle.
It lands on Owen Cole. He chooses truth and I ask him whether he thinks people that only choose truth are boring and he laughs and says yes.
The game goes on for some time. We’re a rather large group so the bottle doesn’t land on me that often. I do all the dares they give me, all of them are rather harmless. I’ve finished my drink after half an hour and ask Kim to make me another one with more alcohol. I don’t really feel drunk by that point.
Later, I once get to dare Sadie and tell her to speak only Hindu for the next five minutes. It gets funny when it’s her turn to ask Linea a question because even though she speaks fluently, nobody understands her. Linea ends up swapping to a dare so Sadie can more accurately mime it and Sadie tells her to just do ten push-ups and be done with it.
The music gets louder as the sun goes down, the people get more drunk. I’ve been sitting the whole time while I was drinking my second drink and when I get up to go to the loo, I suddenly realise that I, too, am a little drunk. My sense of balance is weirdly off, like there’s a short delay between my brain sending out commands and my body reacting.
But I like it. It’s a novel experience and it’s funny somehow. And generally, the evening is fun, I realise. I’d expected to constantly be on edge, but apparently, the alcohol takes that away.
So when I return, I ask Olli to make me another drink, something tasty, and he gives me a mojito. It’s not exactly my taste, I realise as I sip it before going to sit back down with the others. The sharp taste of alcohol isn’t really my thing. Or I just haven’t gotten used to it yet.
I arrive just in time to witness Sadie being dared to mime making out with an invisible person.
She glances up when she sees me return and blushes furiously. But then she nods and sits up as the others cheer. With a shy grin, she raises her hands like she’s holding an invisible head, closes her eyes and starts kissing the air. It’s not French kissing or overly aggressive or in any other way over-the-top, but she still barely makes it the required five seconds before breaking into a fit of giggles.
I sip my drink and Kim joins our circle. She seems reasonably drunk and almost immediately gets dared to kiss Linea. She does it pretty much the way I expect her to. She walks over, sits down next to Linea, gently moves her chin with her thumb and pointer finger and kisses her on the lips. Then she gets back up with a slight blush to her cheeks and walks back to her seat. She doesn’t make it awkward, she doesn’t refuse, she doesn’t over-do it.
Fascinating.
Then she spins the bottle and it points right at me.
I’m really caught off-guard by it. I’d still been watching her absently and suddenly everybody’s looking at me.
For a moment I want to blurt ‘dare’, but then I think back to all the dares that were just handed out and instead say, “Truth.”
Kim puts back her platinum blonde hair and stares at the ceiling for a moment, thinking.
Then she looks straight at me. “Would you rather get the virus or be sterilised after an accident?”
I almost choke on my drink. My stomach lurches, the effects of the alcohol seem suddenly multiplied in their strength.
I stare at her, she stares back. There’s a vague smile on her lips.
Does she know?
But how would she?
Finally, I manage to frown.
“That’s a shit question,” I say and down the second half of my drink. When I look up again, her attention has moved on and she’s glancing out at the people playing beer pong.
Quickly, I spin the bottle again and dare Olli to lick his own elbow. He almost manages. He’s got a freakishly long tongue.
I stay with the rest of the group for another two rounds, just waiting long enough so it’s not suspicious if I get up and leave. Then I get up and leave.
Sadie notices, of course, and offers to come along, but I shake my head.
“Just need a little fresh air,” I tell her with a tight smile.
My heart is still pounding. My head is swimming. I sway a little as I step over the others to get to the terrace door.
The cool evening air hits me like a bucket of ice water. Immediately, it feels like I can breathe better, like I can think better.
I close the glass door behind me and walk past the beer pong table.
“Join us,” Felix calls.
But I just say, “I’m just here to get a little air,” and walk onwards. My speech is a little slurred and I’m not sure whether I did it intentionally or on accident.
They don’t press it further and I walk a little further from the house.
Ben’s garden isn’t exactly large. But because it’s right at the edge of the village, it’s easy to just leave the garden and walk out onto a large grassy area.
I hadn’t really planned to sit down, but suddenly I feel very tired so I let myself slump against a gentle slope. It’s so easy to just lie here. Lie here, breathe. I don’t have to think, which feels strange. My body is comfortably numb.
I feel my chest rise and fall with each breath, feel the uneven ground against my back. I’m probably lucky it hasn’t rained in a few days.
“Mind if I sit with you?” a voice asks from not too far away.
It takes effort to raise my head to look at the person.
Leon.
What does he want now?
He wasn’t there when Kim asked the question. He can’t have heard, it can’t have tipped him off. And he didn’t seem like he’d been suspecting anything earlier, either.
I let my head fall back down. “Sure.”
He sits next to me. Doesn’t lie down. I only see his back from where my head is.
“That was really cool today,” he says slowly. He doesn’t sound particularly drunk. “In school.”
But why would he say that? He already told me. Doesn’t repeating it like that, out of context, make it weird? Certainly feels that way.
And suddenly I have this need. This irrepressible need to- “Do you remember the things you used to say to me in middle school?”
He turns his head like he wants to glance at my face but stops just short. “Yeah, about that. I’ve been meaning to apologise for a while now. I was a real asshole back then and I’m really sorry for what I did and said and-”
“I have it,” I say in a low voice, not looking at him.
The stars are pretty tonight.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the realisation hits me that I really shouldn’t be this relaxed right now. I also shouldn’t have told him in the first place.
But now the words are out.
He doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. It’s obvious. “I’m sorry.”
That feels weird, that he says that. I mean, logically I knew he would say it. But still I’d been expecting something else.
“So you’re not gonna make fun of me.” It’s not a question. A statement, simply. I’m not sure why I say it. Maybe to get back at him?
“No, of course not,” he whispers. He doesn’t sound offended at the idea. Like he’d been expecting it.
Then, “How are you dealing with it?”
I let my arm fall over my eyes. I’m really not sure I want to have this conversation right now.
“I hate it.”
He breathes out forcefully, probably nodding.
“I’m taking the meds, trying to delay the effects. Still gonna have tits by New Year’s.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I chuckle cynically. “Not your fault.”
“Not that you have the virus. But the way you feel about it, isn’t it?” His voice gets a little muffled like he’s covering his face with his hands. “I feel like such a dick now. Like, all this teasing makes it so much worse for you now, doesn’t it? It’s not just a thing of the past.”
I nod slowly. He’s right, of course. I think it even makes me feel a little better that he’s sorry now.
“Obviously, nobody’s going to give you shit about any of this now. And if they do, well, all the rest of us are on your side. There’s no bullying in this class and we’re keeping that streak.” Pause. “Still, if there’s anything I can do… to make up, you know?”
At least it’s a confirmation that it won’t be repeated from the right source.
But I wouldn’t know what to ask for. Maybe something’ll come up sometime in the future.
“You could keep this to yourself for now. The others’ll find out soon enough.”
“Of course.”
Suddenly, I feel my stomach churn.
Just barely, I manage to throw myself around before I throw up violently into the grass.
Holy shit, Leon is based as f*ck. Not many kids get that mature that fast.
Kim is sus. Is she a shit-stirrer or just an innocent question. Hmmmm
Did the Claire-incident get you paranoid?
@SeptemberMorgan I'm wondering if Kim had the virus and knows the signs.
And yes, definitely lol
Reading this again and going 'oooh' thats them then as well
pfftt i suck so bad with names, hahaha.
this is such a lovely story.
<3
Hmm... Meds and alcohol...
A few days ago I got drunk with a friend and found out how completely f*cked my alcohol tolerance is. Like, it was never great but it's gotten even worse over the last four months of hrt, apparently
@SeptemberMorgan oh not just that, alcohol often reduces medication effectiveness, and for meds you can't really skip... I'm always leery to take alcohol anymore
“I’m so sorry.”
I chuckle cynically. “Not your fault.”
“Not that you have the virus. But the way you feel about it, isn’t it?” His voice gets a little muffled like he’s covering his face with his hands. “I feel like such a d*ck now. Like, all this teasing makes it so much worse for you now, doesn’t it? It’s not just a thing of the past.”
Damn. That's some growth.