Afterparty(25)

I leave my bag inside.

The moral compass is re-energized: Could this be a message from your highly moral, totally non-functional conscience calling, Go Back? Hmmm? Well, is it?

I ignore this. I’m an analyst’s kid. I was raised on this stuff, and I’m not climbing back through the window, peeling off my jeans, and retreating into bed.

I grab the bag and streak across the lawn. Siobhan keeps texting: Where ru? RU still coming? U didn’t chicken out did u? Where the helllllllll r u???

I silence my phone.

Suddenly illuminated houses (no doubt with girl-sensitive motion detectors) signal my descent into civilization. Cats meow, dogs bark, and I imagine that somewhere along the way, there’s a chatty talking parrot that’s about to rat me out to his suspicious owner. By the time I reach the Strip, I’m convinced everyone my dad has ever met is, at this moment, driving down Sunset and speed-dialing him.

Naturally, the Chateau Marmont is flanked by paparazzi. I think, Really bad plan. Why didn’t I go to the Standard? But the Chateau is the plan and I’m too wigged-out to cross the street.

I ask one of the guys in the motor court if he could get me a cab. I wait for him to look me over—so much mascara my eyes threaten to seal closed, kitten heels slightly caked with mud—and go, “Who the hell are you?”

But he doesn’t. He looks me over and gets me a cab.

It’s on.

? ? ?

The streets near the top of Beverly Hills are pitch-black and empty.

“You’re not going to regret this!” Siobhan says. She’s standing at the bottom of Roy Warner’s driveway, shivering in jeans and Nancy’s gold mesh top. She smiles into the taxi while I pay the driver. Cash isn’t a problem. My credit card might be confiscated, but I haven’t spent one cent of birthday money for sixteen years.

She says, “Of course, you’re you, so you might a little.”

“Are you sure this is okay? I don’t even know Roy Warner.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Her necklace catches light from the cab’s open door. “He’s so trashed, he wouldn’t recognize his sister. I mean, she’s here and he didn’t.”

Roy Warner goes to Winston and this party seems like a better plan than staging my first adventure in normal teen life at a Latimer party where I could end up acting bizarre around people I know. Still, I’m shaking so hard, Roy’s driveway starts to resemble the trail up Mount Everest.

“I want to throw up.”

“Breathe,” Siobhan says. “Don’t geek out on me. Everyone will think you’re cool because you’re with me. Don’t blow it.”

She pushes me up the driveway toward the house.

“Roy’s parties suck,” she says. “It’s only stoners from Winston. You can throw up all you want.”

By now, we are standing outside the front door, which is hanging open; there are fumes. I’m thinking, What was I thinking? How could this even vaguely be a good idea, there must be something seriously wrong with me.

Siobhan pulls notebook paper folded into origami squares out of her bag.

“Kiddie pool,” she says brightly. “I even brought the list. You’re going to drink a beer and take a reasonable number of hits on a joint and you’re going to hook up with a guy. A half hour from now, you’ll have three things checked off.”

She sounds like a cheerful camp counselor explaining how much fun it’s going to be to rappel down a cliff when, to me, the whole idea of rappelling down a cliff has a lot in common with jumping off the cliff.

“I’m hooking up with a random Winston stoner? Think again.”

“He won’t even remember; they’re comatose. Some of them might be dead.”

“I thought I was observing the first time.”

“Noooo, you’re going to participant-observe, like a cool anthropologist participant-observing in the wilds. Like Jane Goodall if she got it on with apes.”

There’s the sound of something crashing inside, and someone saying “Shit,” but not sounding that upset about whatever it was.

“Do you ever worry something bad could happen?” (Because even Totally Bad Emma can’t get all the way away from the images of looming danger I’ve been raised to entertain.)

In the yellow porch light, Siobhan’s pupils are so dilated, they fill her irises, and her lipstick is smudged. She does not look worried.

“Sib, how much did you pregame? Want to wait out here for a minute?”

“I’ve been here for a while,” she says. “I gamed. And now you need to game.”

In the powder room off the front hall, there is a gold sink with faucets in the shape of scary swans, and wallpaper with flowers that look like Venus flytraps.

Siobhan says, “Frightening, right? No wonder Roy gets loaded.”

She spreads the list on the counter. “Oh, I might have updated it,” she says. “Don’t freak. ’Shrooms is a joke. I might have gotten carried away.”

“Seriously? A threesome? And LSD?”

“I was just having fun. Don’t be a baby.”

“What did you do to my list? Where’s beer pong? Wait, a biker bar? Have you ever done any of this stuff?”

“You have no sense of humor. Why would it be so bad if I had, anyway?”