Undone(12)

Bugs had Stu in a headlock, rubbing his knuckles across Stu’s shaved head. They didn’t have girlfriends as far as I knew. Stu was a bit like Louise in that respect, except he was considered to be a stud rather than a slut. It made perfect sense that those two had done the nasty last year. At school I couldn’t help noticing the way Stu looked at girls as they walked past, like he was grading them in his head. Calculating if it was worth his time to try to make them laugh. Everyone (including Kai) seemed to think he was harmless, but I saw something in him . . . something predatory and not remotely funny. Not that I’d ever talked to him, of course.

I saw Max and Louise standing a little bit away from the others. From the look of things, Louise was not a happy bunny (snake). Her arms were flailing around and her chin jutted out aggressively. Max’s hands were raised in a gesture of surrender. I wished the music wasn’t so loud – this was better than watching TV.

I was about to tune back into the conversation Kai was having with Bland Boy A and Bland Girl B, but Louise chose that very moment to storm off into the house. Max didn’t go after her, and you could tell she’d expected him to, because she looked over her shoulder when she reached the kitchen door. He wasn’t even watching her; he’d stormed off to the other end of the garden. Interesting.

The next thing I knew, Kai grabbed my arm and said, ‘Excuse us for a second, would you? I need to get another drink.’ But he wasn’t talking to me – he was talking to the Blands.

‘Would you mind letting go of my arm?’ I said when we were nearly at the house.

‘Could you be any more rude? I mean, God! The least you could do is pretend to engage with people!’ He was serious. He was actually being serious.

‘Come off it, Kai. They’re so boring my eyes have now got double glazing . . . no wait, triple glazing.’ I giggled.

‘Are you drunk? Oh God, please don’t tell me you’re drunk. You’ve only had two beers! How is that even possible?’

‘I’m not drunk! Get me another beer this instant, my good man!’

Kai rolled his eyes and opened the door to the kitchen. The room was now packed with people and we had to squeeze our way through towards the fridge, which was almost empty of anything a normal person would choose to drink. Our beers were gone so Kai grabbed us a couple of bottles of WKD.

We clinked our bottles together and Kai said, ‘That’s your lot, OK? You’re on the soft drinks after that one.’

I saluted and nearly elbowed someone in the face. ‘Aye aye, cap’n.’

Kai sighed. ‘I definitely prefer you sober. Now . . . what do you say we split up for a while . . . I’ve always fancied myself a bit of a lone wolf.’

That made me laugh. Kai was SO not a wolf, but if he wanted to tell himself that . . .

‘OK, whatever. Go do your wolfy thing. I’ll be fine. Me and my alarmingly blue drink will be just fine.’

‘Promise me you’ll talk to someone new. How about that guy over there? He looks normal. And he definitely doesn’t go to our school, which has got to be a bonus.’

I looked to where Kai was not so subtly pointing. The boy in question did indeed look normal, friendly even. ‘If it’ll make you happy, I’ll talk to him. Now fly away, you little social butterfly!’

Kai kissed me on the cheek and threaded his way through the crowd. I took another look at the boy Kai had picked out and he turned and saw me looking. Awkward. I concentrated on taking a swig of my drink. When I looked back he was still looking. Mega-awkward. He smiled a little bit and I turned away. There was no way I could talk to him. What would I say? ‘Do you come here often?’ or ‘Great party, shame about the people,’ or ‘I like your shirt. It fits really well’. His shirt did fit really well, but somehow it didn’t look try-hard on him, not like Lucas, showing off every muscle in his tight white T-shirt.

I felt trapped and vulnerable. I needed Kai by my side to remind me how normal people interacted with each other. Suddenly I was finding it hard to catch my breath and I felt too hot. Fresh air. I needed fresh air. And space. There were too many people in the kitchen, all laughing and joking and crowding in on me. I bolted for the door, spilling someone’s drink and tripping over someone else’s foot on the way. I didn’t think the foot had been placed in my path on purpose, but you never can tell for sure.

I closed the door behind me, but not before I heard someone shout, ‘Who invited that freak?’ I couldn’t be sure if the voice belonged to someone I knew or a complete stranger, but it was nothing I hadn’t heard before.

I felt loads better as soon as I was outside. The air was crisp and cool and I breathed it in as deeply as I could. I tried not to think about the boy in the kitchen. He probably hadn’t been smiling at me anyway. He was probably looking at someone standing next to me. Yeah, that had to be it.

I took another long gulp of my drink, because there was nothing else to do. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. If I was interested in talking to people I would do it at school where at least you had a decent excuse to start a conversation – like borrowing notes for a class you missed or something. I looked at my watch and groaned to see that it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. Kai and I had agreed to leave at eleven. I could have stayed out later – Mum and Dad have never been that big on curfews – but Kai had agreed to an early departure since I was doing him such a huge favour by being here. Thinking about it, it was kind of strange that he’d wanted me here. He clearly wasn’t interested in hanging out with me (I ignored the little voice in my head that said maybe he didn’t want to hang out with me because I was being so obnoxious).