The night was hot and wet and no stars shone beyond the streetlamp’s glare and as we pulled up to Gabby’s house my heart shuddered into my throat and stayed there. The house was a hazy shadow and it thrummed with excitement at the edges. Beckoning lights shone from beneath the door and over the tops of the windowsills. We stepped out of the car, and waiting for us at the door was a boy I recognized but had barely ever spoken to. Part of me expected him to turn us away. Already the dull hum of music and chatter drifted from inside. We didn’t belong there. He waved to us. We waved back. He said nothing, and we went inside.
When a school is part of your life for seven years—day in, day out, surrounded by the same people, returning to the same teachers, reciting the same honor code—people’s image of you calcifies, freezing mid-motion in the dash towards whatever it is they think you’re seeking. But who’s to say their image is right in the first place? Maybe, as time goes on, you’ll manage to free an arm, or a leg. Maybe even your head. Maybe you’ll find a way to move, turn around, spin about. Maybe they’ll even start running alongside you. But, no matter how far you think you’ll get, your mouth will never be free. That image they have will never really be you.
It was the end of senior year when I went to that party. I wanted so many things. Some of them had weight. Some of them were petty. I wanted others to give my life meaning. I wanted to read and see and know everything the world had to offer. More than any of that, though, I wanted to party. I wanted to have fun. For a few hours, I just wanted to be recognized as someone who was capable of going to a party like that. Mistakes are beautiful on nights like those.
We headed inside and parked at the counter. There wasn’t a single light on inside. Glowsticks were wrapped around the bannister of the staircase, and dim figures lurked up and down aimlessly. We had showed up half an hour after it started, but already people were getting drunk. I started talking to a couple I knew. The boy had his arm draped across her shoulder, and the girl wobbled about on her stool. She lunged forward across the counter to greet me before slowly dragging herself back upright. Earlier that week, she and I had sat together in English and talked about that week’s chapter of Frankenstein. She turned back toward her boyfriend, and they began grasping at each other. I looked away.
We had been there for a while when Ari arrived. He was the pimple the class always poked at. We were once good friends, but we steadily grew apart as we both shared similar pursuits and I succeeded more at attaining them than he did. Seeing him there startled me. His greasy hair and too-small shirt, neon green against the blacks and whites and greys of everyone else. He carried in his hand a small bottle with no label and a few plastic shot glasses. I watched him speak with my other friends. He poured them all a drink. I went over and took one with them. It tasted like hand sanitizer and made my eyes ring and sparkle and I spat it up over the kitchen floor. A friend puked into the trash can. People pressed at him and mocked him for bringing something as awful as that, while I stood at the counter gathering my bearings.
My friends and I devised a challenge. We were going to speak to as many strangers as possible. Whoever talked to the most by the end of the night won. We never discussed what the reward would be. It’s not like it mattered much. I just loved the idea of the game, loved the idea of being part of the group who created it.
We wandered around to a few people that night. They were brief interactions that I don’t remember. I don’t think I even remembered them when I staggered home.
At one point, we went out to the patio. Sitting there was a boy I had known for years but grown apart from. He and I had spent long nights on the phone with our other friends, playing games and telling stories of our lives before we came to the school. Then he started talking to other people. He changed his hair, his clothes, his interests, his voice. He wasn’t better or worse than he had been before. He just changed.
We were still friendly with him, and he seemed like he was going through it, so we decided to sit with him and talk. He gazed out at nothing with a dead-eyed stare.
“You boys having fun?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” we replied. “It’s great.”
He nodded and took a sip of his drink. “I never see you all at any of these things.”
“Never knew about them.”
“Yeah, I guess not. If we’d known you guys were fun, were up to it, y’know, we would’ve invited you.”
None of us said anything.
“We used to hang out more,” he said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Just natural to grow apart, I guess.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” He looked down at his hands. “I just wish I’d known. I like you guys. You guys are nice. I wish we’d treated you better.”
I don’t remember what we said to that. My eyes were trained across the pool, where a few people were smoking cigarettes. The light from the patio didn’t reach where they were sitting. The lazy glow of the cigarette would flare briefly and flash across their faces before shrinking once again and darkening their forms.
There was a light display set up on the counter. It shone these great dots of red light onto the ceiling, and those dots melted at the corners into each other so that they all rotated together. I stood and stared up at it for a while. I stood there for so long that my friends started asking me if I was okay, if I wanted to leave. But I hadn’t had much to drink. No. I just felt so small under those lights. Like a museum exhibit.
I knew that there was no hope. I knew that the only answer was to leave. To leave that house, that school. That my calcified corpse would haunt me all through Tampa and watch me from the tarmac as my plane left for Providence. This city is mine, it would say. This school is mine. These people are mine.
My friends pulled me out of the house. I didn’t resist. We walked down the driveway to their car. As we walked, I looked back at the house behind us. Even though the party still raged on, there was no evidence of its life. The lights were dim and fleeting and dead and the whole thing seemed some decrepit old construct waiting to be put down. Through the front window, I saw myself standing there, leering. It waved. Then, it turned around and disappeared from view. Even now, I think it’s still in that house.