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“Fate picks,” she told me. “Cruel fate. But don’t be like me. Don’t settle for less. Don’t lower your standards.”
“What do you mean?” I levered up off the bed, draining the glass.
“Nothing,” Pe
“Yeah, right.” I smiled because we’d heard that before. We heard it regularly, in fact.
“New year, new me.” She drained her glass too. “You know you made this place awesome, right? This is the first classy New Year’s party I’ve ever been to. You actually did it. So get up and enjoy.”
I got up. More people had arrived, all dressed to the nines and bringing offerings—homemade Skittles vodka in bright colors, a mysterious chocolate pie baked with hash, peach-flavored champagne, pink champagne, and a half-full bottle of bourbon. Girls wore fancy dresses, guys had on shirts that buttoned, a few even with bow ties. Oscar had his pink mohawk teased up and wore pink shoes to match. Marc had on a leather vest over a crisp white shirt that looked like it might even have been ironed. In the candlelight, everything shimmered.
Wren was sucking face with the guy from the coffee shop in the kitchen area. Apparently he decided to forsake his other plans.
Everyone seemed to be having a good time and, if I squinted my eyes a little, it was all as beautiful as I’d imagined. I went over to the bar table and refilled my glass with more vodka and champagne, a smile pulling up the corners of my face.
A few more people from school came in, laughing. They’d brought prosecco and sparkly party hats. Everything started blurring together and being awesome. Pe
We played several rounds of “I Never” and when someone said, “I never wanted to make out with anyone at this party,” lots of people had to take shots.
By the time Silke arrived, I’d decided none of the Mossley kids were coming and felt relieved. Then the door opened and she stepped through, shivering in a short silvery dress, looking completely confused to find herself in a trailer. Behind her was Roth. He had three people with him, two guys and a pissed-off looking girl. Everyone but the girl looked drunk.
“You call this a party?” Roth slurred, eyes bright and hair messy. His cheeks were pinked by the cold and manic cheer.
“Who the hell are you?” Marc demanded, crossing the floor. Marc was a big guy with long hair, the fuzzy begi
Punching rich kids was a bad idea, but I kind of hoped he’d do it anyway.
“It’s okay,” Pe
I looked around for Wren, but she’d snuck off to the back room with her barista. “Have a drink,” I said, but I couldn’t make myself sound like I meant it.
“I don’t think so.” Roth turned toward me, his words slurring a little. “Are you the one who’s been texting lies to my girlfriend?”
“Lies?” I snorted. Pe
Conversations had stopped around the small room. Outside, a siren howled. Music still thrummed through the speakers of Grandma’s stereo, not loud enough.
“Are you the one he was sleeping with?” Silke asked, and I noticed her eyes were bright and red-rimmed, like she’d been crying. Then she looked past me to Pe
“What if I was?” I asked, interrupting, because it wasn’t fair for Pe
Silke turned to Roth, shaking her head. “She was your girlfriend?”
“No! Are you crazy? I told you. I brought you here to see how pathetic they were. To understand that they’re lying. Maybe they want money. I don’t know. They’re trailer trash in a real, actual, literal trailer park. Nailing one of these girls would be worse than slumming. It would be like swimming through a sewer. I’d never get the smell out.”
His friends guffawed at that. A dude-bro Greek chorus.
No one else so much as cracked a smile. Oscar cracked his knuckles instead.
Silke looked uncomfortable.
I took my phone out of my pocket. I wasn’t as good at this as Wren would have been, but with the liquor singing through my veins, I knew I had to do something. “I have a picture of Roth here—”
“No you don’t.” Roth grabbed for the phone. “Give me that.”
I didn’t actually have a picture of him and Pe
And then everything happened at once. Wren burst out of the back in her underwear. Marc tried to get between me and Roth. One of Roth’s friends tried to get in Marc’s way. Oscar hit somebody. I was on the floor and guys were punching one another and Wren was smashing a lamp over someone’s head and everyone was screaming.
That’s when Roth kicked the table with the punch bowl on it. The leg cracked, and the punch bowl went over, spilling a fizzing frozen strawberry and booze tide onto all the food, soaking the cheese and crackers, splashing into the hummus and onion dip, ruining the quiches. Ruining everything.
I full-on screamed. Way louder than when he bent my arm. I screamed so loud that Marc let Roth go. Bloody-nosed, Roth turned and saw my horrified face. I don’t think it was until that moment that he realized how much destroying the party would hurt me. His smile was smug and hideous.
I wanted to claw his eyes out. I wanted to hide in the back room. I wanted to go outside and sit in the cold until I was frozen all the way through. I wanted to do all those contradictory things so intensely that I did absolutely nothing at all. I just stood there, my eyes filling with tears as Roth’s smile grew into a laugh.
Then the door opened again, letting in a cold breeze that guttered the candles.
It was the beautiful Krampus boy with the goat legs and the gold paint. He must have misunderstood about dressing up for the party, because he was in a variation on his costume at the Krampuslauf. He’d paired his goat legs with a green brocade jacket stitched with silver thread and matching knee breeches with tiny silver buttons along the cuffs. Two friends were with him, both in costume. One, a girl in a white dress with a single sleeve stitched with glittering crystals. The other, a boy with waist-length blond hair. He wore pointed-eared prosthetics and a black wool Edwardian suit.
Roth and his friends looked thrown by their arrival, but they weren’t standing there with tears in their eyes and a wrecked table of food.
“We brought gifts,” the boy with the hooves said, and the blond reached into his coat and brought out a bottle of clear liquor. He removed the cork with his teeth. “Mine is holiday cheer.”
“Are you guys for real?” one of the Mossley kids said.
Roth snorted, still spoiling for a fight. Silke stepped back, into the kitchen of the trailer. A few of our friends were rearranging themselves in case Roth and the Mossley boys wanted to throw a few more punches. I was trying to edge my way to where I’d left my grandmother’s broom. If Roth tried anything else, I’d crack it over his skull.