Yael | Ongoing

Chapter 2: Life of The Party

Sharon.
7:58 PM

"Shit. I'm gonna be late." I muttered to myself as I gazed at my watch while sitting in a taxi, feeling the cool evening breeze whip my hair around my face and neck. I was not prepared for the cold; I looked beautiful, no doubt, but I was as cold as a witch's tit. I had to wind the windows up and ask the driver to get some heat going for fear of freezing to death in a cab. Not one of the ways I was prepared to go. I was only 17, after all. I still wanted to live a little.

"We're here," droned the taxi driver. His voice was hoarse and shaky like he'd been drinking too much. I paid him and got out of the cab. The cab drove off, leaving me in front of a massive two-story building on East-West Road. I knew this place because it wasn't very far from the university and I'd been here on a few occasions. But never to this particular house. Almost all the lights were on and the house was booming with music but it sounded muffled because all the doors and windows had been shut so you only slightly heard the bass thumps. Well, here we go, I thought to myself. Into the rabbit hole.

I checked the time and it was 8:00 and so I awarded myself with a quick victory dance for being on time. The house was tall and huge, extending toward the left and the right. It felt more right to refer to it as a mansion than as a house. I walked up the front steps and into the house where I was greeted with slightly dimmed lights and heavy music. It was uncomfortably loud and you couldn't even hear someone talking close to you except amplified their voice up a few decibels. I walked into the living room and saw a lot of people. You have to understand just how big this house was. There were at least 30 people in the living room alone. And that's accounting for those I could even see.

"Sharon!" came a voice from the other end of the room but sounded so close that I turned around quickly. "You came!"

"Hey!" I replied, seeing it was only Jeff, my colleague at school. "Yeah, I came. I was invited."

"Really? That's cool. I heard that attendance at this party was purely on invitation alone!"

"That's a little cringe but okay. I just thought the invitation was a nice gesture."

"If only it was. Oh, where are my manners?" he said, just as soon as a light-skinned girl walked up to him and wrapped one arm around his waist. "I don't believe you've met."

"I don't think we have," I said.

"Sharon, meet my girlfriend, Nancy." Then, turning to the girl, "This is Sharon, my colleague at school."

"Nice to meet you," Nancy greeted with her hand out.

I took it. "The pleasure is all mine. You're way out of his league though, if I do say so myself."

"You know, I say this to him all the time but he never believes me," she replied with a gentle chuckle. She was beautiful with her long dark hair and the freckles that adorned her face.

"Okay," said Jeff, cutting in with a nervous laugh, "Enough chit-chat. Hey babe, wanna grab a drink?"

"Sure," she replied as they walked away together, hand in hand.

Love, I thought. How cute.

More people had started to arrive and the place wasn't even half packed. The kitchen was adjacent to the living room and had no corridor or door. It was an open space, tiled impeccably and adorned with a huge island with a thick marble top. There was a big metal bowl on the center of it filled with apples and oranges. I grabbed one and looked around. Because of how dim the lights were, I couldn't easily make out people's faces but two people were making out just beside the fridge, their silhouettes moving and writhing as they held each other. I bit into my apple and walked over to the couch to sit down close to another couple who were engrossed in conversation. It was unlike other parties I'd attended before, mostly because at those parties I was in the midst of friends and people I knew. I had only seen one familiar face and had already started feeling somewhat uncomfortable.