Whom to love.

10

I winged my eyeliner in my small and crooked bathroom mirror.

"What are you wearing?" My mum asked, appearing from around the corner.

"This." My mum seemed to look me up and down in my ripped jeans and leather jacket.

"But you aren't anything. Jisoo, it's a Halloween party. You're supposed to dress up." My mum explained. "I know that. I'm just not doing it." I assured her.

Her rant about why I should partake in these stupid traditions in my teenage years was interrupted by a hammering on the door.

I walked downstairs with my mum in tow and opened the door to see Lisa, who was dressed a slutty bunny.

She had two friends with her that I knew vaguely from previous school years who had continued to do A Levels, Rose and Grey.

Rose was dressed as a cliché cat with minimal effort and Grey, who was known for being a complete tomboy, wore blue jeans and a grey hoodie.

"You didn't dress up." I stated. Grey laughed a belly laugh. "Of course not. What a load of fucking shit."

I grinned. My mum's eyebrows raised at Grey's immediate language choices, but Grey was also known for being loud and boisterous, so the swearing didn't take me off guard.

"You look lovely, Lisa." My mum cooed over her. She'd always been fond of Lisa. "Thank you, Aunt." Lisa innocently smiled. "Shall we go?" I asked. Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Have a good night, girls." My mum smiled from the doorstep before adding, "Jisoo! Try not to get in any trouble."

"So how are you enjoying A Levels, Jisoo?" Rose asked in her polite and timid voice. "Fine. What are you two doing now?" I asked Rose and Grey, curiously. "I'm office working." Rose smiled.

"I'm working in a phone shop. It's fucking shit." Grey shrugged.

"That's cool." I nodded.

"So what's the plan tonight? Get high?" Lisa smiled with excitement.

"And fuck boys?" Rose added.

I raised my eyebrows slightly in shock. Rose seemed too innocent for that comment.

Lisa has noticed my look. "Yeah, Rose is a bit of a dark horse." She laughed. "A slut, more like." Grey spluttered and I raised my eyebrows again.

"Oh, yeah... and Grey is a bitch." Lisa filled me in.

We walked through Lottie's front door and into the mass of people. "Fucking hell." I muttered.

"Well, this looks like a whole lot of shit." Grey scoffed. And I was sure she was right.

Everyone in every corner was dressed up to the nines in a slutty or eccentric costume. Everyone wore extravagant make-up and colourful eye contacts. Each person had a formal champagne glass or a red/blue cup. People posed in strategic places for fake photos and flashes went off everywhere.

"Let's make a joint." Lisa suggested, and we waded our way through the people to the back yard and settled ourselves into a corner.

"This is not my sort of party." I commented.

"Fucking same." Grey said, incapable of stringing a sentence together without swearing.

"I don't fancy any of the boys here." Rose told us.

"That's because none of them are fucking chavs." Grey pointed out and we all laughed.

"Our parties are much better. I mean, where's the inside smoking? Where's the people shagging in the corners? Glasses being smashed, shit being broken? Where's the blazing rows? It looks boring."

Lisa ranted.

"Come on, we'll have fun." Rose encouraged, pulling a bottle of vodka from inside her bag. "Let's get fucking mortal."

"Here, here's some shot glasses." Lisa grabbed a few empty, used shot cups from one of the tables.

"Can we just use other people's?" Rose seemed skeptical.

"Why not?" Grey scoffed and set them up, grabbing the vodka off Rose and pouring vodka into the shot glasses.

We all picked them up, Rose more skeptical than the other three of us, and drank them.

Grey repeated the process of pouring them and passing them for us to take four more

times. "Come on. Let's go find some fucking boys." Rose suggested.

Lisa and Grey followed her off but I remained where I was, not particularly interested in watching Rose's desperate pursuit of any male.

I watched the fake and forced social interactions happening around me. And then I noticed someone approaching me. Lottie Quinn. I hoped she wasn't approaching me.

"Hey!" Oh great, she was. "I can't believe you came, Jisoo." She flashed me her fake and people-pleasing smile.

"Why?" I wondered.

"Oh, you know - you never show up at parties like this." She stuttered slightly but regained her confidence. "I mean, you could've dressed up though." She tried to jokey with me.

I flashed her an equally fake smile. "No, I couldn't." She pushed her cat ears up her head.

"Anyway, you look happier this year. I think it's a really good thing." She beamed at me again.

"Really?" I asked, knowing full well that my happiness (or lack of) was the same. "Yeah, you do. Now the black nail polish and the black clothes and the black lipstick and shit have gone. You look pretty. I'm glad it was just a phase."
I felt a hundred shitty and sarky comments sprint through my mind, but I quickly reminded myself that this was genuinely Lottie's attempt at being nice. Despite reminding myself this, I still couldn't cope in her presence for much longer.

"I'll see you later Lottie."