Odd One Out

CHAPTER 2

Naya
Saturday, September 20

Ten minutes into the party I realized my mistake. I had followed my friends here because I wanted to prove I wasn't the boring beauty queen everyone thought I was only to immediately realize that parties weren't exactly my scene. It might have been better if I had stuck with my friends, but they were out doing shots with the cheerleaders and I wasn't really in the mood to deal with them.

Maybe, I thought, if I left now, they wouldn't notice.

They'd all carpooled with me though. How would they get back?

"Hey," a familiar voice rang out, and I looked up only to regret my decision of coming here even more.

"Hey, Cisco," I grinned politely, watching as he took a seat next to me, half-empty beer bottle in hand. If there was one thing I was really good at, it was being friendly. That's how you get voted Homecoming Queen, and how you get boys to do what you want. And in this case, being kind to Francisco was how I'd get out of whatever he was plotting.

"You okay?"

"Just fine. You?"

He shot me a knowing look, looking back out into the dancing bodies a few yards away from us in the main entrance. "Great." 

Things between us got silent after that, and I snuck a few glances of him through my peripheral to see if I could catch his reason for being here, but he just looked...drunk. Extremely drunk, but also sort of distant. He'd always been weird and had a talent for being the "close but distant" student at our school, but tonight was different. Tonight, he didn't seem distant in a calculated way.

He was just distant.

As if hearing my thoughts, he suddenly said, "Sometimes I just want to disappear."

"Well, it's easy to do that here." When he gave me a confused look, I cleared up my statement. "I lost my friends as soon as we stepped in, it's like a jungle of drunk people out here."

"But you, my dear Naya, would never get lost. You don't blend in, you glow."

Which is why I hated going to parties in the first place. It seemed like no matter where I went, people never got over how amazing my hair looked, or the way my eyes shone in the sun, or how well put-together and chic my outfit for the day was.

It wasn't like I didn't care about their compliments, because I did. I always put a lot of effort into my looks, even though now it was more out of routine than actual desire. And I really wasn't trying to be ungrateful, but there wasn't a moment in my life I could think of where someone had complimented anything other than my looks.

"Sometimes, I wish I didn't glow."

The words escaped my mouth before I could stop them, which made me mentally slap myself for saying them in the first place. It was bad enough that I'd even let my thoughts escape my mind, but to have said them in front of Francisco Salazar was social suicide.

He chuckled, tipping his beer towards me slightly before saying, "Here's to getting lost."

Francisco had always been very good with his words. Extremely persuading, much to everyone's dismay. When we were in middle school he won the Speech and Debate competition, making him the best in the entire county that year, and the year after that. So it really wasn't surprising when eventually, he managed to get uptight Bailey Phillips and the drug-dealer of Roosevelt High to join our pity group. My cup still had the same amount of liquor it did when I first got it, but Cisco had already downed like five beers and a couple shots, making him as fun as he was dangerous in this drunk state.