Forever & Always

Chapter 25

"What up, yo?" Liam asked, joining me and Lacey at the lunch table. 

I shrugged. "Does anything interesting ever happen here?" I asked with a chuckle. 

"Well, didn't you get pulled to the ground in this very room a couple of weeks ago?" he asked smartly. 

I shot him a quick glance. "Would you like it to happen again, instead this time, it's you? Because trust me, I don't have a past history of kicking your ass, so I won't have to worry about consequences." 

He held his hands up in defense and laughed. "Okay, okay, I surrender," he conceded. 

Sara joined us in a couple of minutes and eventually Shane did as well. We were all talking about random nonsense from what had happened during our respective days, when we heard someone yelling from the middle of the room. I turned around to see a moderately tall guy with dirty blonde hair and ripped jeans standing on top of one of the tables. 

"Hey, everyone, listen up!" he shouted above the level of noise in the room. The room quickly quieted down and some people clapped, recognizing who this guy was. I, however, had no fucking clue who he was. 

"My name is Tim Evers," he said, (boom, question answered), "and it's that time of year again!" He finished that statement with some gusto and the cafeteria applauded. I clapped along, not knowing at all what I was clapping for. 

"What time of year is it?" I asked, Shane, but he politely shushed me so he could hear what Tim was saying. 

"My party is going down this Friday night, and I hope to see all of you there," he said slyly. "If you need my address, ask around and you'll get it eventually. But come on out for another party to remember, y'all!" he shouted and sat back down in his seat while everyone around me clapped and cheered.

When the room had settled down again, I leaned into the table and asked, "So what the hell was that all about?"

Lacey looked at me, slightly confused for a second, but then snapped out of it.

"Oh God, I forget some times that you are new here this year," she said, as if it was such  clumsy thing for her to do. "Tim Evers is one of the nicest guys ever, and around this time every year, he throws a huge party for everyone. Literally, everyone is invited."

"Yeah," Shane jumped in. "They're always really fun, they've become a tradition for our class since 7th grade I think. It's an 'anything can happen' kind of night." 

I looked around the table and then around the room. Everyone was buzzing about the announcement of the party this Friday. It really was a big thing apparently. 

"What do you do?" I asked, realizing that sounded like such a dumb question. "I mean, is it a theme party or something, is there dancing, what is it?" 

Lacey looked up into the air dreamily and sighed with a smile. "It's all of the above," she said. "There's dancing, drinking, and everything in between. His parties are legendary."

It sounded fun to me. I hadn't been to any kind of party since that night at Trevor's, which then made me remember that my mom said she didn't want to catch me drinking again. I was worried that she would tell me I couldn't go, but let's be honest. If this party was as fun as they were all saying it was and everyone was so excited for it, I was going no matter what. Plus, I hadn't been to a party with anyone but Shane in our friend group and I wanted to be able to party with them. And Shane didn't even have that much to drink that night. I figured I could be the designated driver or something, and satisfy both our need and my mother's desire for me not to drink. 

I was going and that was that. 

****

Sara and I walked to my house after school that day. She was coming over so we could work on some Biology homework together. We both hated the class, but with both of us working on it, we would get it done twice as fast. Or at least we thought. As it turned out, neither of us knew what was going on in that class. But anyway...