The Idea of You

Chapter 1

How I got there, I have no idea. I’d never been much of a partier myself, but Lex was, and she was determined to get me to a kegger even if she had to drag me there. It was such a cliché. If it had been some lame teen movie I would’ve ended up hammered and in bed with a total stranger.

But it wasn’t some lame teen movie, and although I did end up with a stranger, it was not in a bed, much to Lex’s dismay.

It was October, and we’d been at UMF for almost two months. I was getting a jump on some of my assignments and Lex was tapping away on her phone, giggling every now and then.

“Hey, Andie?” she asked after a while. I looked up from my notes, waiting for her to go on. “Is there any way I can persuade you to come to a party with me?”

“I doubt it, but you’re certainly welcome to try,” I replied with a laugh.

“Oh come on, you work so hard all the time, you deserve to have some fun,” Lex whined as she sat up on her bed.

“Lex, I have a ton of work to do here,” I said, gesturing to the assortment of papers and textbooks around me.

“Seriously? You have all semester to do that stuff! You’ll be done all your classes before Thanksgiving at this rate!” she argued.

“Yes, but I have all semester to go to parties too,” I pointed out. Lex groaned overdramatically. She got up and paced around the room, picking out articles of clothing as she did so. Eventually she was able to assemble an outfit that she deemed fit for a party.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said as she scrunched her dark hair with her fingers and touched up her makeup in the mirror. I set down my pencil and waited, interested to hear her proposal. “If you come to this party with me, I won’t force you to come to any more for the rest of the year.”

I’m pretty sure we both knew she wouldn’t hold up her end of the bargain, but I agreed to it nonetheless, on the one condition that she let me wear whatever I wanted. She had been a little discouraged when I chose a t-shirt, jeans, and some brown combat boots, but I reminded her that she should be happy I was going in the first place and it shut her up.

Lex’s latest fling, Codie, picked us up, and while he drove I put my hair in a side braid and checked my phone. I responded to a couple texts from my mom and stuck the device back in my pocket.

When we got to the party, Lex introduced me to a few people I recognized from school and sat me down on a couch with a few of them.  A plastic red cup was forced into my hand at some point and I could practically see the alcohol radiating from it. I kept it in my hands but I never took a sip from it.

After a while the guy sitting next to me struck up a conversation, mostly about drinks and how much school sucked. It was obvious that he was drunk, but he was kind of amusing, and Lex was nowhere to be found.

A game of truth or dare formed around me, and somehow I got sucked into it. The dares were as juvenile as they had been in middle school, but the questions were much more intrusive. I was almost positive that everyone playing had swapped spit at least once except for me. I picked truth every time, my answer to the question usually being no. I was trying desperately to remain under the radar, but I still managed to catch the attention of a petite brunette sitting across from me. Her glazed-over eyes were studying me intently, and I was suddenly aware of the fact that I was probably the heaviest female in the room. I instinctively crossed my arms over my stomach and sucked it in.

“This one here hasn’t picked dare yet,” I heard her tell the guy next to her when he couldn’t decide who to pick on. Bitch. Everyone’s eyes focused on me as the guy called me out. I couldn’t give the brunette the satisfaction of me chickening out, so I chose dare.