It was in the middle of that conversation, which involved about ten of us and which none of us were really following, that I felt a hand on my back. A small, obviously female hand. Tasha. She'd come to find me. I reached back behind me and squeezed her ass.
Was it a dimly lit room? Yeah, it was. There was only a single light on, right at the back - we didn't want to attract any attention from teachers. So yeah, the room was dimly lit but mostly, I was completely fucking drunk. When I turned around to kiss Tasha I just...didn't look. It seemed obvious that it was her.
It was only a few good seconds later that the taste of cigarettes actually registered in my brain. Cigarettes? But Tasha didn't smoke...? I stumbled back and allowed my eyes to slowly focus on the person in front of me. A face and a body appeared out of the spinning colors.
Kelsey Richards. FUCK. She was smiling, too. Had she done it on purpose? I took an awkward step forward and immediately felt someone dragging me back.
"Whoa, cool down, Barlow. We don't hit women."
I turned to see who was holding me back. Carlson. Anger tightened my throat. "I wasn't going to fucking hit her!" I bellowed, yanking my arm out of his grip. And that much was true - I wasn't going to hit her. I was just trying to get myself the hell out of there. As soon as Carlson had let me go, I lurched towards the door, determined to find Tasha.
"Kaden, wait!"
It was Kelsey, and she was grabbing my sleeve, trying to stop me. "Kaden! Wait a sec - I just want to talk to you."
I spun around and slurred "Fuck off!" She was lucky I was too drunk to put a sentence together at that moment, because I wanted to say a lot more. Kelsey knew I was with Tasha - everyone at school did. Without the dampening effects of alcohol on my brain I think things would have gotten a lot uglier. Even with the "fuck off" her face was already crumpling into tears and Carlson was already moving in for the kill, wrapping his arm around Kelsey and pointing towards the door, shouting at me to get out. Which is exactly what I wanted to do.
Chapter 12: Natasha
I've never had a night quite so cleanly split into the 'before' and the 'after' as I did on the night of my high school prom. After Kaden left to spend time with his friends I found my own group and we snuck off to the bathroom to drink horrible mixed drinks that Maisie had made and then poured into sports-drink bottles. I took a sip of something bright neon blue and made a face.
"Ugh, Maisie, that's awful! What is that?"
She grinned. Well, it's Kool-Aid. And vodka.
"Did you put any sugar in the Kool-Aid?" Lena inquired after tasting the mixture and making a very similar expression to mine.
We all turned to Maisie, anticipating the answer. "Oh my God - I didn't! Are you supposed to put sugar in Kool-Aid?"
I started laughing. Maisie had grown up in a slightly more well-off family than me. "Yep," I told her. "But maybe you had to grow up in a house where Kool-Aid was a thing."
"At least I didn't mix it with Sunny-D" She giggled, forcing herself to take a sip from the bottle, this one containing a bright red liquid. "Oh God, you guys are right this is disgusting."
"Never mind," Sadie piped up. "There's always the after-party. Besides, I don't want to get too messy tonight - there's already people throwing up on the field outside."
We, after a few more small, unwilling sips, abandoned Maisie's failed attempt at drink mixing and stood in front of one of the mirror, fixing our makeup and hair.
"What about you?" Lena asked me, catching my eye in the mirror. "Are you coming out with us later?"
"I - um, I don't know," I said. "Kaden said he wanted to meet up but I don't know what our plans are."
"Where is Kaden, anyway? He seems to have disappeared with the rest of the football players. Do they have some kind of exclusive prom that none of us are allowed to go to? He's welcome to come with us later, if you want. Sadie's parents are out, we were going to go back there and then maybe for a drive up into the hills? Have some drinks and watch the sun come up?"
It sounded like a decent plan. I wasn't convinced I was going to join then - I was already missing Kaden, and that was only exacerbated by what had happened that afternoon - but I told Lena maybe.
The vodka had a nice effect. It had hardly been very much but I wasn't what you'd call an experienced drinker at that age - a lot of my classmates were doing it regularly but my life just didn't allow a lot of time for partying. We headed back out to the gym and danced to a few more songs, all of us in a big, laughing group.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the momentousness of the occasion. It was probably both but whatever it was I found myself swimming in a strange feeling of pre-nostalgia in the gym, dancing away happily and giggling every time one of the balloons broke free and floated down to bop one of us on the head. There was a sudden consciousness that in a few short weeks, this tight group of girls was going to splinter off in all directions. Lena and Sadie were going to college in state. But Maisie was going to California. Andrea and I were staying in Little Falls. We'd promised each other a thousand times to stay in touch every day. Messages, Snapchat, phone calls, whatever it took. But even then I knew it was soon going to be very different - even if we did manage to keep all our promises of constant communication. All our lives were about to start moving along very different trajectories. I wasn't sure if it made me happy or sad.