Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [78]
I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it tight.
“I know what you're thinking, Jess,” she said, plopping herself down on the grass next to me. “That I hate LA because of Percy.”
She was right. That was exactly what I was thinking.
“Sure, it would be easier to tolerate it if he were there with me. But the truth is, I hated it on its own. I'm just happy that the solution to my hating-LA problem also happens to solve my missing-Percy problem.”
I hated myself for my skepticism, because I knew it had nothing to do with Bridget and Percy and everything to do with Marcus and me. What if I had transferred to Berkeley? Would we still be—?
“So let's go out!” she said, thankfully interrupting a thought that I didn't want to finish. “Percy and I will take you out!”
Everyone always thinks that getting me out of hiding and back into the world will do me some good. This, of course, makes no sense, when it's the world that makes me want to go into hiding. But remarkably I said, “Okay.”
Partying in general exhausts me. But I've come to the conclusion that partying at college exhausts me, like, existentially even more than parties in high school. High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. College parties are exhausting in a diametrically opposite way. They are full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room, so they spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.
I figured that hitting a bar with Bridget and Percy wouldn't be such a burden on my brain, which is how I found myself in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, at a bar called Tiki Tiki Tonga. Triple T, as it's known, is a bar that's got sand on the floor, leering tribal masks on the walls, and wooden torches topped with swirling disco lights. It's a jungle jumble of Club Med and The Rainforest Café.
Obviously, the décor isn't the main attraction. Every season there's one bar on the Cheezeside strip that quickly establishes itself for its lax attitude about fake IDs and therefore becomes the favorite hangout for underage drinkers until the ABC busts up the party. This year, its Triple T. Pineville High has no need to throw a reunion: Its graduating class of '02 could be found there in near-perfect attendance because most of us have yet to turn twenty-one.
No surprise, then, that we'd barely gotten past the bouncer before we saw none other than Sara and Scotty heading our way. She was still unnaturally brown and skinny, and in a yellow-and-red-striped tube dress, I'll be goddiggitydamned if she didn't look exactly, exactly like a Slim Jim. Sara had trouble making her way through the crowd, so Scotty was putting his pounds to good use by acting as her own personal offensive line, with emphasis on offensive. He wore a T-shirt bearing a message that might have explained what he was doing in her company: LIFE IS SHORT. GO UGLY EARLY.
“I'm so outta here,” I said.
“Come on,” Bridget said. “We've already blown fifteen bucks just to get in the door.”
“I need a strong drink.”
“A bottle of Grey Goose and a straw?” Pepe suggested, on his way to the bar.
“OMIGOD!!!”
I shot Pepe a look that said, Make that a double.
Sara was saying something, but I couldn't hear her over the tribal drums beating through the sound system. I nodded and smiled, hoping it would placate her. But that wasn't the desired reaction to whatever she had said, so she repeated it at a volume that would have otherwise seemed impossible through sheer vocal power alone.
“HOW ARE YOU HOLDING UP???!!!”
Pepe and Bridget returned with my drink. It was antifreeze green and garnished with a gummy monkey