Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [57]
"I want to go."
Manda looked at me, expressionless.
"To the party," I said. "I want to go to the party."
Manda thought this was the funniest thing she had ever heard in her life. She literally bent over and slapped her knees as she laughed, affording Woody and his Hungarian homeboys a golden opportunity to look down her tank top.
"Are you spoken for?" Woody asked Manda.
Manda stopped cackling and started gagging. I ignored him.
"I’ll call my parents and tell them I’m sleeping over at Sara’s," I said. "They’ll be thrilled that I’m out being social."
"You’re serious about this?" she asked, as though I were signing away my life, which, as it turned out, wasn’t too far from the truth.
"Yes," I said. "I’m ready to par-tay."
After work (or nonwork in Sara’s case), Burke drove us over to the stretch of beach where the festivities were taking place. We got there around midnight. The fiesta was clearly in its early stages, as there was an even one-to-one ratio of people to beer cans scattered on the sand. Plus, the sexes had yet to mingle. Giggly girls clung in clumps, clutching plastic cups and beer cans kindly provided by members of the opposite sex who wanted to get in their pants. Packs of guys pounded each other in the arm, pointing out the girls whose pants they wanted to get into. We may be in high school, but until everyone is wasted these shindigs are as boy–girl segregated as a kindergarten birthday party. When the sexes interface, that’s when you know things are getting really messy.
The "beat of the beach," FM 98.5, blasted a hot weather classic:
Summer summer summertime.
Time to sit back and unwind.
"Still ready to par-tay?" yelled Manda over the music.
I had no ride home. No escape.
"I desperately need a beer," I yelled back.
Manda had sent Burke off in search of alcohol. On cue, he returned to us, his arms full of cans of Milwaukee’s Best. I really hate the taste of beer. Even good beer when it’s icy cold, and this "Beast" was neither. But I’ve learned that once you’re buzzed, the foul taste doesn’t register anymore. I cracked it open and chugged as much as I could as fast as I could.
"Whoo-hoo!" whooped Manda and Sara. "You go, girl."
I slammed my first beer before the Fresh Prince finished. He was followed by the opening guitar picking of a big Backstreet Boys hit from a couple summers back. Their reign as the undisputed crown princes of teenybopper pop was clearly over because the backlash was immediate: The crowd started booing before BSB began to harmonize. Someone quickly changed the station, but it was too late. I had already started thinking about Marcus Flutie, wondering if he wore that T-shirt at Middlebury. Wondering if anyone got the joke if he did. Wondering if he wondered about me.
I got another beer out of the nearest cooler.
Sara and Manda had barely sipped their beers but were already fronting like they had tied one on.
"Know who I miss?" asked Sara.
"Who do you miss?" asked Manda.
"I miss Hy," said Sara.
"Me, too," said Manda.
I grunted and gulped more beer. I don’t know why, but for a split second I thought Sara was going to say, Hope. I miss Hope. It’s probably because I hadn’t really given Hy’s disappearance a second thought, while I can’t for the life of me forget that Hope is gone. The thing is, if Sara had said, I miss Hope, I would have coldcocked her with my beer can.
"Hy was for real, you know?" said Manda.
"Her aunt said she was quote going back to where she belongs unquote."
That got my attention.
"What? What does that mean?"
"I think it means she’s back in the city," Sara said.
"Why wouldn’t she tell us?" I asked.
"Maybe she was embarrassed, you know, after all the bad stuff she said about the stuck-up girls she went to school with," mused Sara. "She didn’t want to face us."
I chucked my can into the garbage and grabbed another.
The "conversations" that followed aren’t worth going into in detail.
Manda wondered if Bridget would act all stuck up