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She nudged her out of the room. Emily scuttled up the stairs, walked into her bedroom, and opened her closet. Nearly identical Old Navy long-sleeved T-shirts, medium-wash jeans, and Banana Republic cable-knit sweaters hung in an unorganized jumble. What did one wear to a naughty elf party? She pulled out a pair of tight black jeans and an off-the-shoulder black top she’d bought on a whim with Maya.
Then, a flicker outside the window caught her eye. She ran to the window and squinted hard. Something was moving through the cornfield outside. It was definitely a person. And did she see blond hair?
Emily pressed her nose and mouth so close to the window that the glass immediately steamed up. But by the time she wiped it clean and looked again, the figure had vanished.
Chapter 6
Poor Little Wallflower
A few hours later, Emily walked up the front steps of a huge white Victorian on Emerson Road in Old Hollis, the hip neighborhood next to Hollis College. It was the only house on the block with loud music pulsing from its seams, lights in every window, and cars parked on the grass, so Emily figured it was Cassie’s. A couple of kids were making drunken angels in the light dusting of snow. Everyone seemed to know one another, and she already felt out of place. She’d asked Aria to come with her, but Aria had to help her dad get wreaths or logs or something ready for the Winter Solstice.
The front door was shut tight. Emily was deliberating over what to do—knock? Just go in?—when the door burst open and a girl wearing a very short dress and thigh-high snow boots and a guy in a Santa beard and a HOLLIS BEER CRAWL T-shirt tumbled out onto the porch, giggling. They held the door open for Emily, and she slipped inside.
The scent of stale beer instantly assaulted her. People crammed the rooms, talking loudly. A small Christmas tree decorated with white lights rotated slowly on a plastic pedestal. A high-tech-looking stereo pumped out music, and a flat-screen TV was tuned to Comedy Central, not that anyone was watching. A gray cat perched on the stairs, licking her paws. When a girl barreled down from the second floor, spilling her cup of beer as she went, the cat screeched and took off.
There was no one at the party Emily even remotely recognized. She passed through the living room into a dining room with a stately old table laden with booze, and then into the kitchen, which had a stainless-steel fridge and expensive-looking pots and pans hanging from a rack above the island. Pinned up to the fridge was a neon-yellow Post-it that said, Cassie is a slutty beast! There were black bananas in a hanging basket over the oven, and a ton of dishes were piled in the sink. Emily wondered if Cassie was holding down the fort while her parents were away on vacation.
When her gaze clapped on the view of the Hollis spire out the back window, a pathway connected in her brain. The field hockey party she and Ali had attended all those years ago was in this very same house. It had been in the dining room behind her that Cassie plied Ali with vodka and Red Bulls and ignored Emily completely.
“Oops,” a voice said behind Emily. She turned just as a burly guy, wearing a T-shirt that had a drawing of a penis on it, spilled half his beer on her arm.
“Hey!” Emily cried, drawing back. Her sleeve was drenched.
“Sorry,” the guy half-spoke, half-belched. He wandered away.
The hip-hop song rose in volume, making Emily’s head ache. After toweling off her sleeve, she escaped back into the dining room, which was slightly less crowded. A guy stood behind the table, pouring vodka into a red plastic cup. He raised his eyes to Emily. “What are you having? Cassie’s making me be bartender so no one hogs the booze.”
“Oh, uh, I’ll just have some orange juice.” Emily pointed to the first nonalcoholic beverage she saw, thinking of her mother’s advice not to drink.
A slow smirk rolled across the guy’s face. “It’s not like I’m going to card you.”
“Really. Orange juice is fine,” Emily insisted, feeling like the most prudish girl in the universe.
She took the red cup from the guy—at least now she had something to do with her hands—and wandered through the crowd, looking for Cassie and the elves. People stared past her apathetically as though she wasn’t even there.
Then the crowd parted, and she spotted four figures lounging on plastic lawn chairs next to the radiator in the front room. It was Cassie, dressed in a leather skirt and a tie-dyed baby tee. She’d bleached her blue hair to white blond, though it was nothing like the blond hair from her field hockey days. Heather, Sophie, and Lola, each in similarly skimpy outfits, sat next to her, whispering and looking smug.
Emily pushed through the throng toward them. When only a few people stood between Emily and the elves, a tall boy leaned over Cassie, grinning mysteriously. “I heard you guys have been raising hell all over town. Is it true?”
Cassie gave him a cryptic smile. “That’s what elves do, isn’t it?”
“That’s for us to know and you to wonder about,” Heather added.
“You guys rock,” the guy said, giving Lola a fist bump.
Then Cassie looked up and stared squarely at Emily. Emily felt a swoop in her stomach and waved, but Cassie just peered through her. Lola glanced in Emily’s direction too, but she gave Emily the same blank, unwelcoming expression.
Emily shrank back. A high-pitched giggle lilted through the air. She knew the laugh was meant for her.
She drank the orange juice, pretending it was booze. So this was just a big joke. The elves wanted to make it clear how big of a loser she was. She ducked into the empty hall bathroom, feeling tears rush to her eyes. After fiddling with the old-timey glass knob so that the door actually shut, she plopped down on the side of the tub and placed her head in her hands. Talk about déjà vu—she’d locked herself in this very same bathroom at the party in seventh grade, shortly after Ali had headed upstairs with Cassie. The pain she’d felt back then was still so palpable. It felt like Ali had been breaking up with her—and, in a way, she had been.
