AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 17
Just Another Kegger at the Kahns’
By the time Aria and Mike pulled up to the Kahns’ monstrosity of a house on Thursday night, there were already tons of cars parked in the driveway and on the lawn. Music thumped from inside the house, and Aria heard a splash from the hot tub out back.
“Sweet,” Mike said, leaping out the passenger door. In a blink, he had run halfway around the side of the house toward the backyard. Aria glowered. So much for an escort.
Aria got out of the car and joined a knot of thin, pretty girls from the Quaker prep school making their way to Noel’s door. Each girl was blonder than the last. They were wearing matching fur-trimmed hats that probably cost more than Aria’s entire outfit. Aria felt shabby and weird next to them in her deep green mohair sweater dress, gray suede boots, and leg warmers. The girls jostled on the porch, each trying desperately to be the first one through the door, bumping into Aria as if she wasn’t even there.
Just as Aria was about to turn and run back to her car, Noel flung open the door, dressed in a plain black T-shirt and black swim trunks. “You’re here!” he whooped to Aria and only Aria, ignoring the other girls. “Are you ready for the hot tub?”
“I don’t know,” Aria answered shyly. At the last minute, she’d thrown a bikini in her bag, but she hadn’t decided whether she’d wear it. She still didn’t even know what she was doing here. This wasn’t exactly her group.
Noel scowled. “It’s a hot tub party. You’re going in.”
Aria giggled, trying to relax. But then Mason Byers grabbed Noel’s arm and asked where the bottle opener was. Naomi Zeigler waltzed over and said that a skanky drunk girl was throwing up in the powder room. Aria sighed, deflated. It was a Typical Kahn party—what did she expect? That just because she and Noel had shared something special yesterday, he’d cancel the kegger and instead host a sophisticated wine-and-cheese event?
As if sensing her annoyance, Noel glanced over his shoulder at Aria and held up a single finger. Be back in a sec, he mouthed. Aria wandered past the double staircase and the legendary marble lions that Mr. Kahn had allegedly procured from an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. To her right was the living room, stuffed full ofauthentic O’Keeffes and Jasper Johnses. She walked into the gigantic stainless-steel kitchen. Kids were everywhere. Devon Arliss was mixing drinks in a blender. Kate Randall was parading around the room in a skimpy Missoni bikini. Jenna Cavanaugh was leaning against the window, whispering in Emily’s ex-girlfriend’s ear.
Aria stopped, backtracking. Jenna Cavanaugh? No one had bothered to tell Jenna that her service dog was lapping up a puddle of beer on the floor, or that someone had fastened a black lacy bra around the dog’s neck, its padded cups hanging down like a bow tie.
Suddenly Aria was desperate to know what Jenna and Jason had been fighting about in her house last week, when Emily had seen them through the window. Aria had been Ali’s best friend, but Jenna seemed to know much more about Ali’s family than Aria did—including Ali’s alleged “sibling problems” with Jason. Aria nudged through the crowd, but then more kids filed into the kitchen, blocking her way. By the time Aria could see the window again, Jenna and Maya had disappeared.
A bunch of guys on the Rosewood Day swim team came up behind Aria and grabbed some beer from the cooler under the table. Aria felt a tug on her arm. When she turned, she saw a bleached-blond girl with flawless skin and big boobs staring at her. She was one of the Quaker school girls Aria had stood next to on the front porch.
“You’re Aria Montgomery, right?” the girl said. Aria nodded, and the girl gave her a knowing smirk. “Pretty Little Liar,” she chanted.
A skinny brunette in a fuchsia silk dress sidled up too. “Have you seen Alison today?” she teased. “Do you see her right now? Is she standing right next to you?” She wiggled her fingers in front of her face spookily.
Aria took a step back, bumping into the round kitchen table.
The jeers continued. “I see dead people,” Mason Byers said in falsetto, leaning against the counter near the pot rack.
“She just likes the attention,” Naomi Zeigler scoffed from the sliding glass door. Beyond that was the Kahns’ patio. Steam rose from the hot tub. Aria caught sight of Mike way at the edge of the lawn, horsing around with James Freed.
“She probably just wants to be on the news,” Riley Wolfe added, perched on a stool near the veggies and dip.
“That’s not true!” Aria protested.
More kids entered the room, staring Aria down: Their eyes were derisive and hateful. Aria looked right and left, eager to escape, but she was pinned against the kitchen table, barely able to move. Then someone grabbed her left wrist. “C’mon,” Noel said. He pulled her through the crowd.
Kids parted immediately. “Are you kicking her out?” a boy on the baseball team whose name Aria never remembered crowed.
“You should turn her in!” Seth Cardiff encouraged.
“No, he shouldn’t, idiot,” Mason Byers’s voice rose above the din. “This party is a cop-free zone.”
Noel dragged Aria up to the second floor. “I’m so sorry,” he said, nudging open a dark bedroom that had an enormous oil painting of Mrs. Kahn on the wall. The room smelled overpoweringly like mothballs. “You don’t need to be in the middle of that.”
Aria sat down on the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. What had she been thinking, coming here? Noel settled next to her, offering Aria a Kleenex and his gin and tonic. She shook her head. Downstairs, someone turned up the stereo. A girl shrieked. Noel rested his glass on his knee. Aria glanced at his sloped nose, his bushy eyebrows, his long eyelashes. It felt comforting, sitting here in the dark next to him.
