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/> We have a couple of drinks in the room, Meiko doing the glittery finishing touches on Elle’s makeup, and then we head on out when we’re good and buzzed. It’s a busy night on campus, lots of the housing around the area overflowing with drunk students done with their exams and partying it up. The fog still hangs on the street like moving curtains, people drinking in the shadows.
The party is at a house that ten students share up on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, just above the campus, probably dangerous for us to walk tonight (not to mention all uphill), so we end up getting an Uber to split, which shows up right away.
We slide into the car, the driver looking tired of handling people like us all night.
“So, how are you?” Elle says, nudging me with her shoulder. She smells like cider. I’m sure I do too. “I mean, really.”
“Good. Great,” I say, flashing her a smile. “Awesome.”
She squints at me through her false lashes. “You sure? Because you still seem a bit stressed.”
“Maybe it takes a few days for my stress levels to go down. We can’t all be like you.”
“You see that stalker again?”
“What stalker?” Meiko cries out, leaning over Elle, her expertly curled hair falling forward. “You have a stalker?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I just felt like I did … but it was nothing.” I pause, the cider making the truth tickle on my tongue. “But I’ve been easily spooked lately.”
“Oh yeah? Spooked how?” Elle asks.
“Well, I know what you’re going to say, so before you say it, let me just tell you it’s chalked up to too little sleep, too little food, too much studying and then smoking up before bed.”
“Okay, so like, I’ve been doing the same and I haven’t been spooked. What happened?”
I sigh, looking out the window at the dark mist as the car climbs up the ridge. I tell them about the voices I’ve been hearing, the closing door, the dead roses, the shadows, and Atlas Poe.
By the time I’m done, the car is pulling up beside the party house. Cars are parked in all directions, but it really is the middle of nowhere up here, with the lights of Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland glittering below.
“Shit, Lenore,” Elle says to me as we scramble out of the car. “You know what your problem really is?”
“What?”
“You need to get laid.”
Then she slaps me hard on the back and starts laughing maniacally, and I have a feeling I’m going to spend the rest of the evening fending off a bunch of douchebags she’s picked out for me. She doesn’t have the best taste in men, especially when it comes to who I should be with, like she’s trying to undo my high standards.
The house is absolutely bumping and we head up the stairs to the porch, people everywhere, drinking, making out, laughing.
Inside, a remix of “Method Man” by Wu-Tang Clan is playing, the speakers making the house vibrate. I see some people I know from my classes, some of Elle’s friends, and pretty soon the three of us are drinking mystery beers and punch passed to us in an assortment of mugs and glasses, floating from room to room in the house.
I push all my worries to the back of my head and find myself in someone’s bedroom with Meiko and some girl with dreads who hands me a joint. This will help me get in the mood, turn off this stupid brain of mine. I’ve been cursed with not only the ability to intensely focus on things, but have my thoughts rattle inside my noggin at a hundred miles an hour. Weed keeps the focus at bay and the thoughts at a minimum.
A quiet mind is bliss.
It takes a few hits for it to work, to feel my brain slow down, to start feeling the good vibes of my friends, the party, the music. Everything feels like it’s going to be okay now, no matter what happens.
And that’s when my eyes are drawn to the doorway, just in time to see a man stride past the room, a man that makes my knees shake, my blood burn.
Oh my god.
It’s him!
The sexy suit guy!
What is he doing here?
“Lenore?” Meiko asks, but I’m shoving the joint back into her hands and striding over to the doorway, hoping to catch him.
