AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kayla smiles wide. “The next one can be about Nope.”
I find Holden cheering on Mikki, Carlos, and two guys I don’t know while they play beer pong. He’s having a sideconversation with Nita and a junior, Ricardo, so I wait across the table, awkwardly trying to make eye contact. After a minute, it happens.
He nods at me, says something to Nita and Ricardo, and then crosses the room.
“Should we film?”
I gesture to the beer pong table. “How good are you at beer pong?”
He grins and calls “We’ve got winners!” to the room.
Holden has to drive, so he can’t drink. He’s also very terrible at beer pong and he can’t even blame it on the fact that he’s filming with one hand because I was filming for a while and he still sucked. So, that means I am drinking a lot of beer, which I hate and didn’t plan on partaking in tonight, for him. Sometime around ten, when my tongue is long past numb, Logan shows up and Corrine wraps her arms around my stomach, nuzzling into my neck. She wishes me—and Holden—good luck as the rest of our friends cheer us on, even though it’s very clear we’re going to lose. I hate how easy it is to get my hopes up that this could all be normal. Holden and I friends again. Corrine happy and okay with it. Juniper and Kayla twirling around the five square feet of empty space that constitutes a dance floor.
Soon, we accept defeat and force the people around the sound system to listen to Nope.’s first song ever, “Meme, Myself, and I,” which failed to take off but holds weird nostalgia for some CHHS students and spurred a hacking prank where students replaced faculty photos on the website with whatever memewas popular that day. I film this part, feeling safer behind the lens, feeling like I have a purpose for dancing. But even if I didn’t have the camera, I think seeing Holden’s nonchalance would probably put me at ease. He was a follower when he was a kid, but I find myself taking his lead more and more these days. Kayla dances with her eyes closed, so she doesn’t see how Juniper looks at her. Juniper’s gonna say yes when Kayla asks her out. I’d bet my acceptance to Temple on it.
When the song’s over—they played it four times in a row, at Taj’s insistence—the whole group of us moves to the kitchen to fill up on refreshments and, even though we all seem to be getting along, Holden ducks away, apparently to take a call. I step toward him and then reverse back to where I was. I have no excuse for following. I have the camera, my friends are here, the drinks are here. I’ve switched to water but it doesn’t do much to settle my stomach. I’d actually like to just pull a Corrine and chuck it up just to get it out of my body.
It’s quieter in the kitchen than any other room, so I hear when Holden says, “Mara, put Taylor back on the phone. I can’t understand you.” I go on high alert, spinning toward him.
“Is Mara okay?” Then something dark and hot fills my gut. “Is Trevor?”
Holden holds up his finger. “What? Okay. It’s okay.”
“Is she okay?” I ask again, closer. I can hear that annoying childlike lilt to my voice that happens when I drink.
“Yeah,” he says into the phone, “that was her.” He glances at me. “No, she’s not coming—”
He retracts the phone from his ear suddenly, Mara’s loud voice reaching me.
“Please!” she wails.
So, it’s not really a discussion at that point. When I tell my friends I have to go and that I don’t need a ride anymore, Corrine, snug with Logan hanging over her shoulders, nods in understanding. Friend Probation will probably last a little longer still, but maybe some progress was made tonight.
