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“Where the hell have you been?” Victoria shrieked when she saw me. “You have to catch up with me. I’m so drunk already!”
She did seem pretty drunk, her words were slurred, and her eyes could barely focus on me. One of Alexander’s friends was hanging off her, making sure she wasn’t leaving his sight.
“I think you’ve already left the station, and there aren’t any more trains tonight,” I laughed, but I took a glass from her hand nonetheless. I took a sip and grimaced. The taste wasn’t appealing. I’d never been a wine drinker.
“Come on, chug it!” Victoria yelled. “It’s your favorite riesling! You must have had a couple barrels’ worth last spring break alone!”
“I don’t actually like wine,” I said, holding the bottle up as I looked at the label. “Do you have any beer? Preferably an IPA of some sort?”
“Oh my god, beer, fucking gross!” Victoria spat. “We make fun of bitches who drink beer like the guys!”
“I feel like I’d like it,” I said, taking another drink of wine and finding it even more bitter than before. “This tastes like piss.”
“How would you know what piss tastes like?” Grace asked, giving me an exaggerated look of disgust. “Are you into golden showers?”
I glared at her, and she shut up immediately; she knew better.
“Get her a beer, an IPA if we have any,” Alexander said, looking at me with a strange expression. “She can drink whatever she wants, even if it is sort of strange for a woman.”
They were so sexist. It was just another thing that irked me about the Crimson crowd. The misogyny was ingrained in everything they did, from the way our classes were divided all the way up to marriage. I would be expected to just become a housewife if I went through with my wedding to Alexander, any dreams I had to become something would be forgotten.
And it wasn’t as if I had some big career in mind, but I didn’t like being told I couldn’t get a degree if I decided to become a wife. The Crimson idea of a degree was laughable, but there were options for afterward. I could go on and become a doctor or research scientist, but I had to be an unmarried Lower if this was the option I wanted.
As an Upper, I might have more money and a better life on paper, but as a woman, it was extremely restricted. I wasn’t allowed to do anything for myself, and from what I could tell, it just got worse if I managed to squeeze out a couple Upper brats.
“There’s nothing strange about a woman liking beer,” I snapped, the build-up too great to contain. “I think it’s weird to assign a gender to alcohol, myself. That’s fucked up.”
Victoria shook her head and rolled her eyes. She threw her head back and began to sway to the music. “Just shut up!” she yelled, but her voice wasn’t mean. She wasn’t being bitchy. She was just as frustrated with me as I was with them. “Seriously, Willow, you’ve been such a fucking downer since the accident. So please, just shut the fuck up and try to have a good time.”
“Give me a beer, and I will,” I replied with good humor.
Somebody pressed a bottle into my hand. I tried to loosen the top but realized it wasn’t a screw-off. It was strange, everybody watched me as I looked around for a bottle opener, and then not a single one of them was prepared for what I did next.
“Not a screw cap, hey?” I laughed and held it up to my mouth. “No worries!”
I bit down and jerked the bottle, snapped the lid off, and spit it out onto the floor. The music throbbed in the background, but nobody said a word.
I didn’t know where I knew how to do that trick, but my tooth was still intact so clearly, somebody had taught me some time.
“Now we can party!” I giggled and held the bottle up, then brought it to my lips and began to drink.
All at once a cacophony of noise broke out as they all started to talk at once. Some of them cheered me on, and Rome and Alexander just watched me as if I was a stranger in their midst.
Only Luke smiled at me across the room when our eyes met. He was watching me closely, his eyes glittering with pride as I performed like a Lower while wearing an Upper girl’s body.
He came to my side shortly after when I was three beers deep into the night.
“Who are you, Willow Avalon?” he asked me as we danced in the living room. “I mean, who are you really because you’re not her anymore, are you?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along!” I giggled and had another drink.
The night went past in a blur, and some time when the sun was coming up through the trees of the forest that surrounded the campus, I staggered home in between Victoria and Alexander, and I felt out of my head.
When we got to our floor, Victoria staggered to her end of the hall, and Alexander helped me to mine. I opened my door with my palm print scan, and we stepped inside.
I was immediately immersed in chaotic blaring, an alarm was going off, a rhythmic whooping sound of bells, and jarringly painful decibel levels.
“What is that?” Alexander asked, searching frantically for the source.
