“No,” says the other one. “She just tried to kill herself.”
“All I know is she tried to kill someone.”
“Who cares? Where’d that cocktail waitress go?”
“I did see her mom lurking around, though,” says a young man. “She looked hungry. She’s on the prowl.” The girls laugh.
“You’re technically legal.”
“Gross,” he says. “But I’m sure she could snag an island boy easy.”
It goes on like that for a long time. Everyone at the party is having different versions of the same conversation.
It wouldn’t matter if I stayed outside, looking in. If I perched somewhere in the corner and eavesdropped on other people’s lives. It would not be much different than if I followed Tami around the party as the night gets darker, nursing my soda while everyone gets drunker.
Another young celebrity arrives and everyone pretends to not be impressed. One of the island’s local drug dealers is propped up in a throne-type chair with a line of people waiting for their turn to conduct business. The reality show runner-up plays piano and sings, but no one is listening. I can feel the party collectively getting drunker. The heat rises. Articles of clothing are strewn about the house.
A woman who is older than all of us stands at the top of the grand staircase looking down with a drink in her hand, hair extensions piled on her head and cleavage piled on her chest, surveying the party with a hungry, prideful look in her eyes. Something seizes inside me as I see this vision of Ivy in thirty years. Something like fear. Something like disgust.
The music has gotten louder. People yell to be heard, but they say nothing. A girl falls down the stairs and no one comes to help her up. Someone runs by, fast, nearly ramming into me. Someone else lunges forward and I have to jump out of their way. Arms grab a boy and pull him into a shadowed corner. The lights seem to flicker and spin and I wonder if my drink has been spiked.
The magic has shifted. What felt so special at first has tipped over into some other realm. A frenetic energy has inserted itself into the party, like the stakes have suddenly been raised, like everything has become more desperate. And I just watch from wherever I am, either by Tami’s side or alone, in shadows, hiding behind sunglasses, the light shining through me, the night turning more surreal even though I think I am completely sober.
It does not matter if I found Tami or if I watched from the shadows. She would not notice when I got up to leave. No one would see me walk down the hall. They’re all looking for someone else.
I find a drunk girl slouched in the bathroom who doesn’t know where she is. “I was in a boat,” she says. “I think. Now I’m in here. But the floor’s still moving like a boat. Is this a houseboat? Are we on Lake Union again?”
I just stare at her, wondering what I should do, when I feel the presence of someone new behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My skin feels warmed. Without looking, I know it is Ivy.
“Do you know her?” Ivy’s voice asks. I can feel her breath on my bare shoulders.
“No,” I say, turning around. “Do you?”
“I don’t know any of these people.” Her face is calm, friendly. “We can put her in one of the bedrooms. She’ll be safe there until she sobers up.”
What if I’m the only one who’s seen Ivy all night? The whole world thinks they know her, but here, in this bathroom, I am the only one.
“I know you,” the drunk girl says, and I can’t tell if she’s talking to Ivy or me.
Ivy texts something into her phone and almost immediately two large men arrive. “Take her to the south bedroom,” she says. “And someone check on her regularly to make sure she’s okay. Don’t let any assholes into her room. Got it? If anyone hurts her, you’re both dead.” The men nod and carry the girl away.
“You sound like a feminist mafia boss,” I say.
She smiles. I have pleased her.
“I’m not in the mood for a party, are you?” she says, then takes my hand. “Let’s go upstairs.” And I don’t even think. I would follow her anywhere.
Nearly the whole bottom floor is made of glass and steel beams, almost completely open except for a couple of bathrooms, while the second floor is more private, with actual walls. No one seems to notice us as Ivy leads me upstairs to a secluded bay window with a built-in bench, like a reproduction of a quaint little reading nook in an older, traditional-style home. We sit there together in silence for a while, the windows open so we can hear and see the madness below and the stars shining above.
“Do you want to know a secret?” Ivy says.
“What?”
“I wasn’t even at the party last weekend. My own party. I had nothing to do with it. It was all my mom.”
“What’d you do instead?” I say.
“We should hang out soon,” Ivy says, looking out the window like she’s looking for something, or someone, specific. I wonder if she knows how mysterious she’s being, if she’s like this on purpose.
“We’re hanging out now.”
“I mean go fishing or something.”
“Fishing?”
“I’m kidding,” she says, turning to look at me. “But let’s go for that walk we were talking about. Or a hike. I’ll even go in the forest. I don’t know. Something nice. Something not this.”
Nice. I am her source of something “nice.”
“You’re not drunk, are you?” she says.
“Not at all.”
“It’s refreshing, right? Being sober? Seeing clearly?” She raises her glass, and I have a feeling she’s trying to convince herself more than me. “Club soda and lime. Doctor’s orders. I think we’re the only sober people here. By a long shot.”
“I feel like I’m on an alien planet,” I say.
“I feel that way all the time.”
“I wish I could put on some kind of disguise and go through the world being the opposite of me.”
“Me too.”
“But that only works in the movies.”
She looks at me and just like that there is no party, there are no people, there are just the two of us suspended here in space, molecules and atoms connected by molecules and atoms, and I forget time, I forget history, I am only what her eyes make me, I am only the sound exhaled through her mouth, perfectly articulated.
And suddenly the party is transformed again. This is a new kind of magic. This is the other world I was meant to enter when I walked down the driveway, as I stood in the shadows in my sunglasses, watching, waiting for entry. I am on a side with Ivy that no one else is on.