Changing With Autumn

Chapter 6

The ride went by too quick and way too soon we had pulled up and parked behind a long line of other partygoers' cars. Erika shot out of the car in a flash, but I tried to kill as much time as possible as I sat in the passenger seat trying to gather courage by gulping in large breaths. When Erika started banging on the hood of the car and cheering “Let’s go Willow,” in her favorite cheer chants I took that as my que to get out as quickly as possible before she began drawing anymore attention. 

As soon as I opened the door the sound of raving music and the laughs of teenage alcohol fueled enthusiasm filled the air. I couldn’t help but crinkle my nose at it all. Didn’t these people have neighbors? Oh God, I sounded like an old person. Pretty soon I would be wielding a cane at people and talking about the good old days. As I made my way to the front of the car where Erika waited for me I tried to pep talk myself. Thinking over and over in my head, “It’s just a party, be a normal teen and have fun. It’s just a party, be a normal teen and have fun.”

“Let’s go Willow.” Erika said impatiently as she reached out to grab my hand. “I’m like so excited! Aren’t you at all excited?” She was practically bouncing beside me as we made our way up the extremely long and red solo cup littered driveway. 

How she could be excited about this was way beyond me. Looking around I could see that people were everywhere and all in different levels of intoxication. I could hear that the blasting music had no lyrics and relied solely on what seemed to be techno beats. If I had to be stuck here I would have hoped that at least there would have been some better music to listen to and distract myself.

I could instantly tell that not only was this not where I wanted to be tonight but also that this was so not going to be my scene just by looking at the crowd of people making their way into the house. I don’t think I had ever seen so many preps and jocks in my entire life, it was almost as if all of them had been collected from every high school in the entire state and had shown up at the same party. There was literally no one else at this party that didn’t fit into that typical high school cliche group. Erika must have been invited by some of her cheer friends and decided to have me tag along to crash. 

“Uh Erika,” I abruptly stopped walking, pulling her to a stop and turned to look at her. “I don’t think this is going to work for me. I mean seriously look at these kids and look at me. They are all staring at me like I have two heads or something.” I said looking around at the groups of kids openly drunk gazing at me.

“Willow, will you just relax? Maybe if you didn’t look like you were in physical pain right now you wouldn’t draw so much attention to yourself.” She said.

“You’re kidding right? Look at me Erika. I think they would notice the emo kid whether I plaster on a smile or not. I stick out, you know I stick out, and you know I don’t like the attention.” I told her. “Plus look at the difference between me and you. It looks like I kidn*pped you or something and forced you to bring me along in a desperate attempt at getting in with the popular kids.”

I wasn’t exaggerating at all either. It’s not like the difference was subtle between the two of us, and people were definitely noticing as we made our way up to the house. Here I was, this dark looking girl and walking next to me was the perfect high school beauty. With her long, perfect hair. Her pink skirt that sat perfectly in the middle of her thighs and her white tank top that dived down a little too low for my taste. I mean this girl looked like boner bait and I could already see the looks she was getting. Apparently I would have to keep more than just her currently non-boyfriend away from her tonight.

“Just calm down woman. You’re here with me not them. Since when have you ever cared this much? Like you usually don’t give a damn if people stare or whatever.”

“Look, I don’t care what they think ABOUT me. It’s just super uncomfortable here FOR me. This isn’t where I belong and I just don’t want to spend my Friday night getting stared at like I’m some kind of circus animal.” I responded. I really didn’t care what they thought about me. I was used to getting looks and I was used to the whispers, but it wasn’t exactly my idea of fun to sit in a room full of all eyes on me.

“Alright let’s make a deal.” She grabbed my face with both of her hands to keep me from continuing to look around us. “Give me one hour. Just one. After that if you’re not having fun then we can leave and we will go to a drive thru and head back to my place for a movie night.” 

“See why didn’t we do that instead” I whined at her.

“Please Willow, please.” she folded her hands in front of me and begged.

“Ughhhh…” I threw my head back and rubbed at my temples. “You’ve got one hour. One hour Erika. I will be counting down. Then you owe me big time.” I said while letting out a defeated sigh. 

“Yay!” She jumped up and down, clapping her hands and drawing more drunk and smiling, lusty gazes in her direction.

Ew. I internally groaned. Why couldn’t I tell this girl no? No willpower that’s why. Stupid Willow. Stupid, stupid Willow I cursed at myself. We returned to our walk towards Hell and I began the mental countdown. 59 minutes 59 seconds. 59 minutes 58 seconds. 59 minutes 57 seconds. I could feel Erika bouncing next to me for the remaining walk. With each step the anxiety began to rise and it felt like my heart was beating louder than the bass from the speakers. 

If I thought the walk up to the house was bad though, it was nothing compared to the first step into the house. 

Have you ever walked into the room and it felt like everything stopped all at once? Like how you see in movies where the music at a party screeches to a stop. Yeah, that’s kind of what my entrance felt like. Granted, the room didn’t go silent and the music didn’t screech out, but I could feel it. I could practically feel the inhale of each person as their eyes landed on me. I could see the look in their eyes that questioned if I was lost and why I was here? I could hear the conversation volume drop to almost a whisper as people started asking their neighbor who the intruder was. All the while all I could think was great, so much for being the wallflower tonight. 

“Erika, people are staring.” I whispered at her from the corner of my mouth.

“Yeah they are. That’s ‘cause a couple of sexy bitches just walked through the door.” She smiled her bright smile at me.

“Yeah, that’s so not the case and you know it.” I responded. “Why are there so many jocks in here? What is this some kind of cult party?” I asked her, looking around and trying to hide my look of disgust.

“Willow, you play sports. Not even do you just play sports. You are varsity and you are really, really good at it too. You do realize that makes you part of the jock clan right?” She said exasperated. 

“Ouch.” It was my turn to put my hand on my chest and fake hurt. “If I’m gonna be grouped with these people then I’m quitting tennis on Monday.” Which left me thinking to myself that it actually didn’t sound like too bad of an idea considering the Hell I had to face next week anyways.

“Oh my God Willow. You’re so dramatic.” She laughed at me and continued to drag me further into the torture chamber.

It didn’t take long for the initial awkwardness to pass, granted it did not disappear completely, but the stares started to become fewer and fewer as the drinks started to be poured more and more. It seemed as if the initial shock of me crashing their prep/jock-fest had finally started to die down. So taking that as my opportunity to slightly slip into the background I sat down with Erika on the couch and listened to her chatter away about the gossip as she pointed out each person she knew at the party. Listening to her talking I soon found out that she seemed to know everything about everyone in the room- who was with who, who was cheating on who, who was the hot and nots, who was the new school sluts, who just broke up and why, how nasty was the breakup, and the gossip train continued as she moved the conversation from person to person. I let her talk as I put in my nods and agreed at the appropriate times. After a while though I could tell that I had started to only half listen and I felt like a horrible friend for it, but I just couldn’t help it. Giggles and gossip was not my thing.

“Willow? Willow? Willow!!!! Seriously!” I had started to zone out again and was brought back when I received a sharp smack to the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?” I rubbed my arm where I was sure she left a handprint this time.

“Dude, don’t be such a baby I barely love tapped you.” She said.

“Love tap my ass.” I responded and shot her a dirty look.

“Well if you were paying attention then it wouldn’t have happened would it? Now look. Aaron is here with Ricky and the cousin I was telling you about.” She said as she motioned for me to look towards the group of boys that just walked in through the back door. 

“Holy Hell!” She continued on. “The bad boy rumors were true, and let me just say that mommy like! If you don’t want him then I’m calling dibs.” Erika had started fanning herself. 

I smiled at her and shook my head. This girl was something else. I seriously loved her, even if she did drag me out into personally horrible situations. I looked over in their direction to humor her mainly, but I had to admit that I was kinda curious to see who was the cause of her reaction. When my eyes landed on the trio I couldn’t help the unconscious and slight jaw drop.I decided right then that I was wrong when I told Erika in her car that I had no interest in checking out Aaron’s best friend’s, uncle’s, cousin’s, brother or whatever. Because it turns out that I was, in fact, very interested in checking out Aaron’s best friend’s, uncle’s, cousin’s, brother or whatever. 

I had to admit that this guy was hella attractive, but it didn’t take long to see that, much to my disgust, he was that cocky kind of attractive. The kind of guy that knew that girls were drooling over him and he looked at all of them as a new conquest. I could already see it as his eyes started to roam around the room in appreciation of all of the low cut shirts and short skirts. The smiles he was receiving in return didn’t seem to help his already inflated ego. Watching him smirk at each of the girls that passed by or smiled at him had begun to make my skin crawl.

Now trust me, he was so not the type of guy I would ever even consider wanting to be with, and honestly I kinda hated him immediately after the moment he walked in, but if I had to suffer through this party I might as well appreciate a little eye candy right? 

Well, that was what I had thought up until a couple minutes later when the front door opened and my heart stopped.