So I did. Laughing, I spun around in circles with my arms flung out all the way down the beaten sandy path between the shrubbery until I lost my footing and fell over into a bush.
Lee was laughing too, and jogged over to give me a hand up.
It wasn’t hard to find the party. It was a little past eight, but there were a lot of people around. There were coolers, and a couple of small campfires. People had dragged some logs round to make circles, and if they weren’t sitting, they were milling about.
“This is the dangerous, drug-fueled rave your brother warned us to stay away from?” I couldn’t help but ask incredulously, looking on. From here, it all seemed pretty tame.
As we got closer, I saw that the people there were mostly around college age, a little older than us. But there were a ton of kids our age too, and a few younger.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing Lee’s hand and dragging him toward the nearest cooler. “I’m thirsty.”
“What happened toNo, I won’t drink at all, don’t worry?”
“I never said that. I said I wouldn’t getdrunk. There’s a difference.” I bent down to grab two cans of beer out of the slowly melting ice and handed one to Lee.
“Hey, Lee, you made it!” We turned around and saw a guy walking up to us.
“Hey,” Lee replied, doing that weird half-hug thing guys do. “This is my friend I was telling you about, Elle. Elle, this is Kory.”
I sipped my beer. “Hi.”
“You guys good for drinks? Come on,” Kory said. “I’ll introduce you to some people.”
And he did. Kory’s group of friends all looked either our age or maybe freshmen and sophomores in college. I was kind of able to put names to faces, but I’d forgotten half of them within the first few minutes.
At one point, while we were talking to some of them, Lee stood beside me and slung his arm round my shoulders. He drained the last of his can and said, “I’m getting another drink—you want one?”
“No, I’m good.”
He ruffled my hair and walked off, one of the guys joining him. The other girl in our little group, Jess, watched them go for all of three seconds before saying, “So, are you guys dating, or…?”
“What?”I snorted. “No way! Are you for real?”
She shrugged. “You two just look pretty cozy.”
I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. He’s myfriend.Not in a million years would we ever be—you know,dating.”
“Nothing wrong with being friends first,” one of the guys whose name I couldn’t remember said. “It’s like the start of any great rom-com.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not me and Lee. Trust me.”
I wasn’t used to people asking about me and Lee. Everyone at school knew we’d always been practically joined at the hip, that we came as a package deal. I’d never really thought how it looked to an outsider.
I was still laughing about it when Lee came back.
Chapter 12
It was late, and a few people had started to leave the party. The alcohol supply had mostly run out, and the buzz it had given people seemed to be fading.
“Okay,” Kory announced, heaving himself up from where he lay on the ground. He shook the sand out of his hair with one hand. “This is starting to get boring. Come on.”
So we did. We all got up and followed him from the clusters of partygoers to a small, dying campfire a little farther off, where we sat around on some logs.
After dumping a little more driftwood onto the fire, a guy called Miles said, “Truth or dare?”
“Sure,” everyone said, nodding. I wriggled into a more comfortable spot on the log and hooked my arm through Lee’s, feeling the chill of the night air now, glad he’d reminded me to bring a hoodie.
“I’ll go first!” Jess chirped. “Um…Maria! Truth or dare?”
