I parked my car in the long row of vehicles that snaked down Vuyo’s street. I could hear the music from here. A deep bass shook the ground and I recognized it as a Black Coffee tune. I could feel the song “Drive” underneath my feet as it moved through the concrete like an unstoppable wave, and I wondered if it was telling me something—Get in your car and drive away, Lori! But I didn’t. I took a deep breath and tried to pull my dress down; it felt like it had gotten caught between my butt cheeks and was rising up in the back. Another fat girl problem, usually a result of wearing a skirt, sitting down, and then standing up again. I felt so out of place here. Everything inside me told me I didn’t want to be here, but I certainly didn’t want to go home either.
When I got closer to the house, I stopped. Everyone was inside. I could see them all dancing through the massive glass front. Throngs of happy people jumping up and down together, their body parts and clothes and colors melting together like an impressionist painting and then . . . there he was. Someone had lifted him onto their shoulders, and he was laughing as if he was having the time of his life.
I took a step back. What the hell was I doing here? I didn’t belong here. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t care that I’d promised the doc, and that I’d smeared my lips red. All I cared about was the sweaty ache in my belly and the thump in my heart, and that building anxiety that made my feet feel like they were swelling. I was just about to obey the song and head right back to my car when I felt two massive arms around my shoulders. I jumped in fright.
“You caught the baaaaaallllll!” someone yelled in my ear.
“Yeeaah!” another voice shouted, and suddenly I had two people screaming in my face at once. I was totally disoriented for a second until I recognized them as the two water polo players who had called me dude earlier. They smelled of vodka, overly sweet cotton candy vape, and cologne so strong it caught in the back of my nose.
The one put his hand up in front of my face and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. So I did the only thing I could think of: I gave it a tentative high five. This seemed to be the right move because he wrapped his fingers through mine and forced my arm into the air for a mutual fist pump.
“Caught the fucking ball!” the other one screamed, and then I was being dragged toward the house. Caught up in a flurry of drunken, BWH cheer. I tried to pull away.
“I—I was . . . just . . . going.” I tried to stop this forward momentum I’d been caught up in, like a riptide carrying me away.
“Party!” the one shouted enthusiastically, still pulling me. Pulling me all the way down the driveway and into the house. But as soon as I was there, the arms disappeared and so did the guys, and I was left standing all alone in a sea of mostly strangers.
I scanned the room for a friendly face. But they were few and far between. Very few and so far between. I felt far between. Between worlds and places and standing somewhere so unfamiliar and feeling like I didn’t belong here, only apparently, I did? It seemed that everyone knew who I was, not by name, but that I was the girl who caught the fucking ball, and apparently that made me a someone. So much so that Vuyo was showing me the video of my catch on TikTok.
“It’s already got ten thousand likes,” he said, and this made me so uncomfortable I wanted to turn and run.
And then Thembi and the Ts started walking toward me. They should be a girl band. I looked to my left. Amber was approaching too. Looked to my right, the Ts. Left, Amber. Right, Ts, left Amber until . . . perfect timing. Like two swells crashing against each other, they were all upon me at once.
“Hiya,” I said lamely.
“Hey,” Thembi spoke. She seemed to be the leader of the Ts. I wasn’t sure where Amber fit into the mix. She seemed to be a part of two different groups. The Ts and what I’d come to refer to in my head as the Goldilocks gang. What was weird about BWH was that it had cliques all right, but they all seemed to be of a similar ilk. Slight variations here and there, but all cut from the same cloth—probably Egyptian cotton, thread count off the charts. But there didn’t seem to be the usual school extremes here. These groups were only slight variations of the same theme.
“Is that a Huda matte lipstick?” Thembi asked, looking at my matte red lips.
I raised my hand to my mouth and covered it slightly. Damn, I shouldn’t have worn the lipstick. What was she going to say now? It didn’t suit me. What was a girl like me doing wearing lipstick like this? “I think so,” I muttered.
“Cool,” she said casually. “That stuff was so sold out. You couldn’t get it for months. No one makes matte lipstick like she does, though.” I looked over at the other Ts, who both seemed to be inspecting my lips too. The only reason I owned this lipstick was because Maddy had gotten it for me, she was cool that way. She knew what everyone was wearing and wasn’t wearing, and she was always trying to bond with me over this—I guess she really didn’t know me. And then, out of the blue, I was being ambushed again.
“You have to drink with Jake,” a guy said and started pulling me again.
“Wait . . . no.” I pulled back.
“Dude, that’s the rule. Whoever catches the ball, drinks!”
“But . . .”
Another arm wrapped around my shoulders. This time it was Amber’s. I didn’t much like the way she was looking at me.
“You have to,” she crooned in my ear. “It’s tradition.” She pulled me into the crowd and a chant started.
“Shooters! Shooters! Shooters!” People flocked around me, and I began to feel very claustrophobic. Drowning in a sea of people. And then, through the crowd a familiar face appeared and my heart did a very involuntary series of backflips.
“Hey,” Jake said, looking at me.
“Hey,” I mumbled back.
“Shooters! Shooters! Shooters! Shooters! Shooters! Shooters!” The chant got louder, and a bright blue and white shooter was thrust into my hand. The colors of BWH.
The crowd leaned in and I looked over at Jake, who was raising the glass to his lips. I raised mine slowly and then brought my nose over it to sniff.
“Oh God!” I half choked as the blue liquid suddenly flew into my face as someone knocked the bottom of my glass. It dripped down my chin, and the rest splashed across my dress and forehead. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Amber laughing. Her head was back, her mouth was open, and because of the way the light was positioned straight above her, it was dark and shadowy inside. Like a bloody black mamba. Did you know that just two drops of black mamba venom can kill a person in twenty minutes?
But no one else was laughing. Everyone else was cheering me on, as if this was all part of the game. I looked up at Jake, and while everyone was distracted, he spilled his drink into a nearby potted plant. No one seemed to have noticed. Except me. And then everyone lost interest in Jake and me as more blue and white shooters got poured and passed around.
I walked away, trying to wipe the sticky liquid off me.
“Where you going?” I heard Amber shout from behind me, a taunting tone in her voice. But I didn’t look back. Why was she such a bitch? I walked into the kitchen and washed my hands in the sink. I felt dizzy. Not from the drink; I’d barely swallowed any of it. I felt dizzy because I really didn’t want to be here any longer. This crowd. This noise. This house. This everything. My phone rang and I scrambled to pull it out of my bag. It was my mother, and when I answered it, she sounded hysterical.
“Your brother is having a total meltdown because you’re not here.” I could hear Zac screaming in the background. “You need to come home.”
I hung up and actually breathed a sigh of relief; at least I had a reason to go.