3

“Him?” He doesn't seem noteworthy. Medium-tall, medium-weight, medium-attractive. He's wearing ripped up flannel and some sort of baggy green pair of pants, but I'm really not one to judge right now in my hoodie and shapeless jean shorts I never would have worn if I knew we were actually going somewhere.
              “Yeah. Him.”
              “What about him?”
              “He's weird,” he says, in this loaded way, like weird is code for something else. A code I should know.
              And I've been at this party for an hour, and I'm tired of being the person who doesn't know anything.
              So I ask, “Weird how?” but Lucas yells “MIRKUSSSS!” at a guy across the room and runs off to bro-hug him, leaving me alone with the photoshop girls. Screw this, I'm getting a drink. There's a tall girl in the kitchen measuring out shots and tilting them into glasses for people. She has dark hair in the kind of curls I try and massively fail to achieve. She's like a really tall, vampiracly-pale, brunette Molly Ringwald. She's also in flannel. Is that a thing? I could wear flannel.
              She smiles at me when the guy in front of me clears out. “Can I make you a drink?”
              I pick up a bottle of Coke. “No, but you can watch me make my own drink, if you want.”
              “Ahh, finally a smart one. I've made like twenty drinks and no one's even been watching me. If I were a serial killer looking to sedate my victims, everyone here would be screwed.”
              “But you like your victims nice and thriving?”
              “Exactly.”
              “Is this your house?” I say.
              “Me? Nooo. I just like kitchens better than any other rooms, so I'm pretending to be hostess. Since our real hostess is crying in the basement that this kid Lucas hasn't talked to her all night.”
              That's hilarious. And more than that, it's the first thing anyone's said all night that I've felt like I'm a part of, or at least could potentially be.
              “Sorry,” she says. “Are you a friend of Mara's? I don't think I know you from school.”
              “Never met Mara. I'm Taylor. New kid.”
              “Well, enjoy your drink, Taylor New Kid,” she says, and she turns to the girl behind me and takes her order.
              I go back to the living room, sipping my drink, which I made pretty weak so it tastes okay. My seat on the couch is still empty, miraculously. There's a jacket slung over it, like maybe someone thought that's enough to save it, but I think not. I bunch the jacket up next to me and forget about it until someone comes over and says, “Oh, sorry, I think that's mine.”
              It's Weird Guy! I hadn't even noticed he was wearing a jacket, since those pants are pretty distracting. Do they have an elastic waist? That is a strange decision.
              “Sorry—” I say, and I stand up and try to step out of the way while he moves in to get the jacket and we collide and my drink goes all over me.
              “Oh, shit,” he says.
              “No!” I cry. “My best old ratty hoodie!”
              “All it had going for it was that it didn't have a huge stain!”
              “Haha, that's what you think,” I say. “There's a huge bleach stain on the back already.”
              “You dressed for this party with all the class it deserved.”
              “Thank you, thank you.” Maybe he's weird the same way that I'm weird. That would be pretty okay. Maybe he has a desire for rapid conversation. Maybe he already knows how to do it.               Yeah, I could totally wear flannel.
              “Can I get you a new drink, at least?” he says.
              “You can watch me get myself a new one!”
              “Nice.”
              “Never gets old.”
              He takes my hand and hold it up over my head to help us navigate through the crowd. He does it so casually, like we've been friends forever, like it's something completely natural. If he were better looking I'd be swooning like hell right about now.
              As it is, I will swoon in a dignified and moderate fashion.
              Brunette Molly is still serving drinks. “Having fun?” he asks her.
              “Oh, you know me.” She smiles at me. “Have you made a friend, Taylor New Kid?”
              “He wants to see me make a drink too. He heard what a great show it is.”
              “Well, step right on up there.” She examines me. “Did he spill that on you?”
              “Kind of.”
              “Can I promise you that he didn't do it to try to get you to take your clothes off? He's better than that. Marginally.”
              “Josey really knows how to sell me,” he says. “You two know each other?”
              “Intimately,” Molly (Josey?) says. “This is Taylor.”
              “Hi, Taylor,” he says. “I'm Theo.”
              “Hi. So you're trying to sell yourself, here?” I sip my drink.
              “I never said that!”
              “Mmm, go on, you two,” Josey says. “Go gaze into each other's eyes. I have not-my-guests to entertain.”
              We don't gaze into each other's eyes, obviously. We make some semi-awkward and semi-shouted small talk over the music until I hear my phone buzz and I excuse myself to the bathroom to pour the rest of my drink down the toilet, because this time I made it too strong and it's making me shiver, and smile at Aanya's texts. She sent me pictures of her and Jake and their favorite babysitting charges from that afternoon, all of them soaked and covered in pieces of water balloons. God, I miss her so much.
              I'm about to open the bathroom door before someone does it for me. It's Lucas. “Is that Taylor??” he says.
              Before I can say anything Lucas bursts in and throws himself on the ground and starts worshipping at the holy toilet. Ugh.
              It is a bit flattering that he seemed relieved that I was the one to watching him spew his guts out, though. Maybe this is how siblings work.
              I really