playing for the other team (bxb)

[10] puke-train

Friday, 7:00 p.m., Ethan Thompson's party.

By the time that I arrived at Ethan's party, it felt like half of the town was already there.

A huge line of cars were parked along his street, presumably mostly belonging to people that were at Ethan's house. Booming music can be heard coming from his house and it's a shock that the party hasn't been shut down. Though, I'm not shocked that none of the neighbors called in complaints. Ethan's father was head of the police department, and in a small town like this, it wasn't the smartest idea to call the cops on... well, someone who was related to the person in charge of the cops.

By the time that I'm able to find a spot to park, I'm far from the house. Luckily, it's not too chilly out tonight so the walk to Ethan's house isn't horrible.

Usually, I found that parties went one of two ways; a party was either a house party or a banger. House parties usually consisted of a slightly more manageable group. There would be a lot of people but not so many to the point that you'd barely be able to make your way around. House parties had a far more laidback vibe to them; the music wasn't as loud, and it was more about just talking to people. Bangers were far different. Bangers weren't about talking to people-in fact, usually, you wouldn't even be able to hear people over the music. Bangers were about dancing and hooking up. This was a banger.

The lights were dimmed when I walked in and there were so many people standing around and dancing that I couldn't even tell who was who.

I took out my phone to text Lydia: Where are you?

After twenty seconds of standing around like an idiot, I decide to walk around. I figure that Lydia probably won't be on her phone anyway.

The entire atmosphere is overwhelming, quite frankly. It seems that everyone's doing something. It's either that they're dancing, walking around, shouting out to a friend, stumbling around drunkenly, or doing something else entirely obnoxious.

I make my way through the hallway and into the kitchen that has better lighting. On the counter, I can see a stack of red solo cups and a few bottles of miscellaneous drinks. I pour myself a mixer-a combination of vodka and soda; at least if I can't find my friends, I can get drunk.

Usually, I'm not the biggest fan of drinking. I never quite understood the appeal of it. Honestly, being drunk just made me feel disorientated nauseous, almost like I could throw up. Still, it was hard to get through a party like this completely sober. Half of the appeal of going to parties was getting drunk.

For the next ten minutes, I wander around Ethan's house, and as I do, I can't manage to find any of my friends. Unfortunately, the only people that I was running into that I knew were random guys from the football team or people that I've talked to maybe once in class. Each time that I do run into these people, I have to deal with them saying hi and then doing that stupid little handshake that guys do.

Eventually, I do end up spotting Sawyer and Naomi. However, the two of them were making out at the end of a hallway, so they seemed less than optimal to go up to.

A boy comes up from behind me, roughly shoving my shoulders as she shouted out, "Yo, Sam, what's up?"

It was one of the boys on the team: not one that I was particularly fond of, but definitely not one that was intolerable.

"Hey, Cameron."

"You want the rest of this?" he motions to his red solo cup, "I don't feel like carrying it around anymore."