Girl | Henry Winter

Chapter Five - A Normal Feeling

"So you know Richard?" The girl at the party shouted over the music to her. She was Californian, with sort of a valley girl accent and long hair indescribable in colour due to the lighting.

Margot didn't know how she ended up at that party. It was really down to the fact Richard had shown up at the apartment, shyly asking her to go, as he knew none of the other Greek students really ever attended parties.

And once Margot confirmed this wasn't Nicks party, and was a completely unrelated and bigger get together she told him she would join him, simply down to the boredom and unease she felt walking the dark apartment alone.

Once they got there however, she quickly slipped away from Richard. She had a feeling he sort of expected her to go as his date, which she was firmly against for a multitude of reasons, and felt the guilt heavy since he seemed so sad when he came to her door. Almost as a last resort to battle his loneliness or something.

But she felt better once she saw him chatting with some nice blonde girl across the room while she was getting another drink.

She received many questioning glances at the party, nobody really expecting her to be at a party like this without her boyfriends guiding arm round her shoulder, and she sort of felt like a toddler out of place.

It was only when she ran into a nice girl who saved her from getting aggressively hit on by some drunk frat type boy where she started to have fun.

"Oh, Richard Papen? He's in my class." Margot shouted back to her, sipping on her drink periodically.

"I'm really good friends with him actually! We talk, like, all the time and he's always talking about you guys like your all Gods." The girl told her over the music.

"Thats funny, does he really?" Margot smiled at the idea of Richard going home every night to chat to this random Californian girl about the Greek class.

"Yeah, but like, he's totally nice about you so don't even worry. You don't like him do you? Or no, wait, your with that guy James Edwards right? My friend Marissa totally went out with your boyfriends, like, best friend called like Matt? Or no wait I think he goes by like, Jones?" She asked, Margot actually listening surprisingly.

"Anyway, that boy Jones was like a total dick to her and ended up like, blaming it all on alcohol problems or whatever. Apparently his whole group go out to drink like, almost every night."

"Yeah, uh, James goes out pretty frequently. Not that often. He's not an alcoholic though." Margot told her.

"That's like crazy interesting. You know, me and like all my friends used to think that except for Richard your class was like, really weird." The girl filled in as Margot tried to hide her smile as she sipped from her cup. She could imagine how much Henry cared the Californian costume designer crew thought he was 'like really weird.'

"Really?" Margot asked with mock confusion.

"Yeah, totally! Well, I had this incident with one of those twins? The girl one, last year. It was at a party and like it was so crazy, and she bumped into me or I bumped into her and I ended up throwing my beer on her, y'know? It was like, totally the vibe of the party and I had already had like three beers thrown on me so it was like no big thing. But then the other twin was standing over me like he was gonna totally beat me up! And then my friend who tried to defend me totally got beat up like, really bad from that one boy Henry? It was like a whole thing." The girl told her, and suddenly Margot knew who she was speaking too.

"Wait your Judy Poovey?" She asked, utterly shocked. Maybe she should've put the pieces together a little bit sooner, but somehow it didn't register until the infamous story was brought up.