The Safety Pin Affair

t h i r t y-f i v e - this is what you do

i know that goodbye
means nothing at all,
comes back and makes me
catch her every time she f a l l s . . .

▪️▫️▪️

It seems like this winter took a toll on us for some reason. In the past two months, no one has really had any parties or anything of that nature. I haven't gone out that much and I was honestly starting to get used to it. We were stuck in a rut – go to school during the week, do our own things on the weekend, and stay inside because of how cold and dreary it was all the time.

Now that it's May, we've officially dug ourselves out of the hole and left behind our dead winter souls. Everyone is more alive at school suddenly. The color is back in their faces and nobody can wait until the next party is thrown. We only have a little over a month until high school is over, so we might as well cherish high school parties while we can.

Cue Isabella Bradley. Remember, Dan's wonderful ex-girlfriend who is oh so fond of me? Note my sarcasm, although she doesn't dislike me as much anymore since her and Dan aren't together.

Whatever the case may be, she had broken the dry spell of parties at Ridgeway High.

Five days after my birthday, the news hit the school. It spread fast. People were finding out that she had no intentions of inviting – it was supposedly planned to be a "seniors only" kind of gig. From the second that Blair mentioned it to me in our English class, I had a bad feeling about it. And I never get bad feelings about anything, but for some reason, I was skeptical about this party.

"What time do you think we should go tonight?" Blair asked, looking at her reflection on the screen of her phone and not paying me any mind.

"I don't know," I mumbled with a shrug.

She sighed and turned her head to look at me, raising a blonde eyebrow. I just shrugged again and got the remains of what I'd need from my locker for the weekend.

"Why are you being so weird about this party?" She asked as she kicked herself off the locker next to mine. "Isabella doesn't hate you anymore. And Jaclyn has no hard feelings towards you – she said it herself."

That much is true. Jaclyn approached me a little while after Josh and I ended things and talked to me briefly about it all after school one day. I thought she was going to hate me if I broke her brother's heart, but I guess I read her wrong. She surprisingly understood and told me that she'd be there if I needed to talk about anything. And she reassured me that there's no hard feelings between us.

"I know, I know," I shook my head and shut my locker door. The two of us started walking down the hallway together slowly, going to meet Matt so we could leave. "I just have a weird feeling. You never get that?"

"No," she frowned. "But we don't have to go if you don't want to."

"It's fine, we can go," I brushed it off, not wanting to dwell on it any longer.

Blair sighed again and smoothed her hair out, dropping the conversation. A smile washed over her face when she saw Matt, running up to him and pecking his cheek as I playfully rolled my eyes at them.

The three of us walked out the front door of the school together, then parted ways once we got to our cars. I drove myself home, walking in to my mother blasting music from the kitchen along with the clanging of kitchen utensils. Home sweet home.