Comfort Zone

I Guess I'll Just Have to Brave the Dangers of Teenage Normalcy

"I refuse," I shake my head firmly.

"Please, Henley," pleads Violet, latching onto my arm and giving me her best pouty face.

For the last half an hour Violet has been persistently begging me to attend the dreaded, annual, Berkley High, Halloween, Party tonight.

She's been at it for the past week, but I foolishly thought she had finally given up. I didn't find out how wrong I was until she was barging into my house, a full costume already picked out for me, prepped, and determined to convince me to live out my worst nightmare.

The small blond is without a doubt a master beggar, a product of having pushover parents. However, I consider myself equally masterful in the art of arguing, and every Halloween I have managed to get out of the angsty, teenage gathering. I don't plan on this year being an exception.

I practically have the list of reasons I would rather be burned at the stake than go to this, the worst event of the year, memorized.

Number one, even though I have never attended, said event, I have heard nothing but horrible things about it. After they go, people are always talking about how lame it was, or how the food was bland, or how Bruce Games was blackout drunk and just went around trying to grind on everyone.

Yet, by the time Halloween rolls around next year they all meticulously pick out their costumes and drive on over to the very same event they were bashing just last year. Why, you may ask, do they do this? The same reason anyone does anything in high school. Popularity.

Anyone who's anyone is there. It's the only major party Berkley has. So, if you're trying to prove to that cute boy you like that you're cool enough for him, or you're still trying to land a spot in that exclusive group of friends that won't give you the time of day, how will you ever do it without scoring an invitation to the biggest bash of the year? Please note my sarcasm.

Sweet Violet is no exception to this typical, high school need to fit in. She claims that she doesn't care what anyone thinks of her, or as she so nicely puts it: "Why would I hang out with you if I cared about being popular?"

But from the way she is always jumping at the chance to talk to her fellow 'cool girls' and completely transforms, getting all giggly in front of a classroom full of  students, I know that she does, indeed, care. Everybody does to a certain extent, even me. If I didn't hate parties with the burning, fiery passion of a thousand suns, I too might be stressing over my outfit and putting the finishing touches on my hair and makeup.

However, I do hate them and there will be no make up, no costume, and absolutely no party. Just a chill evening taking Andrew trick-or-treating and having my annual, Halloween Town High marathon.

Also, even if there wasn't the crazy notion that I, a girl who doesn't enjoy the best of parties, wouldn't want to attend one that absolutely no one claims to enjoy, there's the fact that every year it's at a new students house. And as luck would have it, guess who's hosting this year? Noah. Freaking. Anderson. I still haven't seen him since I broke into his yard and I plan on keeping it that way for as long as possible.

"Henley. Twenty years from now, when you're talking to your kids about your high school experience, do you want to say you stayed at home all the time, or do you want to be able to say that you went to the coolest party of the year?"

"I highly doubt my kids are going to care what I was doing thirty years before they were born."

"Hen...," she cries, before stopping short. "Thirty years? You want to have kids when you're forty-seven," she asks, arching her perfectly sculpted eyebrow.