Managing Boys

Managing Boys (34)

October 31st, 2011

“You’re so lucky, Aria,” Zoey gushed as she sat on the counter in my bathroom while I fixed my costume. “You’re going to a senior Halloween party!”

“The only reason I was invited was because of Ian,” I smiled, fingering my skirt lightly as I thought about my boyfriend. “You know he knows almost everyone at our school.”

“But still!” she sighed dreamily, and leaned back against the mirror. “You’re so lucky that you have a popular boyfriend that can take you places. It seems like so much fun.”

I shrugged and fixed the hem of my dress. “I just like being with him.”

I really did. He just made me feel so happy and loved. I was absolutely devastated with the fact that he was going to be moving away to a completely different state only two weeks later. How could our relationship survive through all that distance?

Ten minutes later, Ian was there to pick me up. Zoey went home and I got into his truck, waving goodbye to my best friend as she left.

Ian and I were dressed like Bonnie and Clyde, and our costumes were actually pretty good. We even had fake revolvers and everything.

Ian drove us to the party, though he legally wasn’t allowed to, since he was fifteen and only had his permit, but he was a better driver than most adults, so I didn’t really care. It only would have mattered if we were pulled over anyway.

When we got to the house the party was being thrown in, the music was so loud that it was practically vibrating. It also felt like it was overflowing with people.

“This is a lot of people!” I gasped, looking around at the house-full of people that danced around us. “Is this every senior at the school or something?”

Ian shook his head and clasped onto my hand so I wouldn’t get lost. “There are seniors from our school and then seniors from Corvus High School,” he answered. “So there’s about twice the class size worth of people.”

That was actually pretty intimidating. Not only were we just sophomores, but now we were surrounded by seniors who we didn’t even know. That was actually kind of terrifying.

When someone bumped into my shoulder, I almost screamed. I was so afraid that I was going to piss someone off that I wanted to go crawl into a hole before this person could see who they had run into.

I looked up to see a tall, broad-shouldered blonde boy looking down at me. He was huge; obviously a football player. I was dead.

“Hey, Sean,” Ian greeted, and they did that weird handshake-hug things guys did. I just stared at them in awe. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good,” Sean nodded, and I just stood there. “But I’ve been trying to get away from Marissa all night. She just won’t leave me alone.”

Ian was about to say something to the tall blonde, but was then cut off by a squeaky voice crying out, “Sean!”

Sean rolled his eyes. “And that’s Marissa. I’ll see you around.”

And then he was gone, the Marissa girl following right after him. I now turned toward my boyfriend and asked, “How do you know that guy?”

“Through football,” he answered with a shrug. “He goes to Corvus, along with that girl that’s following him. She’s a nutcase and refuses to believe that he has feelings for someone else, even though the girl won’t give him the time of day either.”

I wondered how it was over at Corvus High School. It seemed like an entire different world.

“Let’s dance,” Ian now smiled, holding onto my hand even tighter and moving me toward the dance floor. There were so many moving bodies that I thought it may have been impossible to actually dance along with them.