New Year's Eve

2

New Year's Eve 2004

Age: 14

My parents had dragged me to this stupid party yet again. Millie — my best friend — asked if I wanted to go to her home for yet another house party. She — or rather, her parents — hosted it to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. But I had to remind her I had to continue with the tradition of going to my father's boss's party.

I shouldn't be so ungrateful; anyone my age would love to go to a party every year. But my parents didn't seem to realise that I was growing older, and I didn't need to spend every waking moment with them.

However, I cast my mind back to last year's party. It wasn't as bad as I anticipated it to be. But that was down to a certain brown-haired and blue-eyed boy I had met. Although I doubted he would be here again; he seemed more persuasive than I was.

I'd told Millie about Robert and she was jealous that I had met a cute guy at the party when only idiots went to hers. It made me wonder why she was having another one, but I never questioned Millie about her motives.

My parents socialised with my father's co-workers, so I was careful to distance myself from them. I made my way to an empty table and sat on one of the red velvet chairs. I began fiddling with the hem of my dress, which came to about an inch above my knee.

"So, I see you parents have hauled you here against your will again." A voice mused.

My head snapped towards the sound of the voice. A huge grin broke through my lips when I saw the person behind the voice.

"Hey, Robert." I grinned.

"Hi to you too." He smiled as he sat next to me. "I take it you're still not happy about being here again."

"Yeah, I suppose so," I mumbled. I then shrugged. "But it's not like I can change it now. I'm here, so I might as well make the most of it."

"I thought the same thing." Robert grinned, his eyes lighting up. "And we did make last year sort of fun, didn't we?" I nodded in response. "Well, we can make this year just as fun. If not more!"

And that's exactly what we did.

We spent the entire night laughing and joking. The dancing seemed even sillier than last year, which I didn't think was possible. We even tried to join in with the younger children when they started playing musical statues. The DJ claimed it was unfair to the little children, so he made it clear he would not let us win. Which was a shame because I was particularly good at musical statues.

At one point during the evening, we even started one huge conga line travelling around the room and in and out the tables. We enticed the children to join and dragged some of their parents up. The latter was more difficult to convince. But by the end of it, we had almost every person in the room up on their feet and tagging on at the end of the now giant conga line.

"You know," Robert mused as he munched on a piece of chocolate cake that we had pinched from the buffet table. "You seem like a pretty awesome girl."

"Why, thank you." I chuckled, pretending to brush a piece of dirt off my shoulder. "Was there a reason you told me this?"

Robert shrugged as he picked a milk chocolate star off the top of the cake and popped it into his mouth. He chewed on it thoughtfully before opening his mouth.

"No reason in particular. But I wondered if you'd like to hang out with me sometime, you know, during the year. Not only on New Year's Eve. Only if you want to, though."

Robert's sincerity made me smile. I couldn't help but feel a slight blush creep onto my cheeks at the thought of Robert wanting to spend more time with me. It was a crazy concept, but I wasn't questioning it.