American Vacanza

oh no they didn't • madison

Everyone surrounding me seemed to be swaying to the beat in a drowsy, disco-ball-reflected haze. In the dark lighting of the room, everyone looked like the same person. Everybody looked like the same person, but nobody looked like their person I was looking for. Where had Ethan danced off to? it was true that this crowd would move you in weird directions - ten minutes earlier, I'd laughed at Siena getting swirled around like a sneaker in a washing machine. But was it possible for my 6'2", muscled boyfriend to have the same thing happen to him?

The corner of the room kept attracting my eyes, for some reason. The only other source of illumination besides the disco ball was the vintage video games in the corner.

But I soon found out that the universe wanted me to look over there for a... different reason altogether. Because there was my boyfriend.

And there, behind him was some blonde.

Wait.

No.

Denial hit me first. That couldn't be Ethan. Okay, maybe it was Ethan, but he wasn't with another girl. And even if he was with another girl, they were probably just talking. All right, maybe it looked like he was more interested in just talking -

Who was I kidding? No matter how much I lied to myself, it wouldn't change the fact that Ethan was standing over a shorter blonde girl in the corner, who was seemingly, disgustingly, attached to him at the mouth.

But just then, the blonde girl pushed him away, disgusted, with a shriek of "You're fucking disgusting!" That was good. At least the hoe definitely wasn't enjoying it. But as her cries of "you fucking jerk" rang through my head, over and over... was I crazy, or did the voice sound familiar? And then it hit me: this girl wasn't just some blonde who I hated for kissing my boo. It was THE blonde. The one who I hated for invading my house with her awful mother.

It was Siena.

At first, I thought the reason I heard Siena's voice was some psychological thing. Like somehow, this was my brain playing a trick on me. I was exhausted, to be fair- and enraged, which can make you a little disoriented. There was no possible way this could be Siena. Loads of girls, especially the type that would make out with your boyfriend in a corner at a party, had blonde hair. But only a small percentage had the small, brown, almond-shaped eyes that Siena did. And none, I was sure, had her bratty voice.

I couldn't possibly lie to myself any longer, I realized as I found myself stomping to the corner of the room: the girl was Siena. It was quite possible that I might actually murder her for this. Or maybe I would murder Ethan. Either way, nobody was off the hook tonight.

I marched over and grabbed Siena by the wrist; Ethan must have wandered off. "Come on," I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking, "Party's over."

"Madison, that wasn't my-"

"Save it," I croaked as we left behind the pounding beats and the pulsating crowd. "We're going to the room. Why waste time at a dumb party anyways? Where's Ethan?"

Her normally pale pink, now bluish-white, face trembled, and she pointed a shaky finger to her left. "He went in that direction."

I told her to stay right where she was - outside of that dumb, godforsaken party- and stomped off to find him. I pushed through the mass of twirling kids and found him, leaning against the wall on the other side of the game room.

"Ethan!" I snapped. "Let's go!" Embarrassed, or possibly scared, he followed me over to find Siena outside the door. "I'm not even going to ask details," I began, my voice quivering with every syllable, "about what went on tonight. All I know is that one of you was being an unfaithful boyfriend, and the other was being a backstabbing stepsister--"