The Quiet Game

Chapter 12- Then

If this looks familiar, skip to the end, I changed it pretty drastically. Thanks for reading.

This is dedicated to Zcarlin for not only being an awesome follower, but also for making the trailer you can see in the sidebar. It's pretty great!

Then:

Connor had never really enjoyed high school parties. The music always seemed too loud, the people to inebriated, the temperature too hot. But now all those factors no longer seemed to be deterrents. Rather, the excuse not to talk to anyone was welcome when he really didn’t want to talk.

Georgina liked to talk, but it was ok because she didn’t want or expect him to respond. And when she was sitting on his lap with her hair tickling his ear he didn’t really care that she liked to speak about a lot of nothing.

“Ugh, why is Hannah here?” she said in his ear, her hand tightening around his shoulder as she looked at a slightly tipsy redhead who was tottering across the room. Earlier in the night Chuck had been moping in the shadows of the kitchen, sucking in smoke before he left, apparently sick of seeing Georgina with another guy. Connor admired that about Georgina, she knew what she wanted and she did what she needed to get it.

“Hey. Chelsea, Hannah ratted you out to Principle Tallis last semester.” She had to yell over the sound of bad alternative rock blaring from the stereo. Chelsea gaped at Georgina in surprise for a second before responding.

“She wouldn’t! Just last week she gave me a ride to cheer practice.” The pretty Asian girl gasped. Georgina just shrugged and turned back to Connor, bending her head towards him to kiss. He saw Chelsea push her way towards Hannah before shrieking and launching herself at the already unstable red head.

Connor pulled away from Georgina and gave her a questioning look. She sighed. “It could be true; besides, Chelsea is too small to do any damage. But this is Samuel’s party so I’m betting any second preppy boy will be in here to kick both of them out.”  Sure enough, a nicely dressed blonde guy came charging out of the kitchen and pulled the two girls apart before ordering them out into the snow.

Georgina tried to go back to kissing, but Connor ducked his head away, not satisfied with her answer. “Hannah stole my boyfriend sophomore year; I don’t want her at this party. I don’t care-” But Connor pressed his lips to hers to shut her up because to be honest he didn’t really care about Hannah and it sort of impressive that Georgina could control everyone like that. He had thought it had only been him.

 And then she got up and said something about getting a drink and he just sat there, bored.

Back in seventh grade science they had learned about viruses. Before then he had always just thought of them as these mean things that made you sick. But the thing about viruses is that they needed a host to live. So when someone died of influenza the influenza died too. Which Connor could appreciate was sort of fair, a life for a life. But that wasn’t all because if the person with this killer flu somehow recovered the influenza still died. So this unlucky virus was doomed from the start.

That was sort of how Connor felt. Because there he was at a party with his dream girl and he didn’t really feel anything much and wasn’t that what was supposed to happen when you kissed the most gorgeous girl at Dubois? But he didn’t think breaking up would be any better because then he’d feel nothing and also be alone which was almost worse but maybe not. And so Connor realized he was a virus trapped in limbo between two inevitable demises.

“Hey, have you seen Blaire?” Miles asked, appearing out of thin air. Connor nodded towards the kitchen. He shot off towards the growing shouts of chug, chug, chug. Connor really wanted to tell someone about his revelation, but he couldn’t think of anyone who would actually listen. Georgina would be back soon, and the thought made him twitchy. Standing up he pushed his way straight through the living room to the porch door. The cold had driven everyone indoors and Connor could easily see his breath condensing into clouds.