Rebel Rebel

Chapter 6

The girls all managed to meet in my front yard around 11. We all lived within a few blocks of each other, so it was doable. I was pretty sure my parents were asleep, but we were still quiet as we could manage to get in the car and get on the road.

The party was in the next neighborhood over, so it was easy to get there. Finding a place to park was another story. I was surprised no one had called the police already, to be entirely honest. But I was glad they didn't. I needed to blow off some steam after this week.
We walked up to the door, and walked right in. It was already crazy in there, with the music blaring, and people shouting and laughing. But it was a party...I'm sure someone's older brother or sister or something bought a keg or two. We were set for the night.

It looked like everyone was here too: the preps, the jocks, the National Honors Society kids, the punk and goth kids (that was the group I usually ended up in), the burnouts, a bunch of band kids made it...everyone made it. I think I even saw a few nerdy kids hanging together playing Magic the Gathering or something like that.

It was rare that a party was this diverse. Preps hardly ever wanted to be seen with anyone but other preps. They were usually little more than spoiled rich kids with mom and dad's money. They didn't have much in the way of intellectual capacity, and the ones who did were what I called the NHS kids. Those kids were smart, sure, and did well in classes, but they couldn't think critically for a damn. Challenge or question their ideas, and I swear their brain functions shut down.

The jocks were another off shoot, but they were a bit more diverse comparatively. But, the way high school society functions, they were slightly below gods in the eyes of most. They could get away with murder and still be heroes. Most of them made me want to gag, but there were one or 2 football players I knew that were sort of friends.

The band kids...well that's a story in and of itself. I'd been one of them for a few years, but I never fit in. I didn't worship Broadway and concert band music, even though I probably had a more diverse musical catalog than most of the people I hung around. I mean, yeah I was still in concert band, but it was different when you weren't worshipping at the holy altar that was marching band (and jazz band, and orchestra, and pep band). I stuck with it to get a foot in the door in college music programs; otherwise I just didn't get the hype. It was almost like they didn't have a life outside of band. I guess I just had a different set of goals.

If I had classes where I wasn't with the girls, I usually ended up with the geeks and nerds. And it was a lot of fun. Of course, they were usually really smart, but they were a lot cooler than everyone gave them credit for. I mean I couldn't always keep up with their conversations, but they made you think. That was the best part. Hell, conversations with them made me think more than anything in class ever did.

The burnouts, the punks, and the goths all kind of overlapped. That was my normal crowd. We all liked freaking awesome music, and I thought we all wore awesome clothes. We all bonded over the fact that we generally rejected what everyone else did, and really didn't want to fall in line with society, whether just in school, or on a larger level. But it was a paradox, at least for me, because we were all rejecting a society that gave us the privileges and perks we had. So because we were supported by it, we rejected it, but in rejecting it fully, we'd lose the support systems. I dunno...a conundrum and a half. I'll worry about that later. Right now, I just wanted to party.

The girls and I looked for the kitchen, figuring there were a few kegs at a place like this. Someone has an older brother or sister who did us all the favor in exchange for something or other. No one asked. But hey, beer is good. Especially when it was free. We found said keg, and all helped ourselves.

We decided to just lay low for a minute, and see how the night would unfold. These parties were either killer, with dancing and craziness and fun, or they were super lame, and just turned into a bunch of jokers getting drunk and not being able to function. On the rare occasion, they turned into make out parties.