Eleven
Eli
"I think you should do it!" Kailey exclaimed.
I had just told my friends about my sudden calling into the principal's office and the request from Principal Montogomery to participate in the academic competition with my enemy.
"I don't know," I drawled. "I'm not sure I can take the embarrassment if I lose."
My last loss had me bawling my eyes out in front of the whole damn school and some random strangers at the park. I wasn’t sure I'd ever recover from that embarrassment.
"Dude, you’re literally the smartest person I know. And this time if you lose, you'll lose with Javier, not to Javier," Ricky said in assurance as he put a comforting hand on my shoulder.
My head jolted back and I squinted. "What does this have to do with Javier?"
"You only ever seem to get upset when you lose to Javier. I mean—you get upset when you lose to anyone, but you really get upset when you lose to him."
"Shut up," I mumbled. I refused to admit it but I knew he was right, but we all knew that was true. It was just something about losing to him that really irked my nerves.
"Anyway…" I used the pause in conversation to change the subject. "Guess what I found.”
“A life?” Bella quipped, a cheeky smile on her face.
I pressed my lips into a straight line and rolled my eyes. “A party for us to go to.”
"Hell yes!" Bella squealed. "I’ve been waiting for a chance to wear one of my new outfits."
"Wait, party? When, where, and whose party?" Kailey asked frantically. Kailey was not one for impromptu plans. She was most definitely a planner and needed things to be organized.
"My sister’s boyfriends," I said with a slight smirk. My friends’ eyes widened in surprise. “I saw him advertising the party on Insta.”
"Uh, Benji as in the guy who the twins forbid you to talk to?" Ricky asked as he readjusted his legs into a crisscross position.
I nodded and then lifted up a pointed finger. "They don't 'forbid' me from doing anything or talking to anyone. I'm my own person."
Easton and Emerson had never let me be near their friends. It was like I had some contagious disease, and they were afraid I’d spread it, so they forbade me from even looking in their friends’ directions.
I remembered back in fourth grade I met a girl. We quickly became friends because she liked to share her animal crackers with me, and in turn I'd let her cheat off of me during tests.
Well, our friendship lasted for about a month tops.
That was because Emerson happened to be friends with the girl too, so when she found out the girl was friends with me, she was furious.
She screamed at me, trying to explain that her friends couldn't be my friends because it "wasn't right.” The girl never shared her animal crackers with me again.
Emerson was a scary girl, especially in the fourth grade, so I can see how she scared the girl into ending our friendship.
I didn’t remember the girl's name, I don’t think I ever actually knew it.
I just knew her as the girl who shared her animal crackers with me.
What I did know, however, was that she transferred schools in the middle of sixth grade for some unknown reason.
It was the last time I saw the Animal Cracker Girl.
That was just one of a few times that my siblings acted like the world was ending because people they associated with did not automatically hate my guts.
So, it was shocking for my friends to hear me willingly insert myself around Benji.
If the twins spotted me there it would cause a lot of drama between them and I.
Thing was, I didn’t care at that moment.
Benji was probably the only one of my siblings' friends that didn't act like I was an irrelevant NPC despite my siblings' protests.
Out of all their friends, I liked him the most.
Also, a party was a party.
"When is it?" Kailey repeated.
"Tonight."
"And you're just now telling us?" Kailey let out an incredulous laugh.
I put my hands up in defense. “I just found out about it today.”
“If you guys are down, so am I,” Bella said.
Ricky took a moment to think. Eventually he shrugged, “Same, and I don’t mind driving.”
"Or we could Uber so that you can have fun too," Bella suggested.
Ricky was normally our designated driver. He did not care much for drinking because he couldn’t get past the taste of it. Sometimes I felt bad that he was always our babysitter, but he was the one to volunteer.
“It’s cool, I’ll do it.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t need to drink to have fun.”
"Well, I do," I joked.
Instead of the chuckles I expected, I was met with blank and uneasy stares from my friends. Huh, weird.
***
We arrived at the party an hour after it began.
There were plenty of people there, I could tell from the abundance of cars on Benji's front lawn.
We could hear the music from outside of the house.
There were people making out on the lawn, someone stripping in the driveway, and there was someone passed out on the front porch of the house.
Ah, your typical high school function.
It was clear to me that Benji hadn’t only invited high schoolers, there were college kids there as well.
That was the only explanation for all the craziness that was already taking place.
It was only a matter of time before one of his neighbors called the police to complain about the group of frat guys doing naked cartwheels down the sidewalk.
Justin was with us, Kailey had invited him after I told her about the party. I was slightly ticked off that she did that, because he was not there when I showed everyone the flyer. He would not have shown up if it were not for me.
Kailey's words were, ‘He's a part of the group. He’s our friend.’ Yeah, he was, or whatever. It wasn’t that big of a deal, I would be too inebriated to care about Justin, anyway.
The five of us got out of the car and took in the atmosphere around us. We had to go around the guys doing naked cartwheels. Scratch that—they were now doing handstands. I was ninety percent sure they were on some type of drug.
"Uh," Bella muttered. “I feel like this party is going to get busted pretty soon."
“Most likely," Ricky grumbled.
I sucked in a shaky breath. I was excited for the party, but I was also wary about going inside.
Not solely because of unclothed guys—though that should have been the only reason—but because of whose party this was.
I still had a teeny-tiny crush on Benji, and I did not want to make a drunken fool out of myself.
But luckily for me, alcohol was great at settling nerves.
The moment we entered the house I was met with a flash of heat. So many people in the house at once obviously meant that it was going to be hot, but damn, we were practically baking. No doubt I would be sweating in the next thirty minutes.
We watched as a cup got knocked out of someone's hand and fell onto the ground in front of us, the clear liquid splashing everywhere.
The girl who spilled the cup was sobbing, her mascara streaming down her face as she knelt and attempted to pick up the cup.
She was clearly drunk, because she could not grab that solo cup to save her life.
A couple of seconds later, a girl came and scooped her up, taking her stumbling self somewhere safe.
We hadn't even walked five feet into the house yet.
I felt someone nudge my shoulder, it was Ricky. He pointed his finger and I followed the direction which led me to a girl standing on the counter. At first I didn't recognize her, as there was so much going on that it was hard to comprehend anything. Eventually, however, I did make out who it was.
I sighed as I watched my sister dance on top of the kitchen counter.
She had on a very tight cropped shirt, and a skirt so short that I couldn't even be sure that one could call it a skirt.
I had never been to a party with my sister, but I had witnessed her coming back from some. This was her usual attire.
"Slut,” Justin muttered thinking no one could hear him.
I glared at him. Regardless of my sisters and I’s strained relationship, I still felt defensive of her. Justin had said that as if every other girl in the house was not dressed the same way. He was merely trying to push my buttons.
Kailey tried to diffuse the situation when she noticed the clench of my jaw. "Justin means it in a good way."
Justin mumbled something under his breath, but the music was so loud that I couldn't hear what he said.
Then, Emerson began to sing. Someone had handed her a microphone, and now her offkey singing was filling the living room.
There was a group of people surrounding her, cheering her on and having the time of their lives.
Yeah, it's definitely time to forget this.
"Okay, enough standing around!" Bella yelled as she slapped Kailey and I on the back aggressively. She then grabbed Kailey's wrist and they both skipped off into the crowd. Justin followed closely behind them.
I went to follow along, but before I could I felt a tug on my shirt. I swiftly turned around, facing my best friend. We were blocking the doorway, so people kept having to push past us to get in. We needed to move before someone forced us out of the way.
"Oh my god, what?" I whined, ready to indulge in illegal substances.
Ricky rolled his eyes at my immaturity. He attempted to speak over the music. "Please don't let me find you blacked out in a bush somewhere. Stay near me, Eli."
"Okay," I said dismissively. I was not in a mood for a lecture.
"I'm serious, man. This shit isn't a joke," he said, and I could see the genuine concern in his eyes.
Thing was, I couldn't understand why. It was only one time that I was so drunk I couldn't even remember my name.
Well—actually, that may have happened twice, but that was beside the point.
I understood that was not an ideal situation to be in.
I smiled softly, trying to get rid of the unnecessary worry on his face. "I promise I won't overdo it tonight."
"Okay, I'm holding you to that."
“Don’t worry, I really do promise.”
After that, he let me go and we met up with the girls and Justin. The girls had already had two shots while Justin had four. I had to show up Justin, so I went for six off the bat. My tolerance was so high, that it barely did shit to me.
I stayed with the group for a long while, and it was fun. We danced, played drinking games, and goofed off. It was going just how I wanted it to, and I was keeping my promise.
But eventually, a drunken me wandered off from my friends. When that happened, drinks started appearing in my hands and going down my throat. Before I knew it, the world was lagging.
I was drunk, but I wasn't too drunk. I was the ‘can barely form coherent sentences’ type of drunk, but at least it was not the ‘puking and blacking out’ kind of drunk. The latter meant that I would be sporting a nasty hangover the next day, so I was glad I was not that far gone.
Looking in the distance I saw Bella flirting with some guy, Kailey trying to dance with Ricky, and I didn't give a shit what Justin was doing.
I was now striking up fun and incoherent conversations with people whom I had never spoken to before.
Most of the people I was talking to didn't even like me, but I didn't care.
I was talking to a girl whose name I couldn't remember when my brother suddenly appeared behind her. His jaw was clenched, he was pissed. That was surprising because I assumed he would be cross faded right about now. He didn’t seem sober, but he was not completely out of it like I thought he would be.
"Run along, girl," Easton gritted through his teeth. She rolled her eyes before quickly finding somewhere else to be. Easton then turned, his focus solely on me. "Are you so fucking stupid that you can't understand basic English anymore?"
"Huh?" I asked, mostly because I hadn’t fully made out what he had just said.
"Why are you here?" he shouted over the music. I could still barely hear him.
I thought long and hard about his question. I put my hand to my chin and furrowed my eyebrows in an attempt to make the answer to his question appear in my head faster. I guess that action annoyed Easton, because he groaned.
He forcefully put his hands on my shoulders. "You already know that you are not welcome here."
I giggled. "Yeah...sorry."
"Elias, I swear I'm gonna — "
"Calm down," Benji said calmly, laying a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Lay off the guy, he's only trying to have fun, just like you are."
Ahh, it's Benji!
"Hi, Benji," I said with a toothy smile.
"Hi, Eli." Benji returned the smile.
"He shouldn't be here," Easton said.
"You need to calm down. Go live your life, Easton. Your brother's fine," Benji said gently before he winked at me.
Did Benji just wink at me? Holy shit, he wants me. No doubt about it. He wants me and I am seriously starving.
Easton looked between the both of us, dumbfounded. He took a deep breath and eventually left, but not before sending another mean glare my way.
Benji wrapped an arm around my shoulder. He leaned down and whispered in my ear so that I could hear over all the noise. "Your brother needs to loosen up, right?"
"He… always needs to," I slurred. When Benji smiled again, I couldn't help but blush.
Benji pulled me with him through the crowd until we made it to a corner of the living room that had a few couches and some chairs all pushed next to each other.
I think it was an area he had created for people to take a break and get away from all of the chaos of the party, but that wasn’t all it was being used for.
There was one person sitting alone on the edge of a chair trying to regroup, and there were two people making out on one of the couches. The other spots were empty.
Benji sat me down and then sat next to me. I assumed that this was him trying to get me to sober up, because that was something Ricky would do. That was when I noticed a cup in Benji’s hand, which I was pretty sure he did not have before. Was I that drunk?
He held the cup to me. "You should have this. Y’know, to loosen up."
I took the cup from his grasp and eyed it. I was never one to say no to a drink, but I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach and I didn’t think it was because of all the alcohol. I was about to ask what was in it, but we were interrupted when I felt the couch dip beside me.
I didn’t even need to look to know who it was because I recognized his scent anywhere. It was Javier. Wasn't it always Javier?