9. Isla
ISLA
I don’t know what I expected a college party to look like, but it wasn’t this.
In my head—which, to be fair, gets most of its social reference points from movies I watched alone in my bedroom on Friday nights—a college party involves a house shaking from the bass, red Solo cups littering every surface, someone doing a keg stand in the backyard, and at least one person crying on the stairs.
There’s supposed to be chaos. There’s supposed to be a DJ, or at a minimum a speaker system that could shatter glass.
Someone is supposed to be wearing a toga for reasons nobody can explain.
Instead, Everett pulls up to a regular-looking house on a regular-looking street and leads me inside. There are roughly fifteen people spread across a living room that smells like weed and pizza, sitting on couches and beanbag chairs, talking at a volume that wouldn’t even get a noise complaint.
“This is the party?” I whisper.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. More... debauchery?”
He gives me a look. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I’m not disappointed. I’m confused.” I need to adjust my expectations, obviously, as I follow him deeper inside.
I need to look like I belong here. That’s a stretch, considering I’m wearing a sweater that has a tiny embroidered chicken on the pocket.
I thought it was subtle when I bought it.
Now I realize it is very much not subtle at all.
A few heads turn when we walk in. Some of them I recognize from the dining hall.
Football players big enough to make the furniture look like it was built for children.
A couple of girls are curled up at one end of the sofa.
Somebody’s rolling a joint on the coffee table with the kind of focus I usually reserve for midterm prep.
“Yo, Stone.” A guy with red hair and a neck roughly the width of my torso nods from the recliner. “You actually came.”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, but you never do.” The redhead’s eyes slide over to me, and I watch the exact moment recognition hits.
How do I know? His eyebrows go up before he nudges the guy next to him.
That guy also looks, and now there’s a ripple of it moving through the room.
People glancing over. Noticing me. Specifically, noticing me next to Everett and clearly trying to do the math on how those two things go together.
“Wait.” A guy on the couch—I think he was at the lunch table, though they all kind of blur together when they’re not in uniform—sits up and squints at me. “Is that the girl from the cafeteria? With the glasses?”
“Pickel,” somebody else helpfully supplies. “Like the food.”
There’s a laugh. It’s not exactly a mean one, and I do know the difference.
It’s more like the involuntary kind, the kind that happens when something catches you off guard.
But it still lands, the way it always lands, right in the center of my chest, where I keep the collection of every time someone has found my name funnier than I am.
I open my mouth. I don’t know what I’m going to say. Maybe I’ll remind everyone it’s actually a German name, which is the response I’ve been trotting out since seventh grade with zero success. Before I have a chance to get a word out, Everett moves.
He reaches out, grabs the guy on the couch by the front of his shirt, and pulls him forward until their faces are about three inches apart. The room goes silent.
“You want to say that again?” Everett’s voice is low and calm in the way calm stops being reassuring and starts being a warning. “Because Tyler just healed up from the last time he said something stupid. You want to match him?”
The guy’s hands come up in surrender. “Nah, man. We’re good.”
“Good.” Everett lets him go, and the guy sinks back into the sofa like he’s trying to merge with the cushions. Everett looks around the room slowly. Thoroughly. Making sure everybody heard. “She’s with me.”
That’s all it takes. Three little words, one syllable each.
Somebody scoots over to make room on the sofa. Red Hair nods at me like we’ve been introduced properly. One of the girls gives me a little wave that seems genuine enough.
She’s with me. He said it the way you’d say the sky is blue. Like it’s a fact.
I sit down with him on the sofa with my head spinning. Somebody hands me a joint. “Want a hit?” It’s Red Hair, holding it out across the gap between the couch and the recliner. He’s looking at me with an expression that seems friendly enough, if a little curious. Like he wants to see what happens.
I’ve never smoked weed. I’ve never smoked anything.
The most rebellious substance I’ve ever consumed is a gas station energy drink I bought during finals week that made me see sounds for about forty-five minutes.
Everyone else in this room is enjoying themselves, and Everett just publicly claimed me as his girlfriend in front of his teammates.
Something about that makes me want to prove I can exist in his world without being a complete disaster.
“Sure,” I reply, taking it from him with what I hope is confidence, but what is probably closer to the energy of a librarian handling a live grenade.
I put it to my lips. I inhale. And then I cough so hard I’m pretty sure something ruptures inside me.
This is not a delicate cough either. It’s the kind of violent, full-body, eyes-watering, snot-threatening cough that makes everyone in the room look over and then politely look away.
Somehow, that makes it worse. I double over, hacking into my elbow.
Everett’s hand is on my back, and I can feel his shoulders shaking, which means he’s laughing, which means I’m going to murder him later when I can breathe again.
“Oh my god,” I wheeze when I’m capable of wheezing again. “Why do people do this recreationally?”
“Here.” One of the girls, the one with dark hair and a nose ring, and the kind of effortlessly cool energy I will never possess, comes over and holds out a brownie wrapped in a napkin. “Try this instead. Same result, no coughing.”
I take the brownie because at this point, I’ve already committed to this path.
Eating a brownie is something I actually know how to do, at least. It tastes like chocolate with a weird aftertaste.
Sort of earthy, like licking a lawn. Not that I’ve ever licked a lawn, but I can imagine.
I eat the whole thing in about four bites because I’m nervous, and I eat fast when I’m nervous.
I figure the faster I eat it, the faster I’ll feel whatever I’m supposed to feel, and then I can stop feeling like the weirdest person in the room.
“You might want to slow down,” the girl with the nose ring offers. “Those are pretty strong.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her with a smile, because I am fine. I feel completely normal. Totally regular Isla. The brownie was a non-event.
Twenty minutes later, I am not fine.
It doesn’t hit me all at once. It sneaks up, which kind of feels like a personal betrayal from a baked good.
One minute I’m on the couch listening to a conversation about whether a hot dog is a sandwich—which, by the way, it is not—and the next minute, the couch feels like it’s slowly swallowing me, and my thoughts are moving at a speed I can only describe as syrupy.
“Oh,” I say out loud to nobody in particular. “There it is.”
“There what is?” Everett asks.
“The brownie. It’s happening.” I hold up my hand and look at it, really look at it, and it’s like I’m seeing my fingers for the first time.
“My hand is so weird. Why do we have five fingers? Who decided five was the right number? Four would be fine. Six would be too many. But five? Five is such an arbitrary—”
“She’s high,” Red Hair announces with a grin.
“I’m not high. I’m just... noticing things.
” I lean back into the sofa cushions, which are definitely swallowing me now.
I don’t even care anymore. It’s actually kind of nice.
“Did you guys know that chickens can remember over a hundred different faces? Like, a hundred. Most people can’t even remember a hundred faces.
My chickens are literally smarter than most humans. ”
And now I’m talking about the chickens. I don’t remember deciding to start talking about them.
It just happens the way breathing happens.
One second, I’m thinking about the number five, and the next, I’m telling football players about Cardigan’s dietary preferences and how Betty refuses to roost next to Tennessee even though they’re inseparable during the day.
How Starlight was a runt I fed sugar water with an eyedropper, and she almost died, but she didn’t.
She didn’t die, and isn’t that beautiful?
Isn’t survival the most beautiful thing?
“I think she’s crying,” someone whispers.
“I’m not crying. I’m just... emotional.” I wipe my face with my sleeve because I am, in fact, crying. “Anyway, Brad Pitt is my rooster. He’s the ugliest rooster you’ve ever seen, but he has the most confidence of anyone I’ve ever met, including every person in this room. No offense.”
“None taken,” Red Hair replies. Even in the state I’m currently in, I can tell he’s entertained.
“I have pictures.” I’m already pulling out my phone, shoving the screen toward the nearest person. “Look at this. This is Marjorie. She’s the smart one. Look at her eyes. You can tell she’s thinking.”
“She’s cute,” Nose Ring Girl offers, passing the phone along.
“She’s a genius. She once figured out how to open the latch on the coop from the inside, and I had to redesign the whole thing. Do you know how many YouTube tutorials there are about chicken-proof latches? Eleven. I watched all of them.”
The phone is making its way around the room, and people are actually looking at the pictures.
A few of them are even making sounds that could generously be interpreted as interest. The weed is helping, probably.
Everyone’s a little more relaxed, a little more open, a little more willing to look at a stranger’s chicken photos and nod along.
Then “Cardigan” comes on.
I don’t know who’s controlling the playlist. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or if the universe is just messing with me tonight. But the opening notes of the song float out of the speaker and hit me right in the chest, and my eyes start watering up again.
“Oh, no,” I whisper. “This is her song. This is Cardigan’s song.”
“The chicken has a song?” somebody asks.
“They all have songs. They’re named after Taylor Swift songs. Cardigan was my first. I got her when she was just a little...” I sniffle and wipe my eyes. “A little yellow puffball. She fit in my hand. She was so tiny.”
I am now fully crying in front of fifteen people I don’t know while Taylor Swift plays in the background, which honestly is not that different from my usual Friday nights except for the audience.
“I love them so much,” I announce to the room at large. “I would die for them. Every single one. Even Brad Pitt, and he’s kind of a jerk sometimes.” I wipe my eyes and then add, “I even have chickens on my underwear. You wanna see?”
My hands go to the waistband of my jeans, but Everett’s hand clamps over mine so fast I don’t even see him move. “No,” he says firmly, holding my hands in his. “They don’t want to see.”
“They might.”
“They don’t.”
“I’m just saying, they’re really cute underwear. There’s little chickens all over them, and they have tiny—”
“Isla.” He gives me the kind of look that manages to be patient and deeply serious at the same time. “No.”
“Fine.” I slump against his shoulder because the effort of existing is suddenly exhausting. “But they’re missing out.”
He keeps holding my hands, and I let him, because I don’t trust myself anymore.
Also, his hands are warm and large, and I feel safe, which is annoying because I was fully prepared to be mad at him for not answering his phone this morning.
Now I’m too high and too comfortable to maintain my anger. It’s very inconvenient.
The room settles back into its rhythm. Someone changes the song. The conversations merge and separate before merging again. I drift in and out, leaning against Everett, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling. I feel like I’m wrapped in something soft and comfortable. I like it. I like this.
Then the front door opens.
A couple of guys walk in. I don’t recognize them—they’re not in team shirts, not built the same way as the football players. It’s not like I’m surprised that I can’t identify them. I don’t know a single person in this room, even though they know half my life story by now.
The taller guy has a split lip that’s mostly healed. The more muscular guy standing next to him has a bruise along his cheekbone.
Red Hair nods at them from the recliner. “What’s up?”
Split Lip nods back, all casual-like, before he spots Everett on the couch. He stands up a little straighter, eyes narrowing. “Stone. Didn’t know you’d be here.”
Everett jerks his chin. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“How’s the hand?” Split Lip glances down at Everett’s knuckles. “I’m pretty sure that left hook you hit me with last week is still ringing in my ears.”
Everett goes tense beside me. Just enough that I notice, but that’s because I’m pressed against him.
“Fine,” he grunts.
Split Lip takes the hint and moves on.
I don’t, because I’m pretty much incapable of moving on in this condition. The high is still buzzing through me, soft and warm. Underneath it, though, there’s something cold and clear forming. A connection.
The bruises on his knuckles. He said they were from a heavy bag.
He lied to me. He hit that guy. Why did he lie?
Why is he hiding something from me?