Float, page 11
“Is that it?” I asked, praying that by some miracle we had arrived at the wrong destination, and there was someone else in Holden throwing a giant party at a house that looked like it belonged to a professional basketball player.
Blake parked and quickly got out. I rolled down my window to shout at him.
“Isabel and I can just wait here!” I reached out the window to pat the outside of Rachel’s car, which I could now see was illegally parked against a red curb. Fantastic. Add that to the list of rules I was breaking tonight.
“Fine,” Blake said. “Do you have your phone with you?”
Oh dear God.
“Waverly?”
“I . . . don’t have a phone.”
Blake blinked. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not. I left it in Alaska.”
On purpose, of course, but we didn’t have time to unpack all that.
“Then you have to come inside with me. I can’t leave you with my baby sister without a phone.”
“But I can’t bring a baby into a party.”
Blake held out a hand impatiently. “Pass me the go bag.”
He retrieved a pair of earmuffs—the kind people wear when they’re using chainsaws or other heavy machinery—and informed me that Chloe had been taking Isabel to baseball games for a while. How different could it be? Blake then produced a baby carrier, which was really just a glorified backpack with an open top. With Isabel strapped between my shoulder blades, Blake and I marched toward the chaos.
Ethan’s house was lit up like an overdecorated Christmas tree, in stark contrast with the black night sky above and all the other houses on the block, which appeared to be inhabited by a series of people with great talent for falling asleep to loud, overplayed pop music.
“I guess we’ll do this like they did in the Middle Ages, since you don’t have a phone,” Blake said as we climbed the front steps.
“I’m pretty sure no one had to go on missions to wild teenage parties to rescue their drunk ex-girlfriends back then.”
Blake snorted, then looked mad that he’d laughed.
The ceilings in Ethan’s entry hall were two stories high and heavily chandeliered, but below, the room was packed with sweaty, bikini-clad, board-short-wearing bodies that were all jumping in rhythm to the Justin Bieber song being blasted through Ethan’s surround-sound stereo system. Over the music, someone belched loudly from somewhere to my left, adding to the thick, heavy stench of alcohol that plagued the building. And it wasn’t just loud, smelly, and cramped in here. It felt like I had just stepped into a furnace.
This was hell.
“Nope!” I shouted over the music. “Nope, we’re leaving.”
I turned back to the door. Isabel let out a little cry of protest.
“Pa-tree!” she exclaimed. Party.
I’d never been to a house party before. Most of the students at Huntington Prep weren’t partying people—unless we were counting weekend outings and overnight trips for sports tournaments, debate competitions, and performance art festivals. Alcohol and loud music wasn’t exactly something we could slap on a college application. But even the toddler strapped to my back seemed to realize that this was a special opportunity.
Maybe this was my chance to be the kind of girl who went to parties.
With a deep breath, I nodded. Blake took my hand, which I hadn’t expected, and tugged me into the crowd. We pushed through the mob of dancing teenagers, some of whom were bouncing up and down on the cushions of a sleek leather couch that looked more expensive than anything I had ever owned. Several people stopped to watch us. My social anxiety had only a moment to take flight before I realized why I was suddenly the center of attention.
“A baby!” someone gasped in delight.
“Oh my gosh, so cute.”
“Look. At. Those. Cheeks.”
By the time we made it to the kitchen, Blake still tugging me along with him, Isabel was positively basking in the attention, shooting gap-toothed grins at anyone who noticed her. The kitchen was blessedly emptier, but I barely had time to appreciate the fresh air before a pair of arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me into a tight hug.
“Lena!” I cried in relief.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, releasing me from her arms and grabbing both of my shoulders so she could look at me. “And why do you have Isabel?”
“She’s my drinking partner, obviously.”
“Par-tee,” Isabel intoned again.
Lena let out a surprised laugh. “Did Blake drag you both along?”
As if summoned, Blake appeared at my side with Jesse at his heels.
“Hey, Waverly!” Jesse greeted. “And guest.”
Isabel reached over my shoulder, grasping for him.
“Have either of you seen Alissa?” Blake asked the twins.
The Fletchers exchanged a glance. For a moment, I thought they were communicating telepathically, and I was jealous that I didn’t have a twin to do the same with. But then they both opened their mouths to speak.
“Nope,” Lena said at the same time that Jesse replied, “She was with Ethan.”
So much for twin telepathy.
“She’s with Ethan?” Blake repeated, eyes suddenly wide and wild.
“But maybe she—” Lena started to attempt damage control, but it was too late. Blake had already grabbed the front of Jesse’s short-sleeved button-down shirt and dragged him into the mob of people dancing in the living room.
“That went well,” I said. “What’s wrong with Alissa?”
Lena sighed and played with Isabel’s little, round, sock-clad foot. “Aside from the usual theatrics? She came here to let Ethan know that she’s done with their relationship.”
“But then why—”
“Is she with Ethan right now? Because she’s drunk. I swear to God, I turned my back on her for one second, and next thing I knew, she’s giggling like a maniac and bouncing on that Louis Vuitton couch in the living room.”
“Louis Vuitton couch?” I repeated.
“Ethan’s dad owns a chain of seafood restaurants,” Lena explained. “Anyway, how’d Blake rope you into coming to this?”
She leaned back against the kitchen’s marble countertop, which had become the foundation for a mountainous heap of crushed soda cans, half-empty potato chip bags, and uneaten chunks of pizza crust. There was an architecturally impressive stack of plastic red cups constructed like a modernistic sculpture next to the sink.
“He needed a car,” I admitted, “so we had to take Rachel’s.”
Lena’s jaw dropped. “You stole your aunt’s car?”
“I know.” I grimaced, reaching over my shoulder to untangle Isabel’s fist from my hair. “I’m so dead. I don’t know what I was thinking—”
“You rebel. Holy shit. You’re going to drive Alissa home in Rachel’s car? What if she, you know, pukes or something?” Lena asked, grimacing as she visualized the interior of Rachel’s car splattered like the world’s worst mural.
“Then I’ll send Blake the bill for the upholstery detailing.”
Lena laughed. “Come on,” she told me, still chuckling as she grabbed my arm. “I bet we can find Alissa before the boys do.”
Together, Lena and I wove through the kitchen and darted down a hallway filled with several couples engaged in heated make out sessions (I angled Isabel away so she couldn’t see). When we reached the end of the hall, we found ourselves standing in a giant game room. The emerald-green walls were lined with vintage-looking pinball machines, and in the center of the room were three large, mahogany pool tables.
The whole room screamed This family has too much money.
“How big is this house?” I asked, mostly to myself since I knew Lena wouldn’t be able to hear me over the music, which Isabel was kicking her legs along to the beat of.
Lena stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck, trying to see if Alissa was anywhere across the room. When she sat back on her heels again, she was frowning.
“Let’s try upstairs,” she said.
I grabbed hold of her arm and steered us to another hallway, this one much shorter than the last, that led back into the living room. The crowd parted for Isabel like the Red Sea for Moses. Except Isabel didn’t have a beard, and she was parting a mob of drunken teenagers instead of a large body of water.
“The baby’s back! See, I told you there was a baby!” someone shouted.
We climbed the grand staircase and made our way to the second floor, which seemed just as crowded as the rest of the house. Lena and I stopped at the top of the stairs and found ourselves facing a dilemma: the hallway in front of us branched out, one part winding to the left and one curling to the right.
“You two go that way,” Lena told me, pointing down the left hallway, “and I’ll take the other hall. Let’s meet back here in three minutes. If you find Alissa, just stay put and I’ll know to come that way and find you. If I’m not back here, then you’ll know she’s this way and you should come find me.”
With that, Lena went right and I went left.
“Alissa?” I called.
The hallway was long and the walls were painted pale cream. Hung along the walls, at four-foot intervals, were professional-looking family photos. Some of them were small portraits but most were large group shots of ten or eleven people. If I hadn’t been on a mission to find Alissa, I would have stopped and tried to pick out which of the boys in the photos was Ethan.
But I had more important things to worry about.
The hallway, aside from being ridiculously long, was also lined with an enormous number of doors, most of which were bedrooms occupied by couples making out. I did pass one bathroom, though, and had to stop and make sure none of the brunets waiting for their turn to grab the porcelain toilet seat and heave were Alissa.
Nope, not there.
I groaned and kept walking.
“Come on, Alissa!” I called. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“Come out, come out!” Isabel added helpfully.
One of the doors farther down the hallway popped open and a short girl with long, copper-red hair stuck her head out. She stared at me for a moment, taking in my oversized shorts and the toddler on my back.
“Did you bring a baby to a party?” she demanded.
It seemed like a rhetorical question, given that Isabel certainly hadn’t arrived on her own and just bumped into me.
“Have you seen Alissa Hastings?” I asked.
“Lissa?” The copper-haired girl raised an eyebrow at me, again looking down at Rachel’s shorts, which I had tied around my waist with a piece of ribbon saved from one of last year’s Christmas presents. “Are you her friend?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. Acquaintance, really.”
“She just went downstairs, like, two minutes ago,” the ginger told me. “Seriously, is the baby like a political statement or something?”
I had my lead. That was all I needed.
I spun around and hurried back to the top of the grand staircase. From behind the railing, I scanned the crowd in the living room for any sign of Alissa before I heard thunderous footsteps coming from the hallway I had just been down. I turned just in time to see several large, shirtless guys bounding through the hallway, laughing and throwing toilet paper rolls at everyone who threatened to step in their way. I threw myself flat against the wall just in time to dodge them, shielding Isabel’s tiny body with my own, but didn’t manage to escape the snowstorm of toilet paper.
“Assholes!” I shouted, plucking a sheet of toilet paper off of my head as I watched them continue down the hallway.
“Ass-oles,” Isabel repeated, because of course she’d caught that through the earmuffs.
“No, no, no. Don’t say—oh, this is just getting worse.”
And then I saw Lena. Like me, she was covered in toilet paper.
“I hate these frat boy–wannabe assholes—” she began.
“Don’t swear in front of the kid. She picks up everything. Look, I just ran into this girl who told me she saw Alissa head downstairs a couple of minutes ago.”
“Awesome!” Lena cried.
“Come out, come out!” Isabel supplied.
The living room seemed to have become even more crowded in the short time Lena and I had been upstairs; now the crowd was so dense that I decided to hover on the edge to keep Isabel safe and out of the crush.
“Lena!” I called over the music. “I don’t like this!”
Judging from the look on her face, I could tell she wanted to get out of here too. As we started a loop around the crowd and toward the kitchen, the song changed. For a moment, we were serenaded by the cute, sugary sweet, country-pop voice of Fearless-era Taylor Swift. Then, suddenly, the bass started thumping like a jackhammer.
Leave it to Ethan to play a techno remix of a Taylor Swift song.
I rose up onto my tiptoes and tried to look over the crowd. I was taller than just about every girl in the room, but the crowd was so thick, and the room so poorly lit and packed full of beach bums.
Speaking of beach bums, where was Blake?
“Where are Blake and Jesse?” I asked.
Lena turned to frown at me over her shoulder and pointed to her ear. She couldn’t hear me. I took a deep breath, preparing to shout.
But then the music stopped.
I sighed in relief. And then a bulky blond boy in SpongeBob-print swim trunks climbed onto the Louis Vuitton couch. He was well over six and a half feet tall and probably weighed twice as much as I did, at bare minimum. Everyone turned to watch him as he held up a meaty hand and pointed to a small circle that was forming on the other side of the living room.
“Fight!” he bellowed.
All hell broke loose.
The kids who were standing around me, no longer upset over the sudden disappearance of the music, quickly rushed forward to the scene of the fight.
“Kick his ass, Ethan!” one guy cheered.
“That’s unfair! Home court advantage!” another protested.
“Anyone got some popcorn?”
I swung Isabel off my back and hooked her around my front so I could better shield her and locked eyes with Lena in the hysteria. We reached a silent, mutual agreement almost instantly, and together we turned and sought out high ground on the stairs.
I already knew who was fighting, even before Lena and I were high enough to see the two grunting, grappling boys in the middle of the circle over the crowd. Because, really, who did I know who had a history of starting fights with Ethan? And who, therefore, would be the most likely person to start a brawl at Ethan’s party?
Ethan’s nemesis, of course.
And, as fate would have it, my ride home.
Talk about déjà vu.
As I pushed through the crowd toward the circle around Blake and Ethan, things were starting to seem like they couldn’t possibly get any worse than they already were.
But, of course, the universe doesn’t seem to like me very much.
I’m not sure who threw the first punch. In fact, I don’t even care who started it all. But someone in the crowd thought that right now would be a good time to take out their anger on some poor drunk kid standing next to him. And once the first punch was thrown, the shouting started. And right behind the shouting came more punching.
Soon enough, everyone in Ethan’s living room was fighting.
“We need to get out of here,” Lena said.
“Can you carry Isabel?” I asked. “My arms are going numb.” I shifted Isabel out of my arms, offering her to Lena.
Lena’s eyes briefly went wide with panic. “I’m not great with kids, Waverly, I—”
“Here’s Aunt Lena!” I announced, shoving Isabel into her arms.
“Ass-oles!” the kid cried, demonstrating her new favorite word.
“All right, she’s kinda cool, I guess,” Lena said, holding Isabel as stiffly as one might hold a bag of rotting lemons. “Let’s get you out of here, babe.”
I was just about to step out of the living room when something came flying at my face.
In retrospect, I totally deserved an elbow to the cheek. I really did. Not only had I let Blake Hamilton convince me that coming to his arch nemesis’s party was a good idea, but I had also stolen my aunt’s car and essentially kidnapped a two-year-old. I’d been an idiot all day, and since karma has a habit of coming back and biting me in the ass, I should’ve seen it coming.
And I did, for a moment.
But then it hit me.
I don’t remember what the impact felt like, because the next thing I knew, I was sprawled not so elegantly across the floor of Ethan’s living room and staring up at Lena, who looked almost as surprised as I felt, and Isabel, who had the nerve to laugh.
“Oh my God! Waverly! Are you all right?” Lena cried.
I wasn’t sure if I was. I could still wiggle my toes, which was always a good sign, but there was a dull throbbing in the back of my head that didn’t feel right. Lena reached down, grabbed one of my hands, and pulled me to my feet.
The throbbing in my head became worse.
“Waverly?” she asked, snapping her fingers in front of my face.
“I’m okay!” I argued.
Lena pursed her lips and held up her hand.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” she demanded.
“Tree!” Isabel supplied.
“Three,” I repeated.
“You cheated,” Lena huffed.
“We don’t have time for this,” I insisted. “We need to find Blake and Jesse. We need to—we gotta go. It’s probably decades past her bedtime.”
Lena narrowed her eyes for a moment, and I could only assume that she was mentally debating whether she should perform a proper medical exam on me or give up and help me find her brother and his friend.
