Lila put her hands on her hips and surveyed her basement slowly. I didn't really know what she was looking for. After all, the entire area looked pretty immaculate for me. She, Olivia, and I were stationed at the family room (or makeshift home movie theatre), where we had pushed all the furniture out of the way and set up the air mattresses. Due to Olivia, everything was exactly in place (even the pillows Olivia and I had brought were perfectly placed parallel to the top of our mattresses).

I turned to Lila, not for the first time. I cleared my throat. "So, what are we looking for?"

"Nothing." Lila looked at me like I was stupid. "What do you think I'm doing?"

I tried to exchange a glance with Olivia, who was texting away madly. Then, after five seconds of no eye contact, I looked away hastily (I was very bad at dealing with awkwardness). "Um, looking for something."

I realized how stupid that sounded about a second later.

Lila let out a very long breath (like she was in theater or something with all those breathing exercises). "I was just thinking about whether we could squish in a mini table in here or something."

I joined her in surveying the room. I saw what she meant immediately-the place was squished. We both hadn't expected for three mattresses to take up that much room. "Why do you wanna put a table in here anyway?" I asked her, scrunching my eyebrows.

"Something I had in mind." She shrugged. "We're gonna see something, right? I should probably go get the popcorn."

And with that, Lila disappeared upstairs so quickly I didn't even have the time to ask her if I could help with anything. I sighed. I really wanted to sit down, but that would definitely mess up the blanket spread over my mattress (which would annoy Olivia so much that she'd spend the rest of the hour trying to fix that as well as any other imaginary flaws in the room). I definitely wasn't against ruffling Olivia a little, but...

I plopped down on the ground, pulling my school backpack to me. Lila had protested heavily upon seeing it (saying that tonight was a strictly no-academics evening), but I'd brushed her off. She didn't understand the strains of taking on extra assignments. Or editing the poems for The Aquiline.

Lila really hadn't helped much with the poems aside from sorting out a couple for me. So right now, I was stuck with a substantial stack (due to Ms. Jacobs's second folder which Josh had given to me yesterday) full of philosophical bullshit. And that was not fun.

With my red pen at the ready, I went through a poem to make suggestions to send back to the people whose poems I'd accepted for the magazine. And there was silence, thankfully.

After a while, Lila came back with two huge bowls of popcorn, stumbling down the stairs. I rushed to help her. "Hey, that's extravagant. What the hell took you so long?"

Olivia put her phone back in her pocket and took the bowl from me, setting it carefully in the space in front of our mattresses (somehow without disturbing the items on top of them, which was incredibly impressive). "Ooh, and drinks?"

Lila nodded toward the mini bar toward the far left of the room. "Tons of water over there. Some soda. I'm not sure which kinds. And of course, there's gin." She wiggled her eyebrows.

"You're seriously not gonna drink that stuff," Olivia said flatly, putting her hands on her hips and straightening up.

Lila scoffed and fell down onto her mattress, popcorn flying all over the place. I could already see Olivia's expressions scrunch up. It wouldn't be very long until she'd lose her temper and start pushing Lila around (effectively causing a bigger mess, I'd suppose) and cleaning up. Usually, it was amusing. Other times, I just wanted to tell her that the Merciers (as well as the rest of us) had cleaning maids for a reason.

"Since when were you my mother?" Lila stuffed her hand into the bowl and managed to fit the whole handful of popcorn into her mouth. Carefully sitting down next to her, I reminded myself to not eat from that bowl at any costs.

Olivia shrugged. "I'm not concerned about that. I fucking hate gin. Why not brandy or something?"

I honestly had no idea what the difference between the two was.

"Brandy is the stuff that your parents give to you when you have a cold," Lila returned. "Now, I'd prefer to have the real stuff."

Ah, fuck it. I took some popcorn from Lila's bowl since it was closer than Olivia's bowl (I'd have to stand up and actually exercise to get there). "Why the hell are we having this discussion? I have stuff to do, and, like, I can't grade papers drunk."

Both of them turned to me, eyebrows raised so comically that I rolled back onto my mattress, snickering. From my position lying down, I raised my eyebrows back at them. "What? I never said I was gonna go to a party this weekend."

"Ugh." The two of them rolled their eyes at the same time.

"Girlfriend, every second you spend with me is a party," Lila said. She exchanged a look at Olivia, who smirked along with her and sat down on her own mattress. (So she'd finally decided to not worry so much about superficial details such as wrinkles on her blanket. Finally.)

"Whatever." I put my books away. In the darkness of Lila's basement, I felt like I really couldn't make my own decisions. Maybe that was good. Maybe that wasn't. But the neon lights shining from the mini bar from another room were definitely one thing that I saw and knew.

Really, whatever.

↔

About a couple hours later, Lila had pulled up a late '80s film that really didn't fit the mood (something for three drinking teenage girls). Blinking blearily, I grasped at a fancy little shot cup that Lila had pulled from a cabinet out of nowhere. My hand shook. Oh shit, I was gonna spill the Cognac all over the mattress.

Olivia seemed to share my sentiments. Stretching out on her blanket (by now, she'd seemed to completely renounce her obsession with neatness-the alcohol probably had something to do with it), she closed her eyes and blurted out loudly, "What the fuck is that guy saying?"

It was very obvious that Lila was way more far gone than the rest of us. We were going to face hell in the morning if her parents caught us...but that was the beauty of it, right? The thrill? Nah. I felt like I was going to throw up, and not from the stuff that I'd just consume.

Waving her hands in the air (luckily, her bowl of popcorn was on my mattress, so I was in control of whether the popcorn would spill out or not), Lila squealed. "Two roads diverged in a road-"

"Shh!" I cut her off.

Lila slapped my head with her open palm, giggling. "You're not drunk enough to enjoy the moment, Olivia."

Even though I wasn't sure of a lot of things at this point (like, yes, what the hell the dude on the screen was talking about), I was very sure that my name was not Olivia. My name ended in a y. I couldn't really recall. My body was enveloped in a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling, like I was surrounded by fluffy pillows (even though I could only see two immediately next to me...how perplexing).

"No, shut up." I reached for my pillow, but I couldn't seem to locate it. Where was it? After some mindless fumbling, I gave up (I was sure that my hand had gotten in Olivia's mouth somehow at one point). "I think I wanna take a nap."

"Stupid." Olivia's hand was a vague, fuzzy outline in the pale light of the TV. "You don't take naps at night."

"Yes, you do." I tried again to find that pillow. "It's called"-I cut myself off with a giggle-"beauty rest!"

"Ugh, that was so stupid-sounding," Olivia drawled. Lila, who was lying to my left, was completely out of it. I mean, she was, like, trying to braid her blanket or something. I stared back at the TV, where a group of guys (they were cute-looking) were jumping on desks and shouting out gibberish to the random philosopher dude. Oh. What were they doing?

Soon enough, the people on the screen disappeared. They were replaced by words. Lots of white words on a black screen. Lila made a clattering noise (did she just drop the remote?), and then, the TV was turned off.

There was darkness.

At least if the pretty neon lights a little far away from us didn't count as, well, light.

I giggled in the silence (well, if Lila's heavy breathing counted as part of that silence).

Everyone kept being quiet. It was annoying, 'cause I wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. Even Lila's parents. Ugh, no, they would totally rat us out. Maybe that weird chemistry teacher from school-Baker? Jenner? I didn't really remember his name.

More silence. I sat up, my limbs feeling jittery and loose. I really wanted to fall back onto the mattress, but, like, that was boring. So I stood up (very shakily) and tried to reach for the wall. Oops-the wall wasn't there. I tripped a little.

It sounded like there were pigs in this room. I didn't even know that human beings could snort and chortle so loudly-and they wouldn't talk to me! I frowned. They probably wanted to be mean. I should get myself some more popcorn from upstairs and entertain myself with another movie-one that didn't have some philosopher dude yelling at some kids.

I staggered to the stairs leading up (I wasn't really sure where, although I was sure there would be popcorn up there). Halfway up, I decided that this was a pretty bad idea. My hand kept slipping off the handrail. Why was it so sweaty? Ew. My feet kept tripping over the steps. The people who designed this house were being so mean to make me fall over like this!

When I got up to level ground, I found out that it was super bright. I squinted up. Oh dear. Why was everything so blurry? It couldn't be just the alcohol. I blinked several times. Right. Nothing in my eyes. I was responsible sometimes, right?

I tripped over a stool, which fell over with a mighty clang. Wincing, I tried to pick it up, but my hand kept missing. I gave up (I was really good at giving up tonight). I continued to the kitchen (which I was sure I was approaching, but really, I wasn't sure).

I hit a cool countertop. That was good. I opened my eyes wide (the lights were still really weird-they kept flashing and spazzing out on me) and reached for a cabinet. The popcorn better be in there.

Someone caught my hand. "Hey, what are you up doing?"

I turned-swayed, really-to face him. "Hey, Luc." His name was fun to say. Luc. Luc. Luc.

He frowned (he looked a lot like he was squinting, which was funny-looking). "It's 2am, Audrey. Are you trying to get the popcorn or something?"

"Yeah, that's totally correct!" I tried to wrestle my wrist away from him, but he held on, looking into my eyes firmly. His eyes were pretty, just like he was. I mean, his hair was all over the place, and it was obvious that he'd showered recently. But his gold-no, amber...or brown-eyes were perfect. Just like he was.

He leaned in closer. Mm, the scent of the laundry detergent that he used was surrounding me. It smelled like cotton. And cleanness. Then he pulled away (aw, why?), frowning even more emphatically. "Audrey, were you and my sister and Olivia drinking down there?"

"We were watching some weird movie," I said, nodding enthusiastically. "It was very philosophical."

Luc muttered to himself, "She'd better not be drunk." Then he stepped closer to me again. "Come on, you've got to get to sleep if you don't wanna have a hangover tomorrow."

A hangover? What was that? I giggled as he slung my arm over his shoulder (which was really far up, so my arm was hurting already). "Hey."

He stopped. He probably wanted to move, though. "What?"

His face was so close. I leaned in closer. He was a lot taller than I was. "You're, like, totally cute."

Luc bit his lip. When I glanced sideways, his ears were turning all red. Weird. Why was that happening? "Um, thanks."

"Okay," I said, satisfied, and then I kissed him squarely on the lips.

He was warm. His warmth was all around me, like he had both arms supporting me. That felt good. He didn't move though, which was weird (and a little insulting-why didn't he kiss back?). But then, he moved his face away from mine, now completely red (even weirder). "Audrey, you're drunk." His voice cracked midway through.

"No, I'm not!" I protested loudly. "I'm tipsy." It was a lot of fun dragging out that last vowel.

"Shh." Luc moved toward the stairs. He kept sending awkward side glances at me, as if he was gonna drop me or something, which would not be fun at all. We stumbled down the stairs together, my head lolling against his arm every once in a while. Then we were down.

It felt good to be away from the brightness. Luc led me through a maze of objects. I kicked over something. Ew. I hoped it wasn't too icky. Then he set me down (or rather dropped me) onto a soft, flat sort of thing. He squatted down so he was at my eye-level. "You need to sleep, okay?"

"Silly, silly." I poked his cheek. It was soft.

He let out a long, soft sigh. "Here." He pushed me a little inward. Then he yanked something from underneath me. It was soft too. He placed it over me and pushed me down so I was lying. "Seriously."

"Fine." I closed my eyes. Ooh, the world was getting even fuzzier. My eyelids hurt.

I felt his lips against my cheek. "Night, A."

My only thought was that the warmth was comforting.

→

Oh Audrey... What do you guys think will happen?

I'm sort of late and hurried right now, so I'll see you all tomorrow! Love ya!

Anne