Boy by Blake Nelson

Chapter 14

JUNIOR YEAR

You see something happening and you bang away at it. Either you get what you saw or you get something else— and whichever is better you print.
—Garry Winogrand

If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough. —Robert Capa

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My summer vacation had turned out okay, I thought, considering how badly it started. I'd laid low, made a little money, hadn't aggravated the Claude and Hanna situation. Once school started, I assumed things would go back to normal. Claude would forgive me for kissing Hanna. He knew it wasn't my fault. Hanna said it wasn't. And Claude and I had been friends for so long. That had to count for something.

But when I got back to school I had a rude awakening. For one thing, Hanna, who I thought had been gone for the summer, had been home for the entire month of August. She'd had a big party at her parents' house. Not only was I not invited, but I hadn't even known about it. Also, two sophomore girls, Ashley and Krista, had suddenly emerged over the summer as the new party girls, and there had been several parties at Krista's parents' McMansion, where people had skinny-dipped and done beer bongs and jumped off the second-floor balcony into the pool. Supposedly, at one of these parties, Grace hooked up with a senior foot- ball player named Austin Wells and now they were in love. Which you'd think someone would have mentioned to me, out of common courtesy.

I slowly realized that Logan had been at most of these parties and hadn't told me about them, either to spare my feelings or because he had been instructed not to. I  g- ured this was Hanna's doing, or Claude's. Maybe Grace was even behind it. She had been the most hurt by  nding Hanna and me together. I guess  nding your  rst boyfriend in the arms of your best friend would be pretty traumatic, though I noticed it hadn't stopped Grace from remaining friends with Hanna.

As the shock of this new reality set in, I found myself remembering other people who'd experienced devastating social downfalls. I remembered this guy Kyle, a basket- ball player who'd buddied around with Claude and me freshman year. He seemed destined for social success at Evergreen, but then his dad went to prison and suddenly his family had no money. He quickly faded from the scene. Or this girl Fiona Martin from eighth grade, who everyone liked. Even Hanna wanted to be her best friend, but some- thing happened to her, too. She had health problems and gained a lot of weight, and by the time she hit high school she had become completely invisible.

Was that going to happen to me? I didn't know. It seemed like it might. I mean, I hadn't disappeared. I was still here. I still hung out with Logan and Olivia sometimes. I was still tall and blond and good at tennis. How far could I fall?

Quite a ways, it turned out.

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There was a big party about two weeks into the school year, at Madison Decker's house. She was one of the editors of the school magazine and not an experienced party thrower. You could tell by the way people talked about it, the party was going to be huge. I asked Logan if he was going, but he and Olivia were doing something else that night. I won- dered what that meant exactly. Probably there was a better party somewhere else and I wasn't invited. But I refused to worry about it. And on Friday I did something I'd never done before: I went to a party by myself.

I parked a few blocks away and walked up the street to Madison's house. The party was the same night as our first home football game, so a lot of kids from the game had shown up. Little packs of bewildered freshmen and sopho- mores were standing in the street and in the driveway. For some of them this was their first high school party ever. And it showed.

I slipped through the people, a little embarrassed to be there at all, but I kept up a good front. People brightened when they saw me. I was still—by reputation at least—one of the cool kids. Someone asked me about Grace. "We broke up," I said bluntly. Someone else—amazed to see me alone— asked if Hanna and Claude were coming. I didn't answer.

I went inside and found my way to the kitchen where the juniors and seniors were. None of my real friends were there. No Claude, Hanna, Petra, Olivia, Logan, or the rest of them. They were obviously somewhere else, doing some- thing much more fun.

I made the best of it. I got a beer. Someone spilled orange juice on my Nikes. Madison was there, freaking out because so many people had shown up. She had no idea what was coming. But I knew. In about an hour every drunk kid on the West Side was going to appear. Madison would be lucky if her house was still standing by the end of the night. Even now people were telling her to call the police. Someone else was reporting that a freshman had passed out in her bathtub. And then two sophomores, wrestling in the living room, broke the co ee table in half. Poor Madison. "This wasn't supposed to be that kind of party!" she cried, which is what people like her always say.

I stayed for forty-five minutes. To stay any longer would make me look bad. As I walked back to my car, I heard someone yelling down the street. I looked and saw Antoinette and another girl running hand in hand up the hill toward the party. They ran by me, breathless and laughing. The other girl I knew vaguely. Her name was Kai. She had an even weirder haircut than Antoinette. The two of them were absurdly overdressed. Antoinette wore a fur coat and Kai had sparkly stuff all over her face. Both had bright red lipstick on, which no normal Evergreen girl would ever wear.

They didn't see me, so I called out, "Antoinette!" She slowed down and stared at me blankly. She was very drunk. They both were. Kai immediately pulled on her arm, drag- ging her forward.

"The party sucks," I called after them. "We don't care!" yelled Kai into the air. They continued up the hill. I got in my car.