North Star

12 | afterparty

2009

Being invited to an afterparty for an event I wasn't allowed to go to was as bad as it sounded.

I actually hadn't been to a lot of parties before, which wasn't weird to me since I was only a freshman in high school, but it made me feel even more of an outsider than I already was due to my preferred loner status. Students knew of me as Kanani's sister, that girl they were occasionally partnered up with for group projects, or the hey-do-I-know-you-from-somewhere when I hung out with someone slightly more popular than me. (That person usually being Kaipo, since he was my only real friend.) (Or, sometimes, it was Aiko, a newer girl I had started hanging out with from my culinary class.)

Practicality-wise, I understood it, but I was also sort of surprised by how many seniors weren't wearing their prom dresses or tuxes. You would think spending that much money on an outfit you were only going to wear once in your life would mean wanting to stay in it for as long as possible, but maybe they all subscribed to the idea of preservation over utilization.

Who the hell was I to judge them for it? I was the lame fourteen-year-old trying to drink their illegally-obtained alcohol for free. These upperclassmen didn't have a care in the world as they counted down their final days of high school, but they did have plenty of beer. What they were while getting shitfaced was unimportant.

As I sat there on the side with a red solo cup in my hand filled with something that vaguely resembled piss in the worst way possible, I wondered what it must be like for some of these people to have spent their entire high school career living this kind of lifestyle. There had to have been some kind of archaic freedom to it all, allowing them to feel more grown-up than they actually were without suffering most of the responsibilities that came specific to adulthood, but when it came time for them to finally reach that milestone in real life, beyond these youthful halls, it had to have a dulled effect. If you did the thing before you were allowed to, finally being old enough to didn't sound as fun. You had already lived it. The only difference was now you'd be able to buy your own drinks, and that was the least fun part of drinking, I imagined.

"You're drinking that?" Kaipo asked as he walked up to me, a grimace present on his splotchy face.

"Kaipo. I can tell you're drunk just by looking at you."

To emphasize my point for me, he pulled a dark brown bottle out from behind his back and took a swig. He probably went the smarter route. Beer from a keg was the worst kind of beer, and I knew that without having drunk it before.

"Yeah, but you're supposed to be better than me," he retorted. His words were slurred enough to be another telltale sign of his inebriation, but not enough that I was concerned or couldn't understand him. (Yet.)

"Nobody here is under the impression that I'm a better person than you." Objectively, I wasn't. Everybody who knew us was aware of that fact. Even as a freshman, Kaipo helped deliver hot meals to the houseless that lined the streets of Waikiki. (A juxtaposition to the glamorous getaway of tourists in the same area.) Meanwhile, I complained about getting dragged to a prom afterparty. Woe was me.

Doing me a solid, I supposed, he switched our beverages. After taking a sip that was severely less painful than any of the previous ones, I thanked him.

Kaipo held out his arm and I tucked mine under his. As we navigated through the colossal house, to whom I had no idea it belonged, he pointed out different people that were in attendance. It was his way of trying to get me more familiar with where we were, even though there was no chance I was ever going to feel a hundred percent at one of these things. Even as the song blasting through the speakers repeatedly told me to just dance, I stoically people-watched instead, something that was much more in my element. Most of the people looked vaguely familiar, even if I had no idea what their name was. Kaipo helped place names to faces since he knew most of them, either due to his general social reach or because of all of his extracurricular activities. It was a little overwhelming when more partygoers tried to latch themselves onto him, giving me a side eye in the process, but he anchored himself to me, which I appreciated.