be so pissed," said Madison.
"Maybe we should go to the diner for a while," suggested Jessica. "You know, give them a
chance to wallow a little?"
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We decided that was a good idea, and while Madison called a cab to take us to Dan's Diner,
Jessica text-messaged Dave that we'd meet them at the party. When I took out my wallet to
check how much cash I had, I saw a corner of the postcard Sam had put on my locker. In the
midst of being so depressed, it was nice to remember the part of the evening that hadn't been a
complete disaster.
We didn't talk much at Dan's, and nobody uttered the word prom. We just sat over our fries and
Cokes, wondering how disappointed the guys were going to be, until finally Jessica decided we'd
waited long enough and she called a cab to take us to the no-victory party.
Even though I knew Connor was going to be totally bummed about losing, my heart couldn't stop
doing its little tap dance of excitement the whole ride. This was going to be my first official
high-school party. And it wasn't like I was going as some desperate, dorky freshman or even an
anonymous sophomore--I was going as Connor Pearson's girlfriend. Maybe the basketball team
was suffering the agony of defeat, but I couldn't help feeling the thrill of victory.
We turned off Cypress Avenue and started making our way through what was clearly a mega-
rich neighborhood, the kind where you can't even see the houses from the road. As we got closer
to Darren's, traffic suddenly became a problem--cars were parked on both sides of the street, and
our cab slowed to a crawl to make its way between the rows. We pulled up in front of a
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gigantic wrought-iron gate with an iron eagle perched on top of it, paid the driver, and joined the
river of people heading up the gravel driveway. Hovering on a rise above us was Darren's house,
the biggest home I'd ever seen outside of a movie set; it was as if a French Chateau had been
lifted off its foundation, flown across the Atlantic Ocean, and dropped, perfectly intact, onto the
North Shore of Long Island.
Inside the massive front door a group of guys was playing Nerf basketball; the foyer was so big
their game wasn't even disturbed by the crowds of people milling around. Madison, Jessica, and I
looked at each other. The entryway branched off in two directions, and Jessica held her hands out
like a pair of scales, standing like that until Madison tapped her right arm. We turned right,
passed a wide staircase, and headed down a long hallway packed with people. Everyone was
drinking something-- beer, wine, tropical-looking drinks with frothy heads. We passed Kathryn
Ford, Jane Brown, and a bunch of other senior girls drinking champagne right out of the bottle.
The house reeked of alcohol and pot; my whole body tingled with excitement.
Okay, true, we'd lost the game. And the season was over. And the seniors, some of whom would
probably never play basketball again, had just suffered the worst defeat of their entire careers.
But this was the biggest party of the year. Practically the entire school was here. And for the first
time since we'd started dating, Connor
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didn't have a curfew. My head spun with the possibilities. Disobeying Mara's note was, without a
doubt, the smartest move I'd made in my entire life.
I couldn't wait to find Connor.
A couple of people we passed said they'd last seen Connor, Matt, and Dave in the kitchen. We
kept going, following their instructions. There must have been a hundred rooms in the house.
Maybe a thousand. Every time we thought we'd made it to the kitchen, we found ourselves in
another library, sitting room, billiard room, conservatory. I was starting to get the feeling the
kitchen was like Brigadoon--we could look for it all we wanted, but we'd never find it.
Miles from the front door, we came to a small alcove with nothing in it but a love seat and,
spotlighted on the opposite wall, a tiny oil painting in an elaborate gilt frame. As we walked by, I
glanced at the painting.
"Oh my god," I said.
"What?" asked Jessica.
"Are you okay?" asked Madison.
I pointed at the young girl in a tutu at a ballet barre. "That's a Degas," I said.
"A what?" asked Madison.
"A Degas. He's this really famous French Impressionist. My dad loves him." I shook my head in amazement. "I can't believe they own a Degas."
Madison and Jessica stepped closer to the frame. "Is it, like, superexpensive?" asked Jessica.
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"Probably," I said.
Jessica shrugged. "Cool," she said, turning away. "Come on."
We knew we had to be getting close when we heard the chanting. "Go! Go! Go! Go!" Following
the noise finally got us to a huge, modern kitchen, bright as an operating room and filled with
stainless-steel appliances that reflected the scene back on itself, like mirrors in a fun house.
The chanting came from a group of people huddled around a keg in the middle of the room.
Dripping wet, with sweat or beer I couldn't tell, Dave was bent over backward at the waist,
sucking from a tap. His face was red and the veins on his neck stuck out. Someone was shouting
out numbers, and when the person got to thirty, Dave spit out the tap, spraying himself and the
people nearby with a mist of beer. Everyone cheered. I didn't see Connor anywhere.
Dave staggered away from the group and collapsed in a chair. The person whose turn it was next
grabbed the tap. "Go, Brewster," someone shouted. "Brewster the Brewmeister!" yelled someone else. I watched Jessica, who looked pissed, make her way over to Dave. Madison and I made eye
contact. She shrugged and followed Jessica, so I followed her.
Dave had stopped gasping for breath and was laughing at, as far as I could tell, nothing. Jessica,
her arms
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folded tightly across her chest, was shaking her head at him. He stopped laughing and started
swaying back and forth in the chair, eyes half closed. "You're wasted, you know that?" she
asked, kicking him in the foot.
"I'm notho wasted," he slurred, smiling up at her. "Comeere." He lifted his arms to embrace her and then dropped them, like they were too heavy to hold up. "Okay, maybe wasted."
"Yeah, maybe," she said.
As if to nod in agreement, Dave dropped his head. But it didn't come up again. Once more,
Jessica kicked him in the foot. This time all he did was shrug.
"Where's Connor?" I asked. Dave looked up at me, his head swaying. He said something that
sounded like, "Background."
"Background?" I repeated.
He took a deep breath and stared into my eyes, all his powers of concentration focused on this
elusive communication. "Back. Yard," he managed to say, articulating each syllable with
remarkable precision. Then he half pointed, half waved to a corridor that branched off the
kitchen and laughed.
"Where's Matt?" asked Madison.
Dave moved his glassy stare from me to Madison and then back again. "Strange," he said.
"What?" she asked.
You could see him gathering himself up for one last push. "Same," he said finally.
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She looked at me, confused. "I think he means they're in the same place," I translated.
I started off in the direction Dave had indicated, with Madison right behind me. Jessica gave