Page 35 of Guarded Rebellion

I frowned. “Are you nervous? We don’t have to go.”

“No. We do. OrIwant to. I want to do a normal, typical thing. Nothing about my life has felt normal or typical, and I’m desperate to dupe myself into thinking I can belong just like anyone else in there.” She lifted her arm to point at the house.

We had more in common than I could’ve ever realized. “Me too. But if you’re this anxious, we can try again another time.”

She huffed, urging me to keep walking toward the house. “Yeah, right. Lev’s going to be so mad that you snuck out. He’s bound to ground you for good.”

I smiled. “Nah. He wouldn’t take it that far.”I don’t think…

“We’ve come this far,” she said in an effort to resist her sudden hit of social anxiety, “so we may as well go all the way.”

I laughed once at her comment and nodded.

We entered the massive party house arm-in-arm. At once, we were accosted by so many things that I could only sum up the experience as overwhelming. With eyes wide open andadmittedly naïve, I took in the scene around me to get a grounding for the chaos. Music deafened me, hurting my ears and also making my legs tremble from the booms of the bass. Smells swirled in a nasty mixture of booze, sweat, and weed. Everyone moved so fast, it was a blur of activity that I couldn’t track or follow at all. People were dancing on furniture. More were drinking. Others were talking and laughing, but there was so much commotion that I couldn’t settle on any one thing to look at or pay attention to.

Talk about being overstimulated.

“Let’s head toward the back,” Kelly said, practically shouting into my ear for me to make out what she wanted to tell me. “Maybe the music will be quieter there?”

I nodded, mostly reading her lips to understand instead of actually hearing her voice. I would go anywhere else to get out of the headache-inducing loudness in the foyer.

But I doubt anywhere in this house will count as quiet.

Holding on to her arm, I trailed after her as we headed into the party. Weaving through the throngs of people was no easy feat. Elbows jabbed into our sides. Bodies shoved, knocking us into the walls and furniture. At one point, a pair of women making out with each other and a man blocked the hallway and we had to circle around and figure out a clear way forward.

Reaching the kitchen didn’t help. With the open layout of the entire floor, we had no break from the constant drone of music, laughter, shouts, and chatter.

I’d never felt so claustrophobic. So intimidated, like I truly was the outsider who would never fit in.

I’d been to parties before. I’d gone to events. I’d been immersed with drunk, high, and wild people. But never like this, in such an unrefined and Bohemian environment. My experiences lay in the black-tie galas, the fancy fundraisers.Elegant wedding receptions and polished parties where decorum and decency were still expected.

This frat party… wasn’t fun. I couldn’t settle my racing mind for long enough to people watch, realizing that I couldn’t because everyone here was acting like an animal.

Embrace the experience. Just check it out to be able to know I’ve done this once.

I came here wanting to feel alive. To do something unexpected and daring. But the further Kelly and I moved into this space, I couldn’t escape the belief that it was a waste of my time.

I hated to feel superior, to be so haughty and want to look down on these people. They were my peers. My age. But they were not cut from the same cloth. I’d grown up fast. Maturity had been expected of me at a young age, and with my mother leaving the family, I’d been thrust into a childhood that was more like adulthood than not.

These partiers seemed so… childish. Trivial. Frivolous.

I don’t belong here.

But I hated to accept that reality because it would only reinforce the hard truths Lev had told me. That I didn’t belong at college at all. That I was being a greedy, selfish brat to insist on having this experience at all when the only things I’d ever been wanted for were my hand in marriage and my body to carry babies.

I sniffled, hating this onslaught of dense emotions. I couldn’t cry. Not here. And maybe not ever. Yet, the oppressive awareness that this was all for nothing weighed so heavily on my soul.

This is stupid.Iam stupid to ever think I could be free from the expectations I’ll never break from. I?—

Someone plowed into me, breaking the link between me and Kelly. She tripped, going forward in the crowd, while I pitchedbackward. The tempo of the music changed, more to something frenetic like what would be at a rave, and with the revitalized energy in the room, we were split. Kelly was swallowed into the crowd. I was shoved backward.

“Kel! Kelly!”

A man’s arm wrapped around my waist. The thick limb didn’t budge, not even when I pried at it and dug my nails into his hairy flesh. Muscles tightened as he doubled down on dragging me out of the chaos.

“Let me go!” I turned to punch him, to disable him in any way that I could, but he grabbed my arm. With sheer force of will, he forced me into another room.

A darker room.

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