Page 13 of No Place Left to Hide

Jena points to my silent phone in the holder on the dash. “I’m surprised yours isn’t blowing up with texts. Do you not have service yet?”

Okay, maybe she’s a smidge the wiser. “It’s on Do Not Disturb. Because I’m driving.”

She shrugs and I grasp for a change in subject.

“You know, technically, I wasn’t even invited to this party,” I say, as I stop at a light.

Jena laughs and puts her feet up on the dash as she reaches over to hit the skip button on the screen. “Yeah right,” she says with a snort. “Don’t be stupid. You’re Brooke Fucking Goodwin. The invitation is implied.”

The song changes and Jena squeals.

“My song!” UPSAHL loudly pulses from my speakers. “This is a good omen. Tonight is going to beeverything.”

I pretend I didn’t hear her and crack a window. A mixture of sea salt and car exhaust seeps into the car, and I close it again. Gas stations, 7-Elevens, hotels, and a Pig ’N Pancake whirl by us as I follow the GPS another twenty minutes until the turn to the beach house looms.

I’ve never actually been here. Beau started offering up his aunt and uncle’s vacation home for parties a few months after the incident at the lake house.

“This is such a long drive for a party,” I complain. “The lake house was so much more accessible.”

“Sure, but in a few months we’re all going to be scattered anyway,” Jena says. “And then we’ll all be looking for new party spots in college. Besides, Beau can’t throw these as often as you could because his familyactually uses the house. We’ll probably only be here tonight and for whatever party he throws for graduation.”

I grumble my acceptance but I’m feeling strangely annoyed and I’m not sure why.

The street finally appears and I hang a right. Within a block, the streetlights disappear entirely. The little residential road slowly slopes down to the water, then veers left to follow the beach. Houses sit on either side of the dead-end street. The right is all beachfront. All the way at the end, my headlights illuminate dozens of cars parked on both sides of the road.

Beau’s place is the last little white bungalow on the right. I check the address twice to make sure this is the correct place, and sigh. It’s a shed on the damn beach. It can’t have more than two bedrooms. The single-car driveway is barely long enough to fit Beau’s shitty station wagon, and one of the porch lights is burned out.

This is what everyone chose as a replacement for the lake house? My four-thousand-square-foot, three-story, picturesque, lakefront property goes away andthisis the next best option?Thisis where we’ll celebrate graduating from Waldorf?

Well, now I know why I’m annoyed.

“Don’t make that face,” Jena says as I slow the Subaru to a crawl. “It’s beachfront! The party is out on the sand, and the house is cute inside. It’s not as bad as it looks from the front.”

“I’m sure it has all the class and style of Depoe Bay’s most luxurious Motel 6.”

“Snob.”

I park behind a blue pickup truck and hit the keyless button on the dash. The car goes silent. “And proud of it.”

I unplug my phone, hesitate for a second, and then stick it straightinto the center console. If there was ever a night to ignore No Caller ID and have a life, it’s tonight. Tonight is for me. They can wait.

Jena hops out, looking like a supermodel in my clothes, and I trail behind her, locking the car over my shoulder. She looks like she’s about to strut into an Oscar after-party, not the nautical-themed living room of a kid we tolerate for his party space. Music drifts to us, and Jena bypasses the front door entirely, heading instead for a gate on the left side of the house. She looks back at me and her eyes are wild with excitement. She’s really keyed up tonight.

The closer we get to the backyard, the more the beat pulses in my teeth. We step from the shadows into a mass of light. String lights zigzag above a weathered patio overflowing with people. There’s no grass back here; it’s all sand, straight until it turns to ocean. Someone’s already lit a bonfire on the beach, about thirty feet from the house. Mismatched Adirondack chairs sit in a wobbly circle around the fire and across the sand. People dance on the patio and talk in clusters as far as the eye can see.

Jena strikes a pose, waving jazz hands in my direction, and everyone seems to turn to us at once. The music cuts, and someone in the crowd shouts, “Yale?”

My whole body basks in the attention. All eyes are on me, and it feels like they’ve been waiting for this, forme.

I keep my face straight for an extra second, and then I smile. “I’m in.”

The cheers drown out the ocean, and I’m dragged into the middle of a crowd of about forty people. The party swells around me. All I can hear are congratulations and well-wishes. Someone hands me a Solo cup. It smells like Malibu, so I take a long drink and let the weightlessness of this moment shake off the last of the tension in my shoulders.Their joy sinks into my bones, and though I won’t admit it to Jena, I needed this.

Someone comes along the side of the house, and the music stops. I turn, hoping for Dylan, but it’s a kid I don’t recognize. The tall, scrawny boy grins and yells, “Stanford!” and the party swells around him too.

I can practically taste the celebration in the air, the crisp bite of excitement. I wish I could bottle this feeling. Especially because it’s the opposite of the hell I’ve been living since January. No Caller ID can suck it—I won, and this party is proof.

We’re folded into a group around the fire, and Jena waggles her eyebrows at me in a way that feels a lot like a visualI told you so. But I have to admit: I am glad I came. It feels good to be around these people. It’s familiar—even if the lake house was nicer.

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