Smooth Criminal

“So,” I began as I climbed into Amanda’s bright yellow 2001 Honda Accord. “I’ve appointed you as my new life coach. If I’m going to start doing this whole ‘rebellion’ thing, I’m gonna need someone telling me what to do if I’m going to do it right.”
Amanda stared at me for the longest time before letting a girly shriek escape from her lips.
“Holy shit, I did it!” she exclaimed proudly. “I’ve finally corrupted Stella Lucille Underwood.”
I chortled at my friend and rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t say corrupted just yet… But you’ve definitely made a breakthrough. I mean, what am I gonna do when I’m eighteen years old, living on my own at college, thousands of miles away from home? I can’t just expect you to drive all the way to New York to bail me out of whatever socially awkward situation I’ve managed to get myself into.”
“Awh, I just knew you’d see my side in all of this.” Amanda reached over and gave my knee a solid pat before pulling out of the parking lot and made way to her house. “Our first official task on your check-off list is to attend a genuine high school house party. Tonight we’re going to Josh Beckler’s party. And we’re going to look amazing.” I eyed my friend from my spot in the passenger seat and immediately thought of a thousand things that could possibly go wrong. “Would you knock it off? Josh’s parties are never busted. His neighborhood is apparently really chill. It’ll be fine.”
“Amanda, if this party gets busted, I will never see the light of day for as long as I live.” I bury my head between my knees and exhale slowly, attempting to calm my nerves. “My dad is on patrol tonight. I cannot get busted. He thinks I’m at your house making tie-dye shirts and watching sappy chick-flicks.”
“God damn it, Stella. Now we have to actually make tie-dye shirts tomorrow.” Amanda rolled her eyes at my stupid lie and drove past her house. “Whatever. We have a few hours to kill before we have to start getting ready, anyway. We can just go get t-shirts and dye now so we don’t hate ourselves for not getting it tomorrow.”

The party had started at eight, but that was around the time Amanda and I had started getting ready.
“No one ever actually shows up to a party on time,” she had told me. So she took her time getting herself ready as she contemplated on how she was going to dress me for the night. I had volunteered myself to be her personal Barbie doll for the evening. Once she had completed getting the two of us dressed, it was about nine thirty and I was finally starting to feel pumped about going out for once.
“Aaaand… Let’s hit it, babe.” Amanda winked at me through her full length mirror that hung on her bedroom wall and turned to face me. “Good God, we look hot. I did good.” I gazed at my reflection, speculating the way the black, lace-fabric tank top hit me right below my boobs. My makeup was absolutely stunning; the subtle smokey eye Amanda had perfected gave some mystery to my baby blue eyes that were perfectly winged with a skillful cat-eye, the red blush that seemed scary at first really gave some color to my dull face, and the bronzer honestly defined every curve of my face in all the right ways. My confidence was definitely at it’s peak right now. I was on top of the world.
Amanda and I called out our goodbyes to her mother who was binge watching Gilmore Girl from the comfort of the couch and the two of us were off. To get us in the party mood, Amanda popped in her old Eminem CD.
When we pulled up to Josh’s house, the party was in full swing. Cars were parked all along the street, teenagers loitered the street, and the bass from the sound system could be heard from two blocks away. The adrenaline pumping through my veins made it hard for me to sit still, so I sat impatiently in the passenger seat while Amanda searched for a place to park.
“You need to chill, child,” she laughed at me as she found a place behind an old Mustang. “Don’t blow this for us. Just be cool.”
I nodded to myself and tried to regain composure. “Be cool,” I repeated, taking in a deep breath. The heels of Amanda’s boots clinked loudly against the pavement as we made our way up to Josh’s house so I focused on that to keep myself from passing out from all of this sensory overload. We stepped into the large house and I scanned the scene laid out before me.
“I’m gonna go get something to drink in the kitchen,” Amanda yelled into my ear, her voice straining over the loud music. I nodded my head and watched my friend disappear into the crowded house. I figured standing here all night wasn’t one of my options so I ventured further into the house and scouted out what all was going on. The smell of alcohol was lingering around me everywhere I went, but no one seemed to be quite drunk yet; although a senior cheerleader I recognized sitting on the couch seemed to have almost reached her limit.
“What are you doing here?”
I spun around and was standing awfully close to Alex and my face suddenly felt very flushed.
“Does your father know where you are, young lady?” he teased me, taking a sip of whatever was in his red Solo cup. I rolled my eyes at him and grabbed his cup, taking a long swig of the liquid. I tried my hardest to not make a face as I swallowed the awful tasting beer.
“I don’t see why that’s any of your concern, Gaskarth,” I shot back. He shook his head at me and went to grab his cup back from me, but I chugged the remaining of the warm beverage before he could take it back.
“You owe me a beer, young lady.”
I rolled my eyes up at him and handed him the empty cup. “I don’t owe you shit.” He chuckled at my feisty behavior and placed a hand on my waist, leading me to the area that was set up to be a make-shift dance floor. “I don’t dance, dude,” I yelled in his ear.
“Bullshit,” he yelled back, pulling me closer to his body, trying to lead the way. “Everyone dances.”
I let out a defeated sigh and allowed him to lead the way, swaying my hips to the rhythm of the music that was pulsing around us. Alex’s hands found their way to my hips and soon enough, I was grinding against my English partner in some stranger’s house. Alex’s breath was hot on my neck, sending shivers down my spine. I closed my eyes and allowed the music and Alex’s hands guide the way. When the song ended, I smirked up at Alex and excused myself to grab a drink from the kitchen.
“There you are!”
Amanda was sitting with a group of kids in our grade around the kitchen table, a line of shot glasses set before them.
“Shots?” A guy who was in my calculus class offered as I walked up and sat in Amanda’s lap.
“Why the fuck not,” I smirked at him and everyone around me cheered. I watched him pour another shot glass filled to the brim with tequila and then he passed it off to me.
“Cheers,” Amanda grinned widely. Everyone clinked glasses and threw our heads back. The burning sensation clawed it’s way down my throat and I winced. “You’ll get used to it,” Amanda whispered in my ear. I nodded my head and grabbed the bottle Calculus Kid had poured from and took a drink from the bottle. Tequila definitely tastes a lot better than beer, that’s for sure. Amanda smiled at me and grabbed my hand, leading me to a room in the back of the house where a table was set up with cups on it.
“Who’s next?” a football player shouted with his fists held in the air. Amanda licked her lips with a devilish grin and walked up to the guy, flirtatiously taking the ping-pong ball from his hands and taking her stance at the other end of the table.
“C’mon Stells. You’re my partner.” I awkwardly shuffled over to my best friend, taking another sip from the tequila bottle I decided was mine for the night. “Beer pong. Just like ping-pong, but you wanna make it into a cup.” I nodded my head and watched her demonstrate the first shot. She flicked the ping-pong ball across the table and it effortlessly sunk into the first cup at the top of the opponent's beer pyramid. “Drink up, Tyler.” She smirked as Tyler flipped her off. When he finished chugging the cup full of beer, Amanda handed me another ball. “It’s all in the wrist, baby.”
“That’s what she said!” some idiot bystander shouted. I rolled my eyes and focused on which cup I was aiming at. I flicked the ball out of my hand and the ball shot across the room, nowhere close to the table.
“Oh my god,” I muttered, burying my face in Amanda’s shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she laughed, patting the back of my head. “Everyone sucks until they’re drunk.”
The two of us watched as Tyler and his partner both sunk their balls into two of our cups. Amanda and I clinked cups before downing the contents, the warm beer making me want to vomit. I washed it down with another few swigs of tequila and I was good.
Ten minutes into the game, and Amanda and I knew we were going to lose. So we decided it was time for distractions. As Greg, Tyler’s partner, went to make his next shot, I pulled my shirt down so that my boobs were basically hanging out of my shirt and hovered over the cup I knew he was aiming for.
“Oh shit! It’s gettin’ real in here!” a baseball player called out to everyone else that was in the main area of the house. A few speculators rushed into the room to see what all the commotion was about and stayed to watch the rest of the game.
“Who knew Officer Underwood’s daughter had such a dark side,” a guy to my left said rather loudly. I smirked and shook my head.
“You haven’t seen anything yet.”
At this point, I was well beyond tipsy. I had downed a solid portion of the bottle of tequila and I was drinking most of the beer from the shots made by Tyler and Greg.
“If I make this next shot, you gotta play the rest of the game topless,” Greg challenges me with a hungry smirk. I nod my head in agreement, hovering over the cup. Sure enough, as the ball comes straight towards me, it bounces off my chest and falls into the cup below me with a ‘plink.’ I shrug my shoulders innocently as a series of ‘OOOHS!’ echo around the crowded room. “Take it off, baby girl.” I smile innocently at him and grab the hem of my shirt, getting ready to pull it over my head, when a pair of arms wrap themselves around me and remove me from the room.
“Let me go!” I shout, pounding on the person’s back. “Amanda!” I call to my friend, but she was already preoccupied with Greg attached to her lips. I watched as the whoever was carrying me took me the staircase and I suddenly found myself in a bedroom.
“What the fuck?” I said loudly as the person set me down on my feet. I stumbled slightly, catching myself on the bed.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” Alex shouts back at me. “Those guys in there are pigs!”
“I was just playing ‘eer bong, Ale-ex,” I hiccuped. The alcohol consumption was starting to hit me and, boy, was I wasted…
“You were about to flash your business to half of the student body, Stella.”
I rolled my eyes and dismissed the idea with a flick of my wrist. “You’re not my dad. I can do whateeever I wanna do, mis’er.”
“You need to go to bed,” Alex sighed at me. “Where’s my tequila?” I looked around the room for the familiar bottle of liquid goodness and pouted when I couldn’t find it. “Where’d it go…”
“Stella Underwood, I can’t deal with you right now.”
“Nobody asked you to deal with me to begin with,” I countered, pointing a drunken finger at him. “I’m perfectly capable of dealing with myself.” I tried to stand up and walk to the door to prove my point, but I ended up tripping over my damn shoe and falling into Alex’s chest.
“You were saying?” Alex raised a knowing eyebrow at me and I huffed like a little toddler. “You,” he started to say, carrying me over to the bed that was inside the room, “need to sleep some of this off.” Alex laid me carefully down on the bed and draped my cardigan over me lightly. He reached over me and turned on a lamp and walked over to the light switch and flicked the overhead light off. “Do you want me to leave or stay here with you?” he asked gently. My eyes grew heavy and I couldn’t fight the urge close them any longer. I nodded my head and Alex chuckled at me. “That doesn’t answer my question, love.”
“Stay,” I yawned pathetically. Even through my closed eyes, everything was spinning and suddenly I was nauseous. The bed shifted under Alex’s weight as he laid down next to me. I curled into his side and placed his arm safely around my waist.
“Stella,” he whispered in my ear.
“Hmm…” I began to drift off to sleep. Alex hesitated before speaking again.
“Nothing. Just… Nothing.” I listened as Alex let out a frustrated sigh and then focused on the pattern of his beating heart and eventually fell asleep curled up in Alex’s arms.

Notes