It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,74

my house) to stop my bra from showing.

‘Want me to zinc your face?’ Alex asks, holding up a stick of orange sunscreen.

‘Sure.’ I close my eyes and let him draw a stripe across each cheek. My skin will break out after this—it freaks out at unscented moisturiser let alone thick, coloured sludgy balm that has touched who knows how many other faces. This is the first concession I will make towards having fun tonight.

‘And your arms?’ he asks.

I hold them out and he writes a word down my left arm and then my right one.

I twist my head to look at them. On my left arm, GOOD. On my right arm, BAD. Lucy and I could spend weeks analysing what this means. I almost text her, but decide not to, because I’ve been texting her nonstop since she left my house this afternoon, and I think she needs a little bit of space. (I think this because she texted me and said, ‘I appreciate you worrying about me, but I’m okay and I just need some space right now.’)

‘Now me,’ Alex says, and I pause and then write LOVER and HATER on his arms.

‘We should get tattoos like this,’ Alex says, squirting his water pistol at a guy walking past, who sticks his finger up without missing a beat.

I really hope he’s joking about the tattoos.

I study Alex out of the corner of my eye. Maybe he’s on something. I need to stand directly in front of him and see if his pupils are dilated. Is he sweating? Yes, but it’s hot in here and pretty much everyone is sweating. Is his jaw moving strangely? I can’t tell from this angle.

I’m not sure how I feel if he is. Mostly nervous, because if he’s high, he won’t be a very good safety net for me, and there’s no way I am surviving this party without a safety net. The other party was a Beginners party, maybe an Intermediate. This one is Advanced. I’m not ready for Advanced. I’ll never be ready for Advanced.

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Alex says, and I follow him up a grand staircase. This is a rich person’s home, which adds to my discomfort. The music is much louder on the next floor, and all the furniture has been pushed to the sides of the room, so the big space in the middle can be used as a dance floor. The floor is polished concrete, and a huge rug has been rolled up and propped on its end in the corner. That rug is probably worth thousands of dollars. Maybe tens of thousands. I feel anxious just looking at it. I want to drape a sheet over it.

People are shouting and jumping up and down in time to the music. The bass is turned up so loud you can hardly hear the music itself, just the deep, thrumming pounding, which is inside my chest immediately. One guy, covered in stripes of yellow zinc and pink glitter, is lying on the floor in the corner, banging his hands in time to the beat.

I am in my own personal rainbow-coloured hell.

I wish Zach and Lucy were here.

‘Let’s dance,’ Alex says. His water pistol has a strap and it’s hanging off his shoulder like he’s some weird neon action hero.

The party was Alex’s idea, obviously. He said we needed to celebrate me getting into uni, into my first preference. I said sure, imagining an evening picnic. Maybe he would make food. Buy me a bunch of flowers. Get me a journal for taking notes during class. Create a special Spotify playlist of celebratory songs. Go on a long drive down the coast and stand on a cliff together, talking about our futures and looking at the sunset. In the space of about ten seconds, I had quite a romantic fantasy going.

Instead, he’d said, ‘Come to my friend’s party, we’ll have fun.’ I said, ‘Okay, sure, sounds good,’ which means I absolutely don’t want to and I am annoyed you are even suggesting it. He doesn’t know me well enough to read that subtext.

Then he said it’s a fluro party, as if that would mean something to me. I laughed, and then I panicked and googled ‘fluro party’ and then I pulled every single piece of clothing out of my wardrobe and onto the floor in a state of near hysteria. I wanted to call Lucy and beg her for help, but at that point she had already asked me for space