mom screamed, and we all scrambled for the door. “Not you!” She grabbed Trevor by the back of his hoodie and yanked him as he tried to make a red-faced run for it. “Get out of here before I call your moms and dads!” she bellowed, and this—this—seemed to be the thing that struck sheer terror into everyone there. Noah grabbed me by the hand and suddenly we were rushing towards the door with the rest of the frantic gang.
“Let’s get out of here!” Noah hissed at me as we dashed for the door.
“Uh . . . thanks for having us, uh, sorry for the mess . . . uh . . . Mrs. . . .” I momentarily paused at the door, but quickly realized I’d made a terrible mistake when Trevor’s mom glared at me.
“Get out NOW, young lady!” she reprimanded, striking icy-cold terror into my veins. I looked at her and blinked. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been in trouble with a parent before. Noah seemed amused by this and ushered me out of the door.
“If you’re not all gone in one minute, I am calling your moms, and the POLICE!” Trevor’s mom sounded angrier than I’d ever heard anyone sound before.
“Run!” Noah said, picking up pace as we burst out the front door and ran towards our car. The party crowd all followed us.
“Can we come with you?” one of the hoodies shouted.
“Cool.” Noah flung the car doors open and we all flew in. The hoodies—what was left of them—the twins, and some other people I didn’t know.
We slammed the doors closed just as I thought I heard Trevor’s mom say she was going to send him away to a military boarding school in Papua New Guinea if he ever did this . . . again! Noah put the key in the ignition and we sped off down the road. When we were several blocks away, he pulled over and turned in his seat to look at everyone.
“That was close,” one of the Hoodies said. “Trevor’s mom is hectic. She’s like an advocate or something like that.”
“No way,” one of the twins said.
“Hey, do you guys want to come to my house now?” Hoodie Two asked. “I’ve got some weed there.”
“Uh . . .” I looked over at Noah. I was exhausted, and he gave his head the tiniest of shakes.
“No, it’s cool,” I said to our friends.
“And you guys?” Hoodie Two turned to the twins and the others in the car and they all nodded their heads.
“It’s just around the corner. We can walk. Thanks, dude.” And then he pulled out his phone, and the twins did too. “What’s your number? We should hang out again. It was sick.”
I pulled my phone out too and, once again, swapped numbers with all these new people. When they were gone and only Noah and I remained, we turned to each other and then, as if we were both thinking the exact same thing, began laughing. Our laughter was loud and hysterical and it escalated until it felt quite uncontrollable.
“Why are we laughing?” I asked, in between snorts.
“You know what just happened to us, don’t you?”
“What?”
“We went to a very dodgy club. You climbed up onstage and sang with the band. Then we party-hopped. You got drunk and smoked weed and then we got kicked out of a house party by an angry parent. That is the quintessential teen experience. And you’ve just had it. All in one night.”
“Oh my God! I did, didn’t I? And I kissed a girl!!”
“Yeah, there was that too,” Noah continued to laugh.
“And the lead singer of a rock band!” I added, feeling quite pleased with myself now.
His laughter stopped abruptly. “Yeah, that too.”
“It was a wild and crazy night!” I said, but stopped laughing too when I noticed how Noah was looking at me. I was going to open my mouth and say something, but I didn’t know what to say, because I don’t think I’d ever been looked at like that before and I didn’t know what the correct response was to it. That same feeling started to bubble up inside me again, that fizzy, warm, champagne feeling that I only got around Noah. We stared at each other now, neither one of us blinking, and with it came this crackling, screaming, zapping energy that I was sure I physically felt in the air around us. I wondered if Noah could feel it too. Or was it just