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Parties. The rejuvenation of one’s social life, a way to unwind and have fun. The crux of all trope and cliche filled highschool movies. It’s not at all surprising to see a movie floating around where the main protagonist gets fucked up from juice and proceeds to do some distatrous shit. Entertainment is often fueled by the embarrassment from others, and these predicaments are usually paired with some filters and catchy music.
Dave’s predicament is that he’s at a party.
Honestly, he doesn’t even exactly know why he’s here. Somewhere in the hazy depths of his mind, the noirette faintly recalls Shawn- the horror movie addict in his theater class- inviting him while they were walking through the highschool hallways so they can trash the place. Like almost all of his conversations with the other guy, Dave had just drowned out the noise and nodded to everything he said. Can you blame him? He has this haircut that looks like he hasn’t brushed it in two weeks, and the smell- oh the smell!- it’s almost enough for Dave to break out into hives.
So he had agreed, and now he’s here. Dave hates it.
There’s some obnoxious 2000s pop blasting on the stereo speakers, throbbing through his ears. Wincing at it, he fumbles through a crowd, which is already hard enough due to his shorter stature, and finds himself near the stairs of the living room. He doesn’t even know whose house this is, Shawn just told him the address and called it a day! Some blonde in a cheerleader outfit is strutting around the place, her heels somehow clicking louder than the music as she sing-songs in this hideous tone. Lights hanging up on the ceilings by red streamers flash colorfully, and Dave hisses as he checks his phone. It’s not even 11 o’ clock, hanging on a cusp.
This is going to be a very long night, Dave regretfully thinks. Somewhere in the distance, the faint smell of vomit infects his nostrils, and while he is thankful he is not near the source, he regrets not bringing his mask. Being considered a germaphobe from a very young age, he would always wear a mask and gloves in public situations to avoid having to touch anything gross. It also seemed to scare people away, as people thought he was some mysterious prick. In fact, even right now, he’s wearing these black gloves that cover every inch of skin on his body up to his elbows. It’s just that, in a rush to meet up with Shawn, he had forgotten his mask.
Speaking of which, where is Shawn? The noriette, now sitting down on one of the wooden white steps, darts his brown eyes around the room, looking for his.. “acquaintance.” There’s a lot more people at this party than expected, but, eventually, Dave spots him by this really tall girl. Oh- wait, that’s Jasmine. An Australian transfer student who always wears a hat, she’s also in the previously mentioned theater class, and could easily be confused for an adult due to her enormous height, but, interestingly, she’s a sophomore; just like Dave and Shawn. She bends down, whispers something to Shawn, and the brunette’s eyes widen, as he whips his head all around and spots Dave in the corner of the party.
“HEEYYY!” He screams, waving his arms up and down like a madman, “DAAAVE! DAVID! COME OVER HEEEEERE!”
Well, that’s a tad bit uncharacteristic of Shawn, Dave concludes as a headache decides to grow from the noise and pound his head. Unable to figure out whether it’s due to some spiked juice, or because Jasmine is near him, his vision spins a little. Mustering up the strength to not look like a fucking moron, he politely shakes his head, and that seems to send the signal that he’s not interested in walking over.
Shawn and Jasmine shrug to each other and trot away to talk to some other blonde cheerleader, except she’s wearing sneakers and her hair is tied up in a ponytail. She.. looks really familiar, now that Dave has the time to question it. Suddenly, he’s feeling a lot worse about this party, because if his.. “ acquaintances” are here, and the blonde cheerleaders are here that he’s pretty sure are in his grade, then..
Oh fuck. SKY is probably here.
Sky is this sophomore girl with pretty jet-black hair and dark eyes. She’s absolutely gorgeous, she can win medals in almost every sport she competes in, and she’s assertive and commanding when needed. Every guy in their grade wants her, every girl in return wants to be her. She’s popular, comes from a decent homelife, and Dave would definitely date her if given the chance. In fact, he did in freshman year.. until they broke up, that is. As it turns out, she had been dating this guy in middle school named Keith, and this guy seemed fairly certain that he and Sky were still dating. Dave had just about lost his fucking mind, and broke up with her by screaming and yelling like a little bitch on the final week of school.
It was horrible, just absolutely horrible to think about. Although Sky had calmly tried to explain that it was all a misunderstanding, and that she was not cheating on him, Dave didn’t want to hear it. He blocked her number, shaved half his head in a fit of rage, and spent an entire summer crying his heart out. He had even considered writing unnecessarily edgy poems about how his heart had been smashed into a million pieces, but then, near the end of August, he had opened his window and decided “Oh, fuck this shit, I’m gonna be mad instead.” The shaved part of his head had mostly regrown the previous hair, so he simply combed his hair to conceal any bald looking spots, and showed up to sophomore year as if nothing had ever happened.
His reputation had taken a blow, but Dave didn’t care. Who gave a shit about what some pretentious bitches think? He shrugged it off, ignoring some of the concerned looks he got, and asked the guidance counselor to remove him from any classes that he shared with Sky. This caused him to get transferred to the theater class, which he had turned to have a lot of untapped potential in, and all was well in the end.
Until now. Sky could easily be at this party, and although she had long given up on trying to communicate with him, there’s a chance she might try to talk. He can’t handle dealing with that, it would get ugly real quick. Crossing his arms and gripping the skin tightly, he hunched over himself to appear smaller, and prayed that nobody walked over to him. On second thought, maybe not wearing a mask was a good idea, because that is pretty much one of his signature traits. A million thoughts racing through his mind, he cocks his head up and looks over the crowd of flashing lights to see who else he knows is also present at the party. Leonard and Beardo, these two weird roleplayers, are chatting with Sugar, some popular girl obsessed with beauty pageants. A fair maiden with her hair tied up with a ribbon named Ella is wearing a pink dress that’s way too proper and fancy for this party, and if Dave wasn’t losing his marbles right about now, he might be able to tolerate a conversation with her. Topher is flashing his phone around, trying to record stuff he can use for his low quality blogger YouTube channel. Scarlett has the smarts and dignity to not turn up at a party like this, but it looks like Max didn’t get the memo, because he’s trying to do death metal karaoke with this redhead girl that looks to be a junior. Dave thinks he saw Rodney head up the stairs like 10 minutes ago, and then there’s..
Sky. Holy shit, he’s screwed. It doesn’t matter that she’s on the other side of the room and talking to some snobby arrogant athletes, he’s gotta get out of here before she finds him and gives him some.. high and mighty lecture on how he needs to think! Using his hands to get up from the steps, his knees wobble and almost buckle as he stares at the front door with hope glittering in his eyes. This aspiration is immediately squashed when some seniors start arguing in front of the door, and Dave wants to just scream and rip his hair out in frustration, just fucking go bald again for all he cares. He stomps away, way too quiet to hear, and marches right up the steps of the party. He needs to hide somewhere AWAY from Sky, but all the doors are locked. The only exception is the bathroom, but that’d just make his germaphobia even worse. God, goddamnit, he really should have chugged some punch after all, if he can’t hide, what the fuck is he going to do?!
Oh, wait, is that Rodney over there? He’s tall enough, maybe he can hide.
Practically running over, Dave’s obnoxious voice cracks as he begs “RODNEY, H-HEY RODNEY! Listen, I need to hide from someone, i-it’s a girl, you can just scare her away from me with your unattractive personality!”
“Rodney? Ugh, why does everyone always confuse me for that guy.”
Blinking away the black spots in his vision, Dave is appalled to find that, no, this guy is not Rodney. He has the same ginger and spiky hair, and he’s quite tall, but the differences end there. Skinnier, dotted with freckles, paler, and blue eyed, he looks like a fucking discount version. They’re right on top of a balcony right now, maybe a gust of wind could knock this guy over. Dave contemplates throwing himself over the edge of the balcony, then sighs for an uncomfortable period of time.
“Y-You look pretty much the exact same, you a farmer or something?”
“So what if I look like him? We have completely different personalities! He’s like, uh..” the tall guy snaps his fingers, “An ugly duckling in a pond of swans!”
Dave wants to tell him that the ugly duckling turned out to be a swan after all, but he rolls his eyes and says “Hmph, cousins have completely different personalities.”
“HE’S NOT MY COUSIN! God, you don’t need any help to hide from girls, you’re annoying enough as it is. Just go away.”
“Nonono, wait, I’m-I’m sorry!” Dave lies, because he really doesn’t wanna go back downstairs, “I just.. have no idea who you are, and had to make a correlation.”
“What are you, a debate club member?”
“No- ah, I sort of.. take theater,” Dave sheepishly says.
The ginger hums, eyes squinting before he laughs suddenly, “Ooooh, I know YOU. You’re Dave, that sophomore who shaved his head because his girlfriend broke up with him. That is WEAK, man!”
Flushing, the noirette stammers “T-That is not what happened! I broke up with her first- ugh, look, you already know me somehow, what’s your name?”
“It’s Scott,” the ginger nasally says in a cockney accent, and Dave suddenly feels like he’s communicating with an actual human and not a machine that says prick comments.
“Well, Scott, I’ll have you know that I- err, what are you doing?” Dave falters as he suddenly spots a bucket by Scott’s feet that the ginger is digging his hands into.
Holding up a water balloon, Scott reels his arm back and screams “THINK FAST!” to Dave, who instinctively closes his eyes and waves his arms in front of him as some sort of shield. The former laughs, moving the water balloon away from him and over the edge of the balcony, “Relax, kid, look, I’ve been throwing these at people for half an hour, watch.”
Releasing his fingers from the edge of the water balloon, he drops it with a lidded smirk and watches it absolutely spray a crowd of people. Some tall girl with black hair hisses in terror and spins all the way around, looking for someone to blame it on. Her target turns out to be a shorter girl with apple themed attire, and they end up screaming and arguing until the heels cheerleader steps in and says something that Dave can’t make out. Arching back, he tilts his head to look at Scott, who is absolutely cackling.
“It’s like taking candy from a baby! You want a turn?”
“First of all, don’t call me a kid,” Dave retorts, “Secondly, not with your gross hands all over the balloons.”
“Ok, sophomore, you’d have to be on your tippy toes to reach me.”
“You’re- like- a year older. At most.”
“And that means that I have plenty more intelligence than you, little one.”
Face growing red, Dave practically shoves past Scott and grabs one of the water balloons. It’s as blue as Scott’s eyes, although Dave doesn’t know why he’s thinking about that, and he furrows his glare at the ginger. Scott raises an eyebrow, waiting for something to happen with a mean smile. In response, Dave huffs, hanging it over the edge and preparing to drop it, but.. he can’t. It’s so.. dirty. Maybe that Scott guy is a farmer after all, because there’s dirt stains ALL OVER it! He needs to just.. clean it, or something! Immediately.
“What? Thinking about how the dirt is gonna.. seep through those gloves?” Scott taunts, and Dave immediately drops the balloon in a flailing fit of disgust, the object plummeting towards the living room and splashing an entire crowd of people.
Dave ducks before the people can spot him, scratching his neck like there’s an itch as he stutters “I ca-can’t believe I just did that!”
Leaning down and pulling Dave up by the scruff of his clothes, Scott says “Hey, you did a pretty handy job back there,” earning a disgruntled “Whatever.”
They both lean over the balcony now, and Scott continues dropping water balloons onto an innocent group of strangers who have nothing to do with this. Every once in a while, he hands one over to Dave, who, not wanting a repeat of the first time, just bites his lip and tosses it like a Thanksgiving football. (That’s a weird metaphor given that they both live in Canada, ay?) There’s a rather comfortable silence between the two, but Dave is ever the impatient one, so he looks for a way to continue talking.
“..How’d you end up at this party? You seem like the kind of person to not be invited to them,” he bluntly offers.
“Ouch, talk about honesty!” Scott pouts with a falsetto voice, before yawning and chucking another water balloon, “My ride- You wouldn’t know her, says I need to be nicer to people,” he says with a wrinkled nose, “Like she knows anything about that, all she cares about is taking care of animals.”
“Is that.. a bad thing?”
“It will be when she ends up living in a dumpster,” Scott defensively states, “I’m just trying to keep that lunatic alive, but she just ends up looking out for ME instead. What a ridiculous thing,” and he hands another water balloon to Dave.
Taking it, the noriette unceremoniously throws it, and admits “I get the feeling. There’s this psycho-“ he clicks his mouth shut, looking for a better word, “..weirdo in my theater class, and he insists that zombies are alive and shit, a-and yet, despite this, he acts like he’s looking out for me. He invited me to this party with some claim that he was gonna trash it.. but now I think he was just trying to get me to talk to people.”
“..You’re talking to me,” Scott awkwardly states, unsure of how to comfort him.
“I guess so.”
..
“Also, are you talking about that guy with the beanie? ‘Cuz you just demolished him with that water balloon.”
This claim is absolutely correct, because Shawn is shaking water off of him like a dog down below, and Dave almost calls out a “sorry, Shawn!” but the pang of guilt in his chest isn’t loud enough to make that happen. He turns away from the balcony, looking lost in thought. He’s itching his neck again, and Scott feels this random urge to.. stop him? It’s not like it’d hurt him or anything, the guy is wearing gloves, but Scott takes the step towards him and rips his hand away.
“You should really stop wearing those gloves,” Scott says, “They look like something my grandmammy would buy at a tag sale.”
Scott half expects some asshole retort about how poor the ginger might be, but instead Dave lightly swipes the other’s arm away and eventually says “..Tell me about your family.”
Honestly, he has no reason to tell him, their bond hasn’t evolved past “acquaintances who ruin other people's lives” yet, but Scott chucks a yellow balloon down below and decides, “Well, there’s my sister, Albertha-“
“ALBERTHA?!”
“Shut up, or else I won’t tell you,” Scott snarls to end Dave’s amused interruption, “She goes to that one school- y’know the one, that Catholic girl school. A lotta people seem to transfer out of it at the start of highschool, but my pappie wouldn’t let her. She likes shoplifting makeup from the mall kiosks.”
“I can see where she got that from,” Dave mutters under his breath, getting a “HEY!” fired his way, and Scott lightly smacked his shoulder, before saying “What about you? Got any siblings.”
“Nope, I’m an only child,” and Scott snorts, but Dave covers his ears and continues in a louder voice: “My parents are always working or coming home and working so.. I mostly just hang out in my garage.”
“The garage? Isn’t that the nastiest place rich people can think of?”
“S-Sort of, but you kind of get claustrophobic sitting in the same room for so long.”
..
Scott looks into the bucket, finding nothing, and decides that this conversation has gone far past the point of needing pranks to provide substance, “You’re.. the kind of person who’s never satisfied by anything, aren’t you?”
“T-That is NOT true, why don’t you go act like a generic bully?!”
“I’m more perceptive than I look,” Scott gestures to his tucked in shirt and his torn pants, “You’re constantly aiming for the next best thing, but you turn away anything that could help you, so you’re stuck living a life of mediocrity.”
“Like you aren’t,” Dave sneers, but his eyes are looking away with hesitation glittering in them this time.
“Yep, this town kind of sucks,” Scott admits, “But I make the most of it. I got friends, like the weirdo girl I mentioned, and this nerdy guy who would crack at the slightest poke. What do you have?”
Dave starts ruffling his hair to look even more side swept than before, and if this was an action movie, there’d be the most intense music playing right now, “..I-I have friends. Didn’t I mention that one guy?”
“You sound really uncertain,” Scott says, staring at his own reflection in the bucket, “You could learn to live a little, open up.”
..
Locking his gaze to meet Scott’s, he asks, “Did you hear about the class president election last year?”
“Yeah? The nerd I mentioned- Cameron- won the sophomore election, but I heard that there was some weird scandal with the freshmen. Some guy tricked everyone into voting for him by pretending they were ballots on who they hated the most, then at the ceremony for it, he was outed as a cheater. Then his girlfriend tried to defuse the situation, and offered the guy flowers to make him not fight anyone, but the sucker was allergic to them, so he started sneezing and crying all the way out of the fucking auditorium!”
“That uh.. was me,” Dave nervously laughs, and he wishes the eyestrain lights of the party could fully conceal his expression.
Surprised, Scott bounces up, whispering “No way.”
“Yessir,” Dave sarcastically says.
“That was- like- the funniest thing I heard all year! I couldn’t laugh at how EMBARRASSING that sounded- uh- no offense, I guess.”
“None taken.”
A bit more certain of each other, they spend the rest of the party chatting each other up. Learning about each other’s backgrounds, hobbies, and even classes. As it turns out, they’re both in the same math class, but they sat on complete opposites of the classroom. That was quite a shock. The hours fade by surprisingly fast, and eventually, the lights begin to dim and the music stops and people start pouring out of the front door. Scott and Dave’s laughter is interrupted by the sound of someone running frantically up the stairs.
“HOLY SHIT- Oh, there you are Dave!” Shawn shouts, Jasmine trailing behind him.
Dave turns away from Scott, an unusually bright smile on his face as he says “Oh, hey, what’s up?”
“I thought you got bitten by a zombie- dude, c’mon, the party’s over, and you know I gotta drive you over before it’s morning. Your parents are gonna be pissed if you were partying all night.”
Dave thinks that his parents probably never even noticed that he left, but instead he says “Alright,” and takes a step forward, but stops and looks at Scott.
“Shucks, don’t worry your little head,” Scott grins, “I texted my ride a while ago, she said she was gonna be here soon about 5 minutes ago. I’ll follow you down.”
The group pile down the stairs, almost crushing the damn steps, and watch the blonde cheerleader with the sneakers throw something at the blonde cheerleader with the heels. Jasmine cheers, although Dave has no idea why, and the front door swings right open. As they step onto the white and shiny porch, they see a dozen or so cars drive away in near complete darkness. After a few moments, they hear a honk, and turn to see.. some blonde girl on a bicycle with two seats, branches and leaves woven around the handles. Scott fondly sighs, and jogs over to her. She seems pretty, and she’s got this nice pair of moon shaped earrings, but then she says one word to Scott and instantly Dave feels nothing but utter sympathy. He turns to Shawn after waving goodbye to Scott, who is jiggling his car keys up and down.
“Let’s go, I may have my permit, but I sure as hell don’t have my license,” the brunette says.
Swinging his black car open, Shawn steps inside, and Dave gets into the passenger seat. The engine roars to life, and the car even shakes a little, before the thing finally gets going and pulls away from the house, speeding down the street. It hits a road bump, and Dave almost screams from shock as the entire damn car is jittering, Shawn pumping his arm up into the air and cheering a “WOOHOO!” Shawn got his car as a gift for his 16th birthday, but the thing is so old and used that it feels like it’s going to explode everytime Dave’s inside it. The former seems to absolutely adore his vehicle.
Suddenly realizing something, Dave asks “Where’s Jasmine?”
“Oh, she’s too tall for my car, so she said she’d run back to her place,” Shawn casually says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“I- What?! I-I don’t even.. how?“ the noirette understandably sputters and questions, because it is dark as fuck out and around 3 A.M.
“Don’t question it, she knows what she’s doing,” and Dave feels as if he has no choice but to believe him.
Eventually, they pull up in front of Dave’s house, this old red and brown thing, and Dave quickly hops out, preparing to swing the door shut, but he suddenly freezes and asks “Hey, Shawn, do you wanna go to that fast food place tomorrow?”
“What? Uh- sure, just call me.. wow, uh, that ginger guy really did something to you, huh? You’re like under some kindness spell,” Shawn laughs.
“Haha, maybe,” Dave says, and he waves goodbye as he swings the car door shut and walks inside.
Ignoring the concerning detail that his house somehow isn’t even locked, he trudges down to his bedroom past his asleep parents and closes the door. Taking off his gloves, he yawns and practically flings himself onto his bed. It’s a good thing that this party was thrown in the middle of the weekend, otherwise Dave would have woken up for school in the crankiest attitude possible. His eyes begin to flutter shut as he reflects on what had just happened. Scott, who had always been around the corner, suddenly shows up with his.. water balloons and his southern accent, and changes everything. God, on Monday, they probably won’t even look at each other during math class. In fact, Dave never wants to go to a party ever again, because SCOTT would probably be there.
But as Dave’s eyes finally close, and his mind succumbs to darkness, he decides:
Ok, maybe Scott is a little bit cute. And maybe he’ll talk to him on Monday.