In the meantime, Katie sat with Tara, trying to cope with what she was seeing. "How they can drink like animals is beyond me."
When the freshman girl was out of earshot and dancing with a few of the popular kids to the Blink 182 music, Tara muttered, "I'm beginning to dislike James quite a bit. No disrespect to you, Katie. He just makes me mad."
"Why?" Katie lifted an eyebrow.
"Look how he flirts with everybody. He doesn't come off as very faithful, if you ask me." Tara gave the jock a dirty look.
"You don't think so?" Katie frowned. She took a bite of her roast beef sandwich.
"Nah."
Katie nodded. "I see."
Leaning forward, staring Katie right in the eye, Tara added, "I don't trust him at all."
"Why not?" Katie asked quickly.
Remembering the night before, when James and Ashley Bodine exchanged a kiss, Tara felt a need to tell her friend the truth. She knew how much it would hurt her. And she knew that James and the rest of the popular kids would go out of their way to make her life miserable afterwards, but her conscience nagged at her to tell the truth. Maybe then, Katie would see James for what he really was and dump him.
Feeling sick from the thoughts of what James was doing behind Katie's back, Tara wanted to bad to spill the truth. But she remembered James's threats: Don't go telling Katie a thing. I know you're her best friend, but keep your mouth shut if you don't want to be in the same category as Stanleigh Kretsch.
Tara shuddered. "I just don't like him very much."
"Then why do you hang around with him?" Katie tilted her head to the side ever so slightly.
"I don't know." Tara shrugged.
Thinking that there was more to the girl's dislike of James than that, Katie thought instead of Stanleigh and how she was going to go to his house right after the party. Even though he probably wouldn't be happy upon seeing her, his annoyance with her would certainly be much better than James's brutish drunkeness.
James let out a loud whoop that pulled Katie from her thoughts. "Drinkin' time!" he shouted. Katie watched the muscular figure make his way over to the cooler, where he got out flasks of whiskey. He passed them around to the other boys, who grinned in appreciation of the alcohol.
In disgust, Katie and Tara watched as the boys drank down the alcohol, getting drunker by the moment. A few of the more pure boys, like Sean Jackson and Danny Williams, got drunk right away. After drinking half of their bottles of alcohol, they were swaying and trying to keep from falling over. James, who'd been drinking for quite some time now, was able to withstand more alcohol than a lot of the other boys.
Courtney sidled up to Chris and grabbed a bottle of beer out of the cooler. She wrapped her lipstick-smeared lips around the bottle, drinking down the horrible liquid. Katie could hardly believe her eyes when Courtney began to sway a few minutes later from drinking too much.
"I'm not going to drink any of that garbage," Tara vowed, pointing at the alcohol bottles. James sat down beside Katie, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, stinking of whiskey. "Man, this is one great party, ain't it?" He gave his girlfriend a kiss on the cheek.
"Yeah...sure." Katie gave him a false smile.
Pushing her bangs out of her eyes, Tara snorted. "I think I'm going to go talk with Danny." She spied her boyfriend lounging on a chair, trying to rest from consuming a little too much alcohol. She stood up, not wanting anything to do with James.
"What's wrong with her?" James stared after Tara's tall, slender figure, wrapped in a floral-print one-piece swimsuit. The girl sat down next to Danny and comforted him.
"Womanly stuff." Katie smiled again.
"Ahhh." James leaned close to her and began kissing her cheek again. He grabbed her small chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her face to look him in the eye. He pressed his mouth against her's, trying to get intimate with her.
Not wanting to seem too suspicious, she allowed James to kiss her in the way that seemed to disgust her most. Well, she was mainly disgusted because of his drunkenness. When a man was drunk, it was a major turn-off for her. She hated the taste of his whiskey; it made her feel sick and disgusted.
When they were done kissing, Katie immediately took a long sip of her cola soda to get the taste of her boyfriend's whiskey out of her mouth. She really wanted to break up with him then and there, but she had no idea how to do it without destroying her popularity status. She was scared of being hated by everyone and treated like dirt. She didn't want everybody to hate her guts. She didn't want to get ganged up on in the locker room. And she didn't want to go to prom next spring alone. Stanleigh wouldn't go, she knew. He hated dances and flat out refused to go to any when Katie asked him about it a while ago. She reminded herself that she only had a year left, but that was a long time.
"You love me, don't you?" James quizzed, his voice heavy with emotion and alcohol.
"Yes, James. I love you a lot," she moaned.
"What's wrong, Katie?" he asked.
"My stomach hurts." She grimaced. "I think I'm coming down with something."
It was actually the truth. A slight cramp seared her lower abdomen. She knew that it all came from her nerves being frazzled over the events of the horrid party.
"I'm going to use your bathroom," she informed him.
James nodded. "If you want any medicine to get rid of the pain in your stomach, there's some in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom."
She walked into the house, still damp from swimming in the pool. She dropped down onto the toilet, her stomach aching. She sat there for a good ten minutes before she got up and consumed a small bit of stomach medicine.
There was the sound of a flirtatious laughter from outside. "Oh James! You are absolutely too much!"
Katie sneaked a quick peek through the blinds to see James flirting with Ashley Bodine. Seething, she took her medicine quickly, flushed the toilet, and contemplated on how she was going to wring Ashley's neck. When she stepped outside, she saw her boyfriend sitting next to the girl, complimenting her as if she were Aphrodite.
"Thanks for letting me use some of your medicine, James," Katie said quickly. "I think I'm going to leave real soon."
"Why? The party's only began!" James gave her a look of pure innocence.
"Not for me," she snapped.
Katie wound up being there longer than she originally planned. Before night fell, a great bulk of the party-goers were quite drunk, a few vomiting. Some wandered off to different parts of James's house to make whoopee while others were making out right in public.
She felt sickened by the sight of the amount of drunk people who danced stupidly to Blink 182. A few of the sober people were still swimming in the pool, not too willing to fit in with the drunken crowd. Scott Henderson passed out drunk in a bowl of ranch dip and James passed out on a lounge chair, even drunker than Scott. Wearing only his swimming trunks, he laid on the chair, sprawled, his mouth wide open as he snored loud enough to wake the dead. Katie was so disgusted by him. She went to the bathroom and dressed quickly. Tara followed her cue.
"I can't believe this. Everybody's drunk," Tara grumbled. "What a stupid party."
There was the loud sound of a crash that startled both of the girls. They looked at each other. "What was that?" Katie asked her friend.
Tara shrugged. "I wouldn't know."
When the girls emerged from the bathroom, they were stunned to see that a few of the drunk boys tried playing Frisbee with some of Mrs. Edson's best china. In a way, James deserved that for throwing a party with booze. But he was sure going to get a bawling out and, possibly, a grounding when his parents returned home.
"Hey John! Pass me one of those!" Josh Edwards shouted, holding up his arms.
Katie recognized John Walters from her study hall. He'd always seemed like the studious type, never in trouble, as he always did his homework during that hour. But now he was one of the many drunks and Katie lost whatever respect she had for him. He was laughing like an idiot as he tossed a plate to Josh. In his drunken stupor, Josh wasn't able to catch it and the plate crashed on the hardwood floor.
"Stop it!" Tara shouted loudly. "Don't touch anymore!"
The boys looked at her, their eyes unfocused. "We didn't do anything wrong," John protested.
"Like hell you didn't! Get outside!" Tara demanded. "Now!" she added when they didn't move.
"I'm going home," Katie told Tara.
"Me, too. These people tick me off," Tara said.
When Katie found her cola drinks still standing by the door, untouched. Nobody bothered drinking any of her cola, as everyone was too busy consuming alcohol. Angry, she picked up her case of soda and carried it to the car with her along with her wet swimming suit. She stuck the soda in the back seat along with the bag of wet clothes. Tara stood by her car, wanting to talk to her a bit before she parted.
"Drive home safe," Tara told her.
"I didn't drink anything, Tara. I don't think you have to worry." Katie smiled at her.
"I didn't either. I'll be safe." Tara looked over her shoulder at James's house. "He really doesn't care whether he gets yelled at by his parents, does he?"
"I hope they return tonight." Katie smirked. "He's so spoiled, I think. So full of himself. I'm ready to dump him."
"You should." Tara lifted her pain-filled brown eyes to meet Katie's.
"Why?" Katie asked.
"He's no good."
Katie thought for a moment, her sweaty hands gripping the steering wheel. "You're right, Tara. I'll give him a few more chances."
"I'll call you tomorrow," Tara told Katie.
"Okay," she said. "I'd better get going." Katie let out a deep sigh.
"Bye." Tara smiled at her before rushing off to her car.
"Bye, Tara!" Katie called to her before driving off.
Driving alone in the dark, she switched on the radio, having a desire to go to Stanleigh's house and seeing how he was doing. She longed for him, her heart aching so bad to see him. She felt betrayed by James; a small tear slid down her cheek from the depression she felt within herself.
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