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Sharp words, sharp hands, sharp pain when getting shoved, perhaps even into something solid, like a wall, all of those are things Eleven is used to.
What she is not used to is loud pop music and alcohol and people dancing, laughing, at a volume that thrums through her body, echoes in her bones. What she is not used to is parties, or the games teenagers play at them, yet she’s here now. Everything inside of her is prickling. In the end, she’s not sure why she came in the first place, really.
She was invited, of course. She’s never been invited before. She wanted to—
All she wants is to belong. It’s always, always been all she wanted.
The music is quieter now than it’s been before, and her red plastic cup is still full. She doesn’t like the alcohol; it’s bitter on her tongue, in her throat, makes her face scrunch up and her stomach burn, so she stopped drinking pretty quickly, smiled politely and pretended to drink whenever someone talked to her for a bit, laughing, always laughing. Mostly though, she’s just been standing around in one of the corners, watching the others, unsure of what to do. What do teenagers do at parties? How do they behave? How do they talk to others?
She knows most of the others. They’re in her grade, but she doesn’t have any friends, and Will is at home. She doesn’t know if he’s been invited. Doesn’t know if he’d have come with her if she asked.
But the music is quieter now, and they’re all sitting in a circle, Eleven on the balls of her feet with her hands on her thighs, spine rigid as she looks around. It’s… uncomfortable. But she wants to belong.
This game is called… spin the bottle. Someone else called it seven minutes in heaven. Eleven isn’t sure which one of those is right, or if it’s just two different names for the same game. After all, she doesn’t know much about these things.
James had scrunched his face up when the bottle almost stopped on her, then breathed in relief when it landed on the girl next to her instead. When they disappeared in the closet together, to do God knows what, what do you even do in this game, everyone was laughing, and Eleven laughed with them, even when she didn’t know what was so funny.
Her head is spinning a little. Perhaps that’s the alcohol—it can make people woozy, apparently, or so she’s heard. Is she woozy? Is that what’s wrong with her?
Angela is the one who grabs the bottle next. She bats her lashes, blows a kiss to Jake across from her, and her lips glitter when she purses them. She’s pretty. Angela is so, so pretty. Maybe that’s why everyone likes her. Eleven wishes she was as pretty, too.
The other girl grins at her, then, and there’s an edge to it that makes Eleven suck in a breath. Makes her sit up even straighter—like she’s expecting something. Like she’s preparing herself for attack.
Because as pretty as Angela is, as mean she is, as well. Eleven wonders if her lip-gloss tastes like poison. If the pretty sparkle in her eyes could cut someone.
The bottle spins and spins and spins, and everything blurs a little. People cheer—the boy on her other side whistles loudly, and she startles, furrows her brows. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. Cheer, too? Laugh, maybe? Whisper in someone’s ear like some of the girls do?
Then the bottle stops, and it points directly at her. Eleven freezes under it, knits her brows together, looks up to Angela slowly—and the other girl’s face is unreadable. People are like porcelain statues; Eleven never knows what’s going on inside of them.
Angela’s blue eyes are electric. She’s chewing on a strand of her blonde hair, smearing pink bubblegum lip-gloss on it, and it makes a strange pit open in Eleven’s stomach.
Then the moment is over, and the students around her erupt in howling and laughter.
“Angela,” one of the boys grins, widely, patting Jake on the back roughly. “Looks like you’re gonna have to go with the freak, huh?”
Right. The game. The person who spun the bottle and the one it landed on disappear in the closet, and stay there for seven minutes, while everyone is squirming and giggling. Then they come back with red faces, giggling themselves. Sometimes their hair is disheveled. Or their clothes.
Spin the bottle. Seven minutes in heaven. Makes sense, now that she thinks about it.
Angela’s mouth twists for just a moment as she glares at the boy, then her face softens in that sugary sweet smile Eleven knows so well. The one she’s wearing when she’s grabbing at her shoulder, when she’s shoving her into the wall, when she’s laughing at her and making fun of her.
Her grip is as tight now as it always is, this time around her hand. For a moment, Eleven wants to run away, but then she’s tugged to her feet already.
“Come on,” Angela hisses, and Eleven just wants to belong.
Finally, she relents. Glances backvat the circle of grinning faces, some of them giggling, some of them whispering, the glass bottle shining in the light in the middle of them—before turning around, getting into the closet with Angela. Before the door closes, gets locked, encasing them in darkness, she can see that the other girl’s face is a deep pink.
It races in her chest. Makes something squirm inside of her, and she rubs her hand against her denim overall, trying to dry them from her nervous sweat. Slowly, her eyes get used to the dark. The first thing that becomes visible is Angela’s face, that scowl back on it; even in black and white she looks as sharp as she is pretty.
“What,” Eleven manages to get out, gasping. The air feels tight in here, stale, way too hot. It smells weird. Like… like human. “What, uh, what do we do?”
Angela scoffs, rolls her eyes, throws her blonde hair over her shoulder. It looks smooth; pretty. Her nails are long and sharp and glittery with small rhinestones. They’re beautiful, so much unlike Eleven’s stubby little nails that she paints sometimes and chews on more often. She’s not very good at it. She’s not very good at most normal things.
“You know nothing, don’t you?” the other girl hisses. She sounds irritated, less triumphant than she usually does. It makes Eleven furrow her brows. “Who even invited you? They probably thought it was funny. Well, it’s not.”
Eleven swallows. Dries her hands on her overall again. “It was Susan,” she says, and Angela rolls her eyes again. “She was laughing.”
And then, because the other girl isn’t saying anything, because she’s not grabbing at her or saying something mean or laughing at her in that high way that makes Eleven prickle in humiliation and something else, “Why aren’t you being mean?”
Angela’s brows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
Wrong thing to say, apparently. Eleven never knows what the right thing is. She shifts where she’s standing, stares at her feet, fiddles with her fingers. “You laugh at me, usually,” she mutters, stupidly. What is she doing?
(Don’t give them more ammo, Will usually tells her, whenever he helps her pick up whatever Angela and her friends scattered around and tore apart this time. And, well, isn’t that exactly what Eleven is doing right now? Giving her so much more ammo? Whatever that means.)
Angela does laugh now, but it sounds like it’s in disbelief. Her brows furrowed, her nose a little scrunched, and Eleven wants, wants, wants. She thinks there’s something wrong with her. She’s dreamed about kissing Angela for months. She thinks there’s something wrong with her, because she’s never thought about a boy like this, and here she is, thinking these thoughts about the meanest girl on the planet.
“You really know nothing, Jane,” Angela mutters, then walks over to her, briskly, fast, and still it seems like it takes a million years and a split-second until she’s right there. It’s a closet, after all. Not very big. Not… too much space. And now Angela is standing right in front of her, glaring at her with sharp eyes and plump lips and she smells good, like vanilla and bubblegum, so strongly it almost makes Eleven nauseous.
“I want to know,” she says, desperate, perhaps. She’s silly. Embarrassing. “I just want to belong.”
Instead of answering, Angela grabs Eleven’s face and crashes her lips to hers. The other girl’s teeth hurt a little when they knock into hers, but her lips are so, so soft that Eleven can only gasp, can only go rigid. Soft and sticky.
Sharp words, sharp hands, sharp pain when getting shoved, perhaps even into something solid, like a wall, all of those are things Eleven is used to, but she’s not used to soft, lip-gloss sticky lips and a sweet scent so overpowering she’s about to pass out, so overpowering it makes her legs wobble.
The door opens again. The light is bright, sharp, stabs into her eyes, and the moment is gone. Angela turns away and leaves, and her face is still pink when Eleven manages to glance at it, but she thinks her own face is way more flushed now.
She can barely hear the giggles as she returns to her spot in the circle and the game continues.