People on the bus now think I’m a crazy person because I laughed out loud.

I’m okay with it.

PS. Principal Valentine dropped by the office this afternoon. Woman is scary as balls. I had to pretend like we’ve actually settled on a theme. I told her we want to keep it a secret because it’s going to blow her mind. Need to decide ASAP.

How long were you at the office for? Sorry I wasn’t at school today.

I’m on my way home. Present tense. I spent most of the afternoon at Murray’s, editing one of Galaxy’s pieces about the disappointing texture of chicken served at the cafeteria. A truly riveting article.

Yikes.

I suddenly feel deep sympathy for Miranda Priestly. (Might have watched The Devil Wears Prada last weekend.)

How did one person edit the newspaper all by themselves in the past?

Amphetamines?

Makes sense.

We should organize some speedballs for print day.

From what I hear about him, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kyle kept a stash somewhere in the office.

I’m sure those business cards Hink gave us have some decent residue on them. Maybe give ’em a lick?

Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark!

Business class. It’s the only way to fly.

Maybe instead of getting into hard drugs, we could become tortured alcoholics? More appropriate for writers. I think we should start drinking in the office every afternoon. Let’s get a mini fridge and fill it with beer.

We can hide it under Lola’s desk. She’s small. She probably won’t even notice.

“You can’t sit there, sorry, beer sits there.”

“We have no designer this year because we replaced them with beer.”

#BeerBeforePeople

Sounds like a government campaign.

Hillary Clinton, 2016: Beer before people.

Only Hillary could pull that off.

Damn straight.

I’d vote for that.

As would I. Anyway, have a nice night. Lift tomorrow afternoon?

Yeah, for sure. Catch you on the flip side, kid.

And then, on Thursday, like a miracle descending from the heavens, there came news of The Party. (Much like World War I, it only became known as The Party later on in the year. Before it had actually occurred, The Party [i.e., WWI] was known as Heslin’s Party [i.e., the Great War].) Heslin’s Party/The Party began as a rumor that escalated to a lunchtime conversation topic that escalated to a full-fledged event when James Heslin made it Facebook official less than twenty-four hours after the initial speculation had begun. The whole year was invited, along with half the juniors (the hot, female half, naturally). Us seniors, despite the occasional personality clash, generally all got along pretty well. Maybe we were an anomalous bunch, or maybe high school movies have been lying to us all along, but all I know is that the “jocks” sometimes hung out with the “nerds” and that most people were nice to most other people most of the time.

Anyway, The Party, to be held on Friday night, was all anyone was talking about for the rest of the day. Lola and Murray were going, naturally. La’s girlfriend, Georgia, was even driving over from the next town to attend. I wasn’t much for parties normally, but this one. This one.

I wanted desperately for Grace Town to go and I wanted to sit with her all night while music thumped through my chest, away from the quiet, fishbowl room that was our office and the quiet, boyish room that was Grace’s car.

I opened the Notes app on my phone, and under the second draft I wrote:

Draft Three

Because I never realized that you could fall in love with humans the same way you fall in love with songs. How the tune of them could mean nothing to you at first, an unfamiliar melody, but quickly turn into a symphony carved across your skin; a hymn in the web of your veins; a harmony stitched into the lining of your soul.

“I AM GOING to The Party,” I announced to her on Friday morning before class. (In retrospect, I probably said “Heslin’s Party” at the time, but I digress.) Grace looked up from her computer screen, where she was scrolling through Tumblr, as per usual.

“You’re definitely going?” she said.

“I’m definitely going,” I answered. I put my things down and turned on my computer and watched her as she turned back to her screen. Now was the moment of revelation. Either she really liked me or she didn’t. Either she felt for me how I felt for her, or she didn’t. A minute ticked by, and then a minute more, and right when I thought I’d be stuck going to some shitty party by myself—I had to go now, you can’t just announce that you’re going to a party and then not go—Grace said, without looking at me, “I think I’ll go too.”

I knew then. Grace Town, beautiful, mysterious, damaged, and thoroughly, thoroughly weird, liked me. The shaky body language and the lack of flirting meant nothing, because she was coming to the party and parties meant alcohol and dimly lit rooms and maybe after a drink she would lighten up a little and then we could talk about the cemetery and the car crash and everything.

Grace wasn’t looking at me, so I watched her without blinking and said, “Cool,” in the most casual voice I could muster.

“Are you going to drink?” she said.

I wasn’t much of a drinker. I’d been truly drunk only once before, when I was sixteen. Murray had coerced me into drinking tequila with him, to test the legitimacy of the “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” theorem. Over the course of the evening I discovered that “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” is wildly inaccurate. It’s more like one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, vomit all over your clothes, cry while your father puts you in the shower, vomit some more, cry and ask your mother to cook you “salmon eggs,” whatever that is, be put to bed by your mother, decide you’re going to escape your parents’ totalitarian regime, vomit in the garden while escaping, be put back to bed by your father, floor.