I was looking at that litter box, wondering about the cat again. “No, it won’t. It’s what she wants to do.”

“Well,” she said, and there was that hair flip as she sat up, pulling another cigarette out of the pack on the headboard. “If it was me, I’d just kill myself before I’d have a baby. I mean, I’d know enough to realize there was no way I could handle it.”

I decided, at that moment, that I truly hated Elizabeth Gunderson. It was all clear to me now; she was evil. She lived her life to swoop down and catch me off guard, dropping bombs and walking off, leaving them to explode in my face.

“You’re not Scarlett,” I said.

“I know it.” She got off the bed, tucking her cigarettes in her pocket. “Thank God for that, right?” She walked to the door, brushing past me, and pushed it open. “You coming?”

“No,” I said, looking back at her, “I think I’ll just—” But she was already gone, the door left half-open with light spilling in, and I was alone.

I sat there on the bed by myself for a long time, the music drifting in from the hallway along with voices and noise, girls giggling, the bathroom door slamming. I lost all track of time and I was sure hours had passed, that I’d missed the New Year altogether, when Macon finally slipped back through the door, locking it behind him.

“Hey,” he said. I could only see his teeth in the dark, just a mouth coming toward me. “You okay?”

I leaned forward, determined to make out his face. As he got closer I was relieved to see he looked the same. My Macon. My boyfriend. Mine. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at his watch, glowing green in the dark. “Eleven-thirty. Why?”

“I just wondered,” I said. “Where have you been?”

“Mingling.” He handed me the beer in his hand, which tasted good and cold going down. I’d lost track of how many I’d had. I felt liquid and warm, and I curled up against him on the bed, kissing his neck as he wrapped his arms around me. As I closed my eyes the world began to spin in the dark, but he held me tight, his hand already moving up my leg, to my waistband. This was it.

I kept kissing him, trying to lose myself in it, but the room was hot and small and the bed smelled bad, like sweat. As we went further and further, I kept thinking that this wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be. Not here, in a smelly bed, when my head was spinning and I could hear each flush of the toilet in the room next door. Not here, in a room with a dirty litter box and Penthouse magazine on the floor, where Elizabeth Gunderson had preceded me. Not here.

I started to get nervous, jumpy, and as Macon kept on, un-snapping my jeans, the noise from the bathroom only got louder, and outside some girl was coughing, and I felt something pressing against my bare back, something hard. When I reached around I felt it cool against my palm, and held it up over Macon’s head to the dim light. It was an earring, a gold teardrop; the one Elizabeth had lost. Scarlett had the same pair.

“Wait,” I said suddenly to Macon, pushing him up and away from me. We were very close, almost there, and I could hear him groan even as I squirmed out from beneath him.

“What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“I feel sick,” I told him, and it wasn’t really true until I said it, and then I thought of all those beers and that bong hit and being here in this sweaty stinky bed and the reeking litter box. “I think I need some air.”

“Come on,” he said, sliding his hand up my back but it felt cold and creepy, suddenly, “lay back down. Come here.”

“No,” I said, jerking away from him and standing up, but I was off-balance and everything slanted off to one side. I leaned against the door, fumbling with the lock. “I think—I think I need to go home.”

“Home?” He said it like it was a dirty word. “Halley, it’s early. You can’t go home.”

I couldn’t get the door open, the lock slipping past my fingers as I tried to find it, and suddenly I could feel everything on its way up, slowly. “I have to go,” I said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Wait,” he said. “Just calm down, okay? Come here.”

“No,” I said, and I was crying suddenly, scared in this strange place and I hated him for doing this to me, hated myself, hated my mother and Scarlett for being right, all along. And then I heard it: voices, counting down. Ten, nine, eight, and I was sick and lost and the lock wouldn’t budge even as I felt everything coming up, the first taste in my mouth, and then finally the door was somehow open and I was running, seven, six, five, down the hallway, busting past the people crammed and chanting the numbers in the kitchen and living room and out into the cold, down the steps and the driveway four, three, two and into the woods and then, as the one came and everyone cheered, I was finally, violently, sick, alone on my knees in the woods, as the New Year began.

Chapter Fifteen

He didn’t speak to me for the first part of the ride home. He was mad, as if I’d elaborately planned getting sick. When he found me in the woods I was half asleep, wishing I was dead, with leaves stuck to my face. He put me in the car and peeled out down the driveway, going way too fast and fishtailing as we headed out onto the main road.

I was huddled against my window, my eyes closed, hoping I wouldn’t get sick again. I felt terrible.

“I’m sorry,” I said after about five miles, as the lights of town started to come into view. Every time I thought of that litter box, and those sheets, my stomach rolled. “I really am.”