“You should let me do your makeup more often,” Rene says. “I like it better when I do your eyes.”

“You use too much mascara. The lashes fall out in the morning.”

“It looks better.” She is putting the lip gloss on my lips. She reaches for a brush. “Toss your hair over.”

The brush goes through my hair in a couple of hard jerks. She sprays it with hair spray. I toss my hair back. She sprays again.

“I love your hair. It just sort of floats back into an ‘I’ve just been fucked’ kind of look.”

I touch it. It feels stiff to me.

Rene looks up as she shoves her junk back into her bag. “So now what?”

We walk from the parking lot onto the sidewalk.

Rene stops and throws her everything bag onto the concrete. “Well, this is a bust. We’ll never get in. Not tonight. It’s packed. What the heck is going on here?”

There is a line down the street, turning the corner to the club entrance. It is the first Friday of spring break, so of course there is a line. I grab Rene’s hand and pull her along with me past all the pretty girls staring. The line is flush with rich, pretty girls and I can feel the stare, the stare that screams from their impeccably made-up faces that they think we are not the kind of girls who can line jump.

For once, getting into a downtown club on Friday will be my problem. We won’t even have to drop Jack’s name, which is part of a bigger secret I haven’t shared with Rene. I spent a lot of time in this club in December during our winter break. Had a lot of my “gas station attendant” moments with the staff.

I shake my head, not wanting to think of winter break. Jack was gone almost the entire month, one of his things, and Rene was in the Cayman’s with her mother. I hated being in the house alone with no one to hang out with. It made the hours drag painfully slow with no one to hang out with. So in the evenings I would pretend to Maria I was off on some super, Eliza-type plans and just come to Peppers alone.

Nightclubs are good places to be alone. Always new people. Always laughter and music and other people alone so you don’t feel so pitiful that you are alone.

At the front of the rope line, I am relieved. I know the bouncer. “Randy.” I shout over the blaring music from within to get his attention.

Randy looks, does a thorough security type scan of the crowd, sees me, smiles, and the rope is pulled back. Rene and I are pulled quickly into the courtyard in front of the door. The front of the line is pissed.

I can feel Rene watching me as if she wants this explained, but I ignore her. Randy keeps his eyes on the front of the line, but leans in to hear me.

“It’s really packed.”

“Some group from Seattle is booked tonight. It’s crazy inside, Chris. Crazy. Not cool at all. Not the usual scene.” He starts pushing back against the line. “Hey, behind the line or I boot you to the end.” He’s stressed. The crowd is enormous and I can feel the pulse in the air that this is a happening. I didn’t know there was a special event tonight, but I bet Eliza did and that’s why she had Daddy book her a private room.

Randy grabs my arm. “Are you packing? I can’t let you in if you’re not packing. ABC has been a real pain in the ass lately.”

I pull from my purse the fake ID Rene appropriated for me. She takes them from her father’s fembots under the pretense she has a right to check their age. There is an entire shoe box of stolen IDs in our dorm room. Rene is the go-to girl for ID, but I think the box means something else to her, though she hasn’t told me.

I hold the New York license beneath Randy’s nose. He checks it, then Rene’s. “Any trouble, Chris, and you run out the back,” he whispers in a low, fierce tone. “A fight. Police. Anything. You run. You get caught in here tonight it’ll make the papers and we’ll lose our liquor license. That fucking whore with the band will make sure it makes press.”

My entire face colors. I nod before Randy lets me walk into the club with Rene. The ground level bar is a crush of bodies. I fight my way to the railing above the dance floor below. The music is ear-splittingly loud. I can feel Rene watching.

At the railing she leans in and stares at me. “Chris?”

No one calls me that. I shrug. It’s the nickname I prefer, who I am here, in this little bit of bad. I’m glad Rene doesn’t probe further. She is caught up in the band on stage. A young, blond shoeless singer. He’s very hot, in that grunge sort of way Rene likes, loose jeans, bare feet, stringy hair, and lean body hopping on stage.

“God, I’d love to go home with that tonight,” Rene purrs, fanning herself with a hand. She looks at me. “OK, now what? We didn’t come here just to watch Eliza, did we? That would be so pathetic, Chrissie.”

Downstairs in the private party room with the mirrored window is Eliza and her mob. On the floor by the stage Tami is dancing with Johnny Ramirez, her public school boyfriend that she kept even after Eliza ended their year of oh, it’s so cool to date boys from the public school phase.

The smart thing to do would be to leave before they see us, but I just want to do something and I don’t know what I want to do. Rene is waiting, trying to ignore the guy beside her, who is working really hard to get her attention.

She shakes her head in aggravation and looks at the pest at her side. She arches a brow. “You’re—” heavy exaggeration on you’re—“talking to me?”

She says it in a perfectly bitchy, rich girl sort of way, a superior put down well done, and the guy just stares at her. She shakes her head and grabs the cocktail waitress passing by. “Two Kamikazes.”

I’m not really much of a drinker, I don’t know what’s in a Kamikaze, but it sounds like the right kind of drink for tonight.  I grab the rail and pull myself up to see down below. It’s really packed in here. It’s easy to pick out the hot girls in the crowd. They are always dancing. Always laughing. Always drinking. Always tossing their hair.

I take a hefty swallow of my Kamikaze and realize it’s just a fancy name for a vodka drink. Hmm… the drink isn’t bad at all. I scan the crowd, watching the hot girls. What would Eliza do if I were the hot girl in the private party room with her ex-boyfriend? I take another hefty sip of my drink, hoping some kind of inspiration will come.

Rene is on her second Kamikaze. She can out drink a sailor. First, scotch at the beach, then two cocktails in under fifteen minutes. She stares at the glass. “How many of these do you think make a set? Six? Eight? They’re so cute. They’ll make a cute set in my apartment in Berkeley.”

I frown. “What?”

“The glasses.” She holds one up then slyly tucks it into her everything bag.

“You’re stealing the glasses?”

Rene nods and smiles. “I have to drink one more. You have to drink two. Or is eight a proper set? I am never sure how many of anything should be in a set. Perhaps I should call my mother. Mom would definitely know that.”

I roll my eyes. I finish my drink, motion to the cocktail girl for another, which really pleases Rene since I hand her my glass, and now there are three rattling around in her everything bag.

What would Eliza do to me? She’d want to make me feel small, insignificant. As if my party wasn’t the happening. As if her party was the happening, which is exactly how I feel now. How would she do it? How would she do it?

I look at Rene. I know what Rene would do. “Who’s the hottest guy in here?”

Rene doesn’t answer. The pest is gone and there is a new guy beside her and this one she’s talking to. I tug on her shoulder. I repeat my question.

She holds up a finger to her latest conquest, a superior gesture of be silent and wait. “Why, Chrissie? What are you going to do?”

I give her a hard look. “Just answer me.”

“You are not going to do anything stupid?”