“Greetings, Anglos and Spaniards,” he said, his crackled voice coming out through a speaker in the corner. Totally unnecessary considering how small the room was. “I hope you’ve all enjoyed your official first day at Casa de Las Palabras!”

People clapped at that, a few hollered. I had the impression that everyone had gotten drunk at dinner because that’s the only way I could imagine anyone tolerating Jerry’s embarrassing enthusiasm.

“So,” he said, “I wanted to kick off the week with a party just for you guys. There are no rules, except for speaking English. Have fun and make sure you tip the bartenders! Every other night after dinner, we will be participating in the extracurricular activities, so enjoy this night while you can! Ole!” He then jumped off the coffee table, took a bit of a stumble and went falling into Angel who was the one closest to him.

I groaned and shook my head, looking back at the girls. Sammy was pulling a flask out of her bling bling purse and passing it to Claudia. So, that’s how they were doing it.

Claudia took a sneaky sip back and then, after an inquisitive glance to Sammy, passed it on to me.

I took a gulp of the burning, stinging liquid.

And that was that.

When my alarm went off at seven am the next morning, I could have sworn I had died at some point during my sleep and gone straight to hell. It was impossible for anyone to feel this horrible. My stomach burned with firewater, my hair smelled like an ashtray and the room was spinning slowly, in beat with the pounding in my head.

I moaned and tried to roll over but my head was in a vice and every time I moved, it tightened until I could feel my pulse in my temple. If I was back home, I would have taken some Gravol, drank a litre of Gatorade, taken a few B vitamins and prayed for sleep to take me away again.

But I wasn’t at home. I was in Spain. I was at a program that I was technically working for and there was no such thing as sleeping off a hangover. I had to get up. I had to get on with the day.

I had to try really, really hard not to vomit everywhere.

I practically crawled into the shower and sat on the tiles, letting the warm water hit my face, trying to knock some sense into me.

Dear god, what the hell happened last night?

Everything came back, sifting into my brain like shards of glass.

After Claudia, Sammy, Becca and I finished the flask of grappa—aka firewater, aka burning liquid of death—our party of four got moved upstairs. The dangerously narrow iron staircase led up to a large room where we’d be having all of our “extracurricular activities.” I don’t know who designed the building and thought putting the bar downstairs would be a bright idea, but there you go. From the amount of people who tripped on the small steps, we quickly nicknamed it the staircase of doom.

Once up there, it turned into a full-on dance party. Mustached Antonio started doing the hustle. Sammy was trying to grind up on Ricardo who was trying to grind up on Claudia. A massive conga line formed and I got stuck between Dave and Eduardo. Yolanda started making out with an Anglo guy I hadn’t met with. I was telling crude jokes with Dave and the English girl Polly. At some point during the night, I thought it would be funny to do Jaegerbombs with Beatriz.

Then a slow song came on, like a fucking high school dance, and drunken Beatriz went and asked Mateo to dance with her. And just like in high school, I felt a sickening bout of jealously as Mateo said yes and they were the first ones out on the floor, her sleek, honeyed limbs wrapped around his. It was all very innocent but it didn’t stop me from feeling drunkenly outraged.

People were cheering, and to save face, I had to cheer too. Soon, everyone was slow dancing and, again, just as in high school, I found myself gravitating toward a back-up plan. I grabbed Dave, took him out into the middle of the floor and wrapped my hands around his skinny waist.

The last thing I remembered was going outside with Dave to have a cigarette and…and…

I kissed him. The image flashed in my head, the feeling of his lips on mine, the taste of tar and nicotine, my hands stuck in his greasy hair.

I’d fucking kissed a guy and on my first day of the program.

I grimaced at the memory. It wasn’t that Dave was a bad kisser or that I didn’t like him, but we were both drunk and anytime I did something drunk that I probably wouldn’t do when I was sober, I felt uneasy and a bit ashamed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, usually when I slept with guys I was sober—and horny as hell. But there have always been a few situations where I should have had a clearer head.

In this case, I couldn’t really remember how the night ended, how we parted, if anyone invited anyone else back to their room and why that didn’t end up happening. It ended at us making out but not having sex and I wasn’t sure why. Bravo to me if I chose celibacy for the night. I was also unsure of how to approach Dave when I saw him and I didn’t know if anyone else had seen us or how fast gossip traveled around a place like this.

Ugh.

I wanted to sit in that shower all day long, but eventually I found the will to get to my feet and work shampoo into my hair. After I let the conditioner sit for ten minutes, remembering the strawberry blonde color was fragile (my natural color was dark blonde), I rinsed and got out. I could barely look at myself in the mirror. Not only was my reflection moving from the spins, but I looked absolutely wretched.

With a deep sigh, I brought out my arsenal of make-up and went after my face with a heavy hand. Going overboard was the only way out of this. If I didn’t look like myself, that was good.

I’d just managed to put on a single coat of mascara when there was a knock at the door. I staggered over to it and opened it to see Becca standing on the other side. For some reason she looked as fresh as a daisy with her bright eyes and cute red hair. I wanted to punch her.

“You don’t remember inviting me, do you?” she asked cautiously, an impish smile on her lips.

I looked down at myself. I was just wearing a thin Banksy t-shirt and boy shorts. Whoops.

I raised my finger. “Uh, just a minute.”

I quickly ran back to my room and threw on the same skinny jeans and boots as yesterday and an aqua tank top that was probably too boobilicious but what the fuck ever, it was better than a see-through shirt. I gathered my hair back into a top knot, plucked up my purse and ran back over to her. Sara was nowhere to be in seen and I wondered if she had left already. Perhaps she was also suffering from the mother of all hangovers. I recalled her doing shots of tequila with Angel.

Becca, on the other hand, was annoyingly bushy-tailed.

“Hi,” I said to her. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m surprised you’re awake,” she said in her lilting accent. “I was hesitant to come by.”

I groaned internally, feeling a wash of shame. “I was pretty drunk last night, wasn’t I?” I asked as I stepped outside and closed the door. Better to bite the bullet and get it over with.

It was chilly outside and my skin erupted into goosebumps. I embraced it. It slapped some sense into my foggy head.

“Oh you were fine,” she said. “Granted, I don’t know you but you didn’t make a fool of yourself, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve seen a lot of these first night parties, well, three so far, and I know what to expect now. Last night was fairly tame compared to others.” She studied me. “You did tell me though, after you stopped sucking Davey’s face, that you wanted to talk to me about my experience with the program.”

Oh, busted. I shot her a sheepish look. “So you saw that. Did anyone else?”

She shook her head. “I was heading home to my flat and happened upon you two outside. I didn’t want to interrupt but you saw me and left Davey with an acute case of blue balls. I said I’d come by and get you in the morning, before breakfast. So, here I am.”