passed a wide staircase, and headed down a long hallway packed with people. Everyone was

drinking something-- beer, wine, tropical-looking drinks with frothy heads. We passed Kathryn

Ford, Jane Brown, and a bunch of other senior girls drinking champagne right out of the bottle.

The house reeked of alcohol and pot; my whole body tingled with excitement.

Okay, true, we'd lost the game. And the season was over. And the seniors, some of whom would

probably never play basketball again, had just suffered the worst defeat of their entire careers.

But this was the biggest party of the year. Practically the entire school was here. And for the first

time since we'd started dating, Connor

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didn't have a curfew. My head spun with the possibilities. Disobeying Mara's note was, without a

doubt, the smartest move I'd made in my entire life.

I couldn't wait to find Connor.

A couple of people we passed said they'd last seen Connor, Matt, and Dave in the kitchen. We

kept going, following their instructions. There must have been a hundred rooms in the house.

Maybe a thousand. Every time we thought we'd made it to the kitchen, we found ourselves in

another library, sitting room, billiard room, conservatory. I was starting to get the feeling the

kitchen was like Brigadoon--we could look for it all we wanted, but we'd never find it.

Miles from the front door, we came to a small alcove with nothing in it but a love seat and,

spotlighted on the opposite wall, a tiny oil painting in an elaborate gilt frame. As we walked by, I

glanced at the painting.

"Oh my god," I said.

"What?" asked Jessica.

"Are you okay?" asked Madison.

I pointed at the young girl in a tutu at a ballet barre. "That's a Degas," I said.

"A what?" asked Madison.

"A Degas. He's this really famous French Impressionist. My dad loves him." I shook my head in amazement. "I can't believe they own a Degas."

Madison and Jessica stepped closer to the frame. "Is it, like, superexpensive?" asked Jessica.

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"Probably," I said.

Jessica shrugged. "Cool," she said, turning away. "Come on."

We knew we had to be getting close when we heard the chanting. "Go! Go! Go! Go!" Following

the noise finally got us to a huge, modern kitchen, bright as an operating room and filled with

stainless-steel appliances that reflected the scene back on itself, like mirrors in a fun house.

The chanting came from a group of people huddled around a keg in the middle of the room.

Dripping wet, with sweat or beer I couldn't tell, Dave was bent over backward at the waist,

sucking from a tap. His face was red and the veins on his neck stuck out. Someone was shouting

out numbers, and when the person got to thirty, Dave spit out the tap, spraying himself and the

people nearby with a mist of beer. Everyone cheered. I didn't see Connor anywhere.

Dave staggered away from the group and collapsed in a chair. The person whose turn it was next

grabbed the tap. "Go, Brewster," someone shouted. "Brewster the Brewmeister!" yelled someone else. I watched Jessica, who looked pissed, make her way over to Dave. Madison and I made eye

contact. She shrugged and followed Jessica, so I followed her.

Dave had stopped gasping for breath and was laughing at, as far as I could tell, nothing. Jessica,

her arms

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folded tightly across her chest, was shaking her head at him. He stopped laughing and started

swaying back and forth in the chair, eyes half closed. "You're wasted, you know that?" she

asked, kicking him in the foot.

"I'm notho wasted," he slurred, smiling up at her. "Comeere." He lifted his arms to embrace her and then dropped them, like they were too heavy to hold up. "Okay, maybe wasted."

"Yeah, maybe," she said.

As if to nod in agreement, Dave dropped his head. But it didn't come up again. Once more,

Jessica kicked him in the foot. This time all he did was shrug.

"Where's Connor?" I asked. Dave looked up at me, his head swaying. He said something that

sounded like, "Background."

"Background?" I repeated.

He took a deep breath and stared into my eyes, all his powers of concentration focused on this

elusive communication. "Back. Yard," he managed to say, articulating each syllable with

remarkable precision. Then he half pointed, half waved to a corridor that branched off the

kitchen and laughed.

"Where's Matt?" asked Madison.

Dave moved his glassy stare from me to Madison and then back again. "Strange," he said.

"What?" she asked.

You could see him gathering himself up for one last push. "Same," he said finally.

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She looked at me, confused. "I think he means they're in the same place," I translated.

I started off in the direction Dave had indicated, with Madison right behind me. Jessica gave

Dave one more kick in the foot before she followed.

I was starting to get the very bad feeling that my dream night wasn't going quite as I'd planned.

We made our way down a long hallway that ended in French doors, which opened onto a deck

overlooking the covered swimming pool.

On the deck, passed out under a large glass table, was Connor. A few feet away lay Matt.

Connor was on his stomach with his head resting on his forearm. For a second I wondered if he

was still breathing, but then Jessica walked over and kicked his ankle and he groaned.

I bent down. "Connor?" I asked.

"Hey, Red," he said. His words were slurred; I sensed more than heard what he was saying. Then

he lifted his head. "Wassup?"

"You okay, Connor?" I sat down on the cold wood and touched his hair. Next to his hip lay an

empty bottle of Wild Turkey.

"We lost, Red," said Connor.

"I know," I said. "I'm really sorry."

"I think I need to sleep for a little while," he said, dropping his head back down. "Thanks for stopping by."

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Chapter Seventeen

You know what Prince Charming isn't supposed to do? He isn't supposed to puke all over

Cinderella's boots. I cleaned Connor's vomit off the leather, helped him climb into Kathryn

Ford's car, and sat behind him while he slept, snoring heavily, but I wasn't finding him as

charming as I usually did. In fact, I wasn't finding him charming at all.

My father was going to kill me. And for what? By the time Kathryn turned onto my block, I was

in a panic. My palms were so sweaty I could smell them. For the first time since I'd decided to do

it, ignoring Mara's note was starting to feel like a very, very bad idea.

Just as Kathryn pulled up in front of my house, I had a momentary reprieve--it looked as if the

only lights on inside were the ones Mara and my dad leave on when they go out for the evening.

But then I saw that a lamp

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was on in my dad's study, and I knew wherever everyone else was, he was home.

And he was waiting for me.

I took a deep breath. "Well, thanks again," I said to Kathryn. "Sorry if this ruined your night."

"Don't worry about it. I told Mark I'd meet up with him in the city." Kathryn's tone made it clear she didn't spend her Friday nights partying with the under twenty-one set.

"Oh, right," I said. "You did mention that."