“Babe, I think you’re drunk,” Harry says exaggeratedly. But he can’t delete what she said. It’s out there now.

“No, remember I showed you the text?” Rae trips over her heels and tumbles into Harry, who struggles to hold her upright since he’s a full foot shorter than her.

Jack’s head whips fast toward me.

Harry, quick to notice the tension, takes Rae’s arm, and they break away from the group until they’re at the back. “How about we go over here, huh, babe?”

Worry lines crack the glass of Jack’s face. Betrayal pulses through his clenched jaw.

I don’t know what to say.

He speeds up to Rhett, who sulk-walks behind Benny and Xavier.

Shit.

This is not how I pictured tonight going. At all.

“Apparently, we’re here?” Benny says.

The only house in the thick woods looks dark. Empty. Save for one hot-pink neon sign in the front window that blinks, You Wish You Were Here! There’s a faint hum of music, an electronic beat that pulses far away. Like pretty much all the off-campus houses around CIA, it’s dingy and small and looks like the set of some C-rated horror flick, complete with a broken concrete path to the front door sprouting dead weeds in the cracks.

Everyone except for Jack turns to me.

I guess I’m expected to lead the way.

I knock on the door, but nobody answers.

“Just go in,” Benny says, and when I turn to give him a “get up with me, you coward” look, he shrinks away and hides behind Xavier.

The door is unlocked, and I mumble, “I hope this is the right place,” before pushing it open. Immediately, the sound of the bass knocks into me, reverberating off the walls and escaping through the door. The house may be small, but it’s wall-to-wall bodies, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I brought so many extra people. The hazy air inside reeks of skunky pot and sweat, and the lights are low, giving the living room a distinct club vibe. It’s beautiful chaos.

I recognize a few people from class and others from having passed them in the hallway of the visual arts building. CIA is not that big, after all, and the animation program is even smaller. I turn around and look for Jack, but he’s gone, disappeared into the sea of people, along with Rhett, Benny, and Xavier. Rae and Harry stick close by, and she grabs a fistful of fabric from the back of my shirt to not lose me.