Dad would realize later of course and send me an annoyed text. He hated me sneaking out. As he figured it, he never actually stopped me from going anywhere, so the least I could do was tell him where I was going to be. But why confront today what you can argue about over breakfast tomorrow?

2.

You know how the Great Wall of China is visible from space? Well, Oliver’s house was audible from space. It was heaving with people and pulsed like a heart. I could practically see the sound waves. I needn’t have worried about being early. By the looks of things, half the kids here had been day drinking since the exam finished at four. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

The noise sucked me in like a black hole. Someone had hooked up their phone to enormous professional-grade speakers that stood outside the front door like odd, modern sentinels. The music was so loud I couldn’t just hear it, I could feel it pounding inside my body, making my heart thump in rhythm with the beat. I liked it like that.

I let myself get pulled into the orbit of people congregating in the garden, slipping in between bodies, suffocating in a blanket of smoke, aftershave, and sweat. Being June in a heat wave, most people had opted for outdoors. It was still warm and bright at eight. Even so, once I’d got into the house, it was so crowded, navigating my way to the kitchen was like a special round of The Crystal Maze or the zombie apocalypse. I had my eye out for Izzy or Hannah so I could avoid them if I had to, but neither had replied to the group message that went out, so I wasn’t expecting them. Hands grabbed me and people called my name, but I couldn’t see who they were. I squeezed through arms and legs and a tangle of intertwined people who had decided foreplay was a spectator sport, and they were putting on a good show.

The kitchen heaved like a living organism. People slithered over one another, through gaps in cliques, to reach the fridge or the door. It looked strangely choreographed, and I felt out of place like a scientist observing it under a microscope instead of being part of it.