Inside, down a flight of concrete steps, is pandemonium. The cavernous chamber is alive with a sea of dancers, strobe lights beating against storm clouds of artificial smoke, and the music is so loud the bass makes my lungs vibrate. There’s a DJ on a raised dais, and massive speakers tower in the gloom. When I look over at Gunnar, his teeth gleam just as brightly as the UV paint that luminesces on his cheeks.

“This is it, Auggie,” he shouts, and I see the golden light smolder to life in his eyes. “I know it sounds dumb, I know this is just a bunch of drunk losers in a basement, but … it’s beautiful, right? It doesn’t matter who’s human and who’s undead—nobody’s scared here, nobody’s in danger. It’s just … joy.”

I can barely make out any faces in this mob, but their body language testifies to what he’s saying. On Halloween, Kenton Reed threw a party at his gigantic house, and basically the entire school went—from the jocks and the horse girls all the way down to the freshman band kids—and his basement looked a lot like this: people feeling the music, dancing close and not caring who was beside them. Boyd had backed into me by accident, his perfect butt actually touching me, and when he realized it, he’d laughed.

Our hands still twined together, Gunnar pulls me down into the thick of the rave. What looked like smoke is really a perfumed vapor, billowing through the crowd, clinging to my skin. The din is too loud to hear over, but as soon as we’re on the dance floor, strangers’ hands brush my arms in a silent welcome; someone hands me a glow stick, someone else kisses my cheek, and the beat thumps like a shared heartbeat.

I’m definitely out of my element, and I have no idea how I’m going to learn what I came here to learn, but the energy in the room is intoxicating. The factory was gutted long ago, and the space opens up, up, up, massive windows high on the wall letting the starlight in. I’ve never danced to this kind of music before, but it’s too dark to be self-conscious about my movements, and nobody seems to be judging me anyway. I sway and I jump … and I feel the joy.

“You’re beautiful, Auggie! Do you know that?” Gunnar shouts at me, his eyes glowing in the darkness—and for the first time in maybe my whole life, I think, I feel beautiful. The beat thuds, laser lights finding exposed brick walls through fog and shadows, and the rhythm surrounding us threads its way into my blood. I embrace it, fall into it, becoming one more essential piece in the great machinery of the dance floor.