I, however, didn’t see the light as welcoming. I, like with most things, saw it as a warning. Like the old tin sign that my great-great-grandfather had hammered onto the foot of our property, the point at which the paved street split into our long dirt driveway.

Trespassers Will Be Shot.

It wasn’t an empty threat.

The house was glass and wood and didn’t come into view until we were already in the front yard, blending into the darkness like a Monet painting, so much that it was impossible to tell how big the house was—just that it was big, and dark, and empty. I started to get nervous that we were in the wrong place, or that this was all a trap, until the dull murmurs of talking, the faint bang of a bass, the hushed whooping of cheers, muffled and lost in the surrounding trees, began to reveal themselves.

Ruthie squeezed my arm as we walked around the side of the house, excited beyond words that we were at a college party. Any disappointment she felt over the fact that it took us this long to get invited to one was quickly washed away in anticipation.

“Tonight’s the night,” she whispered. “It’s all going to happen.” I looked over and matched my smile to hers, though I wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about.

Behind the house, in the back corner of the property, was an old red barn, the source of the muffled noise we were drawn to like moths to light. It looked like it didn’t belong there—the peeling red paint, the hole-filled roof, the broken doors. It looked like my parents’ except ours wasn’t painted and was filled with hay, not drunk college students.

We followed Catherine’s brother as he slipped through the slightly ajar door and the party opened up in front of us. A song about dancing until you die was so loud I was shocked we couldn’t hear it from the street where we parked. There were kids everywhere—dancing, rubbing together like they were having sex fully clothed (a thirty-point violation, at least); standing around a folding table covered in a formation of red cups, the same in the scene from the Hell House we’d been to all those months before (twenty points); lingering around the perimeter (twenty points), drinking or smoking or laughing (thirty points). In the back corner of the barn, on a collection of old and frayed leather couches, a couple was kissing, the girl straddling on top of the boy, her legs spread over his lap (thirty points).