June shifted. ‘Um, what are you doing? Do you need any help with anything?’

‘Nah, everything’s already finished, so. Why don’t you get Sydney a drink?’

Not that I had thought Heath and June were goody-two-shoes or anything, but the openness and the recklessness of it all wasn’t something I had anticipated. The cops wouldn’t come, would they? Oh God. This was the peer pressure everyone had told me about. This was the moment those alcohol-celibacy contracts I signed in elementary school had foretold.

Fuck it, I decided.

‘Yeah. That’d be good.’

We moved through the gargantuan kitchen, all dark wood and stainless steel, to a set of stairs going down into the basement: the epicentre of the roar.

We passed Bea.

She’d ditched the Dunkin uniform, wore this tight black dress with long sleeves, and I swore when we walked past she glared at me, like some creepy painting that follows you with its eyes as you walk. I struggled to hide my discontent as we passed, so I resolved to just not look at her all. Could it have actually been her? Looking at her now I wasn’t convinced. But the person who sent the message knew I’d be at the party. It would make sense.

She would not ruin this.

I followed June down the basement stairs. The place was immaculate, but not really in a nice way; deep red walls and plush grey carpet, with the sort of ostentatious, disconnected, glossy-magazine finish that suggested nobody who actually cared about the place had been involved in its design. An old Pac-Man arcade machine sat in the far corner beside a pool table, which I assumed was some attempt to make the place seem like human beings with interests besides gaining affluence lived here. It didn’t really work, but with the amount of life that was crammed into the place, it didn’t really have to.

June turned to me, now needing to raise her voice to be heard over the music. ‘I didn’t know you drank!’

I thought about lying to make myself seem cooler. ‘I don’t. Not really.’

‘What? This is your first time?’

I nodded, deciding now was not the time to explain that Dad had once let me have a sip of beer at our Fourth of July block party, which I’d promptly spat out.