I recognized all of them but knew no one. Most were seniors, and I’d been in classes with them or our lockers had been close together. Others I remembered from freshman year. From over-the-shoulder glances and stifled laughter. Maybe this was my chance to change things. Not that I cared about being liked by the people who thought it was OK to behave the way they had, anyway. But we all want to be liked. I imagined the crowd opening up to me like an outstretched hand and then closing round me, swallowing me, taking me.

I got drunk faster than I’d anticipated. I kept checking myself, checking my reality, like I didn’t believe it would actually work. Right. As if repeatedly emptying low-dosage poison into my body wouldn’t do anything.

It wasn’t necessarily an immediate happiness – like, I didn’t really feel happy – but I felt like there was no reason not to be. Dad, firstly. But June, and the texts, Olivia, it all just kind of melted away, dribbled down the front of my chest, out with the sweat. Gravity seemed to have gone on a break. My guts twirled. My mouth went numb, which was probably to blame for the alarming rate that my words were tumbling out of it. It was kind of a wonderful feeling, to think that there was nothing more important in the world than my own words. Before, everyone in the room had been painted red, and now they were green, green, green.

I learned that I didn’t like to share her.

In the car I had June all to myself – and even when she was with Heath, I’d sort of convinced myself that I wasn’t allowed to be bitter. I was just a growth, anyway; they were here first, and really, I trusted Heath. But here, to all these people I barely even knew, June was the belle of the ball.

They all loved her. She touched them, danced with them and they all loved it, like she was some messiah that was gracing them with her presence, and at some point she took Kendall McIntyre aside and jokingly grinded on her and I honestly thought I might be sick. At least in my mind, Heath was the one I would always need to give her up to. Ha. Give her up. As if she was ever mine. But seeing her flouncing around with everyone else, I couldn’t help but feel alarmingly unprepared and painfully jealous.

The real reason it was painful, I guessed, was that there was nothing different about the way she touched them and the way she touched me.

But she didn’t take any of them to the River Styx.

And while I was looking at June, Bea was looking at me.