7500 4/19

When we walked in, I realized I gravely underestimated the size of the party… there was at least 200 people here.  Veronica and the triplets went straight to the middle of the house to probably find the kitchen where the liquor was. Ryan, Miranda, and I went downstairs to talk to some of our other friends and meet people. Chase disappeared into the abyss of people, and frankly I was glad he did. As we were walking downstairs I notice in the corner of my eye JJ Best approaching me.


“Finally, another black guy here. I thought we were the only one,” JJ said as 3 of his other friends emerged from behind him.


“Haha yeah, I know right? It’s good seeing you,” I replied with a fake laugh.


I like JJ normally during school but I hate how when I see him at parties he tries to put me in a box. I feel like he almost wants me to be restricted to only hanging out with him and whatever other black guy that is there. I understand where he’s coming from though, I guess the subtly racist comments made by our peers get to him. Where he feels so alienated he has to cling on to other black people who experience the same sort of vague degradation. I honestly I just don’t care, and I’m not going to spend my time sitting in the corner feeling angry about it. Sorry, not sorry JJ.


“Where are you guys about to go,” JJ asked.


Oh boy, here we go.


“Yeah, I don’t really know. But I’m about to use the restroom so excuse me fellas,” I dismissed.


I lied.


“Oh…alright. I’ll see you around later though Axel,” JJ asked innocently.


“Yeah, hopefully,” I said as I escaped to the bathroom.

I felt horrible. JJ wasn’t a bad kid, he was actually a really nice person. It’s hard for him to make friends around here because he’s really dark and tall and I think he looks intimidating to all the preppy kids in Stockton who have only seen black people on the news doing criminal things. Maybe he didn’t persist for my company to unite us against all the white people we were surrounded by. Rather he saw me as a door of connection to them. My door was locked with the key thrown.


In the bathroom, I sent a half coherent dizzying text to Veronica asking where she was and she just sent back two bottle emojis with a blush face emoji indicating liquor. I assumed she was either too intoxicated to respond with full sentences or too preoccupied flirting. Or both.
“Hey, Axel, you good man? C’mon I’m ready to go downstairs,” Ryan said hastily.


I noticed Miranda was absent.


“Did Miranda leave,” I asked softly.


“Yeah dude, she got tired of waiting, she said to meet her downstairs,” Ryan informed me.


We walked down only to be blinded by the masses of people who were talking, drinking, smoking, hooking up, and playing drinking games. Sarah’s basement is fairly large but it was no match for the hundred people huddled from the staircase to the back wall.


There was three adjacent pong tables set up to play three different drinking games. The first, which had the most amount of people was beer pong. Beer pong basically consisted of 10 red solo cups with beer on both sides that are shaped into an ascending triangle. The objective of the game was to have you and your partner throw a pong ball once at a time into your opponent’s cups causing them to drink the beer in the cup. The winner is the duo that finishes off all the remaining cups in the opponent’s triangle. Rules may consist of no elbows over the edge of the ping pong table, bouncing pong balls will result in two cups collected, and you may attempt to blow your opponents shot out the cup if it doesn’t hit the liquid. 


On the second ping pong table was slap cup. Knockout is a game similar to the basketball version where two teams have two competing players shooting ping pong balls into how ever many red solo cups you desire, usually 5, and after one player makes a cup they have to drink a corresponding cup to move on to the subsequent cups. When one player finishes their row of cups their partner is at the end of the row and starts their turn. The first team to make and drink all cups wins.


The last of the three drinking games had the least amount of people and no ping pong balls. Instead, they played a game much like the popular card game, BS. Five people are dealt the deck evenly and put down cards face down in chronological order starting with the ace. You can put down whatever card or cards you want but if someone calls “BS” and you put down a card that doesn’t correspond to it’s numerical order in the game then you have to drink the contents in your cup and take all the cards in the deck. On the flipside, if the person who calls “BS” is wrong then they have to drink the contents of their cup and assume all of the cards. The game has a winner when somebody loses all of their cards.


I saw Chase at the third table smiling from ear to ear with about a million cards in his hand screeching out “bullshit!” at almost every turn. I suddenly felt good we decided to bring him along, he truly looked like he was having the time of his life.


Ryan and I got engaged into a conversation intermingled with his baseball friends and some football players that were around. They were exchanging sex stories that for a minute peaked my interest and made me laugh. The stories were fueled with meaningful dialogue, interesting plot developments, absurdist humor, and suspenseful climaxes that garnered a huge drunk sailor-like laugh from me. When the baseball and football players noticed my ears suddenly got warm red as I was now the subject of conversation.


“Woah is that Axel Martin, how are you dude,” One of the football players asked nicely.


“I’m good man, thanks for asking, just applying to colleges you know,” I replied.


“You bang that Miranda chick yet,” another football player asked as he dry humped the air.


My ears were now red hot in a mix of embarrassment, shame, and a little bit of anger. I have never heard anyone refer to Miranda in such vulgar terms. Don’t get me wrong, Miranda is a very attractive girl but I felt she deserved more than to get “banged”.


“Uh.. I..,” I struggled to respond.


“Take it easy, Mike, that’s just Axel’s friend,” Ryan stepped up.


“I mean why not? She has some absolutely gorgeous breasts,” Mike said as he cupped his hands around his chest to indicate boobs.


Now I was blatantly angry. Miranda didn’t deserve this bozo making all types of crude jokes about Miranda. She was probably the most wholesome girl I’ve ever known. Even if I was sexually involved with Miranda, I would never let this clown talk down on her and treat her like an object. I stepped up to the Mike and felt myself ready to fight.


“Oh wait nevermind! Check it out, she’s hooking up with Nick,” Mike said as he pointed out Miranda sloppily making out with another football player. 


“Oh shit…,” Ryan said shocked.


All the anger inside of me vanished down a dark hole in the center of my stomach. I felt the world moving as my face turned bright red and my head spun. I didn’t know why I felt like this. But I found myself in an immovable stare as I watched her tongue twist and turn while it intermingled with his. It resembled one of those inflatable wacky air dancers you see at car dealerships. She had one leg in the air as his hands were all over her body like he was trying to cover every last bit over her body. The air felt suffocating with every breath I choked up. Why was I feeling this way, I asked myself. Miranda and I weren’t dating nor did I have feelings, I thought. We had been friends forever and seeing her kissing this guy destroyed me, so I ran.
“Axel! Wait up, where are you going,” Ryan called after me as I escaped the basement.


On my way out of leaving I ran into Chase who was way too intoxicated. He fell in my arms and told me to get him some water. So I dragged him out of the the crowd and set him down on a unused staircase away from everyone.


“Axel, I..I..I just want say, I just want to say… thank you. For all of what you do,” Chase expressed drunkenly.


I saw a little bit of vomit on Chase’s shirt so I took it off of him and replaced it with my T-shirt so he wouldn’t get nauseous.


“Axel, I’m so sorry about this… please forgive me. You have been the best friend I ever had,”  Chase kept on talking.


“It’s okay, I’m just making sure you’re good man, don’t worry about,”  I assured Chase.


As I left to get Chase cranberry juice, he sat up and looked at me. With the most glaringly depressed and serious eyes he talked to me as straight as he could drunkenly muster.


“Look at me for a second… don’t let me kill myself. You won’t let me die will you,” Chase asked painfully.


“Um… I won’t Chase, just stay here, okay? I’ll be back, don’t worry,” I said nervously.


I didn’t know what Chase meant by that and I started to get seriously concerned. So I decided to try and find Veronica while I went to the kitchen to get cranberry juice.         As I rushed into the kitchen I bumped into the triplets.


“Oh my God Axel, we’ve been looking for you. Veronica is so drunk and she’s been saying she wants you,” Tiffany said looking concerned.


“What?! She wants me? Like… sexually,” I asked very confused..


“I don’t know you should just go see her now,” Tiffany said in panic.


Tiffany, Trinity, Taylor and I went searching for a drunk, lost, and probably wandering Veronica in the incredibly large house sifting through crowds of people while the blaring music was so loud that it somehow impaired our vision. Or maybe, it was just the eight shots of vodka I had in my system.


After at least 10 minutes of aimless searching we decided to ask JJ if he saw Veronica anywhere.
“Last I saw, she was in the kitchen drinking out of the Tito’s handle and then she went upstairs throwing up in the bathroom, but after that I don’t know,” JJ told us.


“How long ago was that,” I asked JJ.


“About 30 minutes ago,” JJ told me.


“Okay, thank you bud,” I said as the triplets and I headed upstairs to the bathroom.


Sure enough, Veronica was still there sitting on the ground with her cat makeup smeared and her face looked really distressed. The triplets stayed at the door and looked in awe as I went over and kneeled down right besides her and her eyes immediately lit up.


“Axel! Thank you for coming, I need you right now. I’m just such a mess,” Veronica said with her eyes swelling up.


“No, you’re okay. Just relax and take deep breaths,” I calmed.


“I think I need to tell you something,” Veronica said drunkenly.


“Okay, go ahead I’m listening,” I said.


We all paused for a moment when we heard footsteps running up the stairs with the same anxiety as Chase Lentil. That’s when I realized I forgot about Chase downstairs. My internal panicked was overshadowed by the pace of the footsteps coming upstairs.


“Somebody’s about to kill themselves! Come down right now,” an unknown person screeched.


All 5 of us rushed downstairs and followed the unknown messenger to a crowd of people moving outside to follow the commotion of a lone person on the roof claiming they were going to kill themself.  When the triplets, Veronica, and I got outside we lost the messenger but saw Ryan and Miranda outside standing in confusion.


“Axel! There you are… where have you been?! I’ve been looking all over for you,” Miranda exclaimed.


“Oh were you now,” I snarled.


Miranda stood there shocked at my response with her mouth wide open. I don’t think she’s ever seen me respond so snarky in her life. I don’t even know why I was so snarky. I had no real right to be snarky.


“Who is on the roof? Can anybody see who it is,” Ryan said at an attempt of diffusing the tension.


We all squinted at a figure on the roof pacing around but none of us could make out who the person was. We were surrounded by murmurs from about a hundred people whispering about who the person on the roof was. Then, the figure got closer and closer and I could finally make out who the person was… it was Chase Lentil.


        “CHASE… CHASE… look at me, it’s Axel,” I screamed and emerged from the crowd.


        Chase started walking towards me as the crowd of people let out a shocking gasp. Chase had the gloomiest face I’ve ever seen as he looked at me on type of the roof.


        “Get down from there! What are you doing,” I said firmly.


        “Yeah dork, get off the roof. You’re ruining the party,” Mike the football player said as he looked around for somebody to high five.


        Nobody high fived him.


        “There’s no point Axel,” Chase said while looking down.


        “No point in what, what are you talking about,” I snapped.


        “No point in me, no point in living like this,” Chase elaborated.


        “Living like what Chase? You have a beautiful life,” I yelled back.


        At this point in the exchange, everyone’s attention was centered on Chase and I. Everyone looked at us and I felt things starting to escalate.


        “I exist in a bubble. A bubble in which nobody can hear me, nobody can see me, and nobody can touch me. I am invisible, Axel. I don’t know what I did to deserve this. Who determined that I would be alienated from everyone. I have no friends, no talents, no quirks, no girlfriend, nothing. See you wouldn’t get it because you have it all Axel. You’re incredibly smart, you are a nationally recognized young poet, you have amazing friends, you socialize easily with other people, you even bowl, and you have a sweet loving family that cares and cherishes you. You think I wanted this life? You think I wanted to live my entire life wishing I had the ability to even talk to your friend Veronica, let alone hangout with her everyday. Why did God even make me if he wanted me to live outside of society inside a bubble. Maybe, I am supposed die. Maybe, God made me to kill myself for empathy boosts for people like you Axel. You don’t think I know why you snuck me into this party? Spoiler alert, it wasn’t for me Axel. It was for you. So how about you shut your patronizing mouth, and collect your pity points.”