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with people — freak dancing on one side of the room, slam dancing on the other. The music was some hard-core rap, bass shaking the walls, and I was already getting a headache.
    Dreadlocks hooked an arm around my waist and tried to pull me over with the freak dancers.
    “What are you doing?” I shouted.
    “We should dance!” he shouted back, circling behind and trying to grind against me.
    “Knock it off!” I yelled, twisting around. Then, for some reason, I added, “I have a boyfriend!”
    “No problem,” Dreadlocks yelled back. “I have a girlfriend.”
    I shoved him away, but the crowd pressed him right back. The next thing I knew, he was trying to kiss me.
    I jerked my face away. “You have a girlfriend, remember?”
    He blinked and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Did I say that?”
    “Yeah,” I said, nodding, too, in case he couldn’t hear me.
    He shrugged. “It’s OK! She’s cool!”
    I tried to slide away from him, but he kept his grip on my arm. “Ah, come on, Sally!”
    “It’s Sadie!” I said. “Anyway, I have to find my sister.”
    Eventually I made it through the scrum of dancers and into the hall. I was just about to go up and check all the rooms again when someone half stumbled down the stairs. Two people, actually: a scuzzy-looking guy holding up a very drunk girl. The girl was Carla.
    “Hey,” she said with a wan smile, her yellow shirt half unbuttoned, no shoes, makeup smeared. She draped herself over me and I hugged her back, trying not to think about what she’d just been doing.
    I buttoned up her shirt, wiped off her smeared lipstick, and combed my fingers through her hair to get it halfway decent. “Where are your shoes, Carla?” I shouted over the music.
    She blinked at me, as if the concept of shoes was foreign to her, or as if she didn’t have shoes, had never had shoes. “Forget it!” I said. “I’m taking you home!”
    To my surprise, she nodded. “OK. I’m ready.”
    We nearly made it out of there. We got all the way to the front door. I was turning the knob, fishing in my pocket to double-check that I had the car keys, when Dreadlocks and Scuzzy appeared next to us in a cloud of pot smoke — a couple of stoner ghosts.
    “You can’t be leaving yet,” Dreadlocks said.
    “Hey, baby,” Scuzzy said to Carla. “We’re not done partying, are we?”
    I was surprised to see Dreadlocks and Scuzzy together. “You guys know each other?” I asked.
    Dreadlocks grinned. “Oh, hell yeah.” He didn’t elaborate.
    I hung on to Carla. “We’re leaving,” I said.
    Scuzzy laughed a cigarette laugh — as much smoke as words. “Hey, that’s OK. But Carla promised you girls would give us a ride first. Just over to the 7-Eleven to get some more beer for the party. You remember, baby, right?” he said to Carla. He shrugged a small backpack over his shoulder. “For beer.”
    Carla nodded hazily. “For beer.”
    I protested, but what Carla said, even if she was just stupidly repeating the words, gave the guys some sort of forward momentum. They ignored my protests and followed us out of the house and down the street to Carla’s car.
    “Fine,” I said, my shoulder aching from propping Carla upright. “Just make it quick.”
    Scuzzy tried to convince me to put Carla in the backseat with him. “Don’t you and him want to sit together?” he asked, nodding at Dreadlocks.
    “No,” I said, trying to maneuver a limp Carla into the front seat. She was all deadweight.
    “Me and her already hooked up,” Scuzzy said. “That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
    “No,” I said, buckling Carla in. “My car, my rules. Boys in the back.”
    Scuzzy got in and slammed the back door hard, to let me know he wasn’t happy. Dreadlocks at least was polite. He even opened and closed the driver’s-side door for me.
    Carla slumped against the window. Dreadlocks lit a cigarette, but I made him put it out.
    “Jesus,” Scuzzy muttered to him. “And you wanted to