Deryn stands outside the Rogers' house, Eugene by her side, shivering in the cold and waiting for someone to hear the doorbell. It's far too cold to be social, she thinks, and wonders for the sixth time why on earth she let herself be dragged to a senior year Christmas party, just because Eugene likes that Tom kid, who invited her. Deryn doesn't like parties at the best of times, and right now she's tired and freezing and has several pages of homework to do for tomorrow.
At last, the door opens and Adela ushers them in. She looks extremely elegant for someone who's only wearing tight jeans, a Ramones t-shirt and red lipstick, her hair in a loose twist and her eyes bright.
"You're ten minutes late, but don't worry, no one's actually brought the alcohol yet, so you haven't missed much," she says, leading them downstairs to the basement, which is absolutely swarming with seniors. There are so many, that they blur into one mass of teenagers - it takes Deryn a while to differentiate them, and find someone she knows.
It's Alek, leaning against the wall with Tom at his side, and he waves them over. When Deryn reaches him, he grins and Tom launches into a complicated story explaining why he was late to school the other day and how it is completely Alek's fault, because... Deryn can't help but tune out after a while, and only feels a little guilty; it isn't as if Tom is saying all that for her benefit, after all. Anyway, Eugene's happy, so Deryn isn't going to complain if this means she'll finally stop moping over how Tom never talks to her.
Deryn looks around the room instead. The decoration is subtle, which would be odd at a high school party, but this is a party hosted by Adela Rogers, so Deryn isn't all that surprised. There are fairy lights all around the room, the little white pinpricks of light fading slowly on and off, tiny glass baubles that look like ice hanging from the ceiling... and more mistletoe than Deryn has ever seen in her life, oh my god, Adela.
She's not quite sure exactly when the alcohol arrives; she didn't even mean to drink that much, but she has a strong suspicion that the punch was spiked. She's not most intoxicated person in the room by far, but she's drunk enough that when she sees Lilit Zavenian standing under the mistletoe she doesn't even think, just walks over and kisses her.
It's a long kiss, and people keep shoving past them, but no one is really paying any attention to them. Lilit kisses her back without delay, and they end up making out by the stairs. Probably; everything's a little unclear, like a dream, and Deryn kind of loses track.
It isn't until they're going home, Alek driving because he's the only sober person among them, that Deryn thinks, vaguely, that she might have made a mistake somewhere. That she's forgetting something really, really important, but she can't quite put her finger on what. She ends up falling asleep in the back of the car, wondering distantly what she's done wrong.
Adela's first class the next morning is Philosophy, but their teacher's called off sick and she ends up stumbling to the library, head bursting with pain. She's never had a hangover more painful than this one; what exactly was inthat punch?
i am literally never drinking again, she texts Lilit.
Her phone buzzes a few seconds later; I'm literally pretty sure that's what you said last time.She rolls her eyes and is about to reply, when the librarian catches her eye and glares at her. Oh, right, no phones in the library.
Literallyhas become their special word, ever since they met and one of Adela's non-journalist friends was grossly overusing the word in their vicinity.
("... so I was like, they're going to literally kill us if we don't go to the party! And she was like, whatever, and I was like, you literally want me dead, then? And she was, oh my god, she literally exploded. We are literally never speaking again."
"She keeps using that word," Lilit muses, "I don't think it means what she thinks it means."
That's the moment Adela falls front line and centre for Lilit Zavenian.)
She puts her phone back in her pocket, chooses a book from a shelf, and sits down, out of sight of the librarian, where she can sleep the hangover off until second period. Adela doesn't often do this kind of thing, so she feels absolutely no remorse knowing that she's meant to be using this time to study.
She's been quietly half-asleep for half an hour when she hears hushed whispers from the other side of the shelf. It's enough to wake her up completely, especially when she catches her own name. Adela isn't particularly good with other people's privacy (she's a journalist, come on), and she edges as close as she can to the source of the whispering while still staying hidden.
"... dating her. Oh my god, what am I going to fucking do?" A hushed female voice - Adela recognizes it as Deryn Sharp, from her History class. She frowns and leans closer, trying to work out who Deryn's talking about.
"You could always... can't you try and talk to her about it?" Also a female voice, possibly Eugene Newkirk.
"And what am I meant to say? 'Hey, we made out and you're dating someone already, also, I have a crush on you, so what shall we do about it'?"
"You probably shouldn't have drunk unspecified amounts of alcohol,"
"Like you weren't plastered last night,"
Their voices and footsteps die away, and Adela goes back to her table, frowning and piecing together the facts. Deryn kissed a girl at a party while drunk, a girl she apparently likes, knows well, and who is dating someone else. And, since Deryn was at her party, it must have happened there. Adela tries to remember what Deryn was doing last night, but she herself drank so much she barely remembers having the party at all.
just heard literally the weirdest news, she texts Lilit as she's walking to her next class, her hangover mostly receded thanks to the aspirin she found in her bag.
You mean you literally spied on someone's private conversation, and are working out how to get it in the gossip column?
shut up.
Just don't get arrested. Literally.
it's literally legal. i checked.
Well, okay then. Literally love you xxx.
literally love you too xxx.