Ch. 9

The Party

David's POV

"So, like, what did you want to tell me, David," Cindy asked, leaning on the kitchen counter, smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary. If she thinks I'm going to tell her I love her, she's in for a huge disappointment.

"I'm bored, Cindy," I said. "And you annoy me. So I'm done."

"What," she whined softly, sounding like she was about to cry. "Why?"

I shrugged. "Like I said, you annoy me," I answered. I had brought the whole gang with me this time, Marko, Paul, and Dwayne. They had all started snickering.

Cindy burst in hysterical sobs and started desperately trying to grab onto me. "But you love me, David," she shrieked. "Don't let your friends ruin what we have!"

I couldn't help it. She was just so pathetic that I started laughing too. She ran away sobbing. I could barely remember what I saw in her. Maybe it was her looks. In any case, I was done with her. I looked around the party. Many of the girls were annoying like Cindy, as most of them were her little friends. The usual suspects were in attendance: Pauly, Tiffani, and Taylor. Tiffani would be a suitable choice for the group: she was like the others, but not only would she follow orders, she was quiet. She had the same affected speech of the other girls, but at least she spoke much less. I still feel the same way about Pauly, though. She might make a good snack, but she was really just your basic bimbo on the outskirts of the Valley. I watched the desperate junior high girls with too much makeup on desperately throwing themselves at tenth graders, acting more pathetic than Cindy.

And then I saw her. Star. She had long, curly brown hair and big brown eyes. I listened to her talk to some other girls for a couple of minutes. There was no bimbo slang whatsoever. Compared to most of the partygoers, she sounded beautiful. I decided to approach her at that moment, tapping her on the shoulder.

"Hi," I said, managing to catch her attention with one syllable.

"Hi," she said sounding surprised. "My name's Star."

"I'm David," I replied.

"And I'm Ann and that's Nancy," one of her friends interrupted. I briefly looked them over. They were college girls, not members of the kiddie pool. Her friend Ann nudged Nancy and they both left.

"So what are you doing at this party," I asked, genuinely curious.

Star rolled her eyes and smiled. "My friends made me come," she said. "Besides, a lot of my friends from high school are here. Why are you here?"

I shrugged. "This was my girlfriend's party," I said, before explaining that I'd just broken things off.

"You just dated Cindy Dunbar," Star asked, surprised.

"Yeah," I said. Shit. Why did she have to be friends with Cindy?

"She seemed mature at first," I explained. "But she turned out to be a little too...young."

Star nodded. "Well, I mean she is only fifteen, and you must be..."

"Nineteen," I answered. Nineteen, one hundred and nineteen, same difference, I thought.

"Oh, so what year are you," Cindy asked.

"Freshman," I answered.

"Oh, cool, me too," Star answered. "I go to UC Santa Carla. How about you?"

"USC," I answered.

"Wow," she said. "That's quite a commute from Los Angeles to here."

I shrugged, not really having a way to explain it. "My friends and I enjoy long car rides," I answered, thinking that sounded really deep. Something about Star at the time had made me want to impress her. In a way, I guess you could say I'd almost fallen in love at first sight.

She looked at me curiously for a moment. "Who are your friends," she asked.

"Oh," I said. I gestured over to my gang and pointed the rest of them out by name.

"Do they go to USC with you," she asked.

"Yeah," I answered. "All of them."

We stood there awkwardly for a few moments.

"You wanna to go somewhere quiet," Star asked.

I nodded, but before I could follow her, a pudgy hand grabbed me and pulled me into a closet. The thing turned on the light. I looked at it. Despite the appearance of its hand, it was only slightly chubby. It was its ambiguous facial structure, dress and mullet that kept me from identifying its gender. It seemed feminine, but you could never be sure.

"My name's Donna," she said, declaring her gender. "And I'm gonna get some tonight."

I smirked. Lucky for her, I was starving, and the possibility of eating Taylor tonight was ruined. The girl reeked of garlic, which could easily be linked back to one of the boys who worked at the local comic shop.

"Right you are," I replied before sinking my teeth into her neck. I covered her mouth to muffle her screams when she realized this was no ordinary hickey. Her blood tasted like lard, which was disgusting, but I handled it well. Unfortunately, though, by the time I was done, and had left the body in the closet, Star had left. I found the others quickly so we could get rid of Donna's body. There wasn't much tension. Marko gathered up a ton of beer cans, and we threw them into the closet, covering the bite marks with a large bandage.

"That alcohol poisoning is a real killer," I muttered causing my friends to snicker.

We went back to the party like nothing had happened. I felt a tap on my shoulder and we all turned around. It was one of the junior high girls.

"My name's Zanne," the child said. "Do you want to play Seven Minutes in Heaven?"

"Not with you kids," I said snickering.

"How about you," she asked Dwayne.

"Sure," he said. "If there are older players."

"There are, there are," she perked up.

"Okay," he said with a shrug following her to the basement and smirking at the rest of us. I decided to go find Star. I saw her drinking a Diet Coke in the kitchen near the back window and porch. I went over there slowly, and it began to seem like we were the only two people in the room.

"Hey, Star," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Oh, hi, David," she said, seeming surprised to see me. "Where'd you go?"

"Oh, you know, that girl was just drunk or something," I explained nonchalantly.

"Oh."

I thought for a moment, before saying, "Hey, do you wanna get outta here with me and my friends?"

Star smiled. "Sure" was her reply.

I start gathering my friends but we had forgotten where Dwayne had gone. Eventually we had found him in the basement with a group of kids from the high school and the junior high school.

"Come on, Dwayne, let's go," I yelled.

But apparently, Tiffani would have none of that. "What are you, Dwayne, his lapdog," she asked.

Some of the junior high boys started hooting and "oooh"ing like animals.

Luckily, I managed to amuse them just as much by replying, "The pit bull says what?"

"What," she immediately replied before blushing.

"Come on, Dwayne," I said. He got up and followed the rest of us.

As soon as we left, Star asked, "So where are we going?" Everyone looked at me as if they had no functioning brains whatsoever.

"Let's head to the boardwalk," I said. The boardwalk is the only place to do anything anyway. "We can catch a movie."

Seeing a movie wasn't really an original idea, sure. But this was a small town at one thirty in the morning in the wintertime. It wasn't particularly cold, considering it was California, but most of the shops and the amusement park closed after midnight during this season. There wasn't really much else to do, and only the one movie theater and a few fast food restaurants were open, so we ended up going to see some crappy B-movie with Virginia Madsen, Zombie High. That's all the movie theater showed. Horror films, B-movies and repertory classics. It was sort of a Land of Misfit Toys for feature films. I guess that's why Max's rental shop was so popular, for its large variety. Star fit in with the rest of us well. She wasn't too outspoken, but she wasn't idiotic, either. The only trouble was when she asked for my phone number. I just told her the number of the nearest pay phone to the cave, and reminded myself to listen out for the phone. I was glad to find an excuse to get away those high school kids. They have too many issues, and most of the girls are melodramatic twits. But college girls were different. Star was different.