Alice is nice. She welcomes me into the garage she calls her room and smiles, not towards me but it catches me and makes me feel comfortable. She doesn't even know how well she's making me feel. Isobel is sitting on a bed drawing all over Kate's leg with a marker, sketching out a tattoo. Words, they're lyrics I later overhear from a song that's playing over the stereo that has them all drooling at the way it sounds like it was meant for their ears only. The band I later find out is Electric President and Alice makes me promise to keep them a secret because they've yet to become famous and she'd like to keep it that way. I promise to keep them to myself and later find out they've had mediocre success and wonder why nothing is hidden anymore. There's stomping and screen doors slamming, a few phone calls and pacing. Everybody is either pacing or swaying in a trance whilst smokes dances around them. Candice pulls a bottle of rum from her backpack looking like a middle school student who had just scored big with her much older friends. I realize she's 17 and the analogy isn't far off. She mixes the rum with the coke she already has in her glass spilling some in the process but Alice is too busy searching through magazines and books to notice or even care. I hardly think she'd care. Candice and Kate mix their drinks and continue to do this back and forth for about fifteen minutes. They drink up while reminiscing of a time when they had nothing to worry about and there was beauty in being ignorant; they both laugh. Jen is outside with Alice and Bryce who showed up while I was inside watching Candice and giving small answers to Kate's random questions. Bryce dangles a cigarette from his lips in a stunt that makes me stand back amazed. He's leaning against the wall immersed in a conversation as Jen stands off a little with her camera hung around her neck taking pictures while the light is just right and it illuminates his face causing a monster to appear. It's 12:30 maybe 1 o'clock and I'm offered to stay but I've had my fill and I say my goodbyes and receive a sincere hug from Isobel who has been absent for some time and is rubbing her eyes which seem pinkish underneath but I chalk it up to crying and put all thoughts of badness out of my reach. I watch myself walk out of there and fade away.