Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver Page B

from Rob as Ally appears next to me, making a face. “You two are perverts,” she says.
    “This is a room.” Rob lifts both arms and gestures around him. He sloshes a little bit of beer onto my shirt, and I make a noise, annoyed.
    “Sorry, babe.” He shrugs. Now there’s only a half inch of beer in his cup and he stares at it, frowning. “Gonna go for a topper. You guys want?”
    “We brought our own.” Ally pats the vodka in her purse.
    “Smart thinking.” Rob brings a finger up to tap the side of his head but nearly takes an eye out instead. He’s drunker than I thought. Ally covers her mouth and giggles.
    “My boyfriend’s an idiot,” I say as soon as he lurches away.
    “A cute idiot,” Ally corrects me.
    “That’s like saying ‘a cute mutant.’ Doesn’t exist.”
    “Sure it does.” Ally’s looking around the room, pouting her lips to make them look more kissable.
    “Where did you go, anyway?” I’m feeling more annoyed than I should by everything: by the fact that my friends ditched me after thirty whole seconds, by the fact that Rob’s so drunk, by the fact that Kent’s still talking to Phoebe Rifer, even though he’s supposed to be obsessively in love with me. Not that I want him to be in love with me, obviously. It’s just a constant that’s always been comforting, in a weird way. I wrestle the bottle out of Ally’s bag and take another sip.
    “We made a round. There’s, like, seventeen different rooms up here. You should check it out.” Ally looks at me, notices the face I’m pulling, and holds up her hands. “What? It’s not like we abandoned you in the middle of nowhere.”
    She’s right. I don’t know why I’m feeling so pissy. “Where did Lindsay and Elody go?”
    “Elody’s suctioned to Muffin’s lap. And Lindsay and Patrick are fighting.”
    “Already?”
    “Yeah, well, they kissed for the first three minutes. They waited until minute four to start going at it.”
    This cracks me up and Ally and I laugh over it. I start to feel better, more comfortable. The vodka fills my head with warmth. More people are arriving all the time and the room seems to be revolving just a little bit. It’s a nice feeling, though, like being on a really slow carousel. Ally and I decide to go on a mission to save Lindsay before her fight with Patrick turns into an all-out brawl.
    It seems like the whole school has shown up, but really there are only sixty or seventy kids. This is the most that ever shows up at a party. There’s the top and middle of the senior class, popularity-wise—Kent’s just holding on to the lower rung of the ladder, but he’s hosting so it’s okay—some of thecooler juniors, and a couple of really cool sophomores. I know I’m supposed to hate them, like we were hated when we were sophomores at all the senior parties, but I can’t bring myself to care. Ally gives a group of them one of her ice stares as we go by, though, and says “Skanks” loudly. One of them, Rachel Kornish, supposedly hooked up with Matt Wilde not long ago.
    Obviously no freshmen are allowed in. The social bottom doesn’t show either. It isn’t because people would make fun of them, although they probably would. It’s more than that. They don’t hear about these parties until after they’ve happened. They don’t know the things we know: they don’t know about the secret side entrance to Andrew Roberts’s guesthouse, or the fact that Carly Jablonski stashed a cooler in her garage where you can keep your beers cold, or the fact that Rocky’s doesn’t check IDs very closely, or the fact that Mic’s stays open around the clock and makes the best egg and cheeses in the world, absolutely dripping with oil and ketchup, perfect for when you’re drunk. It’s like high school holds two different worlds, revolving around each other and never touching: the haves and the have-nots. I guess it’s a good thing. High school is supposed to prepare you for the real world, after