House Party by Eric Walters Page B

of a responsible adult.”
    â€œHow about my mother?” Jen asked. “Could she be in charge?”
    â€œWe could ask her when she gets here,” the officer said.
    â€œDo you think she’ll agree?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know what to expect,” Jen said. “I can’t even predict how she’s going to react.”
    I knew we wouldn’t have long to wait.
    â€œYou two seem like nice kids,” the officer said.
    â€œWe are,” Jen said. “I’ve never been in trouble in my life.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    â€œWe all make mistakes,” the officer said. “This one was a bad one, and hopefully you’ll learn from it.”
    We heard a sound at the front door and another police officer walked in, followed by Jen’s mother.
    â€œMy goodness, this is beyond belief,” she said. She looked slowly around the room, taking in the whole scene.
    â€œHow could this happen?” she gasped.
    There was no answer I could give.
    â€œIt looks awful,” the officer said, “but it’s only property damage. Nobody got hurt. That’s the important thing.”
    Jen started to cry, and her mother rushed over and wrapped one arm around Jen and her other arm around me.
    The last of the police drove away, leaving the three of us at the door. Jen’s mother had agreed to take charge of us and the house. She had already called the number the police had given for the emergencyglass-repair company. They were coming to replace the two smashed windows.
    â€œTomorrow you’re going to have to explain this to your parents,” she said to me.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œBut tonight we’re all going to work,” she said. “When you face your parents, it will be better if some of this is fixed.”
    â€œThank you for understanding.”
    â€œTo tell you the truth, I really don’t under stand how any of this could happen.”
    â€œNeither do we, and we were here,” I said.
    â€œThe police officer called it the weekend plague,” Jen’s mother said. “She said it’s happening more and more often, parties getting out of control.”
    â€œIt was like a fire getting bigger and bigger,” I said, trying to explain it.
    She shook her head slowly, sadly. “We better check out the whole house.”
    I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see. I just wanted to go up to my room, climb into bed, pull the covers over my head andpretend that none of this was real. I couldn’t do that.
    We trailed behind her as she walked from room to room, surveying the scene. There was more damage than I’d remembered. There were stains and spilled drinks everywhere, puddles of vomit, broken furniture and holes in the wall where people had punched or kicked or tossed things. Phones had been ripped out of the wall, and a light had been torn right off the ceiling. The dinner plates had been smashed against a wall in the rec room and were in a million pieces on the floor. Some had been thrown so hard that they were embedded in the wall. The television set downstairs had been knocked over. We picked it up and turned it back on—luckily it still worked.
    Upstairs it was obvious that somebody had been going through my parents’ dresser drawers. Every drawer was open, and clothing had been thrown on the ground. Things had been taken, I was sure, but we wouldn’t know what until my parents got home.Spills could be mopped up and stains could be cleaned, but how could the other damage be fixed? And I didn’t just mean the holes and the broken glass. How could I ever face my parents again? How could I fix the trust that had been broken?
    I felt like curling up in a little ball and crying. It was all so overwhelming.
    â€œI’m going to call your aunt and ask her to come and help,” Jen’s mother said. “An extra set of hands would be helpful. In the meantime, you two start with the