Losers by Matthue Roth

corners, the punk-rock kids dancing to lame pop-rock ballads in front of the speakers, and the normal kids, the ones who either transcended labels or feared dropping into a category, walking around the cliques and amongst themselves, dropping in and out of conversations with a casual, nonthreatening, no-stick attitude.
    Kids passed me by. Kids said “hi”—not a first-day-of-school “hi” where the teachers force you to smile at each other and play nice, but the noncommittal, how-ya-doin’ “hi” that signifies that the two of you are on the same level.
    In reply, I nodded. A cool, detached nod. A nod in time with the music, which I still did not like, but which was pleasantly bland, agreeable to my sensibilities, coating my nerves with a light, white-chocolate-flavored layer. I might not come out from this party with any friends, and I might not learn any deep life lessons, but, dammit, I was having a good time. Hell, I was discovering what it meant to have a good time, independent of my dorky friends, independent of my parents. And that might have been enough of a life lesson for me.
    I felt a finger on my shoulder.
    â€œHey, you’re kind of cute. Do I know you?”
    I caught hold of the finger with all five of my own and I spun around, still clamped tight, tracing the visiting finger to its owner.
    It wasn’t that hard. Even if I hadn’t been holding on to her finger at that moment, she would have been impossible to miss. Three layers of smart-looking pink—tank top, the fluorescent trace of a bra strap beneath it, and a studded pink leather jacket that looked like it was straight out of a movie, high shoulderflaps and wide ‘70s lapels—hugged her conventionally hourglass form, both concealing and teasing in a way that made it impossible not to look at her. Bright blue eyes peered out from under impeccably tossed blond hair, alternately dirty and bright yellow streaks. A pink headband held it all together.
    â€œI’m sorry?” I said quickly—one of the only English phrases I could always say perfectly quickly, guaranteed to be without a trace of an accent.
    â€œI’m Devin Murray. This is my party. Who are you here with?”
    I fought the natural impulse to say, No one brought me—I live down the street and your American hip-hop music is drowning out my ability to sleep. Instead I just smiled and nodded—the cool kid response.
    â€œWhat? Can you not speak English?”
    â€œWhat?” I said, caught off guard. “Oh, yeah, of course I can. I’m Jupiter.”
    Her momentary falter of a smile leaped back into full bloom. “Oh. Sorry. It must be the music—I mean, it needs to be loud, but only so we can complain about it, you know?”
    â€œOf course,” I agreed. “Wow, Devin. That actually sounds sort of profound.”
    â€œYeah. I like to think I can manage profound, once in a while. So—uh—how did you get here?”
    That question again. I’d managed to dodge it once, and I wasn’t sure if my luck could hold out a second time. The possibilities leapt up in my mind like a Choose Your Own Adventure book—one of the sadistic ones where, at the end of every choice, you died.
    I decided to go with the truth.
    â€œMy friend Vadim hacked onto your secret online diary,” I said.
    She looked at me like she was trying to decide whether or not I was lying. I think eventually she settled on lying, because in one hot moment, she burst out in a huge, quick balloon pop of a laugh. “No, seriously,” she said. “Are you with Crash Goldberg and his posse? Because I think they’re about to—”
    At that moment, there was a massive, resounding explosion that flared in the far corner of the warehouse. An explosion that probably nobody else in this entire party would realize came from approximately five full-size barrels of raw castor oil, the kind used in powering