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Tara Budzynski’s party was a joke. The only reason the girls and I were even there was to score some weed. We don’t do parties. But Lydia’s cousin had utterly failed to score us the weed she’d promised, so we had no choice. We’re not stoners or anything, but sometimes you need to get out of your head.

“Shields up,” Lydia said as we made our way across Tara’s front lawn to her big house. Shields up is our motto, our superpower. We watched the Wonder Woman movie together this summer, and afterwards we all vowed to be one anothers’ Shield—especially in dodgy social situations like the one we were about to enter.

Two sophomore guys were vaping weed on the porch.

“Bingo,” Ani muttered.

We stationed ourselves there and let them try to make us laugh, waiting for them to offer us some weed. Meanwhile Suze wandered off to go “check out the scene” inside. She likes to think of herself as an anthropologist of the suburbs, observing the natives in their “natural” habitat, but I figured she’d wind up in the woods behind Tara’s house. Suze has a thing for trees. She says it comes from the summer she spent living on the edge of a forest in Poland, which is classic Suze. Who else can say they lived on the edge of a Polish forest? The plan for the night was to get high then hit Singing Beach, look up at the stars, say deep shit. A typical Saturday night for the girls and me.

At some point in the festivities, if you can call them that, someone turned up the music and all the girls at the party ran out onto the porch to grind, flaunting their asses while the boys gathered around to snap pictures and make gross gestures. The girls and I are into exactly none of that, plus we were sufficiently high, so we went looking for Suze to make a clean adios. Suze’s car was still parked out front, but Suze herself was MIA. Typical. The girl has a severe case of wanderlust. One time over the summer, she picked me up at dawn and we drove all the way to New York City just so she could buy a bagel from this place called David’s. They were okay, I guess. But it seemed like a long way to drive for a bagel. That’s Suze though. She gets an impulse and she goes with it. She doesn’t second-guess herself.

Eventually this little sophomore dude comes out and tells us he saw Suze going down into the basement with Tarkin Shaw.

“I seriously doubt that,” I tell him. Suze may be curious about these suburban natives, but she knows well enough to steer clear of Tarkin Shaw.

“I saw what I saw,” he tells me. “She was all over him too.”

“No,” I say. “That’s not possible.” He must have her confused with someone else.

In any event, she’s definitely not out here, so just to be sure we head inside and go down to Tara’s basement, which is like sinking into a testosterone swamp. It smells like beer, BO, and Axe body spray. Tarkin’s wrestler buddies are playing pool, trying to look tough and super-casual at the same time. Like, sure, they notice us, but they’re not going to lower themselves to acknowledge the fact. Very unconvincing. One of them, Russ Minichek, can’t take his eyes off of Ani’s butt. They’re pathetic, all of them, douchebag clones of Tarkin Shaw. I guess he’s their alpha douchebag.

“Can we hurry this up?” Ani whispers, trying to back away from Minichek so he’ll stop staring at her.

Ani can be ferocious online. But IRL, or in “meatspace,” as she calls it, she’s pretty timid. Lucky for us Tarkin Shaw himself staggers out of a back room, drunk off his ass and swaying side to side. His blond-tipped hair flops into his eyes and every time he swings it away, he nearly falls over. “Well if it isn’t the bitch queen herssssself,” he slurs at me.

Bitch queen has been his nickname for me ever since freshman year, which is ironic because neither “bitch” nor “queen” is an insult.

“We’re looking for Suze,” I tell him coldly.

“Well, she ain’t looking for you.” He tries to stare me down, gets real serious, puffing out his chest to intimidate me. And you know what? He is intimidating. He’s six three and I’m pretty sure he takes steroids. I’m five six if I stretch and I’m not what you’d call physically imposing. But I refuse to let him see how scared I am because that’s exactly what he wants. He wants everybody to be scared of him, as well as impressed, amazed, and attracted. In his mind, those things don’t even cancel each one other out.

“Is she in there?” I ask, gesturing to the room he just came out of.

“See for yourself.”

“Suze?” I call out. But there’s no answer.

“See what I mean, bitch queen?” He stands in the doorway, blocking my way. “It’s not you she wants.”

I take a deep breath, psych myself up, then squeeze past him. He’s so drunk he practically falls over. The room I enter is dark and smells like old sweat. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. Barbells, dumbbells. It’s a weight-lifting room.

And then I see her.

She’s unconscious and draped over a red vinyl weight bench, her T-shirt pulled halfway up, showing the bottom of her left boob.

Tarkin stumbles into the room and says, “She threw herself at me.”

The words pierce me like a serrated edge. It’s not the first time I’ve heard them and I swear to God I want to smash his face and his stupid blond tips right into that poster of Megan Fox.

But Lydia and Ani rush in before I can do anything stupid. They kneel down on either side of Suze and lift her head off the weight bench. She isn’t passed out exactly, just groggy as hell. When her eyes finally focus on me, she smiles like a little girl and tries to say my name. She goes “Ni—Ni—Ni—” When she can’t get the word out she giggles, then curls up in Ani’s arms.

“Awww,” Tarkin says, like this is the cutest thing ever. “Another satisfied customer. Seriously though, you should take her home. That girl is drunk as fuck.”

“She doesn’t drink, moron.” Lydia says.

“Really? She looks pretty drunk to me.” He leans in close to me and whispers: “I think she’s in love with me. Jealous?”

Having him that close freaks me out. The rank smell of beer on his breath sends me right back in time.

“Nikki?” Lydia says, trying to snap me back to the present.

“Nikki?” Tarkin mocks. He throws his arms around me from behind. “Come on, let’s make it a party.”

“Get the fuck away from her!” Lydia says. Then she leaves Suze with Ani and stalks over to us.

“Yo, calm down,” Tarkin says, peeling himself off of me. “There’s plenty of the Tarks to go around. Want to hop on?” He thrusts his crotch at her. “I mean if that’s alright with the bitch queen here.”

Out in the other room, his buddies start yukking it up, like Tarkin Shaw is some kind of A-list comedian.

“Hey, save some for me,” Aaron Paulson shouts, to much snickering.

While I stand frozen like a statue, Lydia’s rage begins to grow. She may look like Tinker Bell, but you do not want to piss her off. Her dad is an ex-boxer and he’s taught her a thing or two.

“Ooh,” Tarkin says, looking down on her. “You gonna fight me?”

Her answer to that is a quick and brutal knee to the nuts.

“FUUUUCKKK!” Tarkin drops to the floor and starts rolling around, moaning about his testicles, going “Unh, unh, unh, you stupid bitch!”

“Nikki?” Lydia says, snapping her fingers in my face.

I haven’t moved since Tarkin touched me.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”

We drag Suze off of the weight bench. She’s like a rag doll. It takes me under one arm, Ani under the other, and Lydia steadying her from behind to get her up.

“You’re a total fucking whore,” Tarkin barks at us from the floor. I guess he’s talking to Lydia for kicking him. Or maybe to Suze. Or even to me. Who knows? On my way out the door I flick the back of his head with the toe of my sneaker, just enough to make him groan again. I’d like to do more, especially with him being so helpless down there. Sometimes my own anger scares me.

When we get Suze out of the weight room, Tarkin’s idiot friends suddenly switch to fucking gentlemen and offer to help us carry her up the stairs, but we’re like no thanks, we got this, keep your grope-ass hands to yourself.

By the time we get around to the front of the house, Tara’s porch is overflowing. The music is super loud, and as we drag carry Suze across the front lawn toward her car, we hear a siren in the distance.

“Uh oh,” Ani says.

Then it’s mayhem. Kids start spilling out of the front door, sprinting for their cars, stumbling over the hedges. Eventually we make it to Suze’s car and lay her down as gently as we can in the back seat. She’s five ten, so it takes some doing getting all her arms and legs in there, like cramming a grasshopper into a Tic Tac box.

“She’s our designated driver,” Ani says in a panic. “What are we gonna do?”

“Relax,” I tell her. “Don’t get paranoid.”

Ani starts taking deep breaths to calm down, but it doesn’t work. She’s practically vibrating with anxiety. Weed does that to her sometimes.

Technically, we’re all too stoned to drive, but those sirens are getting closer. Ani is way too freaked out to take the wheel, and Lydia is a rage driver in the best of circumstances, so it’s on me. I get behind the wheel and try to do things as methodically as possible to override my high. Key. Ignition. Seat pulled forward. Mirror adjusted. Seat belt clicked. Because I’m high, everything seems to be moving way too slowly. I’m convinced the cops are going to wheel up and arrest me right then and there, but somehow, I manage to pull away before they arrive. I weave around all the kids running to their own cars, then about a hundred yards down Brooks Road, right before the turn off to Main Street, the police cruiser glides right on by us.

Ani’s in the back seat with Suze’s head in her lap. “Let’s never do this again,” she says. “Let’s never go to a party again.”

Lydia and I agree. No amount of free weed is worth this.

WHEN WE GET to my place, the three of us carry Suze up the front steps then again up to the second floor, which is no easy feat, especially since we have to keep things quiet or risk waking up my parents. They’re not what you’d call cool. They’re in the scream-first-ask-questions-later camp. They wouldn’t necessarily mind my being at Tara’s party. My mom thinks I’m too antisocial for my own good. But they do not know I smoke pot, and they would not approve of Suze being passed out like this. They already think she’s “a little strange.” I’m hoping to handle this situation on my own. The less my parents know the better.

Once we get Suze into my room, I text her parents from her phone to say:

Crashing at Nikki’s

They text back:

Okeydokey, honey bunny. Stay safe. xo.

Parents, I swear to God, no clue.

Suze barely even stirs as we get her tucked in safe and sound in my bed.

“She’s not going to choke on her own vomit, is she?” Ani asks me, like I’m an expert in people choking on their own vomit.

“I think you’re supposed to put her on her side,” Lydia says. “Then prop her up with a pillow. I saw that in Breaking Bad.”

“Yeah, but that girl died anyway,” Ani says.

“Right, because she rolled on her back and choked on her vomit.”

To be safe, we prop Suze onto her side with a pillow and watch her sleep for a minute to make sure she’s steady. Then Lydia and Ani Uber it home before their parents start getting curious.

Once they leave and I can process what just happened, I realize I’m shaking, and have been ever since Tarkin touched me. We like to say we can protect each other, Shields up and all that, but things could have turned out very differently tonight. Never mind getting busted by the cops for smoking pot, the truly scary thing is that we were in Tara’s basement outnumbered by wrestlers. The even scarier thing is that I was in an enclosed space with Tarkin Shaw, which is something I swore I would never ever do. How did any of this even happen? How did Suze end up in that weight room? She knows better than to be alone with Tarkin Shaw. Did she go there voluntarily? Was she feeling bold in her role as amateur anthropologist? I want to ask her, but she’s fast asleep now and I don’t want to wake her.

What a strange and unsettling night. We should have wound up at the beach picking out constellations while snarking on all the doofuses at that party, not carrying our unconscious friend while fleeing the police. Ani’s right. We should never do this again.

On the plus side, we did get to watch Lydia drop that shartgibbon with her amazing self-defense moves. I think Wonder Woman would be proud.

I STAY UP for a while and watch Suze sleep. There’s something peaceful and reassuring about seeing her there safe and sound. Then, around midnight, I get out this old princess ready bed I haven’t used since middle school and go to sleep, too. I wake up a few times to check on her and she seems fine, her belly moving up and down with her breath.

But when I wake up the next morning around eight, she’s gone. No note or anything. I call her to make sure she’s okay, but she doesn’t pick up. When I check in with Lydia and Ani, they haven’t heard from her either. This isn’t necessarily out of character for Suze. She comes and goes according to her own whims. She once blew off school for three days when an old friend from Munich was in town. She didn’t tell any of us where she was and when Principal Everett asked her for a note, she told him, “I didn’t take any.”