Downers Grove by Michael Hornburg

Author:Michael Hornburg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1999-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

THE PARTY

MOM blasts off with the astronaut so Mister Antisocial comes out of the cellar and decides, under the guided peer pressure of his morbid friends, to have a little get-together to celebrate his dubious accomplishments. Tracy, the social butterfly, has already announced it to half the universe, and I’m instantly Miss Popular at school. When I sat down in the cafeteria I was circled by the dogs of night, a group of degenerate snobs looking for a place to park their boyfriends. I gave them a bogus address, but that just added to the hysteria. I’ve become the flavor of the minute and was even picked for the best volleyball team in gym class.

Tracy drags me shopping, not once, but twice, for the elusive outfit that will capture the Zeitgeist and slay my brother into submission. She thinks that given the opportunity she can snag him into a luscious make-out session that will prove so distracting he’ll forget his entire past, wrap around the moment, and consume her until kingdom come. I told her all she had to do was just scrape up a few bong hits and buy a twelve-pack of Ding Dongs and she’d be In Like Flint, but Tracy has a mind of her own.

She was wearing a white miniskirt and a skintight baby tee with a small red heart pasted in the center, pink sparkle tights, and white Mary Janes. She looked like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a cherry on top, which I presume is exactly the comparison she was looking for.

The teenager formerly known as David has decided to jam with some friends at the party, so they’ve been holed up in the basement night and day practicing three-chord moshes. The noise and repetition were unbearable, but the drummer was kind of cute.

This whole party thing was completely the wrong direction, it’s so last year. I’m trying to project myself out of high school, far away from all the riffraff. I don’t want to be the fairy godmother of puking teenagers who lost their car keys. I’m doing this for Tracy, and my brother, who seems strangely motivated by the potential for anarchy. The introvert will finally have a chance to interact with his public.

Tracy will park herself in front of the band and dance like a maniac until my brother looks up from his guitar strings long enough to discover he has groupies. I put her in charge of the backyard decor, so she strung multicolored tiki lights through the tree branches and stuck lawn torches in the grass around the perimeter.

“I want it to look like someone is going to sacrifice a virgin,” she said.

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