Word Count: 954

Paris hadn’t been to a party in a long time. Months. Sometimes it felt like years, as if the last few months had spanned a lifetime, and his activities before May had happened in a different place, in a different time, and to an entirely different person. Somehow he’d fooled himself into believing that he wasn’t that boy anymore, that he was better, mature, responsible, older than his seventeen years, ready for an adult world with adult friends and adult relationships.

At some point he’d managed to convince himself that he was worth more, that he could rise above the lowlifes and creeps that had come to define his life, but he’d been kicked and dragged down there again, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to climb back up.

The frat party was so far removed from the sophisticated soiree where he’d first met Chris. There were no fruity drinks here, just cheap beer and liquor, and the crowd was loud, rowdy, shouting and laughing over a steady, thumping base and music so loud he could barely even think.

But he didn’t want to think, and for that it was perfect.

He didn’t even know which fraternity owned the old townhouse. There were so many of them there -- obnoxious boys, scantily clad girls, drinking and dancing and hanging all over one another. He saw letters occasionally -- on banners, some on people’s shirts -- a triangle after the letter ‘A’, and another symbol, a circle with a line through it, at the end. Paris didn’t know what it meant, but he remembered thinking at some point that if someone put the last symbol inside the triangle, it would make the sign of the Deathly Hallows.

He was already drunk an hour after arriving. He forgot who’d invited him. Someone from his neighborhood, most likely -- another punk kid who’d been invited by someone they barely knew. Paris quickly lost track of the faces he was familiar with, but he didn’t care. No one cared. For the night, he was one of them. They danced, they drank, they played games with shot glasses, and they clumsily sang along to the music blaring out of the radio. No one knew any of the words. Half of them didn’t even know each other’s names.

A few of them snuck down into the basement. Even drunk, Paris knew not to go down there. Alcohol was hardly foreign to him, but the rest of it he left well enough alone. Once or twice he was encouraged to join those who descended the stairs. He smiled wide and shook his foggy head, and stayed upstairs and lost a game of beer pong instead.

But he didn’t mind the roof. He was used to rooftops now, after months of scaling them all across the city. Paris ended up atop the frat house at one in the morning. No one else was there, just him and another boy with hands that wandered everywhere.

He couldn’t feel anything. He could barely even see. He could hear, but very little registered. Up there the music sounded muffled, but the noises of the city made up for it -- a car horn honked, a couple argued on the street below. There was laughter nearby -- was it coming from him? -- and breath that smelled like stale smoke, rustling and movement and he felt numb and so very empty. If he said anything, he wouldn’t remember it in the morning. A cool breeze wafted against his hair, and he forgot all about the boy he was with. He thought of someone else, auburn hair with eyes like sunshine, and he stared up at a black sky spattered with a few tiny, distant stars, and he wished he were among them, far, far away where there was nothing and no one, just ghosts and memories that were both his and not, and the world was as empty as he was.

How he got down from there, he didn’t know. He woke up the next morning sprawled on the couch, with an upset stomach and a splitting headache. He stumbled over plastic cups and inert bodies, finding the bathroom just in time. A girl he didn’t know lay groaning on the floor by the toilet. Paris clutched the countertop and heaved the contents of his stomach into the sink.

He wore nothing more than his underwear and a tank top. Over the course of the previous evening, he’d lost the bracelets on his wrists, his hat, his shoes, his over-shirt, and his pants. His hair was disheveled, his neck was marred by ugly hickeys, and he reeked of booze and smoke and frat boy. He was tired and sore and sick, and looked like the living dead.

He figured it was appropriate. He’d never felt so dead in his life.

When he thought he could stand without falling over, and when his stomach had settled as much as he could hope for, Paris went around the house to find his missing clothing. His shoes were underneath the kitchen table, his hat on the counter among a number of empty or half-empty cups, and his over-shirt was slung over the back of a chair with another shirt he didn’t recognize. His pants were on the stairs leading up to the roof. He never found his bracelets.

He pulled his clothes on, and then went back through the house of nameless people and unfamiliar faces. No one said anything to him as he left. Most of them were still asleep. Paris slipped out, unnoticed and alone, and walked the streets toward home.

Halfway there he took out his phone and sent a text.

‘Sorry,’ it said.

Just ‘Sorry.’

No one texted him back.