I thought about confirming that for myself. As soon as I found Maddy, I was leaving anyway. I could drop her off. I made a mental note to check and see if she was still there before I left, then headed into the next room.
The kitchen was at the far end of the house and doubled as beer central. There was a keg on the floor, tucked into a brown trash barrel that I presumed was filled with ice. Two coolers stood by the sliding door and what was left of several pizzas littered the counter. There were people everywhere—jammed into the small corner between the refrigerator and the pantry, sitting on the counters, leaning against walls. They’d dragged the dining room chairs in so that they could fit twelve people around the table that housed a bunch of plastic cups and what looked like a Ping-Pong ball.
I scanned the room twice looking for Maddy, listening for the sound of her voice. Placing my hands on Josh’s shoulders, I hoisted myself up so I could see, and still no sign of my sister.
“She’s not here,” I said as I glanced at my watch. So much for my back-in-bed-in-less-than-a-half-hour plan.
Josh looked around the room himself before moving toward a kid by the door. “You seen Maddy Lawton around?”
The kid looked at us, then opened the cooler. He dug around in the slush before pulling out a hard lemonade. His eyes met mine and he smirked, no doubt too drunk to figure out that I was not my sister. I remembered him from Maddy’s Spanish class. Keith something or other. He sat next to her and had asked if “she” wouldn’t mind sharing the answers to the oral exam I’d taken. I batted my eyes, and in my best Maddy voice said, “Absolutely, darling. Anything for you,” then wrote the wrong answers down and slid them toward the edge of my desk. He winked and quickly memorized them, never once questioning who I was. Idiot.
Josh caught Keith’s look and clarified. “This is Ella,” he said. “We’re trying to find Maddy.”
“Ha! Well, that explains why she looks like crap,” Keith said as he walked away, not offering to help.
I glanced down at myself, thought maybe I was wearing mismatched shoes or had a big pizza stain on my sweatshirt. I had on an old pair of jeans, a plain gray hoodie, and an equally dull jacket, and nothing was grossly wrong with any of them. Sneakers matched, too, so maybe it was my hair. I’d quickly tossed it into a ponytail before I left, then tucked it up under my hat. Perhaps I should have actually brushed it.
Josh caught my hand as I went to smooth my hair. “You look fine. He’s just being a jerk.”
Not wanting Josh to know how much the drunk kid’s comments hurt, I tried for a smile. I doubted I had pulled it off.
“I wasn’t lying, you look fine,” Josh said again. “You always do.”
I shook my head and watched as Keith stopped a few feet away and bent down to whisper something into a girl’s ear. She turned around, her gaze raking over me. Crap, Jenna.
She walked over, a beer in one hand and the drunk kid’s hand locked in the other. The disgusted scowl she reserved for me was firmly in place. “What are you doing here?” Jenna asked. “I strongly doubt you are on the guest list.”
“Where’s Maddy?” I asked, ignoring her comment.
“She’s gonna flip when she finds out you’re here. God, it is bad enough she has to deal with you at school, but here…” She shook her head and trailed off, unable to find the exact words to describe her hatred of me.
“Whatever. Where’s Maddy?”
I followed Jenna’s eyes to the ceiling and groaned. It would be exactly like my sister to call me in a tizzy, then suck down two more beers and forget about everything. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Jenna giggled, her hand playing with the blond hair at the back of the drunk kid’s neck. She was amazing, could go from mean girl to flirt at a staggeringly impressive speed. Yeah … me, I didn’t find it amusing.