Read Online Party Girl: A Novel by Anna David - Free Book Online Page A

driveway. I have about ten neighbors who could look outside and see me doing my deal with Alex—he pulls up, I hand him an envelope filled with $140, usually in twenties, and he hands me a similar envelope, with two grams, each folded neatly into Lotto tickets—and during my more paranoid moments, I’m convinced that my neighbors make a sport out of watching me buy my drugs and secretly gossip about what a bad person I am. It has to be obvious—I mean, who else but a person buying drugs would exchange envelopes with a Mexican guy she never speaks to?—but either they don’t find my behavior all that notable, aren’t watching me, or simply don’t care because no one has ever uttered a word about it or wandered out while Alex has been there and gazed at me suspiciously.
    Inside, Jane and I each chop up lines from our separate bindles as Stephanie busies herself playing with my makeup. Stephanie’s relationship with our coke snorting is sort of the same as the one my parents have with my smoking. It’s done—rather blatantly, as a matter of fact—but it seems to still go unseen. As I watch Jane roll up a twenty, I pack up my supply for the night. I usually carry the coke I bring out with me in a bullet that’s attached to my car key chain—such a ridiculously asinine move in terms of getting busted that it’s probably akin only to keeping a beer holder on your steering wheel—but I couldn’t resist its cool practicality when I saw it for sale at the Pleasure Chest.
    We do our lines in silence while Stephanie drinks until Jane says that the gasoline smell is giving her a headache and Stephanie suggests we get to Steve’s before it gets completely overrun by fake-titted aspiring actresses looking for their next casting couch.
     
    The party is even bigger than I expected it to be, and during the initial circle that Stephanie, Jane, and I make around the indoor and outdoor bar areas, I feel my skin tingle with excitement over all the promise the evening holds. I remember how much that tingle kept me going when my love affair with partying started back when I was a sophomore or junior in high school. It would build from a sense of excited anticipation I usually had the day of an event—anticipation that was typically far more enjoyable than the actual party—and grow as I strolled around a place, marveling at all the potentially exciting things that could happen to me that night.
    Somehow, seeing the odd celebrity—Nicky Hilton talking to a stylist I once interviewed, Colin Farrell laughing with Selma Blair as they wait in line for the bathroom—only enhances my excitement. If these celebrated people could go anywhere they wanted to and they chose to come here, “here” must really be amazing. It’s usually not until a good hour later, when I realize that nothing’s really happening and probably won’t that the inevitable depression—as heavy and over-the-top as my previous elation—sets in.
    At least we have pockets full of Alex to help us through those periods. It can be challenging to do coke at parties, considering the complications: not showing judgmental nonimbibers that you do it while also not giving it away to the free riders who like to hit you up and ask if you’re “holding” or who gather in the bedrooms, knowing those are the number one choices for people looking for special party rooms. Jane and I opt for the roughly thirty-minute-interval bathroom break routine. There’s nothing that screams “we’ve just been doing drugs” louder than two girls emerging from a bathroom together, usually sniffling, after having held up a line for longer than it could possibly take them to pee, but it usually seems like the lesser of several evils.
    Jane and I seem to be doing a solid job of not letting each other get too paranoid or sensitive or unable to communicate with other people, and I find myself intensely grateful for her companionship. I marvel at those people who seem able to cruise