Amy 17: Amy's Shiny New Year! free porn video

Amy 17: Amy's Shiny New Year! Copyright 2013 by Amy Komori The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2013 Amy Komori. All rights reserved. Chapter One: Standing on My Own Life likes to punish people for doing dumb things. Not everyone, because obviously some people are rewarded, but life kicks the snot out of most people when they act stupid. So case in point, on this particular Sunday afternoon I was standing in front of this mirror in my bedroom and what I was doing was bobbing one fist across in front of me while the other fist rested on my hip. When my bobbing fist got to a certain point, I'd jerk it back and bend my elbow while sticking out my hip and mouthing the words, "Go Blue Devils." I was trying to do this secretly, so mouthing was all I dared to. Yeah, it was this little move we did during my stupid cheerleading experiment from the year before and there was no real reason for me doing it except for this teensy burst of nostalgia. Okay, so there had been a few things about being a cheerleader I'd actually liked, and doing some of the dance moves was one of them, this one especially. I'd really gotten into it in an almost hypnotized sort of way and was kind of enjoying the feel of my socks sliding roughly on the carpet when there was this hint of movement. "Am-- OH." White hot lightning bolt of complete embarrassment as I froze in mid-hip thrust then turned around with my nerves jingle-jangling all over and my brain popping like flashbulbs going off. Big sister Emily stood there in the door I'd so foolishly left slightly open. "The things you see when you forget to knock," she said. "I was... just..." I didn't know what I was doing. Well, I knew. I just couldn't come up with something to excuse what Emily had already seen. My face felt like someone's mouth would after eating a hot pepper. I don't know. A habenero or a jalapeno. One of those. "Well, I was going to ask if you were ready, but if you've got better things to do..." "No! I'm ready." My voice was shaky and my hands even more so as I grabbed my puka shell necklace from the dresser. I finger-fumbled with the screw and couldn't get the threads to match up. Emily came into the room and sidled up behind me to do it for me. Her fingers brushed the back of my neck. I kind of shied from them. "God, you need to knock," I told her. Gooseflesh. "The door was open." "Barely." "What's knocking region? Two-thirds open? One half?" "Any fucking time I'm in here!" "Such language." I grabbed a hoodie from my closet, this red one I favored lately and zippered myself into it then followed Emily down the hall to the living room where her oh-so-serious boyfriend Snowboard Boy was waiting. We were all going to the movies that afternoon, a rare treat for me because now that I was a high school kid and Emily was a college student with a boyfriend and this whole new social sphere--plus her own place--we didn't do that much together. And we missed each other a lot. Sitting in the backseat I tried not to think so much about what just happened. I mean, at least she hadn't walked in on me doing this other trick I knew and had been doing a lot lately. It was something I'd gradually figured out and it felt really good but I didn't want to think about it at the moment. I looked out the window and halfway listened to Snowboard Boy as he asked me lame questions about my life and Silly Monkey, my band. Don't get me wrong--Snowboard Boy was a super nice guy and really cool and I was happy for Emily but I was just distracted by a lot of my own life things, as usual. Like how I knew this big secret about Heidi Fleegleman, (just a junior, a year ahead of my friends and me and already heiress apparent to the keys to the high school kingdom), and she knew one about me. She didn't know my deeper secret, that I was only about three years old as a girl with this whole other be-dicked life that was more or less like a dream on waking to me these days. But knowing what I knew about Heidi sure made life around Delacroix High a whole lot more interesting. Okay, it was interesting enough as it was, probably too much so. Not classes and not the whole social thing other than with my own little group of friends I loved like sisters (and one of them even more so). But that group of friends I had was endlessly fascinating to me now. We were all in tenth grade now and they occupied almost all of my thoughts. I dreamed about them now a lot, too. It was funny, but before I turned into a girl--I mean not just my body, but my brain and soul and all that shit, too--I hardly ever dreamed about friends. I couldn't remember what I dreamed about, really. Now hardly a night went by when I didn't have some surreal adventure with Sarah or dream about getting into a screaming match with Michelle Cho (which always woke me up with my heart pounding and this stupid feeling I should call her on the phone and apologize). During the day, I had to learn from them, too. Back in the fall of my ninth grade year, around the time I fucked things up majorly by becoming a cheerleader, I'd made up my mind to just become the girl everyone assumed I was anyways. To me, that meant study and thinking and finally, just being. I watched Sarah, who I considered way girly and I watched Gina and Michelle, who were kind of tomboyish. There was Lena, in the middle, Dallas back on the girlier side. My major influence, big sister Emily, was all over the map. My friends and I hung out, we did things together, we talked about all kinds of stuff and I internalized everything. That's basically what I'd been doing now ever since and while I wasn't there all the way yet, I'd really changed a lot in the interim. Some of it for the better, some of it Mrs. Komori and the faculty and staff at Delacroix High would think for the worst if they knew the half of it. But like I said, there was also Delacroix High, which was like a big test kitchen. Learning things weren't so black and white and so us versus them really opened my eyes to a larger world of being a girl in the United States as the twentieth century closed out. But in another sense, it was us versus them. For real. Because Heidi hated my fucking guts. Everyone loved her. She was mostly nice to them all, I had to admit. But she wanted to fuck me, which destroyed her self-image, so she wanted to kill me, too. And as for me, whose self-image had been super colossally destroyed and was in the process of major rebuilding? I was still way attracted to her, but still in love with Gina. I'd been carrying those twin burdens around in my mean little heart for what seemed like forever. Again, like I said... interesting. Well, at least to me it was. Anyways, it was Christmas vacation, or as or our school would have it officially, Winter Break. Christmas had come and gone and New Year's was almost here. Emily and Snowboard Boy were living together, she was studying art and working part-time at this sushi restaurant (she told me I could get a job there when I was old enough by our state's laws, which caused us both to smile at our shared secret) and because they felt bad for me being left out and not dating and all that good shit, they offered to take me to see this movie called "Dogma," which I wasn't all that interested in. Actually, a lot of Snowboard Boy's friends had already seen it and he was all antsy and nervous to check it out for himself because they were all way into Kevin Smith. "It's by the director of 'Chasing Amy,'" he was telling me as he drove, talking to me like I was a little kid, which he tended to do. "I don't suppose you've--" "I know. I saw that with Sarah. It was pretty good." "You've seen 'Chasing Amy?'" I frowned and stared out the window to watch the trees go by. Being condescended to really sucked. So I in my most bored drawl I explained the situation. "We rented it, dude. Comic book guy falls in love with a lesbian. I've seen 'Clerks,' too. You may or may not be able to understand this, but Sarah and I watch real movies sometimes. Not just episodes of 'Animaniacs' or whatever you're thinking." Snowboard Boy abruptly shut up like he needed to concentrate on the road and traffic and fuck all. I looked up and Emily was giving me one of those looks like she wanted to slap me. I was used to those looks. Although it was true Sarah and I spent a lot of time watching "Animaniacs," as well. By the time we hit the theater we were all chatty again and it was funny to see Emily and Snowboard Boy visibly fighting themselves not to hold hands. She'd changed a lot, too. From what I remembered back in my dickdom days, she wasn't much on public displays of affection. But over the course of her time with Snowboard Boy, she'd suddenly developed this romantic streak. It was cute. If I teased her about it, she'd narrow her black eyes and spit out something really cutting and mean to me, so I knew she was the same old Emily, only with a little gloss on her personality now. She was growing up, too. Snowboard Boy bought his ticket, and Emily bought two, one for her and one for me. I didn't have much money. All I got was this allowance from Mrs. Komori. I had no finances. I bought lunch at school and sometimes pitched in with Gina to buy weed but even that was super rare because we really couldn't afford it and anyways, we were sometimes lucky enough to have it offered to us for free at parties. At least someone would pass something around and if we were quick enough we could join the circle for a puff or two. Then Snowboard Boy bought a big ass bucket of popcorn which was for him and Emily and maybe I'd get a handful or two if they remembered me in the dark, where really my job was to be little sister and keep to myself. When we came out of the theater a couple of hours later, I felt kind of barfy. Alanis Morissette as God? I just kind of wanted to forget it and looked wistfully up at the sign that read "Toy Story 2." Fucking Buzz Lightyear, why couldn't you fly down and save me? We went to a Chinese buffet called, funnily enough, simply Super Buffet, which advertised 150 items but really had 161. I knew this because Sarah counted them one time. The food was cheap, the bathrooms were disgusting, but you could sit for an hour and eat whatever you liked including pizza and French fries (everyone gave me shit for eating French fries at a Chinese buffet but holy shit they were so delicious!). My barfiness was gone and I just wanted to eat a lot of noodles, but I had to keep engaging in conversations with Snowboard Boy, who wanted to get into this deep theological discussion about some of the stuff Chris Rock talked about in the movie and he was trying to do with me of all people. Whatever theology I'd ever possessed kind of flew away with whatever it was that turned me into a girl and I didn't really want to relive my distant past as a Sunday School attendee. That person was buried inside me and his nutrients had contributed to the beautiful flower I'd blossomed into. The theology of the life cycle or some stupid shit like that. Plus, it was way obvious he didn't know what he was talking about, just using the points from the movie and making things up as he went along. Like dorm room philosophy or something. Which was pretty appropriate, I guess, because that's how the movie seemed to me, just a lot of pseudo- clever nonsense that sounds great to guys when they're drunk but doesn't really impress anyone else. He knew not to try this talk with Emily because she was so much smarter than he was, or Kevin Smith, or me. Only she couldn't take this stuff seriously at all and would keep making mean jokes if he tried it. So my brilliant big sister, who could have ended this whole ordeal with a single sentence that would have shrunk Snowboard Boy's nuts to the size of atoms just sat back and just watched as the two of us dueled. I had to give Snowboard Boy credit for trying to show his girlfriend he could indulge her hard-headed little sister. And he wasn't treating me like a child anymore, so that was a plus. I watched him over our plates of fried rice and chow mei fun and thought, I guess he's a nice guy in his way, and he's amazingly good looking. A lot better looking than I ever was as a guy. And Emily adored him, which was fine by me because she also wore the pants in that relationship. That was an Emily constant. She was always in charge. In charge of herself, in charge of him, in charge of me. And always would be. She looked at me and smiled slyly and I knew she was thinking about catching me doing my stupid cheerleader dance. Chapter Two: All Our Contributions "A New Year's party?" Sarah asked, looking kind of skeptical. "Yeah!" Michelle told her. "An actual New Year's PARTY!" Sarah's skepticism became worry, which she flashed at me from her big green eyes. "Do... you wanna go?" "Of course I wanna go," I said. We were at Gina's, the whole Silly Monkey crew plus Michelle, who wasn't in the band but was my skating friend and co-conspirator. The coolest thing about her these days was I was now taller than she was by at least an inch. She would forever be the shrimp of our group, even if I would forever be the youngest. "I'm going," Gina said from behind her drums. For a moment I had a flash of a midnight kiss, sealing us together forever, but it was just that. A flash. A little blossom of warmth in my tummy for something that would never happen. When you're a high school kid, even in a college town where weekend and holiday parties are a constant, you don't have too many opportunities to cut loose and mingle with the cool kids. The townies and people in bands and all of that. While we were also people in a band, we didn't have too many shows under our collective belts. Okay, we had like five. More than a year as a band and we'd played in front of people exactly five times. So going to this party would serve multiple purposes. "Getting super drunk, meeting people, dancing all night and maybe, if we're lucky, making some connections to play more shows," I said, listing all those purposes for Sarah who had asked aloud why we were even considering doing this when every time we went somewhere as a group terrible disasters ensued. She didn't look convinced. Her freckled face still troubled, she kind of whispered, "Okay..." "But you have to wear a dress!" Michelle said, pointing at me. "I'll wear one if you wear one," I said. "Fuck that. Just you. You and Sarah or whoever. But you. Mostly I just wanna see you in a dress." "You've seen me in a dress. I wear dresses all the time. Why do you wanna see me in particular in a dress?" "You always look like a boy in a dress. Like a boy who likes to wear dresses. Especially now you have Ramones hair." "Dyke." "Whore." We teased each other like that because a lot of people considered Michelle gay, when actually she was probably the straightest girl I knew, and those same people still had this idea I was kind of available thanks to stupid rumors that started back in junior high. That's one major thing I'd learned since my change: girls were fucking mean to each other and they loved to talk about you behind your back and stick you with reputations. But if Michelle joked about it, it was okay because I could do a flatspin and she couldn't, and like I said, I was now taller than she was. I gave wearing a dress a little thought and then told her my decision. "Look, if I feel like wearing a dress that night, I'll definitely wear a dress. But if I don't or it's really cold I'm wearing jeans, dude. And anyways, if anyone should wear a dress, it should be you because I have never, ever seen you in one." Michelle smirked. "Maybe." "Definitely." "We'll see." "We will. We'll see you in a dress." "Your boyfriend Patrick's gonna be there, by the way." "Why the fuck will he be there? He's our age, dude. We shouldn't even be there, and he's going to be?" "I fucking invited him, that's why. I'm not just friends with you. I'm friends with him, too." "Then there's no fucking way I'm wearing a dress." "Look, I'll wear one for you if you wear one for me. And dear, sweet Patrick, who's pining away for your little body." "STILL?" Gina asked. She had this big smile with her mouth wide open. Michelle nodded. "Always." "Oh my god," Gina said, laughing. Now I was starting to get mad. Before it was just fun teasing, but mentioning Patrick was a low blow and I felt my temper ticking over. I had to stop it, so I boomed, "Let's practice a song before we freeze to death!" "Yes!" Lena said, getting off the metal folding chair she'd been sitting on while changing a string on her guitar. Michelle took her place and made some comment about Lena's ass having warmed the chair up nicely and we played a few songs while I thought about New Year's Eve and being caught in between Patrick and Gina. I mean, maybe Michelle was just joking about Patrick still liking me. But then again, maybe she wasn't. I didn't like that idea at all. Now I was pretty sure I didn't want to go, but after making such a big deal out of convincing Sarah there was no way I could back out. Trapped again by my stupid mouth. Chapter Three: And I Don't Wanna Be the One to Drag You Down So, on the night of New Year's Eve, which was totally below freezing, we left from Michelle's house with her brother and he dropped us off at Bob's for the party. Amazingly, Michelle had followed through on her promise to wear a dress. It was a huge deal for her. It was practically the only time I'd ever seen her looking embarrassed or off her game. All because of some stupid material cut in a different way than what she was used to. This baby blue satiny looking dress just above her brown knees and some black satin-finish mary janes. I was wearing that red hoodie again, a black short-sleeved Metallica tee over a gray longsleeved tee and some saggy boy jeans with Vans I'd written on--just stupid stuff like people's names. I really should have been wearing a heavy coat over all of that but I figured we'd be inside the whole time so my total exposure to below freezing temps would be just a few seconds sprinting from car to door and from door to car. Gina was dressed almost exactly like me, Sarah and Dallas in long skirts. Dallas looked desperately unhappy, but Sarah just looked cute and curious. She was fretting a little, though, biting her nails when she thought we weren't looking. "Relax," I told her. "It's not like we're going to some total shithole or something." Bob's house was a total shithole. The guys who lived there were so far beyond being slobs, they'd have to invent a whole new term to describe their filth. The yard was threadbare, the house itself some rinky-dinky little Cape Cod with a big picture window, but the paint was this dull yellow and there was mud splashed up on the lower parts of the sides becase the shrubs were dead or dying and it had rained a lot that fall and winter. The guys had their cars parked on the dirt driveway and on the street blocking the mailbox. So we knew going in we were in for a real treat. But the exterior, of course, was only half the story and you totally should judge a book by its cover. And you know what really fucking sucks about being a girl? Sitting to pee at gas stations and restaurants. I mean, as a guy, you just whip out your hose and spray away. But as a girl, you have to drop trou or hike up your skirts and then risk skin contact with whatever disgusting surface presents itself. Well, at Bob's the bathroom was piled with all kinds of metal parts for fuck knows what and the toilet seat was dozens of shades of brown. You'd have to clean it with a paint scraper. "Get ready to hover," Gina told me as soon as she came out. She'd arrived ready to pee and the bathroom was her first stop. She looked at me now with her freckled face kind of green and she stuck out her tongue. "That bad, huh?" I asked and she grabbed my hand (palpitations) and dragged me in there. Cramped and disgusting. I almost vomited. "So much for getting drunk," Gina said sadly. "Fuck, dude," I whimpered, feeling almost about to cry. "I haven't had anything to drink since tea at dinner and I don't think I can hold even that all night!" "I know!" Sick to my stomach and deathly afraid Patrick would be out there, I went back to the living room, which was covered with a layer of old beer cans and ash trays. A brand new television stood on one side like that monolith from "2001," a total visual incongruity in the riot of dude- sleaze everywhere else. On the other side, a sweet band set-up. Full- on drums, Marshall amps, guitars on stands. A Fender Jaguar, a P-Bass that made my mouth water. All I'd wanted for Christmas was a bass of my own, but they were expensive and even as generous a soul as Mrs. Komori had, she knew me too well than to drop major bucks on something like that. I'd burned her way too often the year before. I flopped down on the saggy-ass sofa next to Sarah and we both felt incredibly out of place. The guys were already pretty drunk, too, having started sometime early that afternoon. They'd been playing on and off all day. Sarah's obsession, the Guitar Genius, was in the kitchen but he soon came in, ignored both of us like we were part of the d?cor, and took his guitar and began tuning. Lena was instantly on him, asking him questions about alternate tunings and pretty soon they were into this technical guitar talk. Sarah watched them both intently despite my best efforts to monopolize her attention and stave off my own boredom. "You wanted to come," Gina said to me. "Me?" Then someone started pounding on the door. "Answer that someone!" came a booming voice from the kitchen, more than likely Bill, the Cream Corn Superstar drummer. No one moved. Heaving a sigh, I got up and kicked over an empty beer can that was who knows how old. It was still rolling around as I opened the door and saw Patrick and some of his skater buddies looking shriveled by the cold night air despite their knit caps and heavy coats. "Oh," I said. "Come in. We're having the best time ever and you're just in time for fondue." "Fondue?" Patrick said as he shuffled in. One of the guys with him snickered and asked, "What's fondue?" "Jane Fondue," said another one and they laughed, and the room became heavy with boyness. I glared at him from under my heavy black bangs and sank back onto the sofa, the air in the room having dropped a few degrees. Oh fuck, I thought, let me just survive until next year. Chapter Four: I Can't Pretend It's Alright An hour later, Cream Corn Superstar still hadn't played a note, people were starting to get drunk and instead of Sarah, I was sitting next to Patrick who acting all kinds of nervous, talking too much, jerking and twitching like some kind of encephalitis was eating away at his brainstem. He had a can of Coors in his hand and sipped from it making these loud bubbly slurpy noises from the foam. "You're not drinking?" he asked for the tenth time at least. "Looks like," I told him. "So, how's skating these days?" "Too busy to skate." "No! How can you ever be too busy to skate?" "Dude, you don't know?" "Obviously." "I got this part time job workin' for my dad's store. Just like for the Christmas season so I can buy presents. But they haven't cut me loose yet so I'm still hanging in there." "Your dad has a store?" "Napa Auto Parts." "I did not know that." Nor did I care, really. Then I cringed, deathly afraid he was going to do something stupid like start telling me about all the things he did at this so-called job. Lucky for me, Patrick looked around kind of distractedly and asked, "Are these guys gonna play or what?" "Looks like or what." "This party fucking sucks!" I heard Michelle shout in the kitchen. Then a mix of voices as she and whoever else was in there bantered back and forth about just how many parties she'd ever been to for her to be able to pass such a judgment. Sarah appeared out of nowhere and whispered to me, "I want to go home." "We just got here," I said. But I was ready to go home, too. Bob and Michelle came into the living room and Michelle went to the wall of CDs and started looking through them to find something for us to listen to before Cream Corn Superstar started playing again. Pretty soon she and Bob had the Kinks coming out of the stereo. Occasionally, Guitar Genius would play along, drowning out the real music with his almost-perfect approximation of it. Like I said, he was a guitar genius. "Komori," Bob said, suddenly taking notice of me. "What's up?" "I don't know," I said in complete honesty. "Word." "Okay, turn that shit down," Bill said, coming into the room with a beer and taking his place behind the drums. "The Kinks, dude," Bob told him and went to his bass. "You might try having some respect." "Dude, don't talk to me about the Kinks. That's my fuckin' CD. You know what I mean." Michelle turned the volume the wrong way, almost deafening us before she found the off-switch. Then she threw herself down on the sofa beside Patrick and me and almost collapsed the whole stupid thing. "Watch it!" Bob warned. "That thing's an antique. Worth more than your mom's car." "Does it even have springs?" Michelle asked. She bounced up and down, raising dust and causing this crazy squeaking like someone was choking a dog's squeeze toy to death in a fit of rage. "Maybe." Patrick got up to join his friends in this mosh scrum or something so now the sofa was like Girl Zone, with all of us sitting there in a row while Cream Corned Superstar performed what was a basically a private show for us, but was really a glorified practice session. I felt cramped and uncomfortable and my ears felt like they were about to bleed. So this was New Year's Eve, huh? Patrick and the skaters clapped loudly and whoooooo'd after every song and there was a lot of dicking around between them and the band, which was appropriate because they all had dicks. The more this went on, the more convinced I became I was better off vaginal but also that we were trapped in this junky little house with no hope of escape (I'd freeze to death before I could get downtown where there were probably a lot of those mini-van cab things the drunk college kids took home, puking all the way), moving from tiny room to tiny room in various groups and lineups and would be for life. Michelle hovered around Bob until I started feeling sorry for her. It was so weird seeing her in lovesick mode, especially dressed that way. Someone had stolen the real Michelle and replaced her with this wussy-ass phony and it confused me. And I couldn't get comfortable. My pee urgings weren't that great and I'd only had a single sip of beer. I just felt like I wasn't in my place. When the guys started passing around some pot, I declined. "Check out Straight Edge over here," Bill said. I glared at him, but he wasn't looking at me. Lena and Gina smoked it up and started to get really silly, plus they were drunk. How they could stand their repeated trips to that awful, disgusting bathroom I had no idea, especially considering it was Gina who put me off drinking that night in the first place. So I just talked with Sarah and Dallas while everyone got weirder and weirder and I stayed the same. Just before midnight we turned on the TV and found this big celebration in Times Square, way off in New York City. Lots of cheering people in overcoats. Bob and Guitar Genius started talking about how in a minute or two the world would end because of something with computers. I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, but I started thinking about the whole midnight kiss thing, so I carefully maneuvered myself next to Gina just in case. Then came the countdown and a lot of screaming, but no one got kissed. I gave Gina a quick glance, but she was jumping up and down in place. Then I saw Michelle standing next to Bob and looking kind of forlorn herself. With a huge feeling of relief I saw Patrick was over next to Guitar Genius. I turned and there was Sarah. I hugged her and she got all twitchy and her face turned pink. "Happy New Year, Sarah," I said. "I love you." "I love you, too," she said with this big grin. I quietly told her, "Go get a kiss from Guitar Boy." Her eyes went a little wider, but then she shook her head no. "Why not?" I asked. "Because..." I let go of her and gave her my harshest disappointed look, and she playfully pretended to slap me. When I acted like she'd really hurt me, she got scared and started apologizing and I had to reassure her everything was cool and my face was totally uninjured from such a timid brush from her fingertips she wouldn't have fazed a gnat or changed the direction of a dandelion seed. "IT'S 2000!" Bill screamed and threw himself on the nasty floor and started doing this obscene looking hip thrust thing while balancing himself on one arm. Bob and the other guys started doing it and we girls got the fuck out of there into the kitchen. Then Bob and Michelle went out in the backyard and started shooting off bottle rockets. Sarah and I watched from the kitchen window, even though Michelle kept opening the door and letting in a blast of Arctic air. "Get your ass out here," she kept telling me. "It's not any fun without you!" "Fuck, no!" I protested. "It's too cold!" "You're such a fag." I cut my eyes at Dallas, whose brother actually was gay. She looked kind of slit-eyed and unhappy. She saw I was looking at her and shook her head. Michelle sneered at us and slammed the door, and soon we heard the whistle-report of more bottle rockets and Bob's laughter booming. You could hear a lot of POP POP POPs, either more fireworks a few blocks over or else someone shooting guns down in the 'hood, which was pretty close and just across a major boulevard from where we were. So I grabbed Patrick's arm and told him, "Come on, dickhead." "What?" Of course once we got outside the air stung like crazy and I realized it was a stupid idea to let Michelle get to me like that. She laughed maniacally as she and Bob worked to light another bottle rocket. Their hands were too cold and trembly and the little orange flame from the lighter danced uncertainly. "OH JESUS IT'S COLD AS FUCK OUT HERE!" drunk Patrick shouted, his voice booming in the night. "Hold it down," Michelle said. The bottle rocket went up with a whizz then BANG! Michelle clapped. "Let me do one," I demanded. I looked around for the bottle rockets and didn't see them anywhere. Not on the picnic table, not on the little metal table, not on the battered grill. "Where are they?" "Here," Bob said and handed me a crumpled paper bag. The bottle rocket sticks stuck out like straws to pick. You know, long straw, short straw. Only they were all the same length and magenta. "Do you... do you have a bottle?" I asked, looking at him kind of dubiously. "God, what a pussy," Michelle said. "We were just tossin' them," Bob explained. "Light it, let it rip!" I frowned, but now I was determined to go through with it. And probably shoot the stupid rocket right into my skull through an eye socket. "Give Patrick the lighter," I said. Patrick took forever to get the lighter actually lit and by then I was trembling all over. My fingers hurt, my breath came out in clouds. It actually felt good for a second when Patrick roasted part of my hand trying to find the little green fuse, but he was coming pretty close to setting my sleeve on fire, so I grabbed his wrist with my free hand to steady him. The fuse sparked and I danced away then threw the bottle rocket as hard as I could, which turned out not to be nearly hard enough. It zipped right back at all of us and we scattered just in time for the POP! "You almost killed me!" Michelle gasped. Her black eyes were wide with wonder. Her bare knees were shaking, but that was mostly from the cold. Now I was laughing and needing to pee. "Lemme do another one!" I shrieked. "No, it's too cold," Patrick said, white vapor catching someone's security light and making a cottony halo in front of his face. "Go back inside, then," I said. "It's my turn anyways, dude," Bob told me and took the lighter from Patrick. "You can light me this time, Komori." "That's what I'm talkin' about," I said and grinned devilishly, Patrick totally forgotten. So we did that for a while, just zipping off bottle rockets until the cold got to us and I looked around to see Patrick had fled for the warmth of the house. No wonder we hadn't heard his voice for a while. We went back inside, too, and I saw from the clock it was around one. Things had degenerated into a lame game of quarters around the sticky kitchen table, and that killed Lena and Gina both. They got up stumbling and went somewhere else in the house, their trail marked by the sounds of cans rattling, thumps against the wall and giggles. Patrick was sitting next to me, and I turned to say something to him about how I was going to go crash with them when the next thing I knew, he had his hand between my legs, finding his way up to my crotch as he leaned in with his mouth open and his tongue coming out like that mouthy-tongue jaw thing from the "Alien" movies. "Whoa!" I warned him, shying out of my chair. His other hand brushed against my boob and I took a step back. My chair toppled with a loud bang, Patrick flopped out of his and landed on the floor. I made a break for the living room, leaving a lot of commotion in my wake. But Patrick was swaying to his feet, stumbling after me, saying, in this horrible drunk croak, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!" "We're just friends, dude," I told him. "I know, I know. I'm so sorry, Ayumi. I just... I'm just..." Then he turned away, went outside and yakked in the bushes. Bob brought him back in by the shoulders, steered him through the other drunks into the living room right up to the sofa where he suddenly just collapsed like a stuffed toy animal. Out just like that. "Are you okay, Amy?" Bob asked. Well, I had been until he asked me that. I just nodded, my eyes tearing up from anger, confusion and embarrassment and I fled back to one of the bedrooms where it was just Dallas and me sitting on Bob's bed. Below us on the floor was this dark lumpy shape that was Michelle totally passed out, kind of curled into the fetal position. She looked so tiny and innocent and dead to the world. I wiped my eyes with my hoodie sleeves. Now that I was away from all the madness, I felt more like laughing, though. "Where are Gina and Lena?" I asked. Dallas just smiled and shrugged. "Oh fuck," I said, my voice a bit jagged. "This has been the worst New Year's party ever." "I'm so tired," Dallas said. I took one of Bob's pillows and put it in my lap. The pillow smelled like Bob. "Go to sleep, then." She shook her head no. "I didn't get a midnight kiss," Dallas said. "Neither did I," I told her. I was starting to fall asleep. Somnambulistic mind-state activated, no defenses left. Bound to say anything. I wanted Dallas to shut up and just let me drift away. "Did you want one?" "Yeah..." My eyes closed. I tried to flutter them open but sleep was starting to knead me like bread dough, reshaping me into Dream Amy. Or was that something I was hallucinating? "Me, too. I had someone all picked out, but it never happened." "Me, too..." "Michelle didn't get hers, either." "Bob?" "Yeah. I hate to tell her--" "He's not her boyfriend, is he?" "No. She kinda thinks he is, but..." Dallas sounded strangely close, almost inside me and very far away at the same time. All was black. Sleep was almost through with me and I'd be part of it for hours and hours. "Who did you want to kiss you?" "Who?" "Yeah, who?" I may have told her exactly who. I may have said Gina, I may have said Heidi. I may have lied and told her Patrick. God. Patrick. That was one situation I didn't want to deal with. The theme of December--people making me feel small, people making me feel naked. Just when you could almost forget someone was a guy, he had to go and remind you in the worst way. And the stupid part was, he probably wouldn't remember doing that the next day, lucky him. I'd remember and the next time I saw him I'd feel that hand coming up to where I was most vulnerable. Where it had no business being. Well, fuck him. I'd get even at the skate park, when the weather was better... When he least expected it... So this is how things were now. A few years ago, in that fleeting pre- life, I'd have been one of those dudes on the floor. This party probably would have been a total blast. Only, I just didn't feel like that anymore. I had changed inside and out. That was why I felt so weird all night, I realized in the twilight of consciousness. But I'd decided a year ago I couldn't hold onto those boy-life tatters, that I had to let them blow away in the wind, take this as a fresh start. A year into becoming. Another year of becoming just starting. What would happen? Would I ever understand the world? Would anyone ever love me the way I loved them? With the one little bit of consciousness I had left, I found myself kind of babbling, "I just... I just... I don't know who I want to kiss. I only know who I want to be." Then Dallas said, "Amy, it's 2000. It's a whole new year. You can be anything you want in it." And that was the last I knew of New Year's.