"Hey, Carter?" I asked as we walked down Beacon Way. We passed under a streetlight, the yellow hue casting our hazy grey shadows onto the cracked, uneven sidewalk.

"Yeah?" Carter kicked a small stone ahead of us, and it clicked and pinged off the cement. Tree roots beneath the old slabs of concrete had pushed it up in an uneven pattern of tripping hazards, turning the entire sidewalk into a crooked spine running along the street.

"Have you ever gotten drunk before?"

The wind picked up the autumn leaves that had been raked to the edge of a yard and sent them swirling down the street in a miniature tornado. I put my hands into my pockets, tucking my chin down and shielding myself from the harsh breeze.

"No," Carter replied. I'd known what his answer would be before he said it, but it was always a small comfort to know that he never lied about anything, not even something little like this. "You?"

"I used to party a lot...back before I moved here."

Carter was silent for a second. "Why'd you stop?"

I shrugged, kicking the stone he'd been dragging along for the past few blocks and sending it tumbling another couple yards down the sidewalk. "It makes me anxious now."

"You don't strike me as someone to get anxious."

We walked in silence for another minute. My stomach ached and grumbled, reminding me I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and it was now quarter to ten. I'd skipped lunch, and after getting home from school, I'd been too distracted working on my painting.

I'd been interested in art since I was a kid, but I'd gotten more into it lately. Once I had an idea or a vision for what I wanted to create, I couldn't get it out of my head. I needed to capture the emotion and translate it to something visual.

Time had gotten away from me, and before I knew it, Carter was sending me text messages asking if we were still on.

When we reached an empty intersection, I paused and slung my drawstring bag off my shoulders. I reached past the bottle of rum I'd brought and pulled out two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in foil. "Here, eat this before we get there." I handed one to Carter.

He took it without hesitating, crinkling back the foil and taking a large bite. "Why?" he asked through a mouth full of peanut butter. He wiped purple jelly from his chin. "Wait, did you put drugs in this or something? Not that I'm opposed, but—"

"Come on, be serious." I shoved his shoulder, a grin sneaking across my face. "We may be friends, but you know I'd charge you for that sort of shit."

Carter almost looked disappointed. I could tell from his thoughts that even though the idea made him nervous, he'd sort of been hoping I was hooking him up.

"Look, we're going to have some fun tonight, Carter, but we aren't doing drugs," I said as we crossed the street. "It will just help to have something in your stomach before drinking. Keep you from getting fucked up too quick."

I picked at my sandwich as we continued down Beacon Way, wishing I had a pack of hellhounds that I could toss my crust to. Alas, I wasn't a powerful enough goth yet to summon even a single crow, so I was shit out of luck. I took a bite, sucking up the fact that I had to eat the crust myself.

After another block or two, Carter turned at a dark intersection. A couple hundred yards away, a single streetlight flickered like a bug zapper ready to slaughter a wasp. The rest were completely out, but the stars and crescent moon cast enough light between the wisps of clouds to illuminate the rundown ranch houses lining the sides of the street. Boards covered the windows, and stale, yellow tiles flaked off the roofs like peeling dead skin.

I paused, swallowing the last bite I'd taken. Peanut butter stuck in my throat like tar. Suddenly, I'd lost my appetite. "Are you sure this is the right way?" I called as he continued down Ninth Street.

He glanced over his shoulder, slowing his pace. "You said you overheard Andy saying the party was at the green house, yeah?"

I nodded, jogging a few steps to catch up. "Yeah, but I wasn't expecting it to be down here."

"What, scared or something?" Carter teased.

"Fuck no." I'd admit I was a bit skeeved after what happened on the bus that morning when we'd driven this way, but I did not get scared. "I just didn't picture this as an area to have a green house."

"It's not what you're thinking," Carter said.

"You don't know what I'm thinking."

I could tell what he was thinking, though. He imagined I was picturing one of those metal rimmed, arched, glass houses with a garden exploding within it. To be honest, he was right. That was exactly what I'd been imagining, but I wasn't going to let him know that.

"It's just an abandoned house," Carter said with a shrug. "Kids in town like to use it as a hangout for parties cause cops never come by to bust anyone. The street's too much of a mess to deal with and all the houses are vacant now, so no one's around to hear anything."

He paused for a second, glancing at the dark windows of a sickly blue house. Mold crept up its shingled walls.

"I've never been at night," Carter continued, "but my sister, Cathy, used to come here a lot. Anyway, you'll see why they call it the green house soon enough."

We walked in silence for a few minutes. I tried to pick up on Carter's thoughts, but they seemed scrambled and out of focus. I remembered the bus ride this morning and the strange hush that fell over everyone's thoughts as we came this way—almost like an interference. I needed to add a page in my notebook about this. Something about this place was different, I just wasn't sure what.

I glanced at a few of the boarded up houses. Their yards were untouched and overgrown, like no one had set foot in them in years. It struck me as odd that there weren't homeless people squatting around here. Was there something driving people away?

"Why are most of these houses abandoned?" I finally asked.

"People just moving away, I think," Carter said with a shrug. "They've always been like this, at least as long as I've known." He paused for a moment. "You know the Renson Factory?"

I nodded.

"After it closed, there just weren't enough jobs to keep people in the area."

I waited to see if his thoughts would expand on the idea, but it was like he was purposefully avoiding thinking about it, or something was blocking his thoughts.

"Why did it close?" I asked.

Carter let out a long sigh. "There was an accident there. I guess it was pretty big. Some people died. Anyway, after that, the place was shut down."

"What sort of accident?"

"I don't know, Jay. It was before I was born."

The sound of voices and the pounding base of downtempo house music echoed through the night air, interrupting our conversation.

"The green house is right up there." Carter pointed ahead.

"Shit," I said as we approached.

I was shocked I hadn't noticed the place when we drove down the street this morning, but in the day, maybe it blended in with the woods behind it. At night, blue light bled between missing boards and the gaping holes of the windows. A bright white strobe pulsed slowly along with the music, like a heartbeat.

I understood why they called it the green house now. The old shack was painted puke green, but that wasn't the half of it. The building was pressed back against the edge of the woods. Vines crawled out from between the trees, snaking their way around the house like wispy fingers preparing to pull it back into darkness. A tree pressed against the back wall. Over time, it had bent and leaned, growing until it became a part of the house and dislodging a semicircle of roof around it.

Dripping black spray paint tagged what remained of the puke green walls. Most of it I couldn't read, but I distinguished two words: "green house." Just another block down the street, the dark silhouette of the old factory loomed in front of the glowing night sky.

Carter and I paused in front of the house. Where a sidewalk had once been, all that remained now was a path of yellowed grass that had been trodden into the dirt from too much use.

"Should we do this?" Carter asked.

I could already hear the thoughts of my classmates murmuring in the back of my head like a plague, ebbing and flowing out of the house along with the blaring strobes. But no chance in hell I was turning back now. I needed to do this. I needed to finally talk to Lola. She was the key to all of this, and tonight was my chance.

"Let's fucking rage," I replied.

We made our way to the door, and I opened it, letting Carter enter first. I followed, and as soon as the door shut behind me, it was like being submerged in an echo chamber. All of the thoughts and noise around me pounded through my skull, amplifying with resonance. I pinched my eyes shut against the bright flashing lights.

After blinking a few times, my vision finally adjusted so I could take in the room. A worn circular rug the color of dust lay at the center of a dirt floor. A few girls danced on it, swaying in time with the heavy thumps of the music. With the light flashing over their bodies, they looked like zombies moving in stop motion. Coppery beer sloshed from the red plastic cups they held precariously between their fingers. One of them spun a small neon pink hula hoop around her wrist above her head like she thought she was at a rave.

Around the edges of the room, others congregated in small groups, drinking and shouting above the pulse of the music. In the far corner, a beer pong table was set up. Andy and one of his buddies, Hudson, had claimed one end of it, while a pair of girls played on the other side. I recognized them as Lola's friends, Evelyn and Morgan.

Next to them, Lola leaned against the wall, holding a red plastic cup between her manicured fingers as she watched the room like a lioness reigning over her pride. Her dark, curly hair lit up like a halo of fire with each flash of the strobes.

Finally, I spotted an empty spot on the other side of the room near the edge of a table where a few bottles of liquor and mixers were placed, along with a keg of beer stashed in an ice bin below it.

I grabbed Carter by the wrist. "Let's head over there for a minute."

After we pushed our way to the edge of the room, I took my drawstring backpack off and set it at my feet.

I sensed Carter was nervous about the whole thing, but at least we hadn't been accosted by Andy or any of his friends. They were all too preoccupied with their game to even notice us come in.

I snatched two empty cups from a stack on the table and poured some soda into each of them. Then, I took out the bottle of rum I'd brought and added about five shots to one cup and two to the other. I handed the lighter one to Carter. "Drink this."

"Thanks." He took a sip, immediately scowling at the taste.

This is disgusting, he thought.

"It's kind of gross," he said.

I smiled and patted him on the back, rubbing his shoulder like a coach amping up a player for a big game. "That's 'cause I only paid ten bucks for this bottle of rum. But, you'll get used to it, don't worry. Plus, I poured you a light drink for your first."

"What did you do to yours?" He grabbed mine from my hand and took a large sip. Immediately, he coughed and gasped. He passed it back to me. "Fuck, you are going to be wasted."

"That's the plan."

I took a large sip of my own drink, and the two of us stared out into the crowd of students partying in the room around us. I hadn't experimented with it yet, but I wondered if drinking enough would make it so I couldn't hear what they were thinking. I took another drink, the cool liquid burning my throat as it went down.

I can't believe Jenny is hitting on Brandon like that. Didn't he just break up with her best friend?

My mom is going to kill me if she finds out I'm not just sleeping over at Kelsey's house.

Nope. The thoughts were somehow even stronger than the drink I'd mixed myself. Maybe I needed to give it some time to take effect, but more than likely, it was just a theory I'd concocted to distract myself and give me an excuse to drink more before doing what I came here to do.

"So are you going to talk to her?" Carter's voice stirred me from everyone's thoughts.

"Huh?"

"Lola." He gestured towards where she stood at the side of the beer pong table along with her girlfriends. The match had ended, and Andy and Hudson had gone off to search for a new pair of opponents.

I shrugged. "I think I need to drink a bit more first."

"Coward," he coughed under his breath.

I shoved him lightly. "Oh fuck off," I said. "Why don't you go talk to someone, then? Is there anyone you're interested in?"

"There is literally no one here I would date, and you know that."

"Just cause no one else is out doesn't mean—"

"Even if they were, doesn't mean I'd be interested," Carter cut me off. "Do you want to date every straight girl at this school?"

"Fair point."

He chugged the rest of the drink I'd made him, set the empty cup on the table, and dumped in a splash of cola.

"Here." I handed him the bottle of rum, watching to make sure he didn't overdo it.

After he poured in a shot or two, he screwed the cap on and returned the bottle to my bag. "Back to your problem," he said.

Through the haze and flashing lights, my gaze landed on Lola. Her eyelashes fluttered, lowering to hide her eyes as she scanned the room like she was searching for something. What was she thinking? Why couldn't I read her?

"You came here for a reason, right?" Carter continued.

I ground my teeth and took another burning sip of liquid courage. "Fine, fine. You're right. Just...don't do anything I wouldn't do while I'm gone."