1 Chapter 1: Did You Say Party?

--Jamie--

The gun straight at her head. I'm sitting down doing nothing but panic. Even if I did tell him to drop the gun, he wouldn't listen.

My brother, Noah and I just sit still doing nothing about it but watch the horrible scene right in front of our eyes.

"No...Noah." I call out my brother's name with quite a shaky voice.

He looks at me and tries to smile to show me that everything will be alright, but answers afterward, "yeah?"

"Are we gonna lose him?" a drop of tears fall from my left eye down to my left cheek before I wipe it off.

Noah nods and that sets me straight up into folding my arms around my legs and placing my head right between them.

"Okay, that's it, you guys are officially crazy!" A blonde figure takes the remote and switches off the television right in front of Noah and I.

"Hey! We were watching that!" We both yell at Kylie with pouts on our faces.

"You guys were losing it, someone had to do something" She defends herself.

"And that someone is supposedly you?" Noah brightly says with confidence while giving me a stare which I catch directing to the remote on Kylie's right hand. I jump right from the sofa to grab the remote, but she lifts her hands causing me to smack her wrist.

"Nice try," she says with full concentration on me, allowing Noah to sneak up behind her back and grab the remote right away from her palm.

"Ha! It's ours" I stick out my tongue and make a letter 'L' with my fingers and put it above my head.

"Goodluck, catching me loser!" Noah blurts out like a child passing the remote to me.

"Jamie, give it." She orders.

"No!"

Kylie goes to the kitchen looking frustrated and obviously, she's given up. At least that's what we thought.

"Suck on this bitches!" Kylie comes out with an old water gun loaded with water.

Noah and I try to use the throw pillows to shield ourselves from the shots of stinging water coming our way, but the throw pillows were as useless as our defense moves.

"What the hell is going on here?" A lady says with groceries in her hand and a man standing right next to her holding the same.

"Mom! Dad!" All three of us scream out like a bunch of ten-year-old kids that just got busted for crashing a car.

"Care to explain?" She says putting down the groceries.

We all look at each other and spit out the classic, "They started it!"

"Aren't you guys a little too old to be doing all this stuff?

"We're never too old for anything," I say folding my arms then unfolding it trying to place my hand on the arm of the chair, but miss it so instead I fall and land on my face which I admit did hurt but I get up anyway.

"You're never too old for Barney?" He says knowing fully well it will get to me.

"Dad," I whine, "I'm too old for that shit."

"Then act like you are." I pout my lips with his words.

"Dad, Noah and I are mature," Kylie says looking at Noah, but gets discouraged by her words when she sees him fidgeting with a magazine as if he's a child, "point of correction, I'm mature."

"Honey, there's a water gun in your hand and you were the one that was pulverizing them with water," Mom says with a bit of concern to Kylie. "I think its high time you all begin to grow up and act like young adults or teenagers."

Kylie, Noah and I begin to make certain noises and gestures to show how much we are offended.

"Mother, we've grown up already, in fact, if we hadn't grown up, do you think none of us should have gotten our license." Noah tries to defend.

"The truth hurts, honey." We all pout our lips.

"Fine, if we're kids then we're going to march to our bedrooms like kids." Kylie protests then we join her and begin the march to our rooms while singing marching songs.

**********

Noah barges into my room, causing me to collapse from my bed to the floor.

"Noah!" I throw my fluffy white pillow at him getting up to sit on my bed.

"Ouch," he whines.

"What do you want?"

"I came to ask for a request," he says with his usual annoying smirk, "a request that will change your life, a request that'll make you see daylight, a request-" he says dramatically but gets cut off by me.

"Just get straight to the damn point!" I yell

"Jamie!" He pouts his lips, "you suck the fun out of everything"

"What's the request" I pick my cellphone from the bed to check the time.

"Well, there's this old friend of mine that's throwing a party and he's invited me, and you." Noah pauses to look at my disapproving face. "Actually, he invited me and said I can come with any guest.

"Did Kylie refuse your offer?" I asked feeling like a second-class option.

"No, no, why would you think that?" Concern shows in his face while moving to sit beside me.

"Well," I pause to look at my wrist and play with it, "Kylie's the one that's good with parties and shit and I'm not, I never even get invited."

"You just got invited from me." He says trying to show me hope or something.

"I guess," I say a bit disapprovingly. "When's the party?"

"In thirty minutes."

"What? I'm not going" I fold my arms.

"C'mon, you need to get outside." He struggles to unfold my arms and drags me to get up.

"No, it's too soon, and I don't even have a bikini, or friends to talk to there and also, how the hell do you have an old friend in California" He finally stops struggling and lets go off my arms.

"Well, back in Washington when I was in highschool, I had this friend Anthony who moved here and since he's throwing a party and we're around, he invited me and any other person I want to bring with." He presses his lower lips on his upper lips to form a straight line in the middle of both of them, then folds his arms to give me some kind of inquisitive look.

"What?"

"You tell me. You asked a question, I answered and now you have to come with me, please?" He pouts then begins to use the old 'puppy' face trick.

"Fine, whatever." I get up from the bed, walking to my wardrobe which has Jason Derulo posters all over it.

I go through my clothes but I can't seem to find a bikini or anything short to wear.

"Why can't you just ask Kylie for one of her old bikini's your size?" Noah suggests, but the last thing I want to do is borrow Kylie's clothes. She'll give me lectures on how I should manage them and take care of them, and return them by midnight which is a very stupid cinderella reference she gives.

Lucky for me, I happen to find three of my bikinis hiding by the edge of the wardrobe.

"Don't worry about asking her," I pull out my yellow bikini with purple flower designs on it and a smile on my face, "I've got something to wear."

"I'll be waiting in the front porch for you" he leaves the room with those last words.

I have regrets about this. What if something goes wrong? What if I look too fat, or what if I meet a boy and I lose my virginity and get pregnant, drop out of high school, nurse a baby. Or what if I'm just panicking or overreacting.

This is going to be the first party I'm going to in years, I don't remember how to party, I don't think I ever even knew how to party. I have no friends there to talk to, well, I could make friends but I'm not good at doing that. I'd say something stupid or unnecessary to say and chase them right out of my presence.

I take off my clothes and put on my bikini. I get one of my long gray coats and wear it to save my half-naked body for the beach.

I run downstairs skipping some steps into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water and eat one of my pancakes Kylie made, which were on the counter.

Wait, I forgot my phone! I run back up to get it then quickly I catch up to Noah who is waiting for me on the front porch.

"Took you long enough," he says with his hands in his pocket and eyes on dad's car.

"I call the wheels!" I shout knowing exactly what he wanted to say.

"No fair, you always drive." He pouts and folds his arms like a kid. I stick out my tongue at him to blend with the childish play.

"Keys!" He hands them over to me as I demand for it.

We both get into the car, me in the driver's seat and him in the poor babies' passenger seat. The moment I start the car, Noah turns up the radio and Miley Cyrus' Party In The U.S.A. comes on and we both start singing to it and every time she gets to the end of the chorus, Noah and I would recite. "It's a party in the USA!"

I admit the drive to the beach was long, but we eventually got there, and I started having some kind of anxiety attack the moment I saw people my age and my brother's in groups.