Finally Her Turn

Chapter 16: Marissa

The rest of my week goes by pretty normally, except for the unerring nightmares which continue to plague my nights and mornings. But thankfully, Devon increased the amount of patrol duties that Tasha and I have been assigned to. Keeping busy always helps. He’s still not forcing me to work closely with Aly and her mates, which I appreciate, though the idea doesn’t bother me as much as it did. I know better than to look directly at the quiet one now.

But once Saturday rolls around, Tasha’s and my day off from patrol duties, things get a bit interesting. She and I spend the early part of the day wandering around the college town, and though it’s not my thing, I humor her as she bounces from shop to shop, buying gifts and souvenirs for her friends and family back home. Knowing that I’ve been incredibly frugal with my expense account because I want to save as much as I can, she doesn’t even pester me about getting anything for my family.

I told her about my mate, but I still don’t want her to know about my dad. I wouldn’t bother with getting him anything anyway. He’d more than likely destroy whatever it was just to spite me for leaving him, and even if he didn’t, it would get destroyed during one of his rages. We can’t ever keep anything nice in the house, other than his precious television which he always somehow manages to avoid damaging. Good thing too because without it, he wouldn’t have anything to do but sit in his old recliner and brood.

Saturday evening is when things really get strange, though. Just after dinner, I get a mind-link from Devon telling me to link up with Alex and a couple of the other guards that I don’t really know, though I vaguely recognize their names when he says them. He wants us all to meet him over at Aly’s apartment, and he instructs me to dress for a college party.

“Did you just get that mind-link from Devon too?” I ask Tasha, cutting her off in the middle of whatever she was just saying. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I add, feeling guilty about always doing that to her.

“No, what was it about?” she asks curiously. “Is he modifying our assignments again?”

“No, he wants me to dress for a college party and then go meet up with Alex and some of the other guys. Why me and not you, though?”

“Oh, a college party!” She’s excited, I can tell by the way her eyes light up. “I’m probably too young, and so is Caleb, so he needs you because you’re old enough to drink. And Alex because … I don’t know. I think he’s only nineteen.”

“To replace Devon over at the apartment, because Devon is also over the legal age to drink,” I realize as it clicks when she says that. Which would also mean that at least one of our charges intends to stay home.

“You’re probably right,” I commend her, reluctantly rising from where I’ve been sitting with her on the couch. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to dress for a party you can’t even attend, would you?”

“Oh, I’ve so got this.”

She hops up and races into my room ahead of me, and is already digging through my luggage when I join her.

“You don’t even own party attire,” she complains, rifling through all my clothes and messing up my careful organization. “This is all too plain and basic. No offense or anything, but I don’t know if I can help you.”

“Thanks for trying, at least. I guess I’ll just change into something fresh and hope for the best.”

She drops the shirts she had in her hands and then comes over to study me for a moment.

“Well, hold on,” she says, still looking me over. “You’re broader and taller than me, but I might have something that will fit. I’ll be right back.”

She hurries out of the room, and I gather up my pouch of toiletries to head into the bathroom to do a quick refresh. I figure if I’m going to be “too plain and basic,” then I should at least be clean and smell nice.

Honestly, the closet that I should be borrowing from is Aly’s. She’s taller than me, but we’re built kind of similarly, at least more similar than me and Tasha. That isn’t going to happen, though. I may not feel quite as strongly about her as I did a week ago, but we’re still not friends. Not in my book anyway.

When Tasha comes back, she’s holding up a garment that looks vaguely like a shirt, except it’s got a lot of extra fabric that I’m not quite sure the purpose of.

“This might work,” she says, holding it up to show me. “Just put on a black tank top and then we can wrap this over it.”

I do as she says and then stand back to let her work on the rest, since I doubt there’s time for me to try to figure it out on my own. I’ve never worn anything that had to be wrapped and constructed the way that this particular garment seems to require, but I will admit that once she’s done with it, I do look a bit more like someone who is headed to a party.

“If you only had pierced ears, I have the perfect earrings to go with this,” she laments as she looks me over. “But oh well. We’ll have to settle for the perfect lipstick.”

I never agreed to any makeup, but she also doesn’t leave me any time to argue before she’s attacking me with a tube of something. She smears it on my lips, stepping back to admire her handiwork, and then she follows it up with some sort of powder. The whole process takes only a few minutes, to her credit.

“Am I done now?” I ask her, hoping that the answer is yes because I’m sure that the other guys are already waiting for me.

“Almost,” she says, and then picks up a glass bottle of something and sprays it all over me. “You’ll like this. After a few minutes, it will adapt to your body’s natural chemistry and bring out the best elements of your scent.”

“What is it?”

“Werewolf perfume, basically. If your mate was here, he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off you, but since it’s just a bunch of humans, they’ll just think it’s a nice, subtle fragrance.”

“If you’d have asked me before spraying it, I’d have told you not to,” I complain, and not to be funny. This “perfume” sounds like something that I don’t want to mess around with.

“I know, which is why I didn’t ask,” she tells me smugly. “You’ll thank me later, though. Parties get hot and sweaty from all the people and alcohol. My perfume will help keep you smelling good and fresh all night long.”

“Okay well, thanks I guess,” I grumble, though I immediately feel bad about it. “Seriously, though. Thanks for the help. I am so out of my element here.”

“I know, but you need to relax and try to have fun with it. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, and something you’ll probably never get to do again. Honestly, I’m a little jealous.”

“I’d switch places with you in a heartbeat,” I tell her honestly. She’s helping me stow my phone and wallet away as securely and discreetly as we can manage.

“I know,” she laughs. “But there. Now you’re ready.”

She walks me to the door, and when we open it, Alex is right outside with his hand raised as if he was just about to knock. The two other guys with him are as I suspected, guys I don’t really know, though I’m familiar with them. They usually cover the opposite side of campus from where Tasha and I are assigned to roam.

“Oh, hi,” Alex greets me, surprised. “Ready?”

“Yep,” Tasha answers on my behalf. “Now I need you to understand, young man. That’s my baby girl, and I expect you to have her back by curfew.”

“Yes, sir,” Alex salutes her playfully, laughing along as I step out and join them in the hallway.

When we get over to the apartment complex, it’s just Alex and I that walk up to Aly’s apartment, and as suspected, he and Devon switch places. Aly and her quiet mate join us, and I guess it's the blonde one who isn’t coming because there’s no sign of him before we start heading back down to the parking lot.

Aly seems weird and tense as we silently walk the few blocks to the party, and even Devon doesn’t seem to be quite himself. He’s usually pretty quiet, but he seems to be trying to keep everyone’s spirits up by thinking up things to talk about with the quiet guy. Matt, I heard Devon say. Maybe I’ll remember it this time.

I don’t know what’s going on that has them all acting strange, but it’s stressing me out even more than I already was. Finally, I can’t take it anymore.

What’s going on? I ask Aly over mind-link.

Matt’s friend Trevor invited us to a party, and we decided to head over there and hang out with him.

But that doesn’t explain why everyone is so quiet and tense.

But what’s bugging you? I add, more to the point.

She turns and gives me a small but surprisingly warm smile before answering.

That obvious, huh? It’s just that Elder Stirling came to visit Tyler, but none of us know what he actually wants, and he kicked us out so they can talk privately. We’re just worried about him is all.

Uh, yeah. Understandable actually, and though now I have more questions than when I started, I’m surprisingly less stressed. Whatever is going on seems to have nothing to do with me. I feel for her, but I’m also glad not to be her for once.

Sorry. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, or he would have called him to somewhere more official, I try to reassure her, though I know I’m not good at it and it probably doesn’t help her feel any better.

She gives me that same little smile again, but doesn’t seem to have anything more to say about it.

We’re approaching a big, white house that must be where the party is happening, judging by all the people around and the music thumping from somewhere inside the house. I’m not looking forward to actually having to go in there if I can already hear it from the sidewalk. I’m guessing that I will be going in, though, otherwise Devon wouldn’t have told me to change.

You stay with Aly no matter what, and I’m with Matt, he mind-links me a couple seconds later, confirming my fears.

Aly and Matt link hands and lead the way through the small crowd gathered on the porch, mostly guys standing around smoking. Once the door opens, that music gets ten times louder, and I can’t help the way that my body reflexively tenses up at the sight of the swarm of people inside. How are we even supposed to get in there?

I feel a hand grasp mine, and glance over to see that it’s Devon. Thank goodness, because anyone else was about to be throat-punched. He seems to be intending to hold onto me so that he can drag me through the swarm, which I appreciate. He’s taller and bulkier than me and can clear a path better than I can.

I thought it would be better once we cut through some of the people, but it turns out to be worse. Much worse. Now people can see me, and I can’t help feeling like they all know that I don’t belong here.

“Let me know when you need to leave,” Aly whispers to her mate.

Uh, now would be good, if I get a vote. I know Tasha wanted me to give it a chance and try to have some fun, but I don’t even know how I’d do that. What do you even do at a party besides drink?

Aly and Matt make their way a little bit deeper into the crowd, and Devon and I fall behind a little bit. I can see the happy couple whispering together again, but so far they’re not really doing anything either, not until Matt leans in to kiss her cheek and then seems to be walking away from her.

“That’s my cue,” Devon tells me, releasing my hand.

But thankfully, Aly comes over to me instead of making me fight my way over to her.

“Let’s dance,” she says, smiling at me and reaching for my hand.

This is one situation where my normal rules don’t apply. I don’t like the touchy-feely stuff usually, but in this case, I prefer it. If we’re touching, then there’s less chance that I’ll lose her.

I give her a nod, not really knowing what else to do. It’s not like I get a choice in the matter. If she wants to dance, I have to go with her. But if she thinks I’m going to dance with her, she has a surprise coming because I don’t even know how to. I’ve literally never danced before. I’ve never even tried, because I’ve never wanted to.

She leads me over to another part of the room that’s one step lower than the rest. Some smooth tiles have been laid out over top of the carpeting to make an area to dance, and I’m glad to see that this spot is less crowded than the rest. Some people are already over here dancing, but most are standing around outside of the perimeter of the makeshift dance floor.

“Do you do much dancing?” Aly asks me as she starts wiggling her body to the music.

“No, none,” I answer her, kind of just standing there and watching her awkwardly.

“Well, we need to fix that.”

She reaches for both of my hands this time, and though my reflex is to step back and push her away, I fight it back. She tries to encourage me to move with her by wiggling my arms back and forth with how she’s moving, but all that succeeds in doing is making me flop around a little. Mostly just my arms are moving, and only because she’s moving them.

“Come on, Rissy. You can do this, and it will actually be fun if you just let go and try to enjoy it.”

“I’m not really a dancer,” I try to protest.

But then I feel another set of hands on me, around my waist this time, and there’s a body moving in and rubbing on the back of me. I freeze and tense up immediately, every bit of me wanting to turn around and pummel this person, but something in me says to wait. Aly’s smiling at the person, and the new scent is potent and sweet. My guess would be it’s a female, and probably a friend of Aly’s.

“Everybody’s got an inner dancer just waiting to come out,” the woman says from much closer behind me than I’m comfortable with.

“Marissa, this is Meredith,” Aly laughs and gestures to the person behind me. “And Meredith, this is Marissa, someone from back home.”

“I figured,” Meredith says, still not moving her hands that are on me. “Move with me, Marissa. Aly and I will show you how it’s done.”

And before I know it, I have Aly rubbing on me in front and this Meredith girl behind me, and it becomes almost impossible for me to resist their efforts to get me to dance because of how close they are. And the next thing I know, I’m smiling and laughing along with them because it feels really silly, and they're being ridiculous about it. On purpose, probably.

Eventually, my movement becomes less robotic and forced, and Aly and her friend decide to step back and give me a little space. I try to keep moving on my own, ignoring my inner critic that tells me I look as ridiculous as I feel. These people are drunk anyway. We all look like wiggling fools, and no one cares. No one will even remember me in the morning.

Meredith seems to like to randomly grab ahold of me and tug on my hand to spin me around. After the second time that she does it, I kind of figure out what I’m supposed to do.

“Yeah, there you go,” she tells me encouragingly.

Then Aly comes over and gets behind me, pushing on me like Meredith was doing before.

“Tilt your hips and lean into it, and then just move along with her,” Meredith instructs, clapping her hands with glee when I give my best effort at doing what she said. “Yeah, you’ve got it. Told you there was a dancer in there.”

I smile back at her, and I must admit that I’m actually having some fun for once and even enjoying Aly's company. Tasha would be so proud.