7
Emma
Six Years Earlier
“I promise you, you’re going to meet so many cute guys tonight,” my friend Candace whispers in my ear. “Plus I heard that there are going to be older guys there. Like they’ve already graduated and they have jobs and stuff. Can you believe it?”
She says it like we’ve won some kind of prize. I giggle as she pulls me down the sidewalk in a neighborhood near Stanford. We’re dressed to the nines and already a little tipsy.
I hear the party raging before we even see the house that it’s at. The house is modest at best, a little grey shack that’s barely big enough to hold two bedrooms. Loud music is pumping full-blast out of a pair of giant speakers in the yard; there are tons of people standing and talking over the obnoxiously loud music, and a few girls are dancing.
