Paper Alice Read Free Page B

name.
    Then Mum came in. I closed the book and put it away again.

    I’d been to a few of Baddo’s parties before, this one didn’t look as though it was going to be any different from the others.
    â€˜What?’ said the taxi driver, staring, ‘they got the whole suburb there?’
    It certainly looked like it, or everyone between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five at any rate. People were spilling out across the lawn from the open front door and french windows, and music boomed up and down the usually quiet suburban street. Plus there was a mob jammed onto the small circular balcony leading from the upstairs study.
    As I leant forward to pay the driver, a girl who looked vaguely familiar pushed her way out through the front door and hobbled – one heeled shoe off, one on – past the hydrangeas and round the corner of the house. Her mouth wide open in a silent laugh, or scream – you couldn’t tell which.
    Suddenly she stopped, yanked off her remaining shoe and hurled it into the bushes.
    The driver and I stared, waiting for whoever it was chasing her to follow, but nobody did. He snorted.
    â€˜Thanks,’ I said, getting out.
    â€˜You take care, love,’ he said, still glaring at the house. As I’d discovered during the course of the drive, he was Armenian, and the father of five, including two teenage girls. I’m sure if it had been either of them he was driving they wouldn’t have been allowed to get out of the car.
    He drove off, shaking his head. As I walked towards the door a figure detached himself from the crowd on the balcony and leant over the balustrade, stretching his arms out.
    â€˜Hey, look who’s here, it’s Alice! Helloo, Aleece–’
    My heart sank. It was the host, James Baddersley, aka Baddo, who’d obviously already had quite a bit to drink.
    I gave him a tiny wave. ‘Hey Baddo–’
    â€˜Wait!’ He raised his bottle, mock-dramatically. ‘Don’t move! I’ll be right down.’ And he pushed back through the throng and vanished.
    Oh great , I thought, stepping through the door. The front hall and lounge room were packed. I recognised a few faces – probably from his last party.
    Despite living locally, Baddo’s father had forked out for him to live at a residential college at uni and each time Baddersley senior went away to visit his girlfriend in the country, Baddersley junior invited what seemed like the whole college home for a party.
    Dunc and I had gone round the day after the last bash to help him try and clean up before his father got home. We left before Mr Baddersley’s arrival, but Baddo had assured us that his father hadn’t really minded about the trampled flower beds, the stained carpets and the broken glass in the bottom of the pool. Nor about the complaints from neighbours about having to summon the cops at 3 am.
    I couldn’t believe that Baddo was holding another party, and he’d been pretty vague about whether he’d actually been given permission. His father must’ve been mad, I thought, to have even given him the keys of the house. Then again, considering Mr Baddersley’s post-divorce purchases of a hot convertible and an embarrassingly youthful wardrobe of new clothes, he probably had gone a little crazy.
    Now it was too late to escape. With a cry of‘Aleece!’ – his annoying, pseudo-French pronounciation of my name – Baddo was upon me, throwing his arms around me in a gust of sweat, deodorant and beer. I quickly turned my face, not quite in time to avoid his wet lips brushing the corner of mine.
    â€˜Thought you were never,’ he grinned, ‘gunna grace us with your presence!’
    â€˜Well,’ I laughed, edging away a fraction, ‘here I am!’ I really didn’t like him when he was drunk. I glanced around, hoping to spy Dunc.
    â€˜Lover boy was out the back, when I last clapped eyes on him.’