Chapter 1: The Party That Ate the Semester
The basement reeked of stale hops and something older, something like regret. Levi Pryce stood with his back pressed against a support beam that had probably witnessed a century of bad decisions, clutching a red Solo cup filled with keg beer that had gone warm twenty minutes ago.
He took a sip anyway. It tasted like pennies and disappointment.
The strobe lights overhead cut through the darkness in jagged flashes, illuminating fragments of the chaos around him. A girl in a crop top was doing body shots off a guy who looked like he'd already forgotten his own name. Somewhere near the stairs, two frat bros were engaged in what appeared to be a screaming match over whose turn it was to shotgun a Pabst. The pool table in the corner sagged under the weight of empty cups and at least one person who might have been sleeping or dead.
Levi checked his phone. Forty-seven minutes since he'd arrived. Forty-seven minutes of standing in the same spot, nursing the same drink, wondering if transferring to Westbrook University had been the single worst decision of his twenty-one years on this planet.
His father's voice echoed in his head, crisp and disappointed. You're throwing away everything we've worked for. His mother's silence had been worse. The way she'd looked at him across the dinner table, like she was already grieving the son who'd chosen to walk away from molecular biology and the Ivy League and everything that was supposed to matter.
He'd told them he needed a change. What he hadn't told them was that he'd spent three years at Cornell feeling like a ghost in his own life, acing exams he didn't care about, attending parties where he understood every cultural reference and still felt like he was reading a script in a language he'd never learned to speak.
Westbrook was supposed to be different. Messier. Realer.
So far, it just felt sticky.
A body slammed into his shoulder, and beer sloshed over the rim of his cup, soaking into the sleeve of his Henley. The guy didn't even look back, just kept pushing through the crowd toward the stairs. Levi watched the wet stain spread across the gray fabric and felt something inside him deflate.
This was a mistake.
He was already calculating the fastest route to the exit, mapping the path through the crowd like he used to map organic chemistry reactions—methodically, efficiently, with no room for error—when a laugh cut through the noise.
Not just a laugh. A foghorn. Low and loud and completely unselfconscious, the kind of laugh that didn't care who heard it or what anyone thought. It came from somewhere to his left, and Levi turned toward it before he could stop himself.
The girl was impossible to miss. Close-cropped hair, electric blue against skin the color of burnished copper. She wore a mesh top over a black sports bra, ripped jeans that looked deliberate rather than accidental, and combat boots that had seen actual combat, if the scuffs were any indication. She was dancing like no one was watching, except everyone was watching, and she clearly knew it and didn't give a single shit.
Their eyes met.
Levi felt the collision of it, something sharp and unexpected, like missing a step on a staircase. He looked away first. Took a long pull of his warm beer. Pretended to be fascinated by the peeling wallpaper that hung off the walls in curling strips.
Too late.
The girl was already moving toward him, cutting through the crowd like a heat-seeking missile. People parted for her instinctively, the way water parts for the prow of a ship. She stopped about a foot away, close enough that Levi could smell the coconut shampoo she'd used and something underneath it, something chemical and clean, like a laboratory.
"You look like someone killed your dog," she said.
Levi blinked. "What?"
"Your face." She gestured vaguely at him, encompassing his entire existence with a wave of her hand. "It's doing this thing. Like you're at a funeral but you forgot the dead person's name."
"I'm fine."
"You're standing alone in the corner of a basement party, drinking beer that's been sitting in the sun for God knows how long, and you've been here for—" She paused, tilted her head, studied him like he was a specimen under a microscope. "At least an hour. So either you're a philosophy major having an existential crisis, or you're new."
Levi opened his mouth. Closed it.
"New," she decided. "Definitely new. The existential crisis comes later, usually around midterms."
"I'm not—" He stopped. What was he going to say? That he wasn't new? He was so obviously, painfully new that it might as well have been tattooed on his forehead.
The girl's smile widened. It was a good smile. The kind that made you want to tell her things, even though you knew you shouldn't.
"First party at Westbrook?" she asked.
"Does it show?"
"Only in the way you're gripping that cup like it's a lifeline and the way you keep glancing at the stairs like you're planning your escape route." She plucked the cup from his hand and sniffed it. Made a face. "And in the fact that you're actually drinking this shit. No one drinks this shit. This is for pong, or making bad decisions, not for sipping like a gentleman."
She dumped the contents on the floor. Levi watched the beer spread across the concrete, a small puddle of amber in the strobe-lit darkness.
"That was my drink," he said.
"That was a war crime." She grabbed his hand. Her grip was warm and calloused, the hand of someone who worked with them. "Come on. If you're going to have your first Westbrook party, you're going to do it right."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means you're going to stop being a wallflower and start being a person." She tugged him forward, and Levi stumbled after her because apparently that was what he did now, follow strange girls into the heart of the chaos.
"I don't know your name," he said.
"Del." She threw the word over her shoulder like it was obvious. "Delphine Okafor. I'm a senior, I run this place, and you're my new project."
"Project?"
"You'll see." She stopped in the middle of the dance floor, where the music was loudest and the bodies were packed so tight there was barely room to breathe. The bass thrummed through the floor, through his feet, up through his stomach and into his chest. Del turned to face him, still holding his hand. "What's your name?"
"Levi. Levi Pryce."
"Levi Pryce." She said it like she was tasting it, testing the weight of it on her tongue. "Okay, Levi. Here's the thing. The Ivy League teaches you how to think. It teaches you how to analyze and critique and deconstruct. What it doesn't teach you is how to be a person. How to let go. How to dance badly in a basement with strangers and not give a fuck."
"I don't—"
"I know you don't." Her grin was sharp, knowing. "That's the problem."
She pulled him closer, her hands finding his hips, repositioning him like he was a mannequin. Her touch was sure and unselfconscious, the way she'd probably touch a piece of equipment in the lab, adjusting a valve, calibrating a meter.
"Loosen up," she commanded. "Your shoulders are up by your ears. You're not about to get tackled. Probably."
Levi tried to relax. He succeeded in maybe sixty percent of the way, which Del apparently noticed, because she laughed that foghorn laugh again and said, "Better. Barely. We'll work on it."
The song shifted, something with more bass, more urgency. Bodies pressed in around them, hot and anonymous. Levi felt sweat prickle at the back of his neck, felt the thrum of the music in his teeth. Del was moving in front of him, not quite dancing with him, more like dancing at him, a challenge in the tilt of her chin.
"So," she said, leaning in so he could hear her over the music, "what's your story? Why'd you transfer from wherever you came from to the armpit of higher education?"
Levi hesitated. This was usually the part where he gave the approved answer, the one he'd practiced in the mirror. I wanted a change of pace. The program wasn't the right fit. I needed to be closer to family. All true, in the way that carefully constructed lies can be true.
Del watched him with those dark eyes, patient and knowing, and something in his chest cracked.
"Cornell," he said. "I was pre-med. Molecular biology. My parents are both researchers, my dad's on the tenure track at Yale, my mom runs a lab at MIT, and I was supposed to be—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I was supposed to be them. But I wasn't."
Del didn't say anything. Just kept dancing, kept watching.
"So I left," he continued, the words coming faster now, tumbling out like they'd been waiting for permission. "Mid-semester. Didn't even finish the year. My advisor told me I was making a catastrophic mistake. My dad stopped speaking to me for two weeks. My mom just... looked at me. Like I'd died."
"And now you're here." Del's voice was even. Not sympathetic, not mocking. Just factual.
"And now I'm here." Levi laughed, a hollow sound. "At a party school. In a basement. Drinking beer that tastes like pennies. Wondering if they were right."
The song changed again, something slower, something that pulsed like a heartbeat. Del stepped closer, her hand finding his shoulder.
"Here's what I know," she said. "I've been at this school for four years. I've seen a lot of people come through, and I've seen a lot of them leave. The ones who make it, the ones who actually live here instead of just existing, they're the ones who figure out that this is the only life they're going to get. One shot. One chance to be a person instead of a résumé."
She looked up at him, her face half-lit by the strobe, her expression unreadable.
"The Ivy League teaches you how to win," she said. "But what's the point of winning if you don't know what you're playing for?"
Levi felt something shift inside him. Something small and tectonic, like the first tremor before an earthquake.
"That's very profound for a basement party," he said.
"I contain multitudes." Del grinned. "Also, I'm drunk. But that doesn't make me wrong."
She spun him around, and Levi let her, and for the first time since he'd walked through the door, he stopped thinking about the exit. He stopped thinking about his parents, about Cornell, about the careful path he'd abandoned. He just moved, awkward and uncoordinated and completely, terrifyingly present.
The music pounded. The lights flashed. The crowd pressed in, hot and loud and alive.
Del caught his eyes and laughed. "There you go, Levi Pryce. There you fucking go."
He laughed too, surprised by it, and the sound felt foreign in his throat, like a language he'd forgotten he knew.
For the first time in years, he wasn't performing. He wasn't analyzing. He wasn't calculating the probability of success. He was just here, in this basement, with this strange girl who had decided, for reasons he couldn't understand, to save him.
"Same time next week?" Del asked.
"What?"
"There's another party next week. Same place. Same shitty beer." She stepped back, starting to disappear into the crowd. "You coming?"
Levi opened his mouth to answer, but she was already gone, swallowed by the dancing bodies and the strobing lights and the fog of smoke that hung over the basement like a promise.
He stood there for a long moment, breathless, sweaty, grinning like an idiot.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from his father, the first one in three weeks: Let me know if you're coming home for Thanksgiving.
Levi stared at the message. Thought about his father's office with its wall of diplomas and awards, the smell of old books and ambition. Thought about the person he'd been when he'd left for Cornell, so sure of where he was going, so blind to where he actually wanted to be.
He typed back: Sure. I'll be there.
Then he looked up, scanning the crowd for a flash of blue hair and a laugh like a foghorn, and realized he hadn't even kissed her. Hadn't touched her except for the dancing. Hadn't done any of the things he usually did when he met a girl at a party.
She'd pulled him onto the dance floor and given him something better than sex. Something rarer.
A reason to stay.
The strobe lights kept flashing. The bass kept thrumming. The party raged on around him, a living thing, a breathing organism, and for the first time since he'd set foot in Westbrook, Levi felt like he was part of it.
He pushed his way toward the stairs, but he wasn't planning his escape anymore.
He was planning his return.
The week crawled by like a wounded animal, each day bleeding into the next with the slow agony of anticipation. Levi went to his classes, took notes he barely looked at, ate meals in the dining hall that tasted like cardboard and obligation. He checked his phone constantly, scrolling through the campus events page for any mention of another party, another chance to see the girl with blue hair and a laugh that could crack concrete.
Nothing.
He tried to focus on his coursework. Introduction to Sociology, The History of Modern Art, Creative Writing Workshop. He'd registered for them on a whim, picking classes that sounded interesting rather than practical, a small rebellion against the pre-med track that had defined his entire academic life. His advisor had looked at his schedule with barely concealed horror.
"You're aware that none of these fulfill your general education requirements," she'd said, her pen hovering over the form like it might bite her.
"I'm aware."
"And you're planning to declare a major when?"
Levi had shrugged. "When I figure out what I actually want to do."
She'd sighed, stamped the form anyway, and told him to come back when he was ready to be serious. He'd walked out of her office feeling lighter than he had in years.
But that lightness didn't help him find Del.
By Wednesday, he'd started to wonder if he'd imagined her. Maybe the basement had been a fever dream, a hallucination born from cheap beer and desperation. Maybe she was a ghost, a figment of his imagination, conjured by his lonely brain to give himself hope.
By Thursday, he'd convinced himself she was real but that she'd forgotten about him. She was a senior, for fuck's sake. She had a life. She had friends and parties and probably a boyfriend, a whole world that didn't include the strange transfer student she'd rescued on a whim.
By Friday, he was back in his dorm room, staring at the ceiling and wondering if he should just give up.
His roommate, a lanky sophomore named Marcus who seemed to exist mostly in a haze of marijuana smoke and video game sounds, took one look at his face and said, "You look like shit."
"Thanks."
"Girl trouble?"
Levi considered lying. Considered saying no, there's no girl, there's nothing, I'm just tired. But something in him was tired of lying, tired of the careful performances, tired of pretending he was fine when he felt like he was slowly drowning.
"Yeah," he said. "Something like that."
"Wanna talk about it?"
"Not really."
Marcus nodded, returned to his video game, and didn't ask again. Levi appreciated that about him. Marcus never pushed. Marcus never asked for more than Levi was willing to give. It made sharing a room with him surprisingly easy.
The party started at nine. Levi knew this because he'd spent the entire week stalking every Westbrook social media account he could find, cross-referencing location tags and event pages until he'd pieced together the pattern. The same Victorian house. The same basement. The same rotating cast of characters.
He arrived at nine fifteen, which felt like a compromise between being pathetically early and fashionably late. He wore a dark henley that he hoped looked casual rather than calculated, and he'd actually put product in his hair for the first time in months. He told himself he wasn't trying to impress anyone.
That was a lie, and he knew it.
The basement was already packed when he descended the stairs, the smell of stale beer and sweat hitting him like a wall. The same strobe lights. The same sticky floor. The same pool table in the corner, sagging under a new collection of empty cups and abandoned jackets.
He scanned the crowd, looking for blue hair, for that laugh.
Nothing.
He found a spot against the same support beam, grabbed a keg cup from a guy who looked too drunk to notice, and settled in to wait. The beer was the same. Warm. Pennies and disappointment.
Twenty minutes passed. Forty. An hour. The crowd ebbed and flowed around him, bodies pressing close, people screaming conversations over the thump of the bass. Levi stayed where he was, unmoving, watching, waiting.
Maybe she wasn't coming.
Maybe she'd graduated early and moved to a different city to start a job at a chemical plant somewhere. Maybe she'd found a new project. Maybe she'd looked at him last week and realized he wasn't worth the effort.
He was about to leave, about to admit defeat and retreat to his dorm room and his roommate's video games and his safe, lonely existence, when a hand grabbed his arm.
"Did you actually wear the same shirt?"
Levi spun. Del was standing behind him, close enough that he could smell the coconut shampoo and the clean chemical scent underneath. She was wearing a red crop top tonight, a leather jacket draped over her shoulders, ripped jeans that showed skin at the knees. Her blue hair was freshly shaved on the sides, the top slightly longer, angled forward like she'd walked out of a barbershop that catered exclusively to beautiful people.
"You remembered what I was wearing?" Levi asked.
"I remember everything." She plucked the cup from his hand, sniffed it, made the same face as last week. "And you're still drinking this shit. I thought I taught you better."
"I didn't know if you were coming."
Something flickered in her eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or satisfaction. He couldn't tell.
"You didn't know if I was coming," she repeated. "So you came anyway. And you stood in the same spot. And you waited."
"I didn't—"
"You did." She dumped his beer on the floor, same as last time. "I watched you from the stairs for ten minutes. You didn't move. You just stood here, looking lost and sad and weirdly hopeful."
Levi felt heat creep up his neck. "I wasn't—"
"Levi." She said his name like it was a joke she was in on, a secret they shared. "You're a terrible liar. I like that about you."
She grabbed his hand, same as last time, and pulled him toward the dance floor. The crowd parted for her, the same way it had before, bodies sliding aside like they'd been choreographed. Levi followed, stumbling slightly, trying to keep up with her pace.
They found a spot in the middle of the floor, surrounded by heat and noise and anonymous bodies. Del turned to face him, still holding his hand, her expression unreadable.
"You came back," she said.
"You told me to."
"I told you there would be another party. I didn't tell you to show up."
Levi shrugged, aiming for casual, probably landing somewhere closer to desperate. "I had nothing better to do."
"Bullshit." She stepped closer, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin. "You came back because you wanted to see me. Because last week was the first time you'd felt like a person in years, and you wanted to feel that again."
He opened his mouth to deny it. Closed it. She wasn't wrong.
"I don't know what you want from me," he said. "I don't know what this is. I don't even know your last name."
"Okafor. Delphine Okafor. I'm a senior, chemical engineering major, I run this party scene because I'm an adrenaline junkie who's too broke for skydiving, and I've been thinking about you all week." She said it all in one breath, matter-of-fact, like she was reciting a grocery list.
"You've been thinking about me?"
"Don't let it go to your head." She stepped closer, her body pressing against his, her hands finding his shoulders. "You're interesting. That's rare. Most people here are carbon copies of each other. Same clothes, same opinions, same desperate need to fit in. You're different. You actually think."
"Is that why you rescued me last week?"
"I didn't rescue you." She started moving, slow and deliberate, her hips finding the rhythm of the music. "I just pointed you in a better direction. You're the one who decided to walk."
Levi let his hands settle on her waist, tentative at first, then more sure when she didn't pull away. She felt solid under his palms, warm, alive. Her skin was soft where her crop top rode up, and he could feel the faint ridge of muscle beneath.
"Tell me something true," she said.
"What?"
"Something true. Something you've never told anyone." Her eyes locked on his, dark and steady. "I'll go first. I'm allergic to chocolate. It makes my throat swell up. But I eat it anyway, whenever I'm stressed, because I figure if I'm going to die, I might as well die happy."
Levi stared at her. "That's insane."
"Probably." She shrugged. "Your turn."
He thought about lying. Thought about giving her something safe, something easy, some carefully edited version of the truth. But she was watching him with those eyes, patient and expectant, and he felt that same cracking in his chest that he'd felt last week.
"I never wanted to be a doctor," he said. "I never wanted any of it. Cornell, the pre-med track, the research papers, the ambition. I did it all because it was what my parents wanted. Because I was scared of disappointing them. Because I didn't know who I was without their approval."
Del didn't say anything. Just kept dancing, kept watching, kept holding his gaze.
"And the worst part is," he continued, the words spilling out now, unstoppable, "I don't even know if I made the right choice. What if they were right? What if I'm throwing away my future for nothing? What if I'm just some privileged asshole who couldn't handle the pressure, and Westbrook is just a place for me to hide while I figure out how to be a failure?"
The music shifted, something slower, more intimate. The strobe lights softened to a dim red glow, casting everything in shadows.
"You're not a failure," Del said.
"You don't know that."
"I know enough." She stopped dancing, her hands sliding up to his neck, her fingers brushing the skin just below his jaw. "You know what I see when I look at you?"
"A confused transfer student with no idea what he's doing?"
"Someone who's finally telling the truth." She pulled him closer, close enough that their foreheads almost touched. "Someone who's been performing his whole life, and who finally got tired enough to stop. Do you know how rare that is? To actually stop? To admit you're lost?"
Levi swallowed. His heart was pounding, loud in his ears.
"I don't feel brave," he said. "I feel like I'm drowning."
"Good." Her lips curved into a smile. "Drowning means you're still fighting. It's the ones who just float that you have to worry about."
She kissed him.
It wasn't tentative or gentle or questioning. It was confident, deliberate, the kiss of someone who knew exactly what she wanted and had no intention of apologizing for it. Her mouth was warm and tasted like mint, and her hands were in his hair, pulling slightly, and Levi heard himself make a sound low in his throat that he'd never made before.
He kissed her back. His hands found her hips, drew her closer, felt the press of her body against his. The crowd around them dissolved. The music faded. There was only this, only her, only the heat and the taste and the sensation of finally, finally being seen.
When she pulled back, she was grinning.
"Better," she said. "Much better."
"What was wrong with before?"
"You were still holding back." She stepped out of his arms, and he felt the absence like a physical blow. "Now you're not."
He reached for her, but she danced out of reach, grinning.
"Where are you going?"
"I have to host this party. I'm the only one sober enough to make sure no one dies." She started backing away, disappearing into the crowd. "But you'll be here next week."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Levi said. "I'll be here."
"Good." She tossed him one last smile over her shoulder. "See you then, Levi Pryce."
She vanished into the throng of bodies, swallowed by the strobe lights and the music and the chaos. Levi stood in the middle of the dance floor, alone, breathless, grinning like an idiot.
His phone buzzed. A text from Marcus: You're not home yet. You okay?
Levi typed back: Better than okay.
He made his way to the stairs, but he wasn't planning his escape anymore. He was already planning next Friday.
THE NEXT WEEK, DEL