Think of me

nine: was he a ghost?

Billie

On Friday, Madison picked me up from school. We stopped by my house to grab my outfit and makeup and then headed to Madison's house to get ready for the party. I hadn't seen her since the concert and we hadn't really spoken about it yet.

After the fight, when that boy walked out, his two friends followed him out. I was left standing in the middle of a crowd with Madison and two groaning boys on the floor. Madison and I moved to the very back of the room so that we had some space to breath. The car journey home was pretty quiet, neither of us knew what to say. Since I got out the car at my house, she hadn't said anything about the subject, which I was kind of relieved about.

When we got to her house, we ran upstairs to her bedroom and started getting ready, we only had three hours to do hair, makeup and check our outfits! Madison and I never missed an opportunity to dress ourselves up, although I think we have different ideas about it.

I started with my makeup, the longest process for me, while Maddie started with her hair. Her hair always took forever, because she felt the need to make sure her naturally frizzy hair was dead straight. I internally rolled my eyes as she plugged in her straighteners and turned the heat up. 

'So...' She started. 'Are we going to talk about what happened on Monday or not?' She blurted out. Madison was never afraid to speak her mind, she had no filter.

'What about it?' I asked, pretending it was nothing.

'Billie! Some guy basically raped you and then another guy came and saved your life!' She shouted at me, I flinched in shock. Raped? Saved my life? 

'Maddie!' I shook my head at her. 'It was nothing like that. You're completely exaggerating. He was just touching me where I didn't want to be touched, and then that guy came and beat him up. You better not have gone round telling people that I almost got raped!' I wagged my finger at her, as if I was her mum telling her off.

'I promise I didn't!' She held her hands up in defense. 'Anyway, the boy who came to your rescue was dreamy.' Maddie wiggled her eyebrows at me before turning back to her mirror to keep straightening her hair. 

'Shut up!' I tried to hold back a smile. He was dreamy. I couldn't get his eyes out of my mind. 'Anyway, he disappeared so I'll never know who he was.'

'I just don't understand why he did it. He'd never met you before, had he?' I shook my head in response. 'And he just came and beat that guy up? It doesn't make sense. Had you even seen him in that room? Maybe he was a ghost!' I laughed as she started getting carried away.

'No, of course he's not a ghost. And yes, I had seen him at the gig already. We made eye contact a couple of times, I guess he took that as a cry for help.' I explained, slightly embarrassed that I was admitting to the eye contact. 'I mean, I wasn't going to get any help from you, that's for sure!' I joked, but she took it the wrong way.

'I'm so sorry! I just got carried away, you know what I'm like.' She started panicking, thinking I was actually annoyed at her.

After I explained that it was a joke, we carried on getting ready and chatting when we weren't concentrating on getting our make up perfect.

In the end I went for a pink eye shadow look. I'd always loved eye shadow but I only recently started trying some more risky looks. The pink matched the two clips that I had in my hair, which I styled to have the two front bits clipped back, and the rest down. I loved the length of my hair, I thought it was just right, no matter how many people told me it was too long. Finally, I got dressed into a baby pink skirt with a matching top. I put on my chunky white trainers and was finally ready.

Madison was more dressed up than me. She had a tiny red dress on with black heels. Her hair was completely straightened now and she just left it down. Her make up was normal, she had red lips, slightly orange skin and false eye lashes.

As Madison was applying the last of her red lipstick, she said 'So, are you going to be looking for any boys tonight?' She was still looking at herself in the mirror while she spoke.

'No, of course not.' I said, embarrassed. 

'But you look amazing! They'll be all over you.' She turned to me and grabbed my hands. 'I'm not going to lie, I quite like Ben.'

'You told me not to let you make out with anyone!' I reminded her. Her face dropped.

'I know, but he's actually really nice.' She explained as she started fiddling with her hair.

'Look, I'm not going to be telling you what to do. It's your decision.' I explain. 'But don't do anything you're going to regret. Otherwise I'm going to have to hear about it for the next two weeks!' I sneered at her and she chuck a cushion from her bed at me. We laughed and I fixed my hair. We were ready to go to the party.

We had decided to get a lift with Madison's older brother, Shawn, as Madison wanted to be able to drink and wouldn't be able to drive us home, and I have never been able to take driving lessons. We left Madison's house and her brother drove us to the end of the road that Ben lived on. We thanked Shawn for the lift and he drove off.

'Are you ready?' Madison asked, hooking her arm in mine and dragging me up the road. I always found that entering a party was always the most awkward part of the night because I always needed alcohol to be able to talk to people.

As we walked up the road, we began to hear the distant noise of music playing. We walked further and could soon see a house with coloured lights and the sound of party music coming from it. 

Madison dragged me to the front door and there was a sign on it saying:

'Come straight in!' 

I took a deep breath as Madison twisted the door handle. When she opened the door, loud music and the sound of people chatting hit me.