"You got rid of that other stuff already?" Ronni asked as they attached the camera to the computer in the editing bay and started to upload the footage. "The stuff you filmed at the end?"
"Yeah, it's been deleted."
"Good." Ronni crossed her arms. "This hard drive already has too much secret porn on it."
Charlie chuckled. They watched the data start to copy over. "Hey," he said, "do you want to go to a party this weekend?"
"Glenn Mack's party?"
"Yeah."
Ronni smiled slightly. "I was wondering if you would invite me. Actually, Michelle already asked if I wanted to go. She told me about it two days ago."
"Oh. She did?"
"I told her I can't go. My family is driving to Sacramento for the weekend."
"Oh. All right." Charlie leaned back in his chair. Michelle had already invited Ronni to the party. Did Michelle invite her for a specific reason? Maybe to keep Charlie company while Michelle was with Glenn? Or did Michelle just invite Ronni because Michelle and Ronni now seemed to be best friends who planned to do things together?
Charlie didn't want to go to the party alone, but he couldn't see any other option. His intent was to find a way to steal Michelle away from the party, and he couldn't do that if he brought other people with him. Ronni might have helped him, she was the only one who knew about his secret affair with Michelle. But Ronni was going to be in Sacramento.
So he would go to the party alone. He would arrive alone, and later on, he would leave with Michelle. That was the plan and the goal. Slip into Glenn Mack's party, even though Glenn hadn't invited him. Locate Michelle, where she undoubtedly would be, sitting with all of her friends, probably even sitting with Glenn Mack himself. Whisk her away without anyone noticing, even though Michelle was supposedly the whole reason for Glenn Mack throwing the party. Charlie's mission if he chose to accept it, a mission impossible.
Or he could fail. He could chicken out. If that happened, he would once again be the bearded man at the back of the movie theater. Sitting and watching Michelle from a distance, helpless to make any moves that would win her to his side. If that was the case, then better to not go at all. He could stay home, watch TV, maybe tell himself he didn't go to the party because he trusted Michelle to stay true to him.
No, he wouldn't stay home. He did trust Michelle. It was Glenn Mack he didn't trust.
Saturday came. Charlie picked his clothes carefully. He intended to dress like a spy, someone who would blend in, someone who wouldn't be noticed. Black shirt, black jeans, a baggy black jacket. Looking at himself in the mirror, he thought he looked less like a spy, more like a cat burglar. "I'm the bad guy in this movie," he told his reflection. "The party crasher that's going to ruin the party."
Actually, he wasn't technically a party crasher. Michelle had invited him; she had even texted him the address. Vampire Vanessa had invited him as well, that day in the hall. "You should come," she had said. So there was that.
He went to the party an hour and a half after it supposedly started, half an hour after the time when Michelle said she would be there. The party wasn't hard to find; he didn't need to check the house numbers. The noise and the mass of cars on the street made it clear which house was having the party.
Glenn's house was only a mile away from the juice bar where Charlie had dropped Michelle off after their brunch date. Maybe Michelle's house was in the same neighborhood. Maybe it was within a few blocks. Michelle's mother was friends with Glenn's mother, after all.
It was a nice house. Bigger than Charlie's, maybe even twice as big. The front door was open and a group of teenagers sat around the front porch, talking and laughing. Charlie didn't recognize any of them. He also noticed some people walking around the left side of the house, where a gate stood open and a walkway seemed to lead to the backyard. He could see lights glowing in the backyard, and decided to take that path instead. Maybe he could slip into the house through the back door and attract less attention.
No one noticed him as he walked through the gate and followed the path towards the back of the house. He could hear music playing from outdoor speakers, not obnoxiously loud but loud enough to be heard several houses away. Some male singer strumming on a guitar and singing about love. Maybe the neighbors would be happy it wasn't rap or electronic dance music.
Halfway along the path, he noticed something attached to the house that looked familiar. He crouched down and let the light of his phone flash over the object, confirming that it was what he thought it was. Charlie glanced towards the back yard, but no one was headed in his direction. He was alone.
He had come to the party with a plan to get Michelle away from Glenn. Now, he had an idea for a phase two of his plan. He leaned over the object, his hands moving quickly. Three minutes later, during which thankfully he wasn't discovered, Charlie rose from his crouch and continued to the backyard.
Glenn Mack had a swimming pool, but no one was swimming. A few groups sat outside on deck chairs drinking from red cups and talking. One group of teenagers smoked by the diving board.
Kim Mink was in one of the groups, along with several other theater kids Charlie recognized. Kim had a large travel mug that she was sipping from, undoubtedly filled with strong coffee. "Charlie," she called out to him when she saw him, and he felt obligated to stop by and say hello.
"What's up, Charlie," said Toki Cho, a tall, slim Korean boy. "Heard you got into the Apex program at Jefferson. Congrats." Toki was a junior; he was in Charlie's Theater Tech class. His real name was Paul, but everyone called him Toki Doki because of his alleged drug use. He reeked of marijuana.
"Thanks," Charlie said.
A long-haired blonde girl named Rachel asked, "When do we get to see the film you've been working on? Are you going to show it at school?" Rachel was one of Kim's friends. Probably Kim had mentioned that she was one of the actors in the film.
"Yeah," Charlie said. "I'll see if I can do a premiere in one of the rooms."
No one asked him about Michelle, and Charlie guessed that Kim hadn't mentioned Michelle's impromptu nude scene to anyone. Kim Mink always seemed to have a unique perspective on things and she might not have even considered Michelle's nudity to be an interesting topic of conversation.
After a few minutes, Charlie excused himself, telling the group that he wanted to go inside and get something to drink. He entered the house through the back door, which led directly into the kitchen. It was a large kitchen with dark granite countertops and a middle island. The island was covered with half-empty bottles of alcohol and red cups. Two tall girls were in the process of pouring themselves drinks; they didn't even look at him as he passed. Charlie didn't really want a drink. He wanted to find Michelle.
The front room was large, brightly lit and filled with people, maybe fifteen in total. Charlie scanned the faces and recognized some of them, fellow seniors from Pine Hills. He didn't see Michelle or any of her friends. One of the walls had family pictures on it: pictures of little-boy Glenn; teenage Glenn; Glenn's parents; Glenn with another boy who was probably his younger brother. Glenn had the same confident smile in all of the pictures.
Charlie went through a doorway into a darker part of the house. He saw a line of women waiting at a door that was probably the bathroom. Through another doorway and he stood in the first of a series of three dimly-lit rooms that were all open to each other, effectively creating one long room. The room Charlie stood in was the dining room. The dining room table remained, but the chairs had all been taken away. Charlie could see the room at the far end held a pool table and a piano. Two men were playing pool, while another two watched. The large room in the middle was the entertainment room, filled with couches and a large flat-screen television that was mounted on one of the walls. This was the room where Charlie finally saw Michelle.
She was talking to another cheerleader, illuminated by the glow of whatever was playing on the TV. She hadn't noticed Charlie's arrival. Glenn stood nearby, less than five feet away. The groups were segregated by gender, Michelle sitting with a group of five girls, and Glenn standing with three other boys. Cody was one of them.
Michelle wore a black tank top that showed off her flat midriff. A dark skirt flared over her legs, and she wore gleaming black boots. Charlie gazed at her and once again marveled that he had become so close to the woman that he considered to be the prettiest at Pine Hills High.
Glenn turned towards the group of girls and said something, smiling that same confident smile. The girls laughed at his joke. Michelle laughed, too.
