"Whose place is this again?" Jared asked Carl, who mumbled a name that Jared didn't recognize.

It had a basement bar and a conveniently unlocked cabinet. Someone was mixing drinks, but being high schoolers they weren't exactly sophisticated mixologists. People were gulping down these awful drinks anyway.

Jared nursed his awful but highly alcoholic drink, and he wasn't the only one drinking with a grimace. The music was the usual stuff that got played at these things, and Carl was mostly plotting what Carl plotted, while Jared started to think through the night's events, particularly the way that he was being steered toward a fight with Livingston. Any way one looked at it, he was going to suffer some sort of consequence, so it was a 'do the right thing' moment.

"Carl, I think I need to back outta this one."

"Awww--look, fuck man, let's go outside, I don't want people overhearing that shit." No one was right there, but it was hard to say who would overhear what. He dipped his head in the indicated direction, weaving through the drinkers, the dancers and the tokers. They managed to slide out to a place outside to talk without being overheard.

"So what are you backing out of, Jared?"

"This Heather Voss thing. It's too much weirdness, I don't think it's gonna work in the long run anyway."

"Well, do yourself a favor son, and just detach after the winter formal. Don't do anything drastic and you should be okay. You got a problem though, it's that Voss is chasing you around, she might be trying to squeeze you in tonight."

"Yeah, I know. And I'm gonna need a favor."

"Shit man, you know you got favors in the bank."

"You're designated driver tonight. I'm getting too drunk to fuck."