First Party
by Mackenzie
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”
Lord Byron “She Walks in Beauty”
I am suspended at the edge of a light beam. All that glows around me is made of gold. She walks in beauty before me, and I am reminded of that day in class when we read Lord Byron. She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies. Nora stands in front of me in a long flowing dress. I hear her voice, distant, like an angel’s and my vision, hazy. Leah. Her hands reach towards me and I wonder for a brief moment if she’s going to kiss me. Then I feel a shake, like an earthquake
“Leah!”
“What, huh?” I focus my eyes. “Oh, Nora. How
you doing? You enjoying this party!?”
“Listen, we need to go home,” she says,
looking me in the eyes.
“Woo-hoo! Don’t you wanna keep partying!?”
She hands me her cell phone. “Call Shane,” she
says.
“Blech,” I roll my eyes. “Shane’s no fun. But
fine, for you,” I say, bopping her nose, “Just for you,” and make a pitiful
attempt at dialing the number before she sighs and takes the phone from me, dialing
it herself.
“Shane? I’m sorry. It’s Nora. We went to a
party after the dance and… uh, I had a little to drink. But Leah’s completely
wasted. Neither of us can drive, can you pick us up?”
“Yo, is that Shane? Yo, yo, yo. Hand me the
phone.” I tilt the phone away from Nora’s ear so I can shout. “It’s a party in
the USA, Shane! Woo!” and take another gulp of my beer.
“Leah, stop it!” Nora half shouts, half
whispers, and grabs the beer away from me, placing it on the counter behind
her. “Yeah, it’s on Evendale. Please get here soon, Shane. Thanks.”
She hangs up the phone and I grab the beer
again, taking another gulp. Party music is blasting in the background. People
are dancing. It’s loud and there’s some girls passed out on the couch. Nora
seizes the beer from my hand. “Seriously, Leah. Stop it.” And dumps the rest of the beer on the floor.
“Hey, what the fuck? That’s good beer!”
“Yeah, and now it’s good beer on the floor.
You drank too much. Come on, let’s go,” she shouts, sharply, and grabs my hand,
pulling me through the crowd and outside to the curb, a few doors down, to wait
for Shane.
“What are we doing, here?” I ask, leaning my
head on her shoulder.
“We’re here to wait for Shane. Too many stupid
mistakes for one night,” she mutters.
I groan. “Mneh, okay,” placing my head on her
shoulder and dozing off for awhile, when I hear a man’s voice, telling me it’s
time to go and a foot gently tapping my leg.
“Oh, hey Shane,” I say, “What are you doing
here?”
“I’m here to pick you up, kiddo. Get in the
car.”
“I don’t see a car,” I mutter, stumbling to my
feet. “Where is it?”
Shane sighs and grabs my arm. I can feel
Nora’s hand on my back, gently pushing me forward, and I’m being helped into my
brother’s car. By the time the engine is put into gear, I’ve already fallen
back into sleep and find myself suspending once again on the edge of a light
beam.
---
Leah… Leah. Somebody’s shaking my
arm, but I don’t want to move. It’s so warm and comfortable—“Leah!!”
“Wha—what,” I mumble, like I’ve just been
woken up from a dream. I look up and see what looks like my brother’s face, but
it’s so blurry, I can hardly make it out, “Where are we?”
“We’re home. Come on, inside,” he says,
holding out his hand to help me out. I topple face first towards the pavement,
but he catches me before I hit the ground. I giggle, “Some party, huh?”
“You’re drunk, Leah.”
“No, no, I’m just happy.” I poke my brother’s
chest and look up at him, “You could use a little of that couldn’t you? You
look kinda grumpy.”
“Alright, inside, Leah. Now,” he enunciates,
as he half pushes, half carries me to the front door.
---
I wake up the next morning, delirious and
dizzy, stomach churning and growling. My face is stuck to the floor and my head
is pounding. Somehow, I manage to lift my head and find myself in the bathroom,
next to the toilet, which I had apparently thrown up in all night, judging by
what it looked like. I rubbed my eyes and groaned, trying to remember what had
happened, how I had gotten back home.
“Oh shit.” I paused, shaking my head, “No. No.
There must be some other explanation. Maybe this is Nora’s bathroom. Maybe she
brought me back to her place.” But it was Shane and Anthony’s towels, and Shane
and Anthony’s toothbrushes and Shane’s electric razor and Anthony’s blowdryer,
and their shower and their bathtub and the walls were the same light blue as
Shane and Anthony’s bathroom. And, oh shit, I was dead. I was really, really
dead.
I looked frantically around me for my phone. I
tried to check my pockets, but I wasn’t wearing the same jeans as the night
before, just my pajamas. I guess Shane had helped me into them the night
before. There was even a pillow and a blanket,that I had somehow managed to
kick off in the middle of the night, on the other side of the bathroom.
“Ugh,” I groaned, slapping my hand to my
forehead. “How could I be such an idiot!? They’re going to kill me.”
At that moment, I heard a gentle rapping on
the door and buried my head into my knees, trying to hide my face from whoever
showed up, Shane or his husband, Anthony.
“Leah,” he said softly.
I looked up, confused when I saw it was
Anthony instead of Shane. “Where’s Shane?” I asked.
“He had a conference in Lexington today. Don’t
you remember?”
“ I guess not,” I muttered, pulling my knees closer
to my chest.
“You got yourself pretty trashed last night.”
I buried my face into my knees again. “What were you thinking, Leah? Huh, can
you tell me that?”
I didn’t say anything, just tried to make
myself as small as I could, shrinking further and further into myself, pulling
my knees closer and closer, burying my face deeper and deeper and turning it
away from Anthony. “I don’t know,” I whined. I felt like shit. My stomach was
empty but somehow I thought I might throw up again. My head still pounded, like
my heart had somehow crept its’ way into my temples.
He sighed. “Shane will be home later tonight.
I want you to take a shower and get dressed and come downstairs for breakfast.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, looking up at him,
my eyes beginning to water.
“We’ll discuss it downstairs. Shower, now,” he
demanded, pointing and giving me a stern look as if to say, “You’d better if you know what’s coming to
you.”
I nodded, wiping my eyes, as he closed the
door to give me some privacy. I could have gone to my bathroom, but my head was
pounding and I couldn’t bare the thought of walking down to the other end of
the hallway before having to climb into the other tub. So I turned on the water
all the way until I could see the steam rising from the showerhead, took off my
shirt and pajama pants and underwear piece by piece and stepped in, letting the
water rush over me and ease at least some of the pain that was radiating
throughout my body.
When I was finished, I grabbed a towel to dry
my hair, then wrapped it around my body and walked down to the hall to my room
to get dressed—sweatpants, a t-shirt and a hoodie—I wouldn’t be feeling up for
anything else today, and walked downstairs to the kitchen where Anthony was
sitting at the table with a plate of eggs and a stack of papers, grading. He
looked up upon hearing me come downstairs, and gestured to the chair across
from him for me to sit.
“So, Leah, tell me about what happened last
night,” he said, leaning back and folding his arms.
“We got invited to this party and I really
wanted to go. So Nora picked me up and we went.”
“After you explicitly told Shane and I both
that you were just going to the movies and then to spend the night at Nora’s
house.”
“So maybe it was a little white lie.”
“That’s a little more than a white lie, Leah.
What happened after that?” he asked, choosing to ignore the white lie for the
moment.
“We got there, and there was beer and some
wine coolers and some other stuff. I don’t remember what. Some guys offered us
some beers and I decided it would be alright if I just had one but then one
turned into two and two turned into three and it just got out of hand.”
Anthony unfolded his arms and leaned forward
looking me in the eye. “Listen, Leah, Shane and I understand that you’re
curious and that you’re going to want to drink from time to time. But if you’re
going to a party, we want you to tell us. And if you’re curious about alcohol,
we’d rather it be under our supervision. You are under NO circumstances to
drive after you’ve been drinking, do you understand me? I don’t care if it’s
one shot of whiskey or 1 sip of beer. You are to call either Shane or me and we
will pick you up, okay? And I know if Nora hadn’t called last night, you would
have driven yourself.”
“No I wouldn’t have,” I argued.
“Do not lie to me, young lady. Shane told me
you were trying to convince him to let you drive when he got there and that you
were planning on it.”
I looked down at my hands. “Maybe I did. I
don’t remember. It’s a blur.”
“That’s what happens when you get passed out
drunk like that, Leah. Do you like how it feels?”
“No,” I whined.
“Good. Hopefully that will be a deterrent,
then.” He paused, letting a few moments of silence pass between us. “Do you
feel up to eating anything?” I shook my head, holding my hand to my stomach.
“Alright, go upstairs to your room then and take it easy. We’ll talk more when
Shane comes home.”
---
“Knock, knock.” I heard my brother say
from outside my door, waking me up from my nap. He opened the door, and sat
down next to me on my bed.
“We need to have a talk, kiddo,” he said,
patting my knee.
I looked at the clock beside my bed. 7 PM. Had
I really been asleep that long?
“Do you know how foolish and irresponsible
what you did was?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“You really understand, then? How utterly
dangerous and disrespectful and irresponsible that was? First of all, you lied
to Anthony and me. You told us you were going to the movies and then to spend
the night at Nora’s. Then you went to a party where you got drunk and you were
planning on driving home. Had Nora not called, and gotten me there, you could
have killed yourself or someone else, do you realize that?”
I buried my face into my hands, trying to hide
from him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, Leah.”
“I’m sorry,” I cried.
“I know you are. I know. And I know you’re
curious about alcohol. But if you’re going to drink, I want it to be under my
supervision. You’re to tell me if you’re going to a party where there’s alcohol
involved. And if you do drink, I want you to call me. You might be in trouble
for going to the party, but it’s better than ending up dead in a ditch
somewhere.” He paused. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, but none of that changes what you did. Stand
up. You’re getting a spanking, Leah Marie.”
“Shane, no! Come on, I learned my lesson! I
won’t do it again!”
“I’m glad to hear that. But I’m spanking you
for what you did, not for what you might do in the future. Stand up, pants
down.”
I stood up, but that didn’t mean I stopped
whining. “Shane, please, no.” I covered my bottom with my hands.
“Leah,” he warned, “Pants down. NOW.”
“Noo.”
“One… two…”
“Shane, please, I’m 16 years old. Can’t we
solve this any other way?”
“Three…”
“Shane…”
He grabbed my arm and turned me around,
smacking me three times on the seat of my pants. “I mean it, Leah. Pants down
now, unless you want me to take them down myself.”
I whined. “Fine,” I muttered, pulling them
down and lying across his lap before he could yell at me again.
He rubbed my back. “I love you, Leah, but I’m
not going to tolerate this sort of behavior.” With that, he lifted his palm and
started smacking my bottom from side to side, left cheek, right cheek, left
sitspot, right sitspot, left thigh, right thigh, before pulling my panties down
and continuing the same pattern. He spanked me for 5, maybe 10 minutes,
straight without stopping.
I was panting by the time he stopped and I
made the mistake of trying to get up but he pushed me back down. “Oh no, we’re
not done here, Leah. You lied to me, went to a party behind my back, got wasted
and tried to convince me to let you drive home. You are not finished.”
I felt him move behind me to pick something
up. “Shane, what are you doing?” I asked.
He smacked me, once. “Shh,” he answered. “Not
a word.” I felt him turn around again to
pick whatever it was up and then what felt like wood on my bottom. “I’m giving
you a final spanking with this paddle. When we’re done here, you’re going to
write me a paper on the dangers of drinking and driving and explain to me
exactly why what you did was wrong and why you’re never going to do it again,
do you understand me?”
“Shane…”
He hit me once with the paddle. “Do you
understand?”
I screamed. “Oww, yes, I understand!”
“Good.” He lifted the paddle high in the air
and continued the same rhythm as before, over and over again, from left to
right, up and down. I kicked and screamed, until I was crying and then sobbing
and limp over his lap. He didn’t speak much during the spanking. If he did, I
couldn’t hear him, just my own cries. He spanked me for what felt like hours but
was probably only 10 minutes and then stopped, rubbing my back as I sobbed.
“Was it worth it?” he asked me. “Was the party
worth it?”
“No, sir,” I sniffled.
He sighed and I pushed myself up from his lap,
accepting his hug. “You worry me, Leah,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” I answered.
He kissed the top of my head and let go of me.
“I know. You’re forgiven.” He handed me my pants back and started walking
towards the door. “You can give Anthony the paper when you’re finished. If
you’re hungry, he made you some chicken noodle soup. It’s in the fridge.”
I smiled slightly. “Thanks, Shane.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome,” and closed the
door.
