House Party (7 page)

“Tomorrow you're going to have to explain this to your parents,” she said to me.

“I know.”

“But tonight we're all going to work,” she said. “When you face your parents, it will be better if some of this is fixed.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

“To tell you the truth, I really don't under stand how any of this could happen.”

“Neither do we, and we were here,” I said.

“The police officer called it the weekend plague,” Jen's mother said. “She said it's happening more and more often, parties getting out of control.”

“It was like a fire getting bigger and bigger,” I said, trying to explain it.

She shook her head slowly, sadly. “We better check out the whole house.”

I didn't want to go. I didn't want to see. I just wanted to go up to my room, climb into bed, pull the covers over my head and
pretend that none of this was real. I couldn't do that.

We trailed behind her as she walked from room to room, surveying the scene. There was more damage than I'd remembered. There were stains and spilled drinks everywhere, puddles of vomit, broken furniture and holes in the wall where people had punched or kicked or tossed things. Phones had been ripped out of the wall, and a light had been torn right off the ceiling. The dinner plates had been smashed against a wall in the rec room and were in a million pieces on the floor. Some had been thrown so hard that they were embedded in the wall. The television set downstairs had been knocked over. We picked it up and turned it back on—luckily it still worked.

Upstairs it was obvious that somebody had been going through my parents' dresser drawers. Every drawer was open, and clothing had been thrown on the ground. Things had been taken, I was sure, but we wouldn't know what until my parents got home.
Spills could be mopped up and stains could be cleaned, but how could the other damage be fixed? And I didn't just mean the holes and the broken glass. How could I ever face my parents again? How could I fix the trust that had been broken?

I felt like curling up in a little ball and crying. It was all so overwhelming.

“I'm going to call your aunt and ask her to come and help,” Jen's mother said. “An extra set of hands would be helpful. In the meantime, you two start with the kitchen. Clear the counters and then work your way down to the floor. We'll all work together, bit by bit. Let's get started.”

“But the holes in the walls…the broken windows…the stereo on the lawn…I don't have the money to fix all of that.”

I started to cry again and she put her arm around me.

“Your parents' insurance will cover some of the cost,” she said. “And the rest will be split two ways.”

“Two ways?”

“There were two people who were responsible.” She turned to Jen. “Right?”

Jen nodded her head in agreement.

I looked at my watch. It was almost two o'clock in the afternoon. Only a few more minutes until my parents were supposed to come home. The windows had been replaced and the garbage and bottles and even the stains on the carpet had been, for the most part, removed. If it weren't for the holes in the walls and the broken furniture, they might not have been able to tell that there had been a party.

Of course there was no way of hiding it or even trying to hide what had happened. There would be the bill for the glass replacement, and the comments from the neighbors, and the police coming over later today to meet with them.

Jen sat in the corner. She looked as tired and scared as I felt. This was going to be awful. Her mother was in the kitchen, still doing a few last-minute cleaning tasks. She had agreed to be here when my parents came home. She said that Jen needed to be here alongside me to take her share of the blame, and she'd be here to support both of us.

“That's it,” Jen's mother said as she walked out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishcloth. “The place doesn't look too bad at all.”

“Thanks for all your help,” I said tiredly.

“It's the least we could do. Are you nervous?”

I shook my head. “Terrified. What do you think they're going to say?”

“I have a pretty good idea. They're going to yell and tell you how disappointed they are in you and wonder how you could ever let this happen and tell you how they don't know if they can ever leave you alone again or trust you.” She paused. “And then they're going to hug you and thank God that you're all right, because it
is
going to be all right.”

I heard the sound of a car pulling up to the house. I ran to the window. My father and mother climbed out of the car, carrying their small overnight bags. They looked happy to be home. That happiness wasn't going to last long.

“You better meet them at the front door,” Jen's mother suggested.

I got up and went to the door, getting there just as they walked it.

“Mom…Dad. I'm so sorry. I have something I have to tell you.”

Eric Walters began writing in 1993 as a way to entice his grade five students into becoming more interested in reading and writing. Since that first creation, Eric has published over forty-five novels. His novels have all become best-sellers, have won over thirty awards and have been translated into several languages.

Eric lives in Mississauga, Ontario, with his wife, Anita, and three children, Christina, Nicholas and Julia. When not writing, or playing and watching sports, he enjoys listening to jazz, playing his saxophone and eating in fine restaurants featuring drive-through service.

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