Pinky and Brad had disappeared some time ago to make room for the others, and anyway their job was done. Before ceding her spot, Pinky had sternly instructed me to text if I needed her but winked (her birthday not being until October, me being a whole two months older than her seemed to count for a lot in her eyes). And besides, while I’d been a bundle of nerves at the start, standing behind the bar anchored by a job and something I could talk about, mixology, I’d been okay.

  So now, my own drink in hand, I wandered alone. With close to an hour to get used to the crowd, I wasn’t almost twitching anymore, and more than a few partiers called my name in passing—April, not Hemingway.

  There was an etiquette to it, one that Delia had very patiently explained when I asked. You could use someone’s nickname if you’d been introduced to them by someone using it and received permission, or if they offered it. You never asked them what their nickname was (that would be pushy, implying you were asking to use it), and even if you learned it from someone else, without introductions you never used it unless, again, they offered it. Pinky and Brad hadn’t introduced any of their Three and Three by their nicknames even though they’d used all of them except Delia’s between each other, which meant they were probably on a nickname basis with each of their three but the privilege hadn’t been extended to me.

  And what was Delia’s nickname? Queen D of course—I’d asked Pinky. I didn’t hear anyone use it but Pinky’s comment about coming by to kiss her ring had been a jab at it.

  So permission to call Ellie Pinky could have been significant, except she insisted everyone call her that. Brad, on the other hand, didn’t seem to give nickname privileges to many, so being told I could call him Rex was a big get and I hadn’t known it. And . . .

  And with all this, Delia’s attempt to mess with Pinky’s nickname had been an even bigger and nastier deal than it had sounded. But Delia had acted so nice tonight, practically stamping her social seal of approval on my forehead. It was like a modernized Jane Austin tale—everyone so formal and polite in a weirdly inverted way, but with currents. Thinking about the currents, I was so distracted I wandered into the pool area without thinking about it.

  Of course the place had a pool—it even had a tennis court that had been turned into an outdoor karaoke bar for the party (in theory also dry). And of course the pool was occupied. I’d seen lots of swimsuits and just assumed it part of the party theme; now I stumbled to a stop at the sight of a dozen boys and girls in the pool engaged in an all-against-all chicken fight. The mounts (all boys) charged around the pool bumping into each other while the riders on their shoulders (all girls) screamed with laughter as they latched onto their targets, trying to pull them off their mounts and into the water. Around the pool kids cheered or called out bets.

  And I froze, my heart racing.

  When one rider went into the water with a shriek, I felt like I was going to vomit. Or hyperventilate. Or vomit and hyperventilate. Another rider went into the water and the first dismounted rider jumped to dunk her when she came up, both of them going under, and I was dizzy.

  You can’t. You can’t lose your shit in the middle of the party! It would ruin my wholly serendipitous first impression with all the cool kids in the school. Careful not to spill with my shaking hand, I put my red cup down on an empty table and turned to fast-walk away, past the pool, past the tennis court, into the darkened grounds beyond.

  Once out of sight of everyone, I ran.

  The gardens behind the villa were more extensive than the patio and pool and court, practically a mini park with a fountain closer to the house and walks flanked by tall hedges behind, everything lit to a half-gloom now by lawn lights. (Queen D’s family had serious money.) Almost sprinting down a hedge-shadowed walk until turning a corner muted most of the party sounds, I collapsed on a concrete bench and sat, head in hands.

  Fuck. What was that? My skin felt clammy and that had nearly been a full-blown public panic attack like I’d never experienced before.

  The pool. Those girls. Fucking, fuck. Two weeks ago I’d almost drowned in my fancy Japanese soaker tub. If I hadn’t realized I was fading out, if I hadn’t pulled the plug and then held out long enough for the water to drain lower, I could have easily drowned in the middle of my transformation—and I’d known, in that horrible minute before my world had gone black, the full danger I’d been in.

  But I’d been in water since! Lots.

  But only to fucking shower. Since waking up as April I’d showered every day. My new bathroom’s shower-tub was deep, not as deep as my soaker tub had been, but deep enough at my slight size to get both knees and shoulders under if I’d wanted to, so why hadn’t I enjoyed a nice relaxing bath?

  The mind-freezing panic that came with the thought of a good soak answered the question. Fuck, I’m aquaphobic. Seeing those girls’ heads go under I’d felt myself going under too, drowning.

  But . . . why hadn’t my first, “floating” wet-dream triggered me? Because I’d been in control and it was a dream.

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  So now I couldn’t swim? Couldn’t take a bath? Head still in my hands, I groaned. I needed all the therapy.

  And then I heard a deeper moan. It wasn’t mine. Raising my head I listened, barely hearing the distant and wall-blocked party and . . . there. Standing and taking a few steps, I looked around a break in the hedge that seemed to hide an entrance to a private nook. In the dim light filtering to us from the tall outdoor lights, it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing

  A boy stood with his back against a pillar in the arbor nook, chest bare and pool shorts down, his fingers tangled in the hair of a kneeling girl’s head. Her eyes closed, she held his manhood in her mouth, lips wrapped around his dick as she moved her head forward and back, sucking him off. The light was dim but I thought her hair was blond, and I could see her dick-distorted face in profile.

  I couldn’t believe it. I should have, after all this was an older teen party. Yes with “adult supervision” but with plenty of opportunities for teens to go off and do what their hormones were yelling at them to do. And it was none of my business. I started to back away but my eyes caught the white-yellow-black pattern of the girl’s light dress, yellow sunflowers on a white background, and even in the half-shadows thrown over them I knew who it was. Pinky.

  Frozen, I stood watching as she worked the boy’s dick. Breaking her rhythm, she withdrew to let it spring up and then leaned forward to lick it from balls to tip before grasping it and popping it back in her mouth, sucking it like a lollypop while looking up at him. His hands tightened in her hair, and as I felt the heat exploding beneath my skin and moving down, my pussy giving that th-thump I was learning to curse, I must have made some kind of sound because he looked over at me.

  I couldn’t move but he just grinned at me, taking more control to push himself deeper in Pinky’s mouth, her lips stretching wide around him. Making a humming noise in response, she wrapped one hand around his shaft and sped up her bobbing, and my nipples hardened, my breasts feeling hotly swollen inside my bra as I found myself caught between queasy fascination and the need to turn and run. And be sick.

  “Good girl,” he growled lowly, turning his eyes down to her but glancing back up at me. “That’s it, that’s it, almost . . . Ah!” That last was almost a growling bark and then Pinky’s head stopped moving under his hands and I could see her throat working as she swallowed again and again while he twitched.

  “That’s it,” he said, again. “Good girl.” Looser now and stroking her hair he looked up at me again and, his eyes on me finally broke my paralysis. I backed up until the hedge came between us then turned and stumbled away, further down the walk.

  Now my imagination populated the hedged gardens with wildly fucking or sucking teens and I bit down on a half-hysterical laugh. Finding another nook—empty—I flung myself down on its concrete bench and just tried to breathe straight. I wasn’t nearly fainting anymore, but wasn’t at all sure my legs could carry me very far now. I once again wanted to vomit.

  Fishing out my cellphone, I stared at it and then put it back in my pocket. I couldn’t call Carl. Not yet, I doubted my voice would be even. Drawing up my feet and wrapping my arms around my legs, I just sat and tried not to feel the shivery sensations seizing my body.

  A bit of gravel crunched on the pathway and I straightened when a boy came around the hedge, recognizing him in the gloom; curly dark hair and ripped physique in an open too-small shirt, it was Chet.

  He stopped at the nook’s entrance. “Hey.” He didn’t sound surprised to see me.

  “. . . Hi, Chet.”

  He stayed where he was. “Are you alright?”

  He’d seen me panic at the pool-scene. Fuck. “I just needed some air.”

  He nodded again. “There is a lot of air out here. May I?” He waved at the bench and after a moment I scooted over, keeping my feet up. I tried to think. What was the proper negotiating move, here? If he’d seen me freak out at the pool, if he told everybody it would be almost as bad as if I’d completely lost my shit back there.

  Better to think about that than about Pinky.

  He sat, stretching his long legs out, and even all up in my head I noticed how nice they were. Strong. Hairy below his shorts. Oh, so you like hairy boys, now? I laughed into my knees. A short laugh, bitten off.

  “So . . .” he said after a moment. About what you saw back here.”

  I turned my head to look at him. “Here?” Not at the pool?

  His brow wrinkled cutely but he nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I saw Lizard and Pinky go down this way a bit ago, knew what they were planning. When I saw you head down here, I should have— Sorry.”

  I blinked. Blinked again. “What?” Seriously, what? “You’re— Wait. They—and you knew? Why?”

  “Yeah, well.” He scratched the back of his head. “It’s not like it’s a secret. Lizard has his nickname because he brags about his tongue. That he can make any girl scream with it. And at parties . . .”

  No. No way. “It’s his party trick? Like, ‘Come with me and I’ll show you my tongue?’ And it works?”

  “You’d be surprised. His fee is that if he does a girl right, well, she returns the favor and . . .”

  “Sucks him off.” My pussy thumped dully at the memory of my Big Sister with a boy’s dick in her mouth. At the same time I felt sick. Fuck, I was messed up.

  “Yeah. When I saw you head down here it took me a moment to remember they’d, yeah. So I followed in case you . . . yeah. Sorry I didn’t catch you in time.”

  “But if I’d been here sooner, I’d have seen a completely different show?”

  That startled a laugh out of him. “Yeah, yeah you would have. So are you alright?”

  I laughed shakily. “I think, I need a few minutes?” He nodded at that.

  “I’ll tell you what, I’ll go back and get you a drink. Bottled water? Take all the time you need, and when you’re okay I’ll escort you out of here.”

  “Past the rest of the bacchanalia?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, sure.”

  He was nice. And knew what a bacchanalia was. A Hadley education really rocked, apparently. “Thanks, Chet.”

  “Call me Papa.”

  I laughed. “No, really?

  He was back to scratching his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “My birthday’s a week after start of school, just before the age cutoff, and every other kid in my cohort has their birthday in the spring or summer so I’m close to a year older than the rest of them. I’m bigger too, and, well let’s just say I’ve been kind of protective of my cohort brothers so they called me Dad. I wasn’t about to let that stick as my nickname, but I got them to switch to Papa, like—”

  “Papa Hemingway! Oh, my God!”

  “Yeah. Nice coincidence, right?” He chuckled again, standing up. “Be right back.” And he was gone.