Old Friends, Good Times When

Old Friends, Good Times When most daughters tell their parents that they won't be home on a Friday night because they are going to the movies with their friends, and then sleeping over their girlfriend's house, their parents don't believe them. But Alison's parents didn't bat an eye when she gave them that excuse. Alison was what is often called a 'good kid.' She was a straight a- student and the captain of the lacrosse team at her high school.

Even in the crisp December darkness, her skin glowed with the tan she had gotten from hours of practicing in the hot summer and early fall sun. Alison met her friends Bethany and Jackie at Bethany's house. During the season, they always accused her of being a stranger to them: between school and practice she could hardly stay awake past 11pm, and weekends were filled with games, catching up on assignments, and helping out at her family's restaurant.

With Christmas break looming, Alison was, if not free, than freer than she had been. Bethany had a brother who was a sophomore at the state university only a few miles away. He assured his high school sister that he had a friend who could get the girls into a party at his frat house -- Bethany and her brother were always 'tight,' in contrast to Alison's older brother, who barely noticed his sister when he came home for the holidays with his wife and young son.

"Alison, is that what you are wearing?" Jackie and Bethany looked like twin sisters, dressed in tight skinny jeans, hooded midriff-bearing sweatshirts and low-cut tank tops. Allison was wearing her Varsity jacket, Vic's Pizza sweatshirt, mittens, and jeans. "It's cold," said Allison, snuggling deeper into her pockets. Her friends shrieked with laughter. Alison shrugged. Her face, in contrast to her friend's lips and cheeps, was bare of makeup. Alison had been friends with the girls since they were in kindergarten.

They had trick-or-treated together, gone to one another's gymnastics and pool parties, and ridden bicycles to the beach every summer as girls. But during high school, they had grown apart. Bethany and Jackie were the kind of girls who didn't play sports, except for maybe cheerleading, and came into Vic's to flirt with the football players, playing with the ice in their Diet Cokes rather than eating. But somehow the three girls stayed friends, as if the habit was hard to break.

Jackie drove fast in her little Ford Focus, which had been given to her as a present for her 17th birthday. Finding a place to park near the frat house was a different matter. Alison found herself thinking: 'well, if we can't find a place to park, maybe we could go home and sleep over Jackie's. That would be nice, like the old times.' But eventually, they did find a parking space in an alley behind a Dunkin' Donuts and the girls piled out.

Alison had never seen a place move and shake quite like the frat house: the building was dilapidated and strobe lights from within poured out of the windows. At first, the brothers at the door weren't going to let them in, but then Jackie's brother appeared, the girls had stamps on their hand, and they were wandering through the beer-stained rooms. At first, all of the girls were uncertain about what to do. Then, Bethany and Jackie had an inspiration.

"Dance and pretend like you're having fun," whispered Bethany to Alison, and shoved her onto the makeshift dance floor on the first-floor common room. "I don't know anyone." "Look like you're having fun and you will," said Jackie. Alison eventually wandered away from the girls, after they had found freshman boys to flirt with. She looked at her cellphone to see if her parents had called her. They hadn't. They trusted her. She flinched inside.

On the field, she was confident, shouting encouragement to the other girls and waving her stick. She felt alive, then. Here there was nothing but darkness -- no rules, no guidelines of how to behave. A boy grabbed her by the shoulder and gave her a kiss. She pushed him away. Hard. "Jeez, what kind of an arm do you have on you girl," he said. He looked at her jacket. At first, Alison thought he was going to tell her to.