

Friday night arrives like Brad Pitt at the Oscars: glamorous, full of promises and giving me stomach butterflies. I hang around in the shower three times as long as I usually do, rehearsing bringing up the party with Annabelle. "Hey, by the way, Dean invited me to this thing... a party, I guess... is it okay if I go?" Nah. That sounds like I'm asking my mom for permission. "Hey, Annabelle, this just occurred to me... Dean mentioned this party thing tonight..." "Annabelle, Dean invited me to a party tonight and I'm going. I don't know the nature of your relationship with Dean, but whatever beef you have, go have it with him."

"Annabelle, can I pleeease go to the party with your Dean? I promise I'll return him just like I found him." "Hey, look! Pizza Hut coupons! You should totally go there and use them tonight! I'll take care of Dean for you! By the way, there's this party..." And there's also the thing about Dean being an entity. Should I bring it up with him? Should I say something? I mean, he might be here illegally, and I'm a Deporter. It's kind of my job. "Hey, Dean, great party! Nice drinks, good food... by the way, are you by any chance in the Mortal Planes illegally, because I kind of have to arrest you if you are." "Hey Dean! Woah, cool outfit. By the way, are you an angel? No, I'm not hitting on you, I actually need to know if you came down from Heaven. I know it still sounds like I'm hitting on you, but really, I need to –" "Hey, Lilith, how much longer is that huge crap you're taking gonna take? Cause I've got places to be!" I turn to face the door through the foggy shower glass. Shit. "I'll be right out, Annabelle!" All right, time to face it. No way around it. I'll just say it. I'll just say he invited me and that I want to go, and if she has a problem with it... well, then I won't go. But I reeeally wanna go... What? I wanna have a good time! It's my first weekend in college. God knows how long it will be before I'm invited to another party. I gotta make this one count. And no I don't mean making out with anyone necessarily though I won't rule that out and no I also don't mean smoking weed and getting blackout drunk but let's also keep those options on the table because who knows, right? I get dressed and roll a towel lazily over my head and turn the knob to let Annabelle in. "All yours," I say. "About time..." Annabelle steps into the steam room that the bathroom's become and stops in front of the mirror. She cleans the foggy glass with her sleeve. "Hey... listen, Annabelle..." I start, trying to sound as casual as I possibly can. "Yeah?" "Huh... so, I went to the Bruin Welcoming Walk this morning." "Yeah, I know. I walked with you." "Haha!" I laugh, a little too loudly. "That's true, you did!" Annabelle turns a weirded out glance my way, then back to the mirror. "Is everything all right, Lilith?" "Yeah. Yeah, totally. I... huh... so I talked to Dean at the walk." "God, this earrings look awful all of a sudden. They looked great until last week, what happened?" Annabelle turns another look my way. "I'm sorry, you were talking to Dean, and...?" "Yeah, and... are you going out tonight?" "Yeah," Annabelle says, distracted. "Yeah, there's this party going on in Dean's dorm room, his friend Max told me to stop by. Hey, you wanna come?" "I – huh.... okay." Oh. Well, that was easy.

Dean's undergrad home is a house that looks like shit, but only if you look at it from the outside. Once you step in you have to change your whole concept of what 'looks like shit' means, and the outside is re-ranked to 'pretty neat, actually', while the inside takes the new position of 'okay, now this looks like shit'. It becomes clear to me, the second I walk through the front door, that no girls live there. The common area living room kind of looks like ours back in Thompson Hall, expect this one is riddled from corner to corner in dirty laundry, dishes, beer bottles and shirtless dudes. "Fuck! Fuck your tight Irish ass, you fucking fucker!" I turn around expecting a bar brawl, but it's just two guys playing a soccer videogame on a tube TV. One of them is wearing nothing but his underwear – and trust me when I say this: that's not the kind of guy you wanna see wearing nothing but his underwear. "Is this the party?" I ask Annabelle as she closes the door behind us and we scan the room. "It's kind of... unbelievably crappy." "Yeah, I know, I always dread coming in here," Annabelle says. "They usually clean it up a bit when they know girls are coming, though. And there's supposed to be music, and some kind of improvised bar. Let's find Dean, he'll know what's going on." As if on cue, Dean shows up, and not just any Dean. Tuxedo Dean. Neat black tuxedo with white shirt and bow tie and hair combed back like he's about to start singing Frank Sinatra to us. He races down the stairs two fast steps at a time, phone in his ear. "Yeah. Yeah, of course man. No, we'll be there." His eyes find me and Annabelle as he reach the last steps. "No, they're here right now. All right, see you in a bit."



Dean reaches us and throws us a smile. "Hey, you guys made it." "Why are you all dressed up?" I ask, as he wraps his arm around Annabelle's waist and gives her a soft kiss and I feel a bit like an idiot talking to someone while he's kissing someone else and why is he still kissing her I mean how long does a kiss hello last that's enough already for the love of – "Hey, Lilith." Dean turns my way and gives me kiss also, albeit one on the cheek. You know, like you kiss ugly girls who you don't wanna make out with. Ugh. "Dorm party's not gonna happen anymore," Dean says. "We're going someplace else."



"Where?" "You'll see."



I look him up and down. Then I look down at my shirt-and-jeans outfit. "I feel like I may be underdressed for this new event." "Oh, you definitely are," Dean says, chuckling. "But that's okay, you're with me, so they'll let you in." I look at Annabelle for support, but she just shrugs. Loud thuds reach us from above and seem to shake the whole house. A second later, Max, also wearing a tux, marches down the stairs. "They're here, Dean," he says. "All right, let's go," Dean says. He goes past me and Annabelle and heads for the door. "Wait, how are we going... wherever it is that we're going?" Dean pushes open the door and steps out into the night. We follow and I almost have a heart attack. Parked in front of the house, all shinning and glistening and reflecting the street lights like a God damned magic mirror is a black limo. The front door comes open and an older man in a flat cap comes out and opens the back door and waves us in like I'm Paris freaking Hilton and Annabelle's Nicole Richie. Between us, Dean puts a hand on my shoulder, a hand on Annabelle's. "Shall we, girls?"