

The rest of the night happens in a series of flashes, both in the literal sense that the lights start blasting nightclub-style on and off in epileptic spasms, and in the figurative sense that everyone is too much out of their minds to keep track of all that is going on. It happens like this: one second I'm sitting in front of Dean wondering what is going on and the next second I'm underwater and the music dies away and all is quiet for a second and I open my eyes to the burning feeling of chlorine. Around me, legs in slow dancing long dresses and legs in nice fit man pants kick back and forth underwater, and more and more people jump in the pool like cannon balls raining down from the sky. I emerge, let out a deep breath and the music explodes around me again. I look for Dean or Annabelle or Max, or anyone. The blinking light makes everything seem to move in a robotic pattern, like stop-motion animation. "Dean?" I call, splashing forward at random past drunken everyones. "Annabelle?" "Over here!" I turn back, and Annabelle's large smile greets me under her soaking wet hair. "Holy shit, what just happened, Annabelle?"

"I know, right?" She brings a beer bottle to her lips and downs a long sip. "Fun night!" "Is it always like this?" I say, pulling sideways to avert a 6 feet 3 blonde dude cannonballing an inch to my left in an atomic splash of water followed by a chorus of 'woooo's! "It usually takes longer for people to jump in the pool," Annabelle replies, swim-walking closer to me. "But yeah, pretty much." I glance past Annabelle, looking for Dean. More and more people jump in the pool, laughing and yelling and wooing, but I see no sign of him. Weird. He was here just now. Someone bumps against my back, and I turn to find two guys escorting a very, very, very drunk looking girl out of the pool. "First casualty of the night," I hear Annabelle's voice behind me. "That was a fast one."

The guys pull the girl out of the pool and drag her out towards the door leading up to the house. My eyes follow them, then turn back to scanning the insanity of the party around me. He was here a second ago! How come he -- "Hey. Hey, Lilith!" Annabelle calls, noticing my eyes darting left and right. "What?" I turn to Annabelle, blinking repeatedly, confused.

"Have a beer," she says, offering me her bottle. "And relax." And she's right, I decide. Let's relax and enjoy. Whatever. Dean will show up, sooner or later. He's an entity, after all. Maybe he can disappear too, in addition to healing himself. Whatever. Who cares? I don't. Really. I don't. Shut up.



The night goes on somewhat smoothly from there. Annabelle and I talk and laugh more and more the drunker we get, and we swim around for a bit, and then we leave the river pool and then jump in the moon pool and then back to the river pool. At one point, I spot the girl who opened the door for me when I first arrived in Thompson Hall, having a friendly chat with two shirtless guys by the bar. "Hey," I call Annabelle. "Isn't that girl from our dorm? The one who was playing ping pong when I arrived?" "Yup, that's Sabina," Annabelle replies. "And the other girls by her side are Sarah and Savannah. They're cheerleaders, the three of them." I notice the two other blonde girls – almost clones of Sabina – standing nearby, all laughing cartoonishly loud at whatever the guys are saying, drinking from Martini glasses. "Sabina, Sarah, Savannah..." I say to myself. "Yup. We call them 'the three esses'. Spell that however you want." I laugh, my eyes on the girls. They do look bitchy, but I don't wanna rush to judgment. Just because they're hot cheerleaders doesn't mean they're necessarily superficial or – "Sabinaaa!" one of them screams, rushing over to her friend and showing her cell phone. "You have no idea who just liked all my January pictures on Instagram!" Okey dokey. Prejudice 1 x 0 Lilith. Annabelle and I talk for a while longer, and she gives me the 'who is who' of Thompson Hall. Besides the three esses, there is also Bee and Joy, a couple who lives in the room next to ours; and Chloe, a quiet freckled girl who's always studying and listening to music. "That's all?" I ask confused. I didn't have time to get to know everybody, true, but I get the feeling there's a lot more than eight girls in Thompson Hall at any given time. "Well, officially, yeah," Annabelle says. "But the truth is at least twice as many girls sleep over there most nights. And guys too, sometimes." I consider asking her about the specifics of having guys over in shared rooms, but I decide against this particularly touchy subject, at least for now. We'll cross that bridge when (if) we get to it. At one point, I mention my feet and the palm of my hand are starting to feel wrinkly, and we decide to get out of the pool and find a table and sit for a bit. Not five seconds go by and a couple of guys join us, and then some girls, and pretty soon there's twenty of us and we're all talking over each other about Pink Floyd or the Persian Empire, it's hard to be sure. A few more times I spot entity behavior, like a dude lighting a cigarette with a flame that seems to emerge from his fingers, and a girl who, with a discrete wave of her hand, saves a falling glass from shattering on the ground by making it hover back to the table in front of her as if by magic. I decide against worrying about this now, though, mainly because I'm having too much fun. The crowd around us disperse after a while, and Annabelle and I discuss life at Thompson Hall some more. Then we decide to go back in the pool for a bit. Then we flirt with some senior guys. Then we participate in an improvised game of aquatic beer pong where you have to hit the cups as they float, which is just as hard and fun as it sounds.

And then five guys emerge from the bar carrying five trays, each supporting at least twenty shot glasses filled to the brim with a pale yellow liquid that is either piss or – "Tequila shots, everyone!" one of them yells. And then that's all I remember.

