I THINK I should blame Hyun. Without him, I'd never have met her.

            Hyun, Ayah and I had this pact—if any of us had to attend some party, we'd all go together. All for one, and one for all. We'd all go together and leave together, always before things got too wild, before someone turned up the god-awful electro music too high or before voices got too drunk or before someone started doing body shots off some poor kid. We always left at the right time.

            Not this time.

            Ayah had pulled out at last moment—down with the flu, sorry guys, you're going to have to go without me, cough, cough—which meant that Hyun would have to pick me up in his shitty Nissan, the one with the scratched up paint job and rusty bumper and an engine that didn't work properly, which meant that we'd be late because Hyun's Tiida couldn't go over fifty miles per hour or "this car would fucking blow up, dude" which meant we were going to be late because Genevieve Huey—birthday girl with the ugliest name in school—lived on the other side of town.

            "Can we just not go?" I asked, for what had to be the fifth time. "I'm telling you, by the time we get there, party's going to be over."

            "If the party's going to be over," Hyun said, "then consider this a leisurely drive."

            "No one's going to be there."

            "I got a birthday present for Gene-whats-it."

            "Dude, you're not going to get laid tonight."

            The car gave a violent jolt. Hyun and I both swore out loud.

            "Look," Hyun said, finally fastening his seat belt, "I'm not trying to get laid tonight. I'm going to give Gene-vava her birthday present. If I happen to get laid—" he looked me right in the eye—"so be it."

            "Eyes on the road, jackass."

            "Shut up. I'm driving."

            "Christ," I said. "Christ. I bet everyone's getting wasted right now."

            "For God's sake," Hyun said, "can you please shut up?"

            "No."

            Hyun let out a noise of frustration. "God, I hate you so much."

            I didn't say a word.

            We arrived at Genevieve's house and Hyun parked the car a little way off. His shitty little Tiida looked out of place on the street, filled with shiny SUVs and glistening Cadillacs. Genevieve lived in a new part of town, recently constructed and filled with white American citizens looking for a nice, quiet suburban getaway.

            Which is to say, she lived in a McMansion.

            We came too late. Even though we were parked a street away, I could hear the music thumping throughout the street, shaking the trees and juddering Hyun's car. Inebriated kids were yelling, singing and milling all around Genevieve's house. The light came through the windows in flickers, as body after body blocked the light then let it pass through.

            I looked at the house. Hyun looked at me. I looked at Hyun.

            "We can always pull out," I said.

            "I wish your father pulled out," Hyun said. "We're going. I don't care if I have to drag you kicking and screaming, but we're going."

            I held up my hands. "If some girl pukes all over your shirt, don't blame me."

            "Since when were you such a tight-ass?" He closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and thumped them against his thighs—something he did often when he was nervous, though I had no idea why he'd be nervous about going to a party that was in full-swing, when he was so eager to go in the first place. "Okay. Okay, let's go."

            He got out of the car. He forgot Genevieve's present on the dash. I got it for him. It was a small gift box, about the size of my palm, and to this day, I still don't know what the hell was in it.

            The thing about Hyun was that despite his good looks, despite what I thought was his rough charm but might as well have been something else, he just couldn't get into a relationship. He could sleep around, he could certainly flirt, but he had the sort of personality that was only good in small doses, meant for one-night stands and fumbling make-out sessions in the janitor's closets—not long term relationships, not anything that required commitment and loyalty.

            Which was why we were friends.

            Hyun shouldered past a group of giggling teenage boys who were pushing each other around. Music grew louder as we approached the house, so loud that I could feel it in my ribs. I'd been to parties before, but not like this. Everything about this just spelled trouble. The too-loud music, the too-drunk kids, the too-many people who I was sure weren't just kids from school, but older kids—adults! Though it was hard to think of them as adults when they were slurring words and spilling beer on each other—too. A recipe for disaster.

            "Five minutes!" I yelled, over the din of the crowd. Someone's boob pressed onto my back. An elbow in my neck. Nausea rose up in me. "Five minutes and I'm leaving!"

            Someone laughed. Hyun said something, indistinct. I couldn't hear him. A girl bumped into me, and for a second, I was overpowered with the smell of cheap perfume that clung to her She laughed and shimmied away from me, all the while saying sorry.

            "What?" I yelled. "What did you say?"

            "I said," Hyun yelled back, "I did not drive for twenty minutes just so you could walk off in five minutes, you fucking coward!"

            "Fuck you, man!"

            Three boys who looked completely wasted booed at me. They started repeating my words back at me, chanting "Fuck you, man! Fuck you, man!" and this was honestly all so bizarre for me, token nerd, token boor, token teetotaller that I couldn't really think beyond moving past the sea of people, trying to keep up with Hyun. Despite its outward appearance, Genevieve's McMansion was huger than it seemed. And Christ, was it packed. Hyun's head bobbed in and out of my vision. I was afraid I'd lose sight of him.

            I lost sight of him. His dark head was gone. Without Hyun acting as my anchor, I was lost at sea. Someone changed the music to something worse. My head was starting to ache. Somehow, I made it to a table laden with snacks. The punch bowl was overturned, staining the tablecloth a washed-out red.

            I waited for five minutes, half-expecting Hyun to walk by, or at the very least, to call me. The whole situation was absurd. I stood there, half-petrified and unmoving. I must've looked very stupid.

            That was when I saw her.

            She passed by me, barely looking at anyone. But people looked at her. What was it about her, I wondered, that made people stand a little further apart from her? She didn't have to squeeze through the crowd like I had to. They turned away slightly, took a quarter of a step back, let her pass through. I always marveled at this. I hadn't met anyone who had this effect on people, except Juliet. It pissed me off, back then.

            Whenever I describe Juliet, I'm tempted to give her some sort of special quality, paint her in a different light, or compare her to some faerie's child. Divine beauty on the mortal plane. Something cheesy, something dramatic, something Juliet. But though I wouldn't know it then, or wouldn't believe it, Juliet was human. How else would she have ended up dead with soil in her teeth?

            So, let me rephrase. Juliet walked by me. She did it easily, without shouldering or jostling past people. This was luck. Coincidence. People just happened to turn away when she was there, like how one would turn away in the face of brightness. Here I go again, comparing her to a star.

            I realized that the group of girls she usually hung out with weren't with her.

            And I don't know what it was but I wanted to be behind her. Scratch that, I know what it was. It was the loudness of the place. The absence of Hyun. The way Juliet seemed to be a sheer force of quiet beauty, a promise of silence.

            Or maybe it was the sight of her—sober and elegant in the midst of all this—that seemed, somehow, impossible to me.

            I followed Juliet outside.

            The air outside was thick and heavy. My skin went sticky with the humidity in the air. It was better here, though. I could breathe here, and the music wasn't so head-achingly loud once you were outside. I realized that I still had Hyun's gift for Genevieve, clutched to my side. In my hurry to get out, I'd half-crushed the box.

            There were still a bunch of kids around, sauntering around Genevieve's front lawn, but it wasn't hard to find Juliet. She stood, right in front of the garage driveway. Her blonde hair—which was already pale to start with—looked even paler in the harsh lights of the garage. Her face was cast into shadow, but you could still see the silhouette of her face, the glint of her eye. Her spine was straight, and she had a hand to her chin. I wondered if she was thinking about something, but then I saw that no, she was just smoking.

            I don't know how long I'd been staring at her. I don't know why it was only now I was looking at her, really looking at her, when we'd been in the same school for years and years. Coincidence. Luck.

            Fate.

            She took a drag of her cigarette, and slowly, she turned her head to look right back at me. She exhaled, and smoke came out of her mouth in languid strokes.

            "Hello," she said, and I took a step forward towards her. She held up her cigarette. "Do you want one?"

            "Sorry," I said. "I don't smoke."

            "Or drink, right?" She tilted her head, bird-like. Her gaze was curious. I could feel blood rush to my face. "You're Muslim, aren't you?"

            "Yes," I said, and I thought, this is it. This is where she just shrugs and turns away and goes back to smoking and ignores me.

            This is how all of our interactions ended. Less than thirty seconds of conversation and we'd go right back to our respective solar systems and stay in our orbits. All deviations are corrected by gravity. But I wasn't willing to head back, for some reason. I wasn't willing to step back into Genevieve's shitty McMansion, crushed under the weight of a hundred sweaty, drunk, hormonal teens when the only other sober person apart from me, was right before my very eyes.

            And maybe she wasn't willing either, because she smiled and asked me, "I wonder how that must be for you."

            "What do you mean?"

            "You're one of only three Muslims in high-school," she said. "Isn't it hard for you, when people find out who you are?"

            "Not really," I said. I took another step towards, and another, and another, till we were face-to-face. I could smell the smoke on her. "It's harder for Ayah than it is for me. She's more visibly Muslim than I am."

            Her eyes were on my clothes. "You dress modestly," she said. "Is that because of religion?"

            "Religion doesn't dress me," I said. "Insecurity does."

            To my surprise, she let out a laugh. It was low and quiet and lovely—a grown woman's laugh coming out the throat of a teenage girl.

            She transferred the cigarette in her hand to her left one, and she held out her right to me. "Juliet Yancy. I believe we haven't truly met before."

            I took her hand. My own stubby and rough hand felt awkward wrapped around her slender fingers.

            "You know my name, I think," I said. "But I'd prefer if you'd call me Ro."

            "Ro?" she asked. She raised an eyebrow. She hadn't let go of my hand. "What an unusual nickname. Like the Greek letter?"

            "Wait, Ro is a Greek letter?"

            She laughed again. Her hand slipped from mine. "It's also a unit for measurement, for density. We took it in Physics, remember?"

            "I never really thought about it like that."

            "I like it, though," she said. "Ro. Very nice."

            "Thank you. I like your name, too. Juliet. Very—"

            "Cheesy? I know. God, you'd think my parents would name me something normal, but no—" an exaggeration on the vowel, rolling eyes, her cigarette dangling from the tips of her fingers—"they just had to name me something as stupid as Juliet. I'd take any other name."

            "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet," I said.

            "Did you just quote Shakespeare to me?" she said, and she smiled again, showing me her teeth. "You just did, didn't you? And Romeo and Juliet, too!"

            I smiled sheepishly back at her. "There's no way people haven't quoted that to you, like, at least a thousand times."

            "You know, it's funny," she said. "Nobody really has."

            "You're joking. No way."

            She opened her mouth, and she was going to say something but right then, I heard Hyun screaming out my name.

            "Ro!" he yelled, and I turned around, irritated.

            He ran across the lawn, towards Juliet and me. I remembered the gift he'd been meaning to hand to Genevieve.

            "Listen, I am this—" he held up his hand, brought his index finger and thumb till they were touching—"close to getting my dick sucked and—" he glanced at Juliet, and stopped talking. "Oh."

            "No, no. Keep talking," she said, amused. "Pretend I'm not here."

            I cleared my throat.

            Hyun laughed, a little nervously. "I just—uh, right—I just need Genevieve's gift—and, uh—" I handed the gift to him, and for a moment, he whispered something under his breath, handed me the keys to his car—"think you can drive back by yourself?"

            "Hyun, you're not thinking this out. How are you going to get back?"

            He smiled. I was aware of Juliet's gaze over my shoulder. "I'll manage," he said, and sauntered off, gift in hand.

            "You have a very funny friend," said Juliet. "He's like you."

            "I'll take that as a compliment."

            "It is," she said.

            "You know, for all your grief about your name," I said, "you should be happy that you don't have a name like Genevieve."

            She laughed, and pushed my shoulder.

            "My god," she said, "you really are mean, aren't you?"

            We stood there, smiling at each other.

            "I have to get going," I said. "It's getting late."

            "Take care," she said. She squeezed my shoulder, then let go.

            I wanted to say something more, something witty, but I couldn't. I turned around. I walked away, towards Hyun's shitty Tiida. I felt warmth rise in my chest, and I suppose I was happy. How strange to feel happy, just because I talked with a girl who previously hadn't interacted with me, but now, she knew me, my name, complimented me, even.

            I completely forgot to ask Juliet why she wasn't with her friends.

//

a/n: ughfgh what can i possibly say that will make sense

okay whatever just tellme your theories if you have any. theories for what, you ask. theories for what, drew? you haven't even written anything coherent, you say. what can i possibly take from this entire thing that would make sense, you say.

well, i say. theories. please. about anythign. also, yes, ro as in romeo. funny story i actually named the narrator 'ro' before it had anythign to do with coincidence im such a goddamn fgenius like LEGIT i didn't even think about the romeo and juliet part i was just like. yo. ro is a wacky ass name i thin k its prefect. wallah, swear to god, i wasnt thinking. im too stupif for that lolz

reminder, theories. please. tell me what u think will happen next or whatever.