Read Everything is Changed for Free Online

front and he looks all wrong.
    â€˜Did ya see Bonnie? She’s looking hot,’ he says with a sneer.
    â€˜Maybe you should stop drinking,’ I say, sounding like someone’s dad.
    He pulls a face. ‘Maybe you should start.’
    A couple of girls bump past us laughing.
    â€˜That’s my cue,’ says Tone, grinning at me as he takes off after them, leaving me alone in the middle of it all.
    I have to find the girl. I start scanning for hair colour, realising that almost all the girls here have really long hair. It makes me think about Ellie and the last time I saw her. How definite she was that it was all finished.
    I step over someone’s legs, and head to the back of the yard. There are shadows bouncing on the trampoline, and a bunch of people sitting in a circle talking and passing around a bottle of something. I turn to head back inside, and then I see her. She’s leaning against the fence, obscured by a lemon tree. I watch her, waiting to see what she’ll do, but she just seems to be standing there, still. I’d like to say she looks happy, that she’s coping with what happened, but I know nothing about her, so the fact she isn’t crying into a friend’s shoulder doesn’t really mean anything.
    I sidle up, not sure what I’m going to say. And just as I reach her, she turns and slams into me, her drink tipping down my t-shirt and all over my arm.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she says, slurring like Tone.
    â€˜No worries. It’s fine,’ I say, shaking my shirt.
    She leans against me, and sort of half slides down onto the ground. I crouch down beside her.
    â€˜You okay?’
    Her long hair is tangled across her face and she half pushes it away, giggling. ‘I’m drunk.’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜But I don’t drink.’
    She slumps back and her head hits the fence. ‘Ow.’
    I sit next to her, leaning back against the fence. ‘Did you come with friends?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜Do you want me to find them?’
    â€˜Nah.’ And she starts laughing again.
    â€˜You sure?’
    â€˜I don’t know much at all. I don’t even know whose party this is.’
    â€˜Me neither,’ I say, looking for signs of Tone. Every now and then his laugh fires up somewhere in the darkness. I wait for her to recognise me, but she doesn’t seem to.
    â€˜Do we know each other?’ I ask, hoping to jog her memory.
    She looks at me and I can see her trying to focus but struggling. Her face isn’t like what I remembered. Maybe it’s make-up but she looks different to when I saw her last.
    â€˜No. Don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Boys Grammar?’
    I nod.
    â€˜Girls Grammar,’ she says with a sigh, her head leaning dangerously close to my shoulder. I want to ask her questions, but not ones I can’t predict the answers to. Like, how are you coping without your father?
    I wait for her to speak while I look at the legs of the people I go to school with as they stumble past.
    â€˜I hate parties,’ she says. ‘Everyone seems so pleased with themselves. Don’t you think?’
    â€˜I guess. Maybe they’re just drunk.’
    â€˜No. I’m drunk and I’m not like that. It’s something else. It’s all some people talk about. It’s so boring.’
    I think of Tone. ‘Yeah.’
    â€˜I wasn’t going to come tonight but Mum made me. She actually rang my friend, if you can believe it.’ She starts laughing like it’s really funny, but there’s an edge to her laugh that wasn’t there before. ‘What a loser.’
    I’m not sure if she means her or her friend or her mum. So I say nothing.
    â€˜I don’t feel well,’ she says. And then her head flops down and connects with my shoulder and I feel her hair on my arm and it’s like an electric shock running through me and I want her off. I move, hoping she’ll get the