Dark Application: ONE (The Dark Application Series Book 1) (4 page)

Mi
began to introduce her friends, and then saw Chris.
“Hi you!” she said and gave him a hug.

“So
lil
' one, who told you there was a party here tonight?
Just wondering because, uh, we didn’t really invite
that many people.
Except you of course! You are always
welcome!
And your friends too!”

Mi
laughed. “Luke posted it on Facebook, silly,” she
said.
“Right Luke?”

“No, I
didn’t actually,” he said, looking bewildered. “Are you sure you saw it
on
my
page?”

“Yes!
Everyone is coming. It’s crazy!”

Chris
had no trouble entertaining them while Luke drifted into the kitchen.
Party?
At this crappy
house?
No way. Who hacked my Facebook page?

He pulled
out his phone and quickly looked at his Facebook app. He looked at his
wall, and then he saw it.
Biggest party of the
semester.
Bring booze.
Dancing.
And Luke’s address.
How frigging
weird. Like Facebook took the words right out of his head or something.
Worse yet, when he scrolled through his newsfeed, just about everyone he
was friends with on Facebook had shared his post on their wall and those posts
were accompanied by strings of comments from their friends saying they were
planning to attend.

There
was a loud knock at the door and about ten more people Luke recognized from
school poured inside, stripping off their damp coats. Slowly, the volume
of the music crawled up and some random guy said, “Excuse me,” and put a case
of beer in Luke’s refrigerator.

He
stood for some time in the kitchen, staring at his cell phone. He clicked
on the
Dark Application
and opened it, trying to figure out what exactly
it did. The logo came up on the screen, and there was a text box that
said,
Hello, Luke Jeffers
. But there were no other buttons or
options.
Just a blue “D” logo on a black screen that
knew his name.

The
hour passed with more people coming and going. Luke had no idea that his
house could even contain this many bodies. They had to bank the fire and
crack the windows because of the heat. The stereo thumped so smooth that
the girls couldn’t help but dance. People showed up with bottles of
liquor and ransacked Luke’s kitchen for glasses, some even drinking
screwdrivers out of coffee mugs or hitting it straight from the bottles.
Funnier yet, everyone knew his name. Luke had never gotten so many
hugs, handshakes, and high-fives in his life. From people he’d never met
to his arch-enemies, after a few drinks, everyone was his friend; he had become
Mr. Popular in a matter of hours.

*****

At one
point, a girl got too drunk, and Luke found her lying on the bathroom floor
upstairs.

“Are
you alright?” he asked. She was a younger-looking girl, maybe nineteen or
twenty. “Are you even old enough to drink?”

“Please
take me home,” she gasped. He lifted her from the floor and threw her arm
over his shoulder, half-dragging her outside.

As he was
leaving, the crowd at the party began to chant, “Luke, Luke, Luke…” with the
tempo and volume of the chants increasing as he approached the door,

Once
outside, the girl he was helping doubled over and puked hard into the gutter.
She gripped her head and stumbled, but Luke caught her with a hand around
her waist. “I’m so sorry, I’m so embarrassed,” she whined, limping toward
the cars.

“It’s
alright. Hey, wait here, I’m going to ask my friend Chris if I can borrow
his car to drive you home.” Luke opened the door of Chris’s 1986 Subaru
station wagon and let her sit down.

“Thank
you,” she said, “And please
hurry
!”

Luke
ran into the house. He had to shoulder his way through the living room to
find Chris by the stereo, his arm around a young girl with straight black hair
in a silver dress who was trying to push him away, laughing.

“I
need to borrow your keys. I need to take someone home real fast,” Luke
shouted.

“Okay,
hey, listen, can you stop and grab some more beer?” Chris said as he tossed the
car keys into Luke’s hand.
“You good to drive man?”

Luke
nodded and clapped Chris on the shoulder. Outside, the girl was still
sitting in the car with the door open and her legs sticking out. “Do you
need to tell anyone you’re leaving?” he asked.

“No,”
she said and slid her legs into the car, slumping over in the seat so Luke
could shut the door. Her short skirt was sliding precariously up her
thigh and Luke looked quickly away for the sake of her dignity. He would
probably have checked her out, but since she was throwing up drunk,
the
timing wasn’t appropriate.

But
regardless, as he shut the driver’s side door and fired up the old car, he had
a hard time not checking her out more. She was short with the thick
muscular curves and deep brown skin.
Like Amy,
he reflected
thoughtfully,
but not quite as dark.
The girl’s face was turned up
toward him and he could see dark, thick straight black hair cascading over the
edge of the seat where her head lay bobbing drunkenly. For some reason,
Luke loved a girl with deep brown skin; the darker the skin, the less the flaws
showed. This girl was silky and flawless, her legs curled up to her
chest, her brows furrowed into a pained frown.

“I
don’t know where you live,” Luke said.

“Just
hop on the interstate downtown,” she slurred, “and go north two exits. Then
go left and when you get to Jade Circle, tell me, and I’ll show you my house.”

Luke
followed her directions, and while he drove, he thought hard about the phone in
his pocket. In fact, he thought about it so hard that he had to take it
out and stare at it some more.
Did that thing really vibrate during class
?
Even Professor Jones had seen him turn it off.
So… did the thing
post on my Facebook wall, and even worse, go “Viral” and share my post on my
friends’ walls too?

He
cringed at his own paranoia. He placed the phone on the dash where he
could see it out of the corner of his eye. Tomorrow, he decided, he
wanted to experiment with it more, to see if he was actually losing his mind or
something. Using his knee to hold the wheel, he plugged Chris’s car
charger into his phone and the screen briefly lit up. He laid the phone
down.
I’m not touching you again tonight. I just want to enjoy
my own party. That you created for me,
Luke thought.
This
was by far the biggest, and
baddest
, party of the year
and crazier yet, it is at our house! Shit was finally changing for the
better! Thanks Dark Application,
he thought to himself
.
At
just that moment, his phone chirped out a single beep. Luke could see the
screen of the phone lying next to him and the
Home Screen
was
illuminated. There weren’t any new notifications; no missed calls, new texts,
reminders or emails, just the plain old screen was lit up. Deep down
inside, Luke knew what the beep meant.

*****

“Here’s
Jade Circle,” Luke said. The girl slowly sat up, holding her head.

“My
house is up there on the left,” she said, pointing.

Luke
pulled around and parked, then leapt around the other side and opened the door
for her.

“Thanks,”
she said timidly, and took his outstretched hand.

“I’m
Luke, by the way,” he said.

“Oh
yeah,” she said, trying to smile, “Tiffany.”

He
helped her to the door, and she thanked him again.

“Hey,
you know where I live,” said Luke. “Stop by whenever. I swear
,
we don’t always party that hard…”

“I
know,
it’s
fine. I just should have eaten first,
I guess,” she said. “Well, thanks, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,”
he said, and she slipped into the house and closed the door.

*****

The
party was really raging when Luke returned with beer. Cars lined the street on
both sides, and Luke had no place to park. When he passed the front of
his house, a crowd of smokers were standing outside, blowing smoke in each
other’s faces and stumbling around laughing in the damp night air. The
rain had stopped and the streets were bright and shiny in the streetlamps. He
could hear the beats blasting even with his windows rolled up.

He had
to turn around a few blocks down and drive back to the house, where he caught
someone leaving the spot at the bottom of his slanted driveway. After
walking through the front door, Chris introduced him to several people he’d
seen around campus, but never met.

“Oh
you live here?” a few people asked. Luke just nodded and headed upstairs
to check on his room.

He
opened his bedroom door to find two strangers making out on his bed.
“Ahem… sorry guys.
I need my room back.
Gotta
go,” he said.

They
stood laughing and bailed, not even saying a word to Luke as they left.
He just stood there with the door open, sort of in shock, and sort of
amused, wondering whose life he had just stepped into.

He
turned to shut the door and bumped almost face-to-face into Amy.

“Oops!
Sorry, Luke,” she said.

“Amy!
Hey, I didn’t know you were coming here tonight!” he stuttered, his heart
skipping a beat.

“How could
I not come? It’s the biggest party of the year, so they said, and
besides, I haven’t hung out with you in a while,” she said, smiling and
shrugging.

When
she looked at him and smiled, his stomach grew weak and his legs went
numb. Her high arching eyebrows framed her dark almond-shaped eyes and
her hair floated around her high-set cheek bones. Her lips were soft and
honey colored, with a touch of pink lip gloss, and her smell… Luke reached
behind him and grabbed the door jam.

“So,
how come you never invite me to any parties Luke?” she said, raising her voice
over the music thumping downstairs and the people waiting for the upstairs
bathroom, screaming and laughing noisily.

“Here,”
he said opening the door and ushering her inside. When he shut the door,
he suddenly heard his heart rapping against his chest and his breathing had
become heavier.

She
giggled and sat on the edge of his bed. She wore stretch pants and
thigh-high boots under a purple cotton dress.

“God
damn you look good in purple,” Luke said.

She
giggled and smiled brightly at him. “Hey, I’m sorry about Savannah the other
day. You know how she can be, especially around guys,” said Amy.

“Uh,
wasn’t that your boyfriend you guys were with?” said Luke hesitantly.

“Yeah,
yeah, but you know that doesn’t stop her,” Amy said and laughed.

Luke
nodded. Yes, he knew. Savannah was the attention whore of the
century.

“So,
where is your boyfriend then? Did you guys break up?” Luke asked and sat
a foot away from her on the bed.

She
leaned forward on outstretched arms. “Travis you mean? No! He’s
here, he’s downstairs.”

The
door swung open and Asshole stood there, a sarcastic grin on his face.
“Actually, I’m right here,” he boomed.

Amy
jolted upright and stood up quickly, looking at Travis. He opened the
door and swung his arm out, gesturing her to go with him.

“Hey,
see you downstairs Luke!” she said, and waved over her shoulder as she bounced
to Travis’s side. When Travis turned to close the door behind him, he
gave Luke a dark, mocking glare. Luke’s face twisted into an angry
grimace. He sat in silence for a moment, reflecting on that tenebrous
look.
What was that some kind of threat? Was Amy now some
possession that he could use like a prop?
An ornament to hang
on his arm like a medal or something?
That piece of shit.
Shitty men like
him shouldn’t
exist.
Men like him should just die and get it over with.

After
a long moment, Luke gathered himself and went downstairs. Everyone was
drunk now. Some people were piled on the couch like a litter of kittens,
and couples had drifted to the dark corners of the rooms to make out. The
crowd began to thin as the night drifted on, and Luke was silently aware of Amy
as she moved about the house, following
Trav
-Ass like
a puppy on a leash. He kept pushing drinks on her, saying
drink up,
drink up
, and Luke felt the wrath growing in him like a blood clot ready to
explode.

When
he realized how drunk he had gotten, and he’d decided that he could no longer
wait to see everyone else in the house leave, Luke sought out Amy one last
time. She stood next to Travis in the doorway, where he argued loudly,
creating a racket with a group of other rugby players. They all got quiet
when Luke approached. He lurched toward them and then leaned against the
wall of the hallway.

“So
Amy, when you dump this bitch, you
gonna
let me take
you out or what?” Luke slurred.

Amy’s
face dropped, and Travis’s chest inflated. The guy’s ribcage just started
to swell and balloon, like he was pumping up a tire and right when Luke was
ready to take a punch to the face, Travis bent over and gave a splitting,
gut-wrenching laugh that rang in Luke’s ears. He doubled over in
hysterics, slapping his thigh, and soon the others in the group began to laugh
too. Out of nowhere, Savannah appeared like a porcelain ghost, and with her red
eyebrows pinched together, she screeched, “Luke, you drunk-ass dork, get the
hell out of here before you get hurt!”

At
this, everyone present began to laugh and grip their sides.
Everyone except Amy.
She did not laugh, didn’t say
anything at all. She looked long and regretfully at Luke, but when Travis
said, “Let’s go,” she took his hand and turned toward the door.