"You break this camera, I will kill you."

"Got it."

"I'm not kidding. I will stab you in the neck and watch you bleed out. Then I'll paint my face with your blood and run naked, howling through the woods."

Greg the Human Tripod didn't have a response for that. Renee took her spot between Lata and Caroline, five feet from both of them. She had chosen them for the aesthetics as much as anything – Caroline's oversaturated Kodachrome, Lata's sepia tint, the stark rayogaph contrasts of her own body. They should be immortalized.

"I just press this button?"

"Don't press anything. I set the timer. You are a human tripod." She assumed the Kouros pose, just as she had instructed Lata and Caroline to make. She let her face go blank. Behind them, a few stray lights twinkled amid the ancient buildings and trees of West Campus. On the roof, a tangible atmosphere of fragrant smoke issued from a dozen mouths. A spotlight above the stairway door shone hot and naked on them, creating deep shadows from every ridge and crevice.

With a click, the shutter opened. Renee held her breath, waiting for it to close.

The rumble and woof from Taylor's apartment increased in strength as they descended the stairs, any identifying characteristics muffled by wood and brick. Renee opened the apartment door and the treble blasted her in the face. Bodies collided with bodies in artificial twilight, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. Renee snaked her way through a maze of flesh, the jutting bones of her hips inscribing messages on thighs and asses. A disco ball threw dots of light around the room, turning everyone's face into a starfield. Renee raised her camera above and took a shot from the perspective of a distant planet.

She made it to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, and the haphazard array of bottles it contained. She reached for the enormous bottle of Grey Goose and looked for a clean cup. Lata was right behind her. "Whose apartment is this?" she asked, looking around at the exposed-brick walls, the stainless-steel appliances, the tasteful up-lighting.

"Taylor Hollister." Renee found a plastic cup in the cabinet, emblazoned with the slogan "COLLEGE – 5 OR 6 OF THE BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE."

"As in..."

"Hollister Drive. Hollister Arena. He is loathsome, but money has its uses." Renee filled the cup with Grey Goose, then drank half of it in one swallow. She wanted it to clean her out, to disinfect her. Lata stared at her, wide-eyed. "What happened to your friend?" Renee asked.

Lata looked out to the living room. The bodies had realigned themselves in orbit around Caroline, a new planet in the center of the room. Light sparked off her shimmering dress like a breathing disco ball. Renee pointed her camera at Caroline and left the shutter open, so time would turn her into a faceless mass of light.

A hand brushed Renee's shoulder blades. "Renee!" Taylor planted a stubbly kiss on Renee's cheek, leaving a sickly-sweet imprint. More to disinfect. "How does the witching hour find you, my goth princess?"

"Tone it down, Taylor."

"Whatever, I'm just trying to relate." Taylor hopped up on a clear spot on the counter. Everything was always frictionless for Taylor. If his name or his money wasn't lubrication enough, his looks usually did the trick. He looked like a wolf, like he'd eat your grandma to get into your bed. He'd blow your fucking house down if you weren't careful. Renee knew a lot of girls building their houses out of straw, waiting for him to saunter by. "Where's Alex?"

"He had something he needed to attend to."

"Sure. You didn't bring the other one, did you? I know you like to keep a backup handy."

"Fuck you, Taylor." Renee downed the rest of the vodka.

"Any time." From his perch on the counter, Taylor took in the whole apartment – either a king surveying his domain, or a predator scanning for prey. His eyes came to a rest on Lata. "And who do we have here?"

Renee locked eyes with Lata and shook her head once: Careful. "Lata." Taylor slid off the counter and took Lata's hand. He pressed his lips to her knuckles. "Welcome. Let me make you a Jimmy Carter. The house specialty." He turned back to the counter, and Lata wiped the back of her hand on her jeans. Taylor filled a cup with ice and poured in Maker's Mark and sweet tea. He called it a Jimmy Carter, but everyone who knew Taylor called it a Sigma Chai, in honor of his being such an asshole that he didn't even get a bid to Sigma Chi despite being the biggest legacy ever to set foot on campus.

Taylor handed the drink to Lata and she took a sip. "Right?" he said.

"Pretty good," said Lata. That was the thing with Taylor. He sucked, but he could be a gateway to things that didn't suck. Renee poured another cup of Grey Goose and added an ice cube. It's still early. Pace yourself. A song started up in the living room, what sounded like a piano reflected in a funhouse mirror. Dave must have been manning the CD player. No one else in Taylor's circle would have played this. Renee downed the vodka, crushed the ice cube into shrapnel. She squeezed Lata's shoulder and sent her another silent message: Find me if you need me. Then the Goose hit her all at once. The song pulled her off her feet and she hovered in mid-air, weightless.

She rose up and up, through the ceiling and into the sky. She glided over the dancers, a million light-years away, a lonely astronaut. I never done good things. I never done bad things. Dave always found exactly the music she needed. It was a gift, though she was still divided on whether he anticipated the need or created it. I never did anything out of the blue. She looked down into the apartment. A sad, small room, despite what it cost Taylor's father, full of teenagers dancing badly to a song as old as they were. But from up here the awkwardness, the fumbling, the fear all seemed graceful and purposeful, all part of the same system. Swirling clouds. Waves on the ocean. A school of fish moving as one organism.

All that Koyaanisqatsi jazz. Like the Bowie, a memory from two summers ago. Funny how that's where your mind always goes, when you let it go wandering. If Dave plays "Senses Working Overtime" next, you'll know he's really in your head. Or maybe he just read this. You wish you could go back there, don't you? To that little enclave, that bubble. The place where you took the last picture you liked. The place where you turned into this version of yourself.

The song ended, and Renee fell. For a moment it felt like nothing would catch her, but then she sunk into a shiny black ball of bass. She bounced up, hung in the air for a moment, and touched down on Planet Caroline.

Renee's head was flushed out, turned into a resonance chamber for the jittery, robotic beat. Her hand found its way to Caroline's hip, soft and pliable under the metallic fabric of her dress. She could barely feel the structure underneath. She squeezed tighter, to see what it was like. Beep beep. What would it feel like not to be constantly aware of the skeleton underneath: the only version of yourself that endures? To be all flesh and no bone, all bend but no break. She held onto Caroline for dear life. Caroline put her hand on Renee's spine. They dipped so low her hair brushed the ground. Up and down again, her leg between Caroline's, heat where their thighs touched. First contact. On the next dip she pointed the camera up at Caroline's broad, joyful face. Documentation for the mothership.

You don't really bring them here for the aesthetics, though that's a nice bonus. You bring them because you need that contact. You never want to show up alone, even to a party where you already know half the people there. You need someone you have a little authority over, someone with some obligation to you, even if it's two freshmen you just met. You need someone to submit to you, with or without the lens as a mediator.

"Holy shit," said Caroline.

"Holy shit," Renee agreed. Her head was empty, her hands full, her body in someone else's possession. She held out the camera and took a picture of the two of them.

"No, it's him." They dipped again. Renee arched backward until she could see upside-down. In the kitchen, Dave was walking across the ceiling toward Taylor and Lata.

"Hey, it's Dave," said Renee. Caroline brought her back up and released her.

"It's the asshole from the newspaper. Paddington Bear or whatever." Caroline forced a path through the dancers, light trailing behind her like a comet. She pointed at Dave and shouted "You! Paddington!" in the second of silence between songs. Lata turned to see Dave approaching her, and whatever she said was drowned out by the start of the next song: a processed guitar like a siren and a warm, insistent bass that made the bricks throb. Renee stood in the middle of the living room, in the black hole created by Caroline's absence, while bodies surged around her.

Lata and Caroline were really laying into Dave. They backed him up against the refrigerator, his hands raised in protest. Dave was like Taylor, part of the whole UNWG royal family, though the Tafts were more like distant earls or barons. There weren't any streets or buildings named after them. Dave wrote the Taddlington Taft articles under his ridiculous real name, some sort of performance-art project that had spun wildly out of control. Dave claimed to hate Taddlington, but he enjoyed the notoriety too much to ever take the poor sad boy out back and shoot him. Sometimes your words just hypnotize me.

Dave caught Renee's eye and silently pleaded with her to come help him, but she couldn't will herself back across the living room. She raised her camera and brought him in frame, twisting away from his tormentors like Laocoön fighting off serpents.

Her head was filling up again. She needed to drown everything out, find a pure state. She shouldered through the dancers toward the source of the bass and found a massive speaker. She leaned against it and let it enter her body. The bony monster inside her vibrated. Soon it would be ready to jump out of her skin and terrorize the village.

A hand slid around Renee's waist. Taylor rested his chin on her shoulder. She could feel his hot sweet breath on her ear.

"Your friends are really tearing Dave a new one."

"It's good for him. He should just think of it as defending his dissertation."

Taylor's thumb ran up the ridge of her hip bone, reading the vibrations. "You really don't know where Alex is?"

"I really don't." She put her hand on his, to move it away, but decided to keep it there instead.

"We really need to see Alex tonight."

"No one needs to see Alex. He works so hard at being unneeded."

"We need to see him."

"Who's 'we?'" Renee rubbed her cheek against Taylor's, his seven-day growth just the right mix of coarse and soft. He was a wolf but maybe he could be a dog, a big fluffy golden retriever who would keep her warm in the dark and demand only the bare minimum of affection in return.

"Me, Dave, Avery."

"Avery's here?"

"You know Avery. Keeping a low profile." One of Taylor's fingers slid up under the hem of her wifebeater. She gently pulled it back down. Bad dog. "We just really need to talk to Alex, if you know where he is."

Where was Alex? Running off with Audrey to chase after that Joanie girl. Renee and Joanie's paths had only ever crossed at oblique angles, but every guy she knew was obsessed with her. It was all so tiresome and obvious. She's tall, we get it. You want to climb her like a tree, scale her like a goddamn mountain. Because she's there.

"I really don't know."

"That's a shame." Taylor nuzzled in closer to her neck, tried his luck with her shirt again. This time she didn't stop him. She closed her eyes, feeling the liquid pulse of the bass, his hand on the cool pale skin of her stomach like Pygmalion admiring Galatea. If she was destined to break, maybe she could be marble instead of bone, a ruin instead of a fossil.

Renee raised her camera with the lens pointed at herself and Taylor. As she pressed the release, Taylor covered the lens with his hand. "No," he said. "I'm not one of your subjects." The shutter snapped, exposing only darkness. Then he was gone.

She turned to say something to him, but he was already swallowed up in the writhing mass of dancers. But through the crowd she could see a face: Alex's face. He moved toward her in stroboscopic bursts, hidden for a second by a swinging arm or swaying head, then reappearing a few feet closer.

Then he was there with her, pressing into her, the vibrations passing through her and into him. He reached up to caress her arm. She looked at him and saw herself. He was her camera, and he kept the shutter open. Time turned her into light.

"Alex," she said. She took his hand to move it to her face, and she saw the name tattooed on his forearm: ALEX.

"The fuck is going on here?" said Xander.

Strange things are afoot at the Kangaroo.

Thanks for reading! I really appreciate it. I'd love to know what you think. Here's a discussion question for the class: Aside from Biggie, Missy and maybe some old Bowie for variety, what other songs would you play to get a party started in August 1997?