“You’re late again, traitor!” Wearing a deep scowl, Tony shakes his head but slaps a beer in my hand anyway.

I give a little shrug. “Rockstars never show up on time.”

How late can I be? It can’t be that bad. I remove my sunglasses to check my phone. It’s 2007, at least for another half-hour or so. All right, I might have overdone it this time. I take a large swig of beer, it’s nice—cold, comforting. I’m already at the limit, just beyond tipsy, not yet trashed, perfect to endure the God-awful music blasting through Sacha’s speakers.

Tony groans, but he can’t help smiling; he agrees with me. Of course he agrees. He’s the one who taught me that line, among many others. Once his name was Anthony, but no one calls him that anymore. He’s my best friend, my mentor, and in his own words, a prophet.

“I think you may have broken your own record.” My girlfriend Lucie; blonde, pigtails, Japanese schoolgirl skirt and Sex Pistols T-shirt, small in stature but as dangerous as a mongoose, is watching me with her arms crossed, her beautiful face flushed with anger.

The booze swirling in my stomach turns even her irritation into a thing of beauty. Laughing, I take another swig of beer. Tonight’s gonna be a good night.

“You think it’s funny?”

“Yes!” I try to kiss her cheek, but she shoves me away. Of course, it’s funny. Ridiculous, in fact.

Have you ever wanted to be special? Really special? To enter a room and your presence stops time? All eyes are on you? Everybody desires to be with you, look at you, touch you, hear the sound of your voice? I can imitate this effect by entering a party with my favourite songs playing on my iPod and imagine everybody else moving in slow motion, their smiling faces turned towards me, their arms outstretched in the hopes of the briefest contact. But when I arrived at this party time didn’t stop, and it certainly didn’t rewind. My friends are legitimately pissed off, and for all my time spent slacking and avoiding this moment, I haven’t thought about a good excuse to justify myself.

Tony is squinting at me suspiciously. “It’s almost midnight, fuckhead. What the hell were you doing?”

“I took my iPod to the store.” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “They gave me a new one, you know.”

“That explains nothing.”

I wasn’t always like this. Once, I was a scrawny kid with no friends, and a girl like Lucie would have never even looked at me. I genuinely wanted to be invisible, but the gods have decided to put Tony and myself together. Tony taught me everything, wrapped me in the right clothes, told me to grow my hair long, and soon the scrawny kid turned into something more palatable.

I assume an air of nonchalance. “I was making a playlist for tonight and got carried away.”

Lucie’s angry flush vanishes from her face. She flings her arms around my neck and swallows half my face in a hungry kiss. “You taste like booze.”

“I may have gotten a head start at home.”

She’s too inebriated herself to wonder about that. “Your playlist. Did you put our song on it?”

“Sure did.”

Her face brightens up. Of course, I don’t have a clue as to which song she’s referring to, but no need to panic. I put every good song in the world on it, playing it safe.

“Come,” Lucie whispers, pulling me to her. “Come with me to the bathroom.”

Lucie once said the first time she saw me, she thought I was so handsome, she decided she wouldn’t get through high school without being mine. This is the sort of thing I’m talking about. She wanted me so much, she couldn’t think straight.

I chuckle into the crook of her neck. “Isn’t it a girl’s job to go with you to the bathroom?”

“Not unless a girl can do this…”

The words she breathes into my ear are not for the faint of heart, which informs me she’s drunker than I thought.

“Sounds great. Maybe later?”

She scrunches up her pretty nose. “No. Now.”

“I need to put on the playlist first.”

Tony still looks sour. “Yeah, well, don’t get your hopes up. The security here’s tighter than my butthole.” Nodding towards the crowd, he takes the beer from my hands and finishes it. I twist my neck to locate the source of his worries while Lucie punches him in the shoulder, looking disgusted.

Growing out of my ugly duckling phase has been our ticket to scoring an invitation to every party at school, no exceptions. Tony can complain all he wants. Without me, we would be playing video games together like two virgins instead of muddying Sacha’s beautiful parquet floors at the top of a grand Haussmannian building in the centre of Paris.

Sacha’s legendary parties occur several times per year, so by now, I know the layout of the flat by heart. The sound system is located under the TV on the other side of the living room. To get past the dancing crowd would be a feat in itself. At least the Persian rug is gone this time, but only because her parents had to send it away for restoration. Even if I survive swimming amongst the sharks dancing to Rihanna, I’d still have to step over people sprawled onto the deep leather sofas, and then worse.

François and Yasmine, Sacha’s best friends and guard dogs, are flanking the TV. Plastic cups in hand, they’re protecting the sanctity of the mediocre music with their lives. Together with Sacha, our host, they form what Tony calls “The Golden Fork”. The three of them are filthy rich, their parents are powerful enough to have ours killed, and despite their lack of academic prowess, everyone knows they will rule us one day. How will I convince the two sharpest tines of the Fork to replace their bland, end-of-the-year soundtrack with my own very end-of-the-world-inspired tunes?

François is a classic case of an uninteresting person. He’s almost ginger but not quite, almost nice but not quite, almost a friend, but who am I kidding? We’ll never be friends. He’s as arrogant as his father is rich, which means a whole lot.

Yasmine’s like a brown Xena, and everybody’s terrified of her, for good reason. She’s by far the smartest of the lot, but also the fiercest. No one dares to mess with her. An example: She was the one who threw up on the Persian rug a few months ago. Everybody saw it, and no one piped a word.

However, though nothing’s easy, nothing’s impossible.

“I’m going to need a drink before anything else.” I put my sunglasses back on, and I leave Tony — still scowling — with Lucie so I can elbow my way towards the large modern kitchen. The room is blindingly bright compared to the rest of the flat, and it’s not sitting well with my vodka-filled stomach. Grabbing a beer from the fridge, I pop it open using my lighter. The lighter takes flight and bounces off the head of the brunette in a black dress in front of me.