PARTY NIGHT - A Short Story

“Why are you going to Davy’s house first? I told you to pick me up at seven so that we could be over at Jen’s party by eight.”

She listened to some lame explanation about Dave needing a ride home.

“But that’s way out of your way! It’s going to take you at least an hour just to get back here again.”

Bridget never did seem to think things through before she took off on some hair-brained mission. Davy wasn’t even Bridget’s boyfriend. Just some guy whose locker was four down from Bridget’s. Apparently Bridget and Davy were also in the same science class and often did projects together. Bridget was explaining something about how Davy had been helping her with some math homework and he had missed his ride with his buddies.

Bridget was trying to apologize and explain why she would be even later. She hadn’t had a chance to get home and shower yet let alone get something to eat. Joni just looked at her cell phone in disbelief.

“Are you kidding me”, exclaimed Joni. “This is the first big party of the school year and you’re telling me that we are going to be late because you’re doing some good deed for a study buddy?”

Joni rolled her eyes as Bridget tried to apologize yet again. Joni could hear Davy in the background saying something about being sorry for causing so much trouble.

“Well, just when do you think you will be getting here?”

Bridget started running through the list of things she needed to do and places she needed to stop at before she could pick up Joni. In the background Joni heard Davy again. This time he was louder, more direct. Something about slowing down.

“You don’t have to do all of that stuff tonight Bridge!” Joni practically screamed into the phone. Joni’s mom stopped at her bedroom door with her hands full of laundry to see what all the drama was about.

A strange sound on the phone caught Joni’s attention and she cocked her head as if to improve the reception. She thought she heard the sound of tires screeching, but then there was a definite scream and thud as if the cell phone had been dropped.

“Bridget? What’s going on?”

Now the sounds seemed more muffled but it was definitely a metal on metal sound. There was another scream but Joni couldn’t be certain if it came from Bridget or Davy.

“Bridget! What’s happening? What’s going on?”

Now there was a very faint sound of traffic in the background and a crackling noise that Joni couldn’t place.

“Bridget! Bridget!”

Joni pushed her cell phone closer to her ear in an attempt to capture the sounds. There was that crackling and hissing sound that seemed closest while further away there seemed to be voice but Joni couldn’t make anything out clearly.

Suddenly there was sound that Joni had only heard on TV before. It sounded like an explosion of some kind, but this was Bridget’s phone, not the television. Before Joni could begin to process her thoughts there was a terrible scream that reached through the phone and seared through Joni’s mind and reached to the very marrow of her being. Then the phone went dead.

Joni looked to her mother, her eyes wide with fear. “Oh my God, Bridget’s phone just died.”