CHAPTER 93

Darrin frowned as the elevator doors opened in front of him. He'd expected to see well-dressed people mingling in a cocktail party atmosphere right there. Instead, there was a long empty corridor leading to another closed door.

Lisa saw his disappointment. As she started walking forward, she said, "Oops. I forgot about this part. Elevators can only go straight up and down, and the cliff I said the headquarters is built into is actually more like a steep slope. So everything is still a little ways ahead. But we'll be there in a second."

Sure enough, they soon got to the next door.

However, when they stopped, Sandy put her hands on Darrin's chest. "Wait! Son, I'm scared of all those strangers! Will you kiss me and hold me one more time, for good luck? That'll give me the confidence to face anybody."

He gave her a skeptical look. "Are you really that scared, or do you just want to make out again?"

She grinned impishly. "A little bit from column A and a little bit from column B."

He sighed, but she was so adorable that he wrapped his arms around her and made out with her for nearly a minute.

That necking session slowed things down considerably for the entire group, because then Jane wanted a kiss. She also insisted she needed a "confidence boost."

Of course he gladly obliged.

But then Lisa wanted one too.

He gave her just as much necking time.

He thought he was done, but Pamela, Astrid, and even Leia seemed just as eager.

Astrid rocked on her heels, and asked eagerly, "What about us?!"

He was amazed. "Seriously?"

The three of them nodded earnestly.

Astrid teasingly told him, "We need our confidence boosts too."

He shook his head in wonder. "But don't you come here a lot? Haven't you been to many parties like this?"

Pamela answered that. "Sure, but better to be safe than sorry."

He rolled his eyes and acted all put out, but he loved it. He made out with each of them, one after another. That made him giddy with delight, even though his penis stayed flaccid. He especially loved feeling a variety of impressive breasts pressing against his chest.

Astrid went first, because she was the most hot and bothered. She made sure her dress slipped down enough to fully expose her big tits before the kissing even got going.

Naturally, Darrin took full advantage. He had her panting hard and burning with desire by the time the make-out session ended.

He looked to Pamela and Leia. Both of them were already fully topless as they waited their turns.

He chose Pamela next. But instead of exploring her dark boobs, his hands went to her firm ass. It wasn't long before her dress slid further down, to mid-thigh level.

Jane complained, "Hey! I didn't know we could get naked like that. I demand another turn!"

Sandy held her tongue, for now, but she felt the same way.

Leia already was sliding her dress further down, fully exposing her bare pussy. She said, "Look at it this way. You'll get to make out with him any time and practically all the time, probably for the rest of your life. Whereas, who knows, this could be our very last time with him. Can't we go out with a bang?"

Jane was still miffed, but Sandy told her, "She has a point. Let them have their minute or two of fun. Look at how he's cupping Pamela's ass with one hand and fondling her chest with his other, while knocking her back with a steamy kiss. We have years and years of that to look forward to. He'll probably keep up naked nearly all the time!"

Astrid had pulled her dress back up. She walked to Jane and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure he will. You're so lucky. You have no idea. Women like us, we were born to suck and serve. But when it's your son or your brother, someone you truly love? You can't put a price on that!"

While she was talking, Darrin finished necking with Pamela and moved on to Leia.

Jane was somewhat mollified, but she grumbled, "It's not fair. Look at how he's just switched from making out with an impossibly gorgeous and nearly naked black woman to an equally impressive richly tanned Hawaiian one."

Astrid still had a hand on Jane's shoulder. "Yes, it's terribly unfair. But that's life in Napali. Soon, you'll learn how to channel your jealousy into being a better cocksucker, which means more joy for you and more joy for him. It's like a virtuous circle, the opposite of a vicious circle, and jealousy helps fuel it all."

"So you say," Jane grumbled. She folded her arms under her heavy rack.

Lisa smirked with amusement as the last kiss with Leia finished. "Okay, are we done here?"

All the other women sheepishly nodded. Leia and Pamela were still busy putting their dresses back in place.

Darrin was blown away, yet again. I just French kissed six total babes, all in a row! SIX! That was such FUN! None of my friends back home would believe it. Hell, it just happened to me, and I barely believe it!

While the last two kissed women finished dressing, Astrid whispered to Sandy and Jane, "About feeling jealous. Search your feelings. Are you really that upset seeing him make out with the rest of us? Doesn't a part of you, at least, feel good about it?"

Sandy and Jane searched their feelings, as instructed. They'd just watched him kiss and fondle Lisa, Pamela, Astrid, and Leia, one after another. He'd engaged in plenty of tit and ass groping each time, with his hands sliding inside their dresses, if the dresses were even still on. But upon reflection, neither mother nor daughter felt particularly upset. Yes, they were jealous, but they also felt strangely jubilant, seeing his success as their success too. Plus, of course, they were easily aroused by all of it.

The key was they felt secure that the two of them would always be the ones he loved and desired the most, and others like those three would just be the icing on the cake. Lisa's attempt to keep some doubt that he might not pick them to be his personal sluts kept them on edge a little bit, but in their hearts they knew he would choose them.

Neither of them replied to Astrid, but their silence was telling.

Once the group was finally ready to proceed, Lisa typed another security code into a keypad, and then they were buzzed through.

What Darrin saw next was pretty much just want he had expected, with a full-on cocktail party atmosphere. The door led to a large room, with about twenty people mingling in it. The lights were dim, at about twilight level.

Sandy and Jane were relieved to see that, in fact, all of the women were fully dressed, and of course the men were too. But they were also daunted, because Lisa had been right that the women were "dressed to the nines." It looked much like a fancy private party back on the mainland, except all the women were ridiculously beautiful, like a gathering of Hollywood starlets, except one from an alternate universe where all of them had super-sized breasts. And there was a lot more skin showing than usual, with bare backs and dramatically exposed cleavages the norm. And while nearly all the women wore dresses, they generally were more like micro mini-skirts, sometimes only going a couple of inches down the thighs. Plus, of course, nobody wore any underwear.

By comparison, the dresses Sandy and Jane had hastily selected were on the conservative side. They did show some cleavage, but the dresses went down below their knees.

Both mother and daughter were relieved that at least Lisa had also been right that make-up wasn't used, or at least only used sparingly. They noticed many of the women did wear lipstick, however.

The men were much more casually dressed than the women. None of them wore the ties and jackets or even the tuxedos that would have normally matched the fancy female wear. Some guys were merely wearing T-shirts and shorts, like Darrin was. Clearly, in the SI world, women went out of their way to impress the men, but that seemed to be a one-way street.

That made sense to Sandy and Jane, due to the imbalanced sex ratio. The party numbers Lisa gave suggested a three to one female to male ratio, and that's exactly how the crowd looked.

Darrin noticed that imbalance, and was somewhat frustrated by it. He wanted safety in numbers, because the collective beauty of the women there was very daunting. But he only saw five other guys in the room of at least twenty people, and none of them were close to his age.

All three Douglases also couldn't fail to notice that many of the women were wearing white cloth collars around their necks. However, more of the women had bare necks.

The Douglases only had a few seconds to get their bearings, because one older woman dressed in a sparkling silver evening gown saw the elevator doors opening, and who was coming through. She immediately tapped on the wine glass she was holding to get people's attention. But there was music playing and a lot of talking going on, so that was only partially successful. So she shouted, "EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!"

That quieted the room.

She still spoke loudly, "Sluts, free ladies, and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make: the last of our special guests have arrived! I bring you... the Douglas family!"

All the people in the room turned to where the Douglases stood and started clapping. Furthermore, there were some open doors leading to other rooms. Many people came flooding from those rooms into this one, with all eyes eager to see the Douglases. In a matter of moments, the room got much more crowded with about forty people in it, plus Lisa and her group. The sex ratio stayed about the same.

Darrin, Sandy, and Jane felt shy and embarrassed. They had lived low key lives back in Missouri, and they weren't used to this sort of attention.

What made the situation surreal was that every single woman in the room looked like they belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine, or even supermodels. Even the women over 50 looked surprisingly sexy and desirable. And yet they were treating the Douglases like rock stars or royalty, just as Lisa said they would. One could sense from the collective excitement of the crowd that their arrival was a genuine big deal for the SI community.

Lisa could sense that the Douglases didn't know how to handle the attention from an adoring crowd. So she spoke up loudly on their behalf. "Everyone, as you know, I'm Lisa Palmer. Let me introduce you to the Douglases. This is Darrin." She held a hand over Darrin's head.

The room erupted into cheers and hollers, and even whistles.

Darrin was downright shocked. He had low self-confidence about his looks, and understandably so, due to his overall scrawny and nerdy appearance. The fact that he was fifteen years old made him the youngest and smallest person in the room, as far as he could see. All the women outclassed the bombshell beauties one would find at a party at the Playboy mansion. And yet everyone seemed to be openly welcoming him like he was naturally one of this group of physically perfect sexual elites.

It took a lot to rattle him, but he was rattled, in a good way. His face flushed in embarrassment.

Once the clapping died down, Lisa announced to the room, "Yes, as you can see, Darrin here is only 15 years old, and he looks even younger than that. But he's already taken his mother and sister firmly in hand. In just one day, they proudly consider themselves his personal big-titted cocksucking sluts!"

The room broke into cheers and hollers again, and louder than before. There even were some whistles and shrieks this time.

Lisa waited for relative silence, while more people continued to stream in from the other rooms. Then she continued, loudly, "It's true that Darrin is still growing into his body, but you only have to look to his mother and sister to see how he's bound to fill out and grow up soon. Meanwhile, don't judge a book by its cover, because this boy is packing some serious HEAT! His cock may only be eight inches long, fairly typical by Napali standards. But what sets it apart is its thickness!"

Darrin's jaw dropped, and his face got redder than it had been all day. He was incredulous that Lisa was openly boasting about his penis in front of a crowd that had grown to at least fifty people, most of them women. And yet nobody seemed the slightest bit fazed. It was as if she was boasting about his academic or athletic achievements instead.

Lisa continued, "I won't say just how thick it is. Ladies, I want you to be pleasantly surprised when you get a chance to wrap your lips around it. It's a five-star sobber for sure!"

There was an audible murmur of appreciation from the women in the audience, as if Lisa had just announced a million dollar donation to a charity, paid out of her own pocket.

Darrin stood there with his jaw hanging open. Even had Lisa not been talking about him, it was hard for him to think straight, due to seeing so many extraordinarily beautiful women in every direction.

One woman shouted out, "What's so great about it?"

Lisa grinned widely. "I'm glad you asked, Syreeta. Let's just say it's one of the very thickest I've ever had the pleasure to suck on. Now, many of you know that I don't like to boast about the color of my heels, but just this one time I'm going to point that out, to show just what a remarkable jaw-breaker he's hiding!"

The crowd burst into even more enthusiastic cheers and applause. Clearly, everyone in the audience knew Lisa was a red-heeled sucker, based on how they reacted to her words.

Meanwhile, the crowd size had continued to grow, to over sixty. By this time, the Douglases could see more familiar faces, including all of the Brown family, as well as Vicky, Joni, and Wanda. Darrin was pleased to see Scarlet and Jamilah too. But none of the Sanchez family or Emily were in sight.

Lisa's heel color comment made all three of the Douglases remember to look down and check out the colors of all the high heels they could see. It was a true rainbow of colors, which was astounding in and of itself from all the cocksucking experience that implied. But also, there seemed to be a uniformity in the overall design, despite there being some slight style differences, such as the location and number of straps. The Douglases guessed, correctly, each such difference had specific symbolic meanings that they hadn't begun to understand yet.

Only the heel colors from the women in the front could be clearly seen, about 20 women in all, due to the dim light and packed crowd. No red heels could be seen on any of them, nor was there any blue, except for one dark blue pair. There was one orange pair, however, the third highest color.

Sandy and Jane felt daunted by all those heel colors. Both of them were especially frustrated to realize that none of the other women wore black heels. That meant every single other woman in the party was much more experienced in cocksucking than they were.

Sandy thought, Talk about daunting! Every bombshell beauty here has probably sucked cock many hundreds of times, but more likely many thousands or even tens of thousands of times! It's dizzying to look around at all the magazine-cover-worthy faces and picture each and every one of them naked and kneeling, with tears streaming down their cheeks from choking and gagging on thick cock-meat. And yet that has to be true.

It's weird though. I feel intimidated, for sure, but I also feel inspired. If they can do it, I can do it too! The fact that so many of the very most beautiful women in the world have fully committed themselves to the cocksucking lifestyle gives me the confidence that I'm making the right decision dedicating myself to my son's pleasure.

Jane had a similar reaction, except that she was more daunted and less inspired. However, she also was even more aroused than her mother, because she had a vision of all of the forty or more women in the room naked and kneeling and bobbing on cock. In her vision, there were way more women than men, so each man had two, three, or sometimes even four women at his crotch. She thought that was seriously hot.

What she didn't fully realize was just how accurate that vision was. Cocksucking parties just like that were very common in Napali, and at SI's Hawaii headquarters too.

Sandy was startled out of her heel inspection when she felt Lisa's hand move until it was hovering over her head. She knew what was coming next, and she dreaded it. She leaned in to Lisa and urgently whispered, "Please keep it short! I'm embarrassed!"

Lisa subtly nodded. Then she spoke in a booming voice, "And here is Sandy! Sandy Douglas, everybody!"

The room broke into wide applause again.

Lisa waited for quiet, then said, "I'll keep things brief so you'll be more intrigued to meet her yourself. But let me confirm that, yes, those are I-cup-sized breasts on her chest. And yes, Darrin already has had the pleasure of plowing his cock right through them! But as much as she enjoyed that, she told me that she's discovered her true passion: sucking her son's cock!"

Lisa was going to say more, but the room erupted into the loudest applause so far, with even more whoops and whistles. She remembered that Sandy wanted her to keep things short, so she decided to end there, on a high note.

That was fortunate, because Sandy was just about ready to die of embarrassment. She had to shut her eyes tightly, though that didn't help much. Her heart thumped wildly and her face was burning red. She was aghast that Lisa told the whole crowd of her passion for sucking her son's cock, even though she knew on some level that that was common knowledge in SI circles already. Yet she also felt more validated in her new lifestyle from hearing everyone roar in approval.

Lisa brought her hand over Jane's head. "And last, but certainly not least, Jane! Jane Douglas!"

Lots of cheers followed, though not as loud as the cheers about Lisa's "true passion" comment regarding Sandy.

Lisa said, "Jane here has just recently turned 18. Her breasts are already F-cups, which is impressive enough, but Sandy kept developing into her early twenties, so Jane will probably end up just as curvy and endowed as her mother. And today she's discovered a new favorite hobby, which is bobbing her head on her brother's tremendously thick cock-meat!"

The crowd erupted again. They loved any sort of cocksucking talk, so the cheers were as loud and long as they had been before with the mention of Sandy's "true passion."

Lisa waited again for relative silence, then said, "Furthermore, I'm happy to say that Jane is taking to her new hobby like a duck to water. She's already taken part in her first mother-daughter double suck, before even getting off the plane, and you know how rare it is to make progress that fast!"

Again, Lisa planned to say more, but the crowd cheered the loudest yet so far. The crowd even surged forward to where the Douglases were standing, and if they all wanted to touch these new heroes and heroines.

With the crowd still going wild, Lisa tried to shout over it. "So there you are! The Douglases! Please make them feel at home and welcome them to our family!"

By the time Lisa finished speaking, Sandy and Jane were positively blushing cherry red, while Darrin was red-faced too. Sandy even unthinkingly sucked on two fingers, which she tended to do when she got very nervous. Jane tried to shift positions, so she could hide behind Lisa's tall and broad frame.

The crowd moved in even closer, because this was an opportunity for people to meet and greet the new arrivals.

The next few minutes were a blur for each of the Douglases. They found themselves cut off from each other and from Lisa, due to the sheer numbers of the people trying to push their way up to them. Then a bewildering variety of strangers came up to shake their hands and/or hug them. Names were exchanged, but none of the Douglases remembered any of them, because they were dazed from the rapturous reception they'd gotten from the crowd as a whole.

It took a while, but everyone who wanted to make introductions got their chance and then wandered off. There were no conversations per se because it was too loud to say much, and anyone who came up to speak to any of the Douglases could see they weren't in the mental shape to go beyond the basic pleasantries.

Darrin desperately wanted to get away from all the strangers. Nearly everyone who wanted to meet him was female, and each one was more sexually stunning than the next. He noticed that the ones without collars looked at him with hunger in their eyes, if they even managed to look at his face and not at his crotch. By contrast, the ones with collars were friendly, but didn't seem to overtly desire him. Even though most seemed friendly towards him, and often even attracted to him, he felt intimidated by the sheer beauty of so many incredibly stacked and sexy women in one place.

It was mentally exhausting! He was awed by the potential of his sexual future. It was way better than his wildest masturbatory fantasies, and those were already unusually incredible because they vividly involved his sister and/or mother.

After Lisa's introductory announcement ended, many people went back to the adjacent rooms they'd come from. The room was slowly returning to its original crowd size.

Looking around, Darrin saw Sandy and Jane standing there appearing utterly stunned and overwhelmed, while Lisa was still busy talking to a couple of people she probably knew from before. He wanted to help lift their spirits, so he moved in towards them and put a hand on each of their shoulders to fully get their attention.

He waited until they were looking into his eyes, then said, "I know, I know. This is totally overwhelming, isn't it? It's too much! For one thing, I can't believe how remarkably gorgeous all the other women are. And they must all be super sexually experienced too."

He continued, "But you know what? That doesn't mean much to me. As far as I'm concerned, not I single one of them is as beautiful as you two are. Because not only are you jaw-dropping knockouts on the outside, I know what beautiful people you are on the inside. I love you so much!"

Sandy and Jane perked up upon hearing that. But they were still feeling insecure. Sandy couldn't resist asking, "But what about their experience?! Every single other woman here can blow the two of us out of the water!"

Jane nodded, with a big frown on her face. Clearly, she has the same worries.

He rolled his eyes dismissively. "Bah! Pshaw! So what? I love you, not them. I'd rather have you two suck my dick any day of the week than all the rest of them combined!"

"Oh! My big man!" Sandy was filled with relief. She rushed forward to give him a hug.

At the same moment she did that, Jane felt exactly the same and rushed forward too. The three of them wound up in a three-way hug. Some very loving French kissing followed.

Lisa was still engaged talking with a couple of old friends, but she kept an eye on the Douglases all the while. She was able to follow Darrin's words and the responses. She was impressed yet again at how he was handling himself, especially considering his youth. He knew exactly what to say, and his words hit home because they were so clearly sincere.

Lisa sighed longingly. What a man! Yeah, he's still got the body of a boy, but he's a man. All man! I wish he could feel the same way about me that he does about them. Just hearing those words makes me even more eager to suck his cock whenever he wants it. But this obviously isn't the time or place.

Indeed, Darrin couldn't even keep the hugging and kissing going for long, because a few straggler women came up and wanted to talk to Sandy and/or Jane. So he reluctantly broke away.

He looked around the room again, trying to decide what to do with himself next. To his great relief, he saw Trevor, right when Trevor turned around and walked into another room. He decided that was a familiar face he was looking for, even though he'd only ever had one significant conversation with Trevor before. Plus, he much preferred talking to another boy his age instead of one of the overwhelmingly sexy strange women. He was close to some kind of mental overload.

Darrin looked to Sandy and Jane to check how they were holding up. He saw they were blushing and embarrassed, but he also saw that Lisa, Pamela, Astrid, and Leia were still near them and filtering or limiting their interaction with even more strangers. He figured they were in good hands as a result, and hurried off to catch up to Trevor.

He found Trevor in the next room, but he hesitated to get closer, because he saw that Trevor was with his mother Jasmine, his sister Vanessa, and their SI handler Joni. He'd had even less contact with any of them so far. He was reluctant to go through the usual introductory small talk now, right when he was feeling especially freaked out after Lisa's introductions and the rest. He'd hardly ever been to any sort of party in his life before.

Luckily, Trevor saw him, broke away from the others, and met him in an empty spot halfway across the room. Trevor came right up to him and gave him a firm handshake, and then a back slap. He was smiling widely. "Hey, man! How are you doing? That was some introduction you got there."

Darrin nodded, still in a slight daze. "Yeah. Crazy! Was it like that for you?"

"Oh yeah. Mine was even longer and more explicit. Joni gave the intro, and she spent most of it talking about how much she loved to suck me off! She kept calling my dick 'yummy.' She said that right in front of everybody, and they cheered like I was the Super Bowl MVP or something. It was nutballs! But that was nothing compared to the praise you got from a real red-heeled sucker! Tell me, is it really so much better when Lisa sucks you?"

Darrin found the conversation beyond surreal, but he plowed on anyway. "Um, no, actually. I mean, she's great, for sure, but from what I gather, I'm so new to being able to handle it that she can only use less than half of her skills on me, way less than half. I think that's the case for a lot of the colored heel ratings, actually. At least the top dozen rankings, maybe more. They're so good that if they turned it on all the way, I'd cum in less than a minute. So, unfortunately, I don't know what the red really means. All I know is it feels awesome, but I can't begin to quantify how awesome."

Trevor nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I can see that. Joni also told me that same sort of thing. She wears dark green heels. I don't know what that means exactly, but I gather it's kind of the middle of the pack. She made clear it's way different than regular green, which is one of the best. I wasn't sure to believe her when she told me she was holding back. But she's not the type to boast, and I guess it's true after what you just said."

Darrin said, "Yeah, I gather the basic colors are the best. If it's dark or light, or an off color like turquoise or tan, that's lower down. You know, there's a lot you and I should talk about. And with Ramon too. I feel like I'm swimming in a sea of insanity." He looked around the room briefly, and was stunned and intimidated all over again. "Talking to you feels almost normal."

Trevor grinned impishly. "Yeah, I get what you mean, even though we're not exactly normal either, since we're talking about the cocksucking colors of high-heeled shoes! Which every single damn woman in the party is wearing! Can you even imagine the sheer combined sucking power of all of them? And they're, like... jaw-droppingly... amazing! And super stacked! It's incredible!" He gesticulated wildly because he was having trouble putting his feelings into words.

Darrin dramatically held out his hand for another handshake. "Welcome to the SI world, my friend! You and me, we get to be on the receiving end!"

The two boys vigorously shook hands. They beamed at each other, reveling in their mutual great fortune.

Trevor said, "Welcome for you too, man! This is nutballs, totally nutballs!" He broke the handshake and shook his head in amazement. "I feel like I'm slowly losing my mind, or maybe I went insane already. Like the introductions your family got, and my family too. Half of it was about fellatio!"

Darrin responded, "I know. And did you hear the secret code to get in the elevator, up above?"

Trevor thought back. "Yeah, for our group it was something like, 'Prepare to get your face fucked, you dirty slut.' Yeah, that was it. Half of it. The other half was, uh, let's see... Oh yeah. 'Soak his balls in your saliva while you wait your turn.' Seriously! That's what they said to each other over the intercom!"

Darrin nodded. "Yeah, it was similar stuff for our group, but different. And the craziest thing is it's said so casually, like 'Nice weather we're having today.' Except it's 'Choke and gag on his thick one' or something like that!"

The two boys chuckled and shook their heads in amazement.

Trevor asked, "How the hell did all these total foxes get so obsessed about blowjobs, and how the hell did the three of us wind up right in the middle of it?!"

Darrin said, "I have no fucking idea! Except I guess if all these women love to suck cock, they've got to have cocks to suck, so why not ours?"

Trevor joked, "It's a thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it!"

Darrin laughed. "Yeah. We've gotta take one for the team. But seriously, you and I seem to have the thickness thing going, at least. I assume that's true for Ramon too. But speaking of Ramon, where is he? I haven't even gotten a chance to talk to him yet."

Trevor looked all around. There were about twenty other people in the room they were in, but none of the Sanchezes were there. He said, "I don't know. I think they went straight to their room with Emily. Something strange is going on with them. I heard the minders talking about them in hushed tones, like they have some disease. And we've all been told to keep our distance, again like they're diseased."

Darrin commented, "It's not that. It's that they're having big time issues with this whole super sexual blowjob-focused Napali culture. Especially Maria Sanchez, apparently. I don't know any more than that, but I know that much."

Trevor said, "Yeah, that's what I've heard too. I didn't mean the disease thing literally. But they are being treated that way. I was here already when they arrived. In fact, they showed up as soon as our embarrassing introductions were finished. But there were no introductions for them whatsoever. They were just silently rushed through the crowd, like they had a medical emergency and had to get to a doctor. The contrast to how your family and my family got treated is stark."

Darrin said, "Huh. That's too bad. I'd really like to talk to Ramon, at least, and get to know him. Have you spoken to him at all? Is he a nice guy?"

"Yeah, we've talked, but not much. Maybe about as much as you and I talked before. He certainly seems nice enough though, and so do you. And yeah, I hope the three of us can become good friends. I feel like we're all on the same adventure, like we've gone through a time machine and come out onto another planet or distant era or something. It makes sense to stick together and work as a team, or we'll probably go crazy."

"Exactly," Darrin nodded firmly. "That's exactly how I feel." He felt a lot better talking to Trevor. It was grounding him and giving him time to adjust to the party atmosphere.

Trevor had been occasionally looking past Darrin, and he seemed increasingly distracted as the talked. He said, "Uh-huh. But listen. Let's put a pin in that and talk more later. I think I've gotta go, because my mom is giving me the eye. I think she needs me for something."

Darrin was bummed, since he and Trevor were getting along so well. He almost wanted to plead for him to stay. But he braved it out and said, "Okay, sure. If you find yourself free, come and find me."

"Sounds good, but I think we're going to go back to our room to take a nap. That's probably what she's on about. She was complaining on the way here how tired she was, and Emily promised we'd only have to stay at the party for a few minutes."

"Ah. Okay. Actually, that's the general plan for my family too. Maybe at dinner then."

"Sure. Later!" Trevor walked away, back to where Jasmine and Emily were standing.