The night was going great; laughter, joy, and music filled the air. Everyone I knew was looking forward to a new year, new beginnings, and to our advantage, new friends. As we begun to celebrate New Year’s Eve, our party took an abrupt pause. We could hear firefighters and ambulances in the distance, but we didn’t know why. Little did we know, that all it took was a simple glance across the street to figure it out.

Every year, my family throws a party on New Year’s Eve. This party was hours filled with friends and family dancing, making jokes, and lots of small talk. Two years ago, on New Year’s Eve, we decided to make our party even bigger, so we added brighter lights, more people, and louder music. As usual, it was all my family, my grandparents, my mom, my aunts and uncles, cousins and 3 family friends. That alone is a total of about 40- 50 people.

The first family friend was Jerry. Jerry was one of my Aunt Nicole’s best friends. She had been my aunt’s friend for a long time. Once, she and my aunt went to Hawaii to celebrate my aunts 21st birthday. Jonathan was my cousin Bianca’s new boyfriend. He was an extremely kind and funny guy. There was also Jonathan’s little brother, Eric. Eric and I were the same age, but he was a tad bit shorter than I was.

About an hour had past and I waited for Jerry to arrive so that we could really start having fun. When she finally arrived we went to my Aunt Maggie’s house to start celebrating. We begun to celebrate, when we heard commotion outside. We slowly made our way to my Aunt Maggie’s fenced, toy filled front yard. As we stood there we could see patches of smoke just floating into the star filled night. We finally arrived in my aunt’s front yard, and just a couple miles away, we could see a bright red orange gleam of light. We then realized, it wasn’t a gleam of light at all, but a fire! No one knew how it had started, but my aunt was worried out of her mind.
She said,” I hope everyone is okay.”

My cousin Andrew began to say,” What if the firefighters didn’t arrive in time?”

My cousin Bianca interrupted him and said,” Andrew, stop saying that, everything is going to be fine.”

My mom handed my aunt the phone. She then called the fire department and they took care of it. Before we knew it, the fire was put out. After the fire was put out, I went to my grandmother’s house to watch TV for a while. Everyone else went back to the party, like if nothing had happened. The music had been playing for a while before I went back. Later that night, Jerry had left to celebrate the New Year with her family. Eric and Jonathan left around 11:30 to do the same. Then, we slowly counted down the New Year. 5,4,3,2,1, ”Happy New Year!” was yelled all around me. It was seemingly clear that New Year’s Eve wasn’t going to be the same, for a while, at least for me.