For a moment, I wish I hadn’t left Claire and Emily behind, abandoning them for this godforsaken plan when they’ve come all this way to see me. I want Emily’s warmth, Claire’s confidence. But how could I let them know what I know, see what I’ve seen? I think of Emily and her comforting mass of copper hair that always smells of the apple shampoo she still uses. I have friends here—uni friends, real-world friends—but there’s something about my friendship with Emily that feels more honest. At uni, everyone decides to reinvent themselves. I’m not the only one pretending. And if two people in a relationship are lying about who they are, is their relationship even real?
Emily would tell me to suck it up.Why be a sad bitch when you can be a bad bitch?She loves the idea of bad bitchery, even if she grew up in a quiet cul-de-sac with a dad who was a dentist and a mother who taught at a primary school.
“Nat, open the fucking door!”
With Emily’s imagined words still ringing in my ears, he gets his wish, terror in the brown eyes that lock on mine. Good. He should be scared. I slam the phone to his chest and he sees what I’ve seen. The terror seems to deepen.
“Listen, Nat, I can explain—”
I don’t wait to hear it. I’m pushing my way back into the throng of the party, looking for “numb,” whatever it might look like and wherever I can find it. One of the party girls I always seem to bump into at these things is heading into another bathroom as I try to brush past. She sees my poorly masked distress, sees Luca grabbing at me, tryingto get me to talk. Without a second thought, she pulls me into the bathroom with her, this secret den of sisterhood. We sit there, not saying much, until Luca gives up and disappears.
It’s a relief to have her here. She always looks pleased to see me, has kind words to say, open ears for my thoughts. But I only seem to meet her when she’s high on MDMA, so it’s not entirely clear how much of this openness is her own. She listens to what’s happened and holds my hand throughout. Her hands are soft and a little clammy. I want to cry at her kindness, but I won’t let myself. My fingers are too firmly curled around my sharp rage now, holding it so tightly that it might be slicing into me, doing internal damage I’ll never be able to repair. But it’s my lifeline. I won’t let go.
“It’ll be okay,” Party Girl says, glittery makeup twinkling in the unforgiving bathroom light.
She hands me a bottle of water, instructs me to drink. The water is bitter and chemical tasting. When I realize it’s spiked, I glug it more greedily, stopping at the point when taking more might be bad manners. She gives me a hug, holds me close, and then we make our way into the party downstairs. I find myself with her friends, dancing, trying not to think about how naked, exposed, and ashamed Luca has left me. As the drugs kick in, this becomes easier, and easier.
Minutes later, I’m flying on this makeshift dance floor in this stripped-out living room. Luca is somewhere, but nowhere near me. I think about all the beers he’s sunk that he shouldn’t be drinking and wish his heart would just give out. Maybe one of these pills my new friends have given me would do the job if the beers aren’t enough. But I’m not meant to be thinking about him, and so I push him out of my mind.
After that, all that’s left is the music and the dancing and the pills. All that’s left is the love of these kind strangers who, for tonight, are my best friends, and whom I’ll probably never see again. For a fewsweet hours, I can pretend the humiliation doesn’t belong to me, reject it like incorrect baggage handed to me across a cloakroom desk.Sorry, this isn’t mine.It’s incredibly freeing.
At some point, and I’m not sure how soon, Emily materializes. She’s worried about me, she says. I haven’t been returning her messages. But she doesn’t need to worry, and I tell her so. I’m having too much of a good time to look at my phone, that’s all. But I’m not sure how convinced by my words Emily is, because it could be two minutes or two hours later, but she’s insisting we go home.
Thanks to Emily, I make it back to my room. The night is not a blank, but it’s a blur. A blur with some large holes in it. I immediately shut my curtains against the hideous morning light already illuminating my bed and tumble underneath the covers, snaking an arm around Emily’s waist and holding on to it like a buoy in the waters of my rising despair, the dam of euphoria breaking, ecstasy draining away and leaving only dark thoughts in its wake. I want my sister, who’s sleeping in the bed my housemate offered up given they’re away, but I don’t want to face Claire’s judgment for falling apart like this. She can see me when I’m sober.
In the afternoon, when I eventually stir, my phone is drowning in notifications, and Emily is gone. A nugget of disappointment and anxiety wedges itself behind my rib cage at the thought of her leaving without saying goodbye.
I don’t want to look at messages. Amid the birthday texts will be more comments and links to the video. And I’ve done so many drugs that I know the comedown is going to be killer without fixating on what made me get so high in the first place.
But then my eyes latch on to a few key words in the messages. I see they have nothing to do with my birthday or the video. Instead, I’m seeing:
In his bed.
MDMA.
Heart attack.
Dead.
It’s easy to piece together the news across the outpouring of messages. Luca’s housemate has found him dead in his bed, of a suspected heart attack. Many people at the party saw him high on MDMA toward the end of the night, a drug he’s historically avoided taking because of the hole in his heart.
The messages are all sympathetic.
Oh my god, Nat.
R u ok?
Let me know if you need someone to be with you tonight.
But the moment the news sinks in, any trace of a comedown lifts. I open my curtains, look up at the sunshine, and let the falling rays warm my face. And for a moment, I feel grateful that Luca was such a master manipulator. Because everyone’s convinced that the leaked sex tape had nothing to do with him, and save for Party Girl, everyone thinks I consented to that tape being made. So no one on campus knows the thoughts I had last night, how grateful I am that Luca is dead.
A foreign feeling settles over me.
Satisfaction.
12
Now
