like too much. Too much silence. Too much sadness.
So on Saturday night, when James and Ethan—the guys from last night—gather folks in the common room to go out, I surprise everyone and myself by agreeing to go with them.
“Really? Abby Berman is coming out?”
Chloe’s not-so-subtle tone makes me feel like I’m twelve and asking to play with the grown-ups. But instead of retreating, I smile more widely, my dry lips dragging across my teeth until I feel like a Halloween pumpkin with my grin. “Yup, I’m in!”
“Fabulous,” Ethan says, throwing his arm around my shoulders.
And suddenly I’m quite clear that this is an epically terrible idea, but I’m still going. Because anything is better than the way I’m feeling right now.
Only that proves not to be true. At all. My head is spinning and the bar we’re at is so noisy that it makes me want to sink my hands inside my skull to block my ears. The sharp laughter hurts my jaw, and I’m a little worried that I’m going to throw up.
“Come dance with me,” a voice says from around the table, and I’m positive that it’s not talking to me because I don’t think anyone has talked to me in days. But I could be wrong because suddenly I find that I can’t remember anything. Like my head is filled with cotton balls or made out of steel wool with tiny, tinkly bells inside. I wonder what that would sound like, the bells tinkling, if I’d be able to hear them even if they’re inside my head. Maybe they would sound hollow or have an echo or—
“Abby, come dance!” Fingers with charcoal smudges, red paint on one of the nails, are tapping my shoulder. At least I think they’re tapping my shoulder. But if they were tapping someone else’s, I wouldn’t be able to feel it, right? And they did say Abby. Though not the fingers, the voice.
I drag my gaze to the front of the table and there’s Colin.
“Colin!” I squeal, only that might have been in my head again.
“Come dance,” he says, nodding his head up and down in a way that makes me even dizzier. “Ethan, move!”
Ethan isn’t listening because he’s talking across the table to Stephie, their lips so close to one another that I don’t think anyone could hear them even if the room were quiet. Which it most definitely is not. I wouldn’t mind the intense PDA that’s going on between them if he didn’t also have his hand on my thigh. I’ve tried to move him away but his hand keeps reappearing like a bad cold. So I’ve taken to leaving my hands in my lap, essentially blocking his wandering fingers from drifting higher.
I wish I hadn’t worn a skirt. I wish I hadn’t come here at all. I wish I hadn’t taken the flask they offered. Taken a large gulp and then a second and a third and I don’t know who was refilling the flask but there was always enough for everyone. And then as we were walking, the cigarette they offered.
“I don’t smoke,” I told them, and they laughed and said it didn’t count because it wasn’t a real cigarette. And I knew what they meant, I knew it was a joint, that I didn’t really want it, but everyone was so happy and my limbs felt loose, so warm and light. And I wanted more of that.
Only now I feel like I can’t really move that well at all.
“Ethan, up,” Colin says again, this time grabbing Ethan’s outside arm. “I want to dance with Abby.”
“She’s kind of out of it.” He smirks, slowly slipping out of the booth, his hand sliding so far up my skirt that he gets close to hitting bases I’ve never gone near.
“You’re an asshole,” Colin mutters to Ethan. He puts his arms around me and slowly shifts me until I’m right at the edge of the booth and he can pull me out off the bench. It’s not that I can’t move my limbs. It’s just that it seems to take a really, really long time to get the message to them that I want to move. Like the message is being rerouted through China. Or Haiti. Or France.
“Do you know that in French, Haiti is pronounces Ah-ee-tee?” I giggle to Colin, who has succeeded in extricating me from the sticky plastic cushions. Plastic cushions and bare legs are not a good combination.
“I did not know how to say Haiti in