“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but first, drinks.”
Jenny poured vodka into two coffee mugs. I thought about the holy fear Matt described. Did he live with it or was he free? Did he accept his dark parts wholly and unrestrained, and could I? With clothes on, he was so calm. Slow, thoughtful in his actions. Restrained. He had a sense of patience with Frankie and his kid. Underneath was something else. I considered his potential capacity to inflict emotional or physical damage on me. When he had pulled me closer to him, it felt so good I wasn’t sure if I cared about the consequences.
“Jenny, I’m obsessed with him. And Frankie is so crazy I don’t know how to deal with it.”
She grabbed a plastic bottle of Cherry Coke from the fridge and untwisted the top.
“Matt is easy to obsess over,” she said. “He just has that way about him. But he and Frankie have been on and off since freshman year of high school.” She poured soda into each of the cups and then handed me one. “That won’t end easily.”
Something in me was changing, even then in the kitchen with Jenny. A part of me was opening up, and while I could see the end of the road and new that it would lead to pain, instead of retreating, I wanted to walk directly into it. Pain is closer to love than indifference, right? I wanted to walk directly into it.
“On and off isn’t good for relationships,” I said. “They’ll never last.”
“How long are you willing to wait?”
I took a sip from the thick lip of the mug and set my cup back down on the counter, remembering the pills. I pulled two tabs of Percocet from me bag. She shook her head at me.
“We have to do that downstairs,” she said.
“It just seemed so intense, you know? Like a forever feeling,” I said. “I could fuck him forever.”
She leaned her elbow against the linoleum counter. Her blunt bangs were a little long and they fell in her face, dark roots growing from her scalp.
“So? I could fuck you forever,” she said. She took another sip of her drink. I loved this, whatever we were doing. She leaned in close and pressed her lips against mine, still wet from the drink. It felt so easy with her. I thumbed the pills in my palm as she kissed me.
“Look,” she said. “I think you should follow your heart if it feels right. But I don’t know what Frankie would do. In high school, she fought girls over Matt. Like, beat the shit out of them.”
I pouted my lips and imagined Matt’s presence in my body. “But I like him.”
“I know, sweet cheeks.” She tugged on my sweater and led me downstairs.
THE OTHER WAY TO SURVIVE THE WORLD IS TO GO TO RAVES
IT WAS THE END of winter, and we were dancing in the middle of the night at a warehouse off Marksheffel Road. I had persuaded Sam and Jenny to come out with me. We’d taken ecstasy and the sweat sparkled on our faces against the backdrop of flashing lights. In the center of the dance floor, people packed in shoulder to shoulder and Rabbit in the Moon played ethereal lava music with a thunderous house beat. Each body in the room swayed together like a single organism. The subwoofer was a heartbeat threading through the crowd. The warehouse was wet and musky and the smells of our bodies mixed and pulsed.
What’s so beautiful about ecstasy is the start of it. There’s a swollen feeling that slowly flickers into your chest and then burns through the rest of your body. It feels like doing a new drug all of the time, like an extended, slow-release orgasm.
Matt, Frankie, and Jenny went to sit in some alcove with pillows and string lights, leaving Sam and me alone on the dance floor. I wished it was Matt who had stayed behind, but I took the chance to kiss Sam on his neck and then gently on the lips while we danced. Still, I didn’t want to miss out on anything Matt was doing. I led Sam with me to the alcove, where we found the three of them sitting with a new guy wearing a Dr. Seuss hat and a flashing necklace. He had dark hair and a really big smile. The new guy, who called himself Tasty, sat between Jenny and Frankie. He pulled out a small dark vial and asked us all if we were rolling. My lips curled up toward my cheeks and into the clouds.
My eyes widened when he poured whatever was into the vial onto a house key, moony in his shining hands.
“It’s K,” he said.
Matt took the first hit. Tasty held the key the whole time even though his hands were shaky. He’d put it right under someone’s nose and the powder would disappear like it never existed.
Tasty got to me next. It was intimate. The heat and skin of his hand gently scraped my cheek as he put the key under my nose. I closed the other nostril just like everyone else and sniffed until the powder was gone. Everything smelled like dish detergent for a second before the world got soft and spongy and sweet. I felt like a bag of marshmallows, plastic and all, expanding and melting inside of a safe, hot microwave. Sam liked me and Jenny liked me and Matt was telling everyone I was his girlfriend’s girlfriend. In that moment Everyone Loved Me and I didn’t want it to change.
I leaned into Frankie and felt closer to her than ever before.
“I have to tell you something,” I said. Our hands touched and instinctively each of our fingers began to writhe in
