The Comeback(46)

I stand in front of the ocean and try to remember how it felt to be underneath the surface, the burning pressure in my lungs as the need for oxygen tore through me, the sun sparkling just above. I try to remember that I chose to be here. I sink into the sand and breathe slowly, cupping my hands over my mouth and breathing hard as tears roll down my cheeks. When none of it works, when it still feels as if my brain is covered in thousands of scuttling beetles, I text Laurel to ask her to come over. At the last minute I add another line: Bring some of our old friends.

I never said I was very good at protecting myself.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX





Laurel pulls out two bottles of Casamigos tequila and a large vial of white powder. She places it all on the glass table in front of the sofa and smiles at me innocently.

“I assumed you meant these old friends, because we hate everyone else.”

I look for a couple of glasses in the kitchen even though I know I don’t have any, and I can feel the familiar anticipation building in my chest. This is what it used to be like, back when I did this every night. Sometimes I wanted feverish pain and sometimes I wanted blinding euphoria, and then there were the times I just wanted to feel my body jerk and burn as I threw up. I wonder what type of night it will be tonight.

“I don’t have any glasses,” I say as I sit next to Laurel on the sofa. She pulls the stopper out of the tequila and has a long swig before she passes it to me. I have a smaller sip, and it burns the back of my throat as it hits.

“How are you finding your new home?” Laurel asks, with obvious distaste as she racks up a couple of lines. She remembers how I like mine, skinny and long. I keep my eyes trained on the coke, ignoring her question.

“If Dylan the Saint could see us now,” she says when I lean over to snort mine using the straw she passes me. The coke tastes metallic, cut with something petrol-like, hopefully not actual petrol.

“Did you go to rehab last year?” she asks after doing her own line, which is much smaller than mine. I shake my head, wishing she’d stop talking for a minute so that I could feel the adrenaline make way for the strange buzzing calm, closely followed by an intense spike in clarity.

“For fuck’s sake, Grace, talk to me.”

“I told you, I went to my parents’.”

“For the entire year? You were in Anaheim for a year. Less than one hour away. What were you doing there?”

I try to remember. What was I doing there? Now I can feel the coke flooding through me. My skin feels tingly, and I’m already clenching my jaw, so I grab the bottle of tequila and have another swig. It’s always a balancing act between the two. Too much coke and you feel on edge, too much alcohol and you feel weighed down.

“I think I was trying to make my parents like me.”

“Did it work?” Laurel is talking faster now, leaning toward me. Urgency drills through me, and it’s bordering on too intense, and I know that the only way to harness it is to grab it quickly and channel it somewhere. I focus on Laurel, the concern in her eyes that I’m only now thinking may actually be real. I always get everything wrong.

“My mom said it was ‘illuminating’ spending so much time with me.”

“As in, you lit up the entire house?”

“I don’t think so.”

We drink some more tequila and do another couple of lines each. I forgot this about us; we never knew when to stop when we were together, and the time between racking up lines would diminish until we started moving like a time-lapse film, cutting out all unnecessary pauses as we dipped our heads.

“What did you come back for? Dylan?”

I shake my head. Another line, this one thicker than I like. I wish we weren’t in the sticks of Malibu and that there was somewhere nearby I could buy a pack of cigarettes.

“Me?” She puts her hand across her heart like she’s flattered, and I shake my head, then point at her, acutely, perfectly.

“Definitely not you. You’re the worst,” I say, and Laurel is pissed for a moment before we both collapse into ridiculous, charged laughter, but I’m only really feeling 10 percent of it. I do another line of coke.

“I came back because I realized I was trying to be someone who doesn’t exist anymore,” I say, my throat stinging.

“But then when I’m here, I just feel like I’m letting everyone down all the time too. I’m never going to be what anyone wants me to be, you know? Even that little shit in Best Buy or my own fucking sister—they think I’m going to be . . . I don’t know—” I search for the right word to perfectly, irrevocably encapsulate how I feel, the coke charging through my bloodstream now and coating every word I say with a thick, urgent intensity. “Cool. They think I’m going to be cool. I’m not cool. I’m not impressive.”

Laurel bursts out laughing again, and some powder falls out of her nose. She claps her hand across her nose and mouth, and you can’t even tell that she’s laughing anymore, other than the snorts escaping.

“I fucking missed you. You’re worried that people don’t think you’re cool?”

“No, I’m worried they do think I’m cool.”

“You’re an idiot, Grace.”

We sit on the floor with our backs against the sofa, and everything seems brighter in the room, the lights glowing around us.