Afterparty(85)

Siobhan is half undressed and halfway to oblivion.

I don’t even get what they’re doing at first; it’s like a live reenactment of a semi-abstract painting with limbs protruding at angles that don’t make anatomical sense. Missy Rogers and Kyra, who is in so-called ballet with me, are at the center of it, Missy having finally found someone glad to kiss her back. Everyone seems happy to kiss everyone back, sharing what looks to be a monster joint—hash, maybe? Maybe something I don’t recognize and probably ought to avoid.

Siobhan extricates herself, a disembodied arm rises from behind her to push her up, and she hands me the joint and watches as I take a hit. It’s harsh, and the roof of my mouth feels charred.

I say, “What is this?”

She says, “You don’t want to know. I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I said I was coming. We were supposed to be dancing downstairs. Don’t you remember?”

“Just saying.”

I say, “I’m here, aren’t I? Where’s your shirt?”

There are people and coats and bottles everywhere. There’s a cat eating something off the carpet by the bed.

“Why do you always care about my shirt?” she says. “You’re not my mother. Hell, my mother’s barely my mother.”

“Why is everybody walking around with half their clothes off?”

Siobhan looks puzzled. “Games. Strip poker in Ian’s suite. Truth or dare. Fun.”

Just then, Paulina, standing on the bed, pops a bottle and jumps up and down until one side of the mattress hits the floor and the pile of coats slides onto the rug. Siobhan says, “Why don’t you just—wait! Where are you going with that?”

Assorted pills are the that. That thing local news stations say misguided teens do with a jumble of random, unidentified pills in festive candy bowls passed hand-to-hand at parties—that thing that we don’t do? Apparently, at Afterparty, we do.

“Do you even know what kind of pill that is?” I bat it out of her hand. Then I go scrambling after it, so I won’t be responsible for the death or the out of body experience of the cat.

I’m thinking that I’ll get a shirt on her, something over the lavender bra and the black skirt, and I’ll get her out of the suite. I’ll get a shirt on her and we’ll freaking dance. We’ll be Afterparty girls dancing that long-planned dance and it’ll be freaking fun.

I’m thinking that I have no doubt been rendered psychotic by assorted substances if I think that’s what’s going to happen.

“Shut up, Mommy,” she says in a weird voice. “Look, here comes Daddy in half a suit.”

Apparently Dylan is following me up and down the halls of the Camden.

“Aren’t you going to kiss your boyfriend?” Siobhan says. “Aren’t you going to go, Oh, baby, let’s stay together forever and ever. No, let’s break up. No, let’s stay together. No, let’s break up.”

Dylan says, “Can we make this stop?” And then, “Shit. Is that guy shooting up?”

There’s a guy on the sill of a black, painted-shut window, and unless he’s busy staving off a diabetic coma with a whole lot of insulin, yes, he is.

Dylan says, “Emma, you need to get out of here. Will you please, for one second, let me help you out?”

“Stop following me! And you’re not who I’d turn to for help.”

He says, “Open your eyes.”

My open eyes are blinking and they sting a lot.

“What, is the happy couple having a widdle pwoblem?” Siobhan croons.

“Shut up, Sib,” Dylan says, and he heads toward a little settee with carved wooden arms in the back of the room. I could resist if I wanted to, I could break free of the loose grasp, but I go with him, sitting pressed against him, aware of my breath, my heartbeat, my pulse, the joint-induced burning sensation at the back of my throat.

He holds my face and he says, “You don’t hate me, right?”

“No. But you still suck.”

“I know,” he says. “You too. You were the virgin and I was the check mark?”

“Fuck and leave for college? That’s what was going on?”

“No.”

And then yes. In a smoky room with people in it, and the only feeling I feel is the intensity of wanting it, pushed harder against the wooden arm of the settee, no room, and here I am with him, in a completely private embrace, only in public, and on the other side of him, Siobhan, her hands under his shirt, her mouth on his mouth, a hand on my breast, I don’t know whose. Crammed against the arm, trying to rise, and Dylan saying, “Shit, Siobhan! Get off me!”

But she doesn’t get off until he pushes her off.

“Get over him!” she spits at me. “You can’t trust him. I’m the one who made you. Not him. But you just won’t listen.”

She looks crazy, hysterical crazy. Screaming and grabbing at my arm as I pull away.

Siobhan says, “Nothing got better! Don’t you get it? Everything got worse. You can’t rely on anybody. Stupid William! It was supposed to get better, but everything keeps getting worse. And you know what that means.” Then she yells, “I’m going on the roof! Who’s coming on the roof?”

Paulina pushes open the glass-paned door to the balcony. The air is laced with cold and rain.