I could hear ruckus laughter and shouts over the music. We followed the sounds to a large living area. The sliding door to the backyard was open and cold wind whipped inside. I spun around the room, my eyes feasting on the guys downing their drinks, the girls dancing in their own groups, and the countless bottles of unopened alcohol on the coffee table.
“What do you wanna do now?” I heard Cindy ask me.
My eyes continued to travel around the room, continuously lingering back on the alcohol. I listened to the music and suddenly wanted to feel it in my bones. I’d felt stale for so long, and in a span of a day I had beaten the snot out of a girl, stolen her wallet and got suspended from school.
I needed this day to end, and I didn’t want to look back and remember a single moment of how it ended. The people I had cared about the most had forgotten me. Tonight, I would forget them.
“Now we have some fun,” I told Cindy, determined.
Our first stop was the alcohol.
*
There were so many things about that night I could remember vividly. Drinking a beer, then doing Bacardi Limon shots among a group of jocks who shouted at me to keep going. Then I did something I hadn’t done in so long. I listened to Hayden’s advice and just…danced. The alcohol took over, and I felt wondrously loose and free. I hadn’t danced like that since Dad died. I went to the bathroom sometime after and shuddered at the condom wrappers on the tile floor. I washed my hands before catching sight of the cracked sink, and then I analysed that cracked sink, wondering if it’d broken under the weight of several fucks.
After that, I returned to more shots, and then…things got a bit blurry. Cindy danced with a guy, and made out with him for what I thought was a very long time. Then I was suddenly on the couch, talking to a guy who was passing me more alcohol. It was rum and coke and it tasted awful. I shook my head but still drank. He got closer to me, and I felt his fingers on my hair, and I liked the feeling because I was so numb and the attention was nice.
I heard screams and a blurry blonde was pointing at my face, telling me I was chatting to her boyfriend. “You’re going to make me apologize for your boyfriend’s shit behaviour? I don’t fucking think so,” I remembered saying. She flipped me off, and I laughed carelessly, and that pissed her off some more. Her boyfriend had to carry her out, and I said something to her, something not so nice judging by the wide eyes of people around me, but I didn’t know what.
I drank something else by the bucket loads. It was cinnamon flavoured and it burned the back of my throat. I liked the burn. It was addictive, but it also made me want to hurl. I slumped back on the couch, my eyes glazed as I watched people chatter like little mice around me. When I ran out of drinks, I got up and things went black again.
I was back on the couch and drinking more shots. People continued moving from room to room, like waves the room receded into almost emptiness and then flooded back in again with little crowds everywhere. All the while the music continued to bleed from one song to the next.
“It’s the brother-fucker,” came a giggling voice. I followed it to the blurry face of one of the bitches that tried to pull me off Michelle.
“Do you want me to fuck you up?” I brazenly asked her, glaring at her evenly. I felt immortal. Alcohol had given me a fearless edge.
She heard me and hesitated, staring at my face before she rapidly turned away to her friends. Not so fucking tough now. I continued staring her down, until her face reddened and her whole body tensed. After some time, she took a girl by the arm and steered her out of the room.
Someone in passing – I didn’t know who – passed me another shot of that cinnamon burn, and I guzzled it down. Then I was suddenly back inside the bathroom, kneeling once more, analysing the crack in the sink like it was some fucking Doctor Who crack in the universe before I stood up. The fast movement made my head swim and I almost threw up. I clutched the edges of the sink with both hands and looked up. My eyes connected to the mirror and they widened at the reflection. My make-up was shocking. I had raccoon eyes, my hair was in my pale face. I was practically unrecognizable, but I didn’t seem to care.
Go out and finish this night.
I was floating with the music when I re-joined the others. I searched for Cindy for a long time, but I couldn’t find her. Vaguely, I remembered her telling me she was going to do something, but the timeline was so messed up in my head, I didn’t know how long ago that was. I settled on dancing again. A guy wrapped his arms around me and I rested my head against his chest, forgetting, feeling numb, pretending it was Aston.
More blackness.
And then I was screaming and shoving the guy away. “You left me!” I screamed over and over again. “You left me when I needed you the most!”