I fought my way through the hallways surrounded by noise and teenagers acting crazy. The house was so full, I couldn’t even place faces anymore; it was a sea of teens getting trashed. I knew everyone in the house in one way or another, but it was so crowded their faces seemed to blend together.
I walked up the stairs in the family room to the bedrooms. I sat in the hallway on the carpet against the wall, feeling the house vibrate from the music. I was grateful no one was there. I needed to mull over things.
Giselle interrupted my peace. She walked up the stairs, smiling when I saw her.
“Hey girl, you’re just the person I wanted to see. I have a drink here, we can, like, share. Some hot guy just gave it to me. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t see his face properly. It's yummy. It's, like, way too packed downstairs.” She passed me the glass, thankfully, before she sat down and spilled it everywhere.
She shrugged up close. “Have some lemonade, Aimes.”
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing, just a bit of vodka. You need a little vodka, I think. I saw you in the living room. You looked sad.”
I wanted to turn her down, but I remembered the evening I had just endured and I decided to be a rebel.
The rebel who shared the drink. I even sucked at being rebellious.
I took a sip, feeling the warmth of the liquor burn the whole way down. For a cold drink, it burned. I smiled at her as I passed it back. "It tastes good, but it’s not really my thing. Besides, you don't know who gave it to you.”
I wasn’t lying. It did taste great and if it weren’t for the burn, I never would have known there was even booze in it. It made me nervous that some random guy gave her a drink, and I was sharing it.
Giselle took a sip and passed the glass back. “Hot guys give me drinks all the time, dummy—I'm hot. You need a little more than that tiny sip you had. It's like one glass for two people; you need to relax. Have fun. Boys like fun girls. I think Shane likes you. He always talks about you. You should steal him from your sister."
"He talks about me?"
She laughed. "Yeah, all the time. It makes Alise nuts. Here, your turn."
I took the drink. I was feeling lost in what she'd said, but then she started rambling again.
"Yeah, the day they started dating he was going to ask you out, but Alise told him you were already into that yucky Blake dork."
My stomach tensed. I chugged back the drink. My heart was racing. Alise had stopped the one guy I had liked forever from asking me out?
"You’re not like your sister, you know. You’re, like, easier to be around. She is, like, really high maintenance.” The irony was that Alise would have said the same thing about Giselle. She took the drink and gulped.
I took the glass back, snatching it from her hands. I drank a few big gulps, amazed that it tasted so good.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but was able to rationalize that it was a small glass of booze between two people. I just needed something to distract me from the possible threat that my legs would get up and walk to Shane. I would kiss him on the mouth and get slapped around by my sister. In my buzzed state, I would probably kill her.
Giselle started to babble but my thoughts were stuck on Shane. I wanted to taste his lips, just once. I wanted to steal him from my sister. She had stolen him from me first.
Out of the blue, and completely without cause, my brain recalled the mystery man with the blue eyes. I laughed out loud as I started to feel a little dirty, enjoying the company of two different guys in my head.
Unexpectedly, the most awkward thing occurred; Giselle started making sense and I liked her. I looked her straight in the face and said as matter a fact as I could, “Giselle, I love you. You’re so awesome. You know that my sister is a slut and she stole Shane from me first.” I knew then that I was drunk. I didn’t know what the feeling was until the word awesome left my mouth, followed by a giggle. I was thinking about boys with no shirts on and giggling with Giselle. How had it happened? I started to panic but felt like I could do nothing about it.
She laughed and pointed at me. "I know, right? She is a bad person, Aimes." Her face was really serious. I watched her mouth and started to laugh again.
It got progressively worse, even though we had only drunk the one glass of lemonade, as far as I knew. After a while, I found myself slipping down the wall, laughing. I was unable to push myself back up to sitting. Giselle lay down beside me and I tried to talk, but my mouth couldn’t make words anymore.
Then noises and pictures came in fuzzy flashes. I saw my sister laughing. Giselle was being carried away. I saw Blake standing alone in the hallway. Then Alise came into my view. I could see them talking, but then my sister grabbed Blake’s face and started to kiss him. Blake grabbed her back and pulled her up into him. They were making out, and as luck would have it, my eyes were stuck open. For some reason, I couldn’t get my eyes to shut; they ignored my brain. I watched the painful moment while drooling on myself and unable to control my body. I heard a voice. It made them stop, and Alise went down the stairs, leaving me with Blake. He brushed my hair from my face and smiled. He said something I couldn’t catch and my eyes shut.
When they opened next, I felt light, like I was floating. There was no sound whatsoever. The music was gone, but I was still in the hallway.
I wasn’t lying on the floor anymore. I turned around and saw a figure slumped on the floor. I grimaced at her hideous pink shirt. She looked sick. I reached for her but my hand went through the girl’s body, like mist.
I looked closer and realized that I was the girl on the floor.
I was the corpse girl on the floor turning blue.
I panicked.
I screamed, but no sound came from my mouth.
I tried to bang the walls. Where was everyone?
My face turned grey. I looked closer at the pile of what appeared to be vomit by my lips. My body was choking—where were the idiots who had left me in the hallway to die?
I turned back around to find someone with me. I jumped up and down and screamed, but he didn’t hear me. I smiled when I realized it was Wade from Port Handley. He knelt beside my body. Then he did something I definitely had never fantasized about, when I saw his face the first time. He stuck his fingers into my throat and started fishing around in there.
I scowled, watching a strange guy root around in my mouth, and tried not to think about the sanitary issues. I needed to remember to, at the very least, rinse with mouthwash when I woke from my nightmare. His hands were huge. They were stretching my mouth.
Wade looked at me, his piercing blue eyes wide. He looked scared and his mouth moved but I heard nothing.
I turned and looked behind me but no one was there. Was he able to see me? I waved my arms back and forth and he waved me over to him. He put his hand into my mouth again, and this time my body heaved and shook, as piles of vomit started to pour out in front of me.
It was like the exorcist, and I was barfing all over the hottest guy I had ever seen. His eyes were panicked as he pointed to my body again. I took a step forward and everything went dark. When I saw light again, I felt instant pain. I wasn’t floating any longer. I was drowning. My body convulsed as I fought, coughing and heaving repeatedly.
My world spun. I reached my hand out and wiped my mouth off. I was on the floor and everything hurt in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Wade from Port Handley spoke, “Welcome back, Aimee. You scared the shit out of me.”
I was excited Wade knew my name. He was so handsome. The smell of my vomit was more than I could bear. I heaved again and threw up some more.
"You're Wade."
He looked puzzled. “Next time chew the veggie burger all the way through, ok?” He picked me up off the floor. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He lifted me like a princess. I laid my face against his chest and felt like I was floating. I sniffed his neck. He smelled amazing. I smelled like barf.
He carried me to the bathroom but in the mirror he wasn’t there—my reflection was, but his was missing.
I closed my eyes and pressed really hard, but when I opened them, he was still gone.
He smiled and laughed. “Yeah, you’re dreaming. Weird things happen in dreams, like people having no reflection.”
He didn’t need a reflection to be perfect.
Pain was everywhere. Everything was burning and hurting. My skin ached and my head pounded.
I couldn’t move my head properly; something was in the way.
I twitched open one eye letting in the light. It made everything burn much worse. I winced as my eye opened completely, seeing a strange room.
Instantly assuming I was at Wade’s house, I felt nervous.
Who was Wade and why would he take me to his house?
I opened my other eye, feeling sick.
My mouth tasted like I might have already been sick. I tried to think about where I had been, but all I remembered was Wade from Port Handley.
Straining, I reached a hand above my head and felt the towel still wrapped on my head. I pulled at it, trying to get it off, but I couldn’t. It was folded in a bizarre way I had never folded a towel. Giving up on the towel, I looked around the room.
It was small, with a queen bed and floral print everywhere. It screamed guest room in every way. I lifted the covers to reveal my naked body and blushed. I hoped I had gotten into bed on my own. There was a water glass on the right bedside table. I knew instantly it was someone else’s. I always put my glass of water on the left. Fear and panic started to mix with my already-fragile mind. Had someone else slept with me? Had Wade abducted me from somewhere? His face and name were the only memories I had.
Using every inch of strength, I sat up, wrapping myself with the sheet and looked for clothes. I fought the urge to scream or pass out again. My clothes were nowhere to be found.
I took a breath and tried to remember what they had told us in defense class.
Nothing came up that seemed like it would apply to the moment.
I pulled the towel off after some work. It reminded me of the way African women folded their headdresses. My hair was still wet, of course. Long, thick hair would never dry in a towel, which was why I would never fall asleep with one on my head. It fell around my face in a ball of unconditioned mats. Someone else put me to bed. Someone else washed my hair and never conditioned it.
