24 GORED AND ELATED
24
G ORED AND E LATED
The first two weeks of January brought the mad crush of the studio again, critiques with Moody, Saz in her bedroom unfairly tan and sunny for a dead Indiana winter. Caroline declared that Saz’s return to campus had to be celebrated, as if it were a surprise. I guessed in some ways it was—now that Saz had no chance of Soloing, the pressure had dissipated. I didn’t consider that she didn’t have to come back. She could leave Rotham behind forever.
The party became Caroline’s baby. She invited anyone and everyone. There was a frenzied desperation to her, the need to be active clashing with the timelines dragging alongside us. The Solo selection would take place in early April. We had a little over two months to finalize at least twenty distinct pieces in addition to our completed thesis papers and artist statements. My paper was barely more than a rough outline. I hated everything I attempted to paint, scrapped and restarted four different pieces in a week. I was trying to capture Caroline sitting at the end of my bed in her lavender nightgown the morning the Boar King was found. But her face kept coming out wrong. The shadows wouldn’t lie down.
I drank too much before the party could even begin. The evening was uncharacteristically warm—though warm at this time of year really meant just above freezing—and it made everyone giddy. Caroline took control of something synthesized over her speaker, and Amrita mixed juice and a cheap handle in a pitcher, shimmying around the kitchen with her cup sloshing over. Saz poured us all tequila shots with slices of lime. We clinked glasses, Saz’s expression erratic as she seized my chin.
“Eye contact, Jo! We are not risking seven years of bad sex. The past twenty-two have been horrific enough.”
The liquor burned all the way down to my belly and lay sterile on my tongue. Amrita made a twisted face, lipstick staining the rim where she’d drunk. “Yuck,” Caroline declared, grinning and chasing the shot with a sip of Amrita’s concoction. The grin crumpled into a grimace. “Extra yuck.”
Amrita rolled her eyes and started to argue about the quality of ingredients she’d put into the drink— love, grapefruit, simple syrup, chemical x.
“Pour me some of Strega Amrita’s potion,” I said, laughing as Amrita blew me a kiss.
A sober start to the night wasn’t an option. After New Year’s Eve, I wanted everything to appear fuzzy enough to slip into unreliability. It was the only chance I had of dancing without soul-crushing humiliation, the only way I could pretend everything was fine and we were still the same people we’d always been, and the only hope I had of being able to stop fixating on the invented image of Finch naked in Thea’s bed. Just the thought was enough to make me flush. I accepted a cup from Amrita and drank—it was actually kind of good.
That cup turned into three by the time Finch showed up. She came in the back door, knowing it would be unlocked, with a bag slung over her shoulder. She was wearing a shirt that used to be mine, cropped above the waist of her cargoes. The hesitant smile she gave me was such a present. The sight of it nearly made me forget all the ways things had gone wrong, all the foolishness that had calcified into a stone in my chest. I tucked my smile into my cup and took a long swallow.
“Can I leave this in one of your rooms?” she asked, hefting the strap of her bag up and off her shoulder. “I brought all my rolling stuff, and I don’t want one of these kleptos to snatch it.”
Amrita took the offered bag as Finch claimed the seat beside me and laid out her supplies. I was already tipsy enough to drag my eyes over her hands in front of everyone—memorizing her knuckles, silver rings, chipped green polish—and then her mouth as she slid her tongue along the paper and sealed it shut. Her eyes flicked up and met mine. I couldn’t read what lived there. She held the joint up between us and gave me her soft smile, the one that made me think I might die if she didn’t touch me again. “Want some?”
“Don’t get her crossfaded already,” Caroline said. She was swaying to the music, like she couldn’t bear to stand still for even a second.
Finch told her that I could decide for myself. I nodded, swelling with pleasure at her defense and hating myself for it. She held the joint to my lips, her other hand coming up and lighting it, her rough voice telling me to inhale. Burned grassiness cooked my tongue and replaced all the acid of Amrita’s potion. I turned and exhaled away from them, my head floating up, and up, and up, and away from me.
The Manor was bigger than any other on-campus housing, but it crowded quickly. Cameron, Phoebe, and Yejun were the first outside of our crew to arrive. Scattered faces from different fine arts majors came close behind. Veda arrived with someone I didn’t recognize on her arm—a boyfriend who’d already graduated? A hometown friend?
Thea appeared an hour in with Mars at her side. I pretended to be caught up in conversation with Phoebe as the two of them melted into the crowd so I wouldn’t have to witness Thea greet Finch.
“It’s just so frustrating to not be chosen for Solo, because I don’t think Moody like, gets what I’m trying to do here,” Phoebe sighed. “I’m not claiming to be an outsider artist. I’m inspired by my anxiety. There’s a huge difference, you know? You get me?”
I kept drinking.
Heat rose in the house as bodies packed into it. I recognized a few from my freshman year foundation classes—a girl I thought might be named Haeun smoked a cigarette inside, opaque smoke curling around the bottle blond of her hair, and beside her someone from graphic design fiddled with the window and tried to pry it open. The back door was propped ajar, and while a part of me was afraid of how loud we were being and how the sound might travel across campus, I was thankful for the cool air seeping into the living room. The music was just repetitive and familiar enough to get me bouncing. I started to bob my head, liquor sloshing pleasantly in my belly as Saz looped an arm around my waist.
“I told Caroline that some SOPHIE would get you going!” she cried, tugging me into her and turning the two of us around in a circle. “I was like, ‘It’s not a party without hyperpop,’ and she told me to get the fuck out of her face when she’s on aux, but look at you now!”
I laughed. I felt clumsy and wild as Saz drew me deeper into the crowd. My head kept turning and looking for the rest of them. It seemed impossible that they could have gone far from me without something in me knowing it instinctively. Saz flickered beneath the colorful lights. I blinked, or maybe my vision went away for a second, punctuated by blackness and the sluggish return of my mind. Her head rolled with a laugh. My hand went up as if I could hold her in place, but she melted past me, spinning and spinning and spinning. A near flutter picked up in my ear again. Louder this time, like a moth hovering too close to a bulb. I swatted around my head and turned into someone else’s orbit, my foot catching, my hips stuttering.
Saz’s hand slipped from mine as I twisted. I kept going, trying to right myself. Somehow in that blip of time she disappeared into the mix. I’d lost everyone. The faces I did find were just strange enough that I couldn’t land on familiarity. I lingered too long. Eyes held mine as I moved, hands sticky around my drink, head too heavy to hold high. I let myself be swept up in thudding sound and the sweaty cling of my shirt against my chest. Movement was a new language. Our feet pounded the floor like a heart hooked to a machine. Caroline’s party lights painted the living room in a million hues—she was purple when I finally caught her gaze across the crowd, her hands twisting above her head, her chin raised and the smile spreading there wide and knowing. The Manor was too full. It swelled and wheezed every time the front door opened, people pouring in and then spilling out onto the steps, floor creaking overhead where I imagined people in my room with their hands and their eyes on my things. Caroline’s laugh carried. I scanned for her again and came up empty. That fluttering buzz continued, the endless whirring of a beehive or a blown speaker. I pressed a finger against my eardrum. It kept ringing. We were too loud. Probably going to face the wrath of administration soon. But I was the kind of drunk that couldn’t be self-conscious. The kind of lost that couldn’t connect neurons to limbs.
My fingers tingled when they bumped someone else’s. I turned, trying to follow the touch, but none of the people pushing close belonged to me. Bodies kept writhing even when my own slowed. Why had Saz left? I wanted her back. I wanted Amrita’s close comfort. I wanted Caroline, the white beacon of her head in that sea of color, the tall rise of her, mythic and mystical.
I wanted Finch. I didn’t want to think about the consequences of that desire.
“Looking for the bathroom? I think it’s upstairs, though someone’s been in there for like twenty minutes.”
I didn’t recognize the voice. The eyes I met were heavy-lidded and pretty against tan skin, everything flickering blue now under the lights. I went to smooth a piece of hair behind my ear and snagged it on an earring, off-kilter. Water would be good. Water would be smart. My tongue wet my lips, numb with drunkenness. The girl in front of me was familiar in a discomfiting way. What was her name? Something like Amaya, or Azalea? Was her last name Prince? Or was that the music muddling my memory?
She smiled. “What’s your name?”
I think I giggled. She’d read my mind. Or did I ask her first? Probably not. She kept staring, waiting for me to answer.
I shrugged. “You’re in my house, you should know my name.”
Her hands went up in defense, but her smile widened. “Your house, huh? Does that mean you have a room you could take me to?”
Agnes. That was her name. We had a class together when I was a sophomore—Fujioka’s Intuitive Sculpture. There had been an odd number of students in the class, so I ended up paired off with Professor Fujioka for all the hours we spent soaking pieces of bread in resin and trying to make them stand on end around the classroom. I didn’t think Agnes had met my eyes once in the whole time we’d been classmates. But now her gaze was heavy and hunting.
I considered the consequences. Fought the urge to search the crowd for Finch. She was probably off with Thea somewhere, tongues twisting down each other’s throats. My stomach tossed.
“Yeah,” I said finally, sweat pooling at the base of my spine. “Wanna go upstairs?”
I was kind of proud of myself for the drunken boldness, but she was the one that ended up taking my hand and leading me through the crowd to the dark staircase. I abandoned my drink on the kitchen table. We had to maneuver over people perched on the steps, something sticky nearly fixing my shoe to the wood. The second floor was dark with only a few people milling in the hall, waiting for the bathroom. The next staircase was empty as we ascended. I still hadn’t seen any of the others. A tiny insecure voice whispered in the back of my head—what if Finch had left? What if she left with Thea?
But what did it really matter? We weren’t exclusive. We were barely anything more than a night in her bed and her mouth on my neck.
Agnes asked which door was mine, and I nodded when she touched the knob on the left. Caroline’s remained closed. Something thumped downstairs, too loud. A cheer went up among the crowd, and then the click of the latch muffled all sound to a dull drone echoing the one already digging into my ear.
As soon as we were closed inside together, she crowded me against the door and pressed her lips to mine. Her hands went to my waist, hooking in my belt loops, dragging our hips to meet in the middle. My brain took too long to catch up, and when it did, my lips parted in surprise and admitted her tongue. One hand rucked up the hem of my shirt and pressed to the soft skin of my abdomen. Her fingers grazed and made my stomach tighten in anticipation. I fumbled for something to hold on to and landed on her waist, touch light and unsure over her shirt. She sighed into my mouth.
I couldn’t leave my own head. Everything was an awareness—the slick drag of her tongue against mine, the tension of her thumb rubbing circles against my belly, the clinging scent of weed in her hair. There were clothes all over my floor and three half-empty glasses of water on the bedside table, and I was a girl incapable of letting go. I couldn’t remember how to play the part. Visions kept carrying me back to Finch’s bed, her hands on me, her lips soft against mine, the tender way her hair slid through my fingers. But if Finch had wanted me all to herself, she could have said so. I had no one to answer to. Now I was somewhere outside of my body watching this girl want me like my life was just a secret I was privy to.
“You okay?” she mumbled against my lips, and I nodded. A kiss. And then, “You sure?” Another nod, more kissing. I pushed into her, let everything melt down to something messier, tried to claim ownership over this body and this moment and this girl in my room. She let me steer her to the bed, smiling against my mouth. We fell together. Her dark hair splayed against my pillow, my vision just hazy enough to make the planes of her face shift and morph. Her eyes were the amber of an old memory, something eerie that I couldn’t place. I blinked her back to reality. A shrill whine picked up as her palms slid higher under my shirt and coaxed it over my head. I bent to kiss her again, fitting between her legs as she arched up into me.
This time the crash was so loud that I was sure that something important had collapsed.
I sat up, frozen. Agnes’s hands clutched my hips. Downstairs someone shouted, but the words were too muffled to decipher whose voice it was. Still—the intention behind them was filled with heat. Her fingers caught the nape of my neck to pull me closer again, but I pushed back.
“Wait,” I pleaded, breathless. I hovered and listened.
There was a slam. The lilting rise of an argument among the shrill cry of a song. Then: “Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck you, Finch.”
I slid off Agnes in a rush, nearly hitting the floor knees first when my ankle snared in the sheets. That was Caroline’s voice. Agnes called after me, but I was already halfway back into my shirt, yanking it over my stomach and stumbling down the stairs. At the bottom, the sea of people jeered, the music too loud, the colors too bright. I grabbed the railing for support.
Caroline and Finch stood in the center of the disaster. Caroline was trashed or high on something—even from where I stood, I could see the hazy gleam of her eyes and the unconcerned way her hair fell into them. Her finger pressed into Finch’s chest with a hard jab. I scanned the room for Amrita, Saz, anyone. One of us needed to rein this in.
“You think you’re so much better than the rest of us,” Caroline spat. “You think everyone worships the fucking ground you walk on. I’m sick of your attitude.”
“If projecting your self-hate onto me makes you feel better, go ahead.” Finch knocked Caroline’s hand away from her chest. Caroline’s face shifted. The shadow of moving lights made her unrecognizable. Her expression kept becoming a new person entirely. When her silence dragged on, Finch continued. “Oh come on, that can’t be it. Say what you want to say to me, tell me to go fuck myself again. Clearly you need an outlet for whatever expectation you’ve put on yourself. Or was that your parents? Can’t handle that you might lose out on your chance to Solo? That you might embarrass them and waste all the money they dropped on you?”
Caroline shoved her, hard, and Finch stumbled back, unprepared. The resulting grin that spread across Caroline’s face was terrifying.
“I told you to shut the fuck up,” Caroline snarled.
“Caroline!” That was Amrita, trying to shove her way down the hall with Saz following behind her, bodies pressed too close to breathe.
The buzz picked up higher now, like my hearing had faltered in one ear. A familiar dark figure stood at the edge of the packed room. I couldn’t look.
“That would make everything easy for you, right? If I just shut up and got out of your way?”
“It would be easier if I never had to see you again in my life.”
Laughter rose. The crowd was so tight that my ribs felt constricted. I sucked hard breaths down through my nose.
“Just let them knock each other out and give the rest of us a chance at Solo,” someone called past a laugh.
“Hell yeah, get Prozac Kozak in there too.”
It took me too long to realize that the voices belonged to Cameron and Yejun, and by “Prozac Kozak,” they meant me. Someone shouldered me, hard. I kept trying to fight my way forward as a shout lobbed itself into the middle of things. “Hit her!”
“No,” I breathed, but no one would let me through, no one would let me reach them.
Caroline was only a few inches taller than Finch, but she towered over her, her pupils too wide, everything cast in shadow. Finch didn’t back down. She tilted her head back to take in the sight of Caroline’s fury.
“I can’t wait to watch you fail,” Caroline said. “I can’t wait until the rest of the world sees you for what you really are. I can’t wait until they know how much time you spend fucking posturing. Until they see how deeply you despise yourself, and what a weak attempt at begging for praise your work really is.”
Finch reared her hand back.
“Move,” I said to the people in front of me, and then, louder, “Move!”
But the hit landed. Caroline’s head snapped with the slap, Finch’s palm a brutal connection with her cheekbone. A cry went up among the crowd—shock, delight, awe.
“Party’s over! Everyone get the fuck out of my house!”
Amrita’s shout carried over the careening noise. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her yell before—it took my mind a moment to place her voice by the front door. She yanked it open, the world a black cutout beyond the jamb.
The noise just continued to rise. I was drowning in sound. I couldn’t move, pinned in that writhing mess, watching Amrita finally body her way through to them as Caroline reached for Finch and mouthed you’re dead you’re dead you’re dead over and over again.
“I said get the fuck out!” Amrita shouted again.
People poured onto the steps of the Manor. The house rocked with them as I pushed, trying to reach them in its center, the heart of my heart. Relief passed through me as soon as I saw Saz was with Caroline, cupping her face and examining. The lights flickered. Saz said something about taking Caroline upstairs, and I just kept asking, “What? What?” Trying to hear above the roar, trying to shove out that sickening buzz, trying to pretend all of this hadn’t happened, that we were okay, that everything was going to be fine. But Saz’s shoulder bumped mine as she called for me to follow, and together we helped Caroline start her ascent.
I turned back once. Amrita was a stern force as she guided people out. When Finch hesitated beside her, I watched Amrita shake her head hard and point to the door. It was too loud to hear, but I caught the shape of the words on her lips: you too.
Finch looked up. Our eyes locked. I wanted to snare her in place. I wanted to know what had gone wrong, wanted to pry her open and find the reason there, safe behind her ribs, in the place none of us were allowed to look. But Amrita’s hand landed on her back and gently pushed, and we hefted Caroline up and out of the apocalypse.
She was a heavy weight on my shoulder. Saz’s jaw clenched as she hoisted Caroline’s right side, pinning Caroline between us.
“She was—” Caroline started, but she made an awful sound, like a cry had lodged inside her chest. “She can be so fucking mean.”
Saz hushed and soothed her, telling Caroline we’d be in her room soon, that she could lie down and sleep.
“Bathroom,” Caroline croaked. “I’m going to be sick.”
Miraculously, she made it. Saz held blond hair away from Caroline’s face as she clutched the toilet. I wobbled in the doorway. I was still too drunk.
“Go to bed, Jo. I got this,” Saz said when she saw the look on my face.
My room felt different now that Agnes had been in it. The past hour had shifted something tectonic—there wasn’t a space to get comfortable. Guilt made me shiver uncontrollably, teeth chattering. I perched on the bed and tried to obey Saz’s command. But rest was impossible as I listened to them shuffle in the hall, Caroline’s weak voice filtering under the door. Saz’s answer was calm and comforting. They muttered back and forth for a while, and then things went quiet. I thought I heard someone go downstairs, or come up.
Somehow without my realizing, my eyes shut for a moment—or I blacked out—and when I came to again, it was dark and silent. I crept to the bathroom and emptied my stomach. Cold water on my face and swished between my teeth brought me closer to life.
Caroline’s door hung open a crack, the space beyond it hot and dense as the interior of a mouth, red exit sign beaming down the hall and painting everything apocalyptic. Inside, it was silent—I hovered. I waited to hear her breathe. When I couldn’t, I crept closer and found her on her back, mouth slack and eyelids fluttering along the restless boundary of near sleep.
“Who left you like this?” I murmured as I turned her over to her side. Caroline let out a weak sound. Something about it, that broken whimper and the clammy touch of her forehead under my hand, broke my heart. I dragged the trash can over in case she might be sick, even though the sight of it made my stomach toss again, and crouched beside it.
“Jo,” she said, voice cracking, eyes still squeezed shut. I could smell tequila and her shampoo mixing with body heat in the sheets. I reached for her hand, and my heart seized when her fingers twined with mine. Her eyes slit open. I couldn’t tell what made them red—tears, or the drugs, or the exit sign’s glow spilling past the doorway.
“Jo,” she started again. Her lips were dry, and her tongue kept darting out to wet them. I started to stand to hunt for a glass of water, but her hand tugged me back to the bed, and I perched there beside her head. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Shh,” I answered. I shook my head, though I doubted she’d even be able to register the action. “Forget about it. It’s not a big deal.”
What I really wanted to say was—we were supposed to love each other without limits. Without reservations, or holds, or weapons. Why did we insist on hurting one another in ways only we knew how to wield?
I thought she’d fallen asleep, but Caroline startled me by pushing her face into my lap, her damp cheek pillowed against my thigh. I stroked my fingers over her hair the way I knew she loved. The shuddering sigh she released hummed down to my bones.
“I’m sorry. Don’t break up with me,” Caroline pleaded.
It was something we’d said once in the first year of our friendship, commiserating about our inability to date, the impossibility of love. We’d made a promise. We’d never break it off.
“Don’t be annoying,” I said softly.
Eventually her ragged breaths lost their wet catch, and she drifted off there in my lap. I tilted my head back against the posters on her wall. A deep ache settled itself in my temples and worked its way down to my jaw. The slightest sound made me turn. There, in the doorway and silhouetted by red, Amrita stood with her hand on the jamb. The first time she spoke, the words were too quiet for me to process.
“What?” I whispered. Caroline stirred.
Amrita frowned at us. “I told you to get some rest. I’ll watch over her now.”
“She was alone,” I said. I wasn’t trying to accuse her, but it still came out sharp.
Amrita flinched as she stepped closer. “Sorry,” she whispered, and I could tell that she meant it, that it hurt. “We were trying to clean up a bit, and I was on the phone with Finch.” She shook her head. Her big eyes were wet. “It’s fine, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Sleep.”
My hand kept running over Caroline’s hair. The headache pounded like a siren.
“I just want us all to be friends,” I said quietly. “Now, forever.”
“Jo,” Amrita placated, and for a moment I believed she might cry. She was silent for a long time. Then she repeated, “Sleep.”
Her tone said it all—there would be no more arguments. I lifted Caroline’s head carefully from my lap, and I went to my room and slipped under the sheets. I waited to hear a voice through the wall. I never went to sleep.