Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER
Twenty-Two
Getting ready for my night out felt like slipping into a dress from last season I’d found at the back of my closet that was somehow still in style.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, it felt as if I was seeing a friend from the past, Old Pom in her black bodycon dress with mussed hair and big, ironic pearls dripping from her ears and her throat.
I met my friends outside one of our old haunts downtown.
They rushed over to me on the sidewalk for cheek kisses and hugs where we barely touched, partially because Coriander’s metallic silver dress had little spikes around the collar.
“Oh my God, Pom, it’s so good to finally see you,” Millicent gushed, clad in a sparkly pink jumpsuit that looked as if she’d plucked it from a human-size Barbie Dreamhouse.
Had her voice always been this nasal to the point where it grated against my nerves?
“Yeah, you’ve really been out of the loop,” Coriander said. Had she always twirled her blond hair with her fingers in this way that made me want to chop her fingers off one by one with gardening shears? “We have to fill you in.”
I leaned in, smiling mechanically, as they led me inside.
The entryway was small and dark, the stairs going down narrow and claustrophobic.
“I can’t wait. Tell me everything.” I couldn’t stop glancing around me, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be seeing me, judging me. Old habit from the past year.
Our usual routine was bar before club, so that we could get all of the talking out of the way before music drowned everything out.
This particular bar was speakeasy style, located in a basement and littered with gas lamps, Tiffany stained glass, and shelf upon shelf of herbal-looking tonic and clear liquids in elegant perfume bottles behind the stately mahogany bar.
It was crowded already; I nodded to a few people I recognized and a few people I was pretty sure I didn’t but who would get a thrill from The Pomona Afton nodding at them like she did.
For the next hour, over drinks that tasted like medicine or licorice or sometimes both, Millicent and Coriander filled me in on the last few months of happenings in their sphere.
My old sphere, the one I had spurned for the new one that had spurned me.
Old friends who had gotten together. Who had broken up.
Who had gotten together then broken up then gotten together again but would probably break up soon.
Who had gotten threatened with eviction proceedings from their parents after throwing one too many loud parties, who had been arrested for dealing or driving under the influence but got off without jail time.
Who had been thinking about starting a fashion line (Millicent) and who had sworn off drinking wine for the near future because of the tannins (Coriander).
“What exactly are tannins?” I asked Coriander. Her face wrinkled up, eyes wide with fright. Before she had to admit she had no idea what they were or why she was avoiding them, I changed the subject. “Do you know Chip? Apparently everyone thinks we should be together for some reason.”
“Chip? Princeton Chip?” Millicent asked. “Oh no. I’ve slept with him and he’s so mid.”
“So mid,” Coriander echoed. Was she supporting her friend or did that mean she’d also slept with him and found him mid?
Probably better not to ask. “Anyway,” I said. Moving on. “What’s the big news, now that we’ve gotten through all the petty drama?”
They regarded me with four big blank eyes. Coriander took a sip of her drink, a parsley soda with gin and tonic. “What do you mean?”
“That was all the big news,” Millicent clarified, in case I hadn’t gotten it from Coriander’s question.
Right. It hit me at once all over again how small and insignificant everything in my old world had been.
A big accomplishment for me back then had been when I’d plotted with a whole group to wear bright red to Catherine Sounder’s Hamptons pink party.
Which—I smiled at the memory—had been a lot of fun, actually.
Maybe it would be nice to kind of turn my brain off for a night and not think about the weight of the world or anything too big or important. Though, of course, anyone who saw me out tonight would assume I wanted to turn it off permanently again.
To avoid thinking about it too much, I took a big gulp of my extremely fennel-y drink, then another. It seared its way down my throat, lit a fire in my stomach. Made me relax enough to take the little orange pill Coriander fetched for me from her pearl compact without asking what it was.
Once the effects started to hit, we cleared out for somewhere louder and sloppier, a new club that had opened in the past year that looked and sounded exactly like every other club I’d been to: flashing multicolored lights; a cloaked DJ spinning beats; a thumping bass; round tables cordoned off in the back that we were ushered to immediately.
Champagne rained down my throat. I felt every inch of its glittering journey, the pooling of it, now warm, in my gullet.
The effects of Coriander’s pill: I’d kind of hoped it was one that would chill me out, but it was doing the opposite; it heightened every sensation, made every light sharper, stretched each second out into a gooey strand of taffy.
This was the place to be tonight. Everybody who was everybody, at least in my old sphere, was here. Random people I hadn’t seen in ages stopped by to say hi, telling me how good I looked, asking me how I was, commenting on the music or the lighting or the champagne before I had a chance to answer.
Everywhere I looked I saw Gabe.
No, that wasn’t fair. Because sometimes also in my peripheral vision there was a swoosh of black hair and I thought it was Vienna, or a lithe, willowy gesture that made me think of Persimmon.
The shine of light on pearl that made me think Libby, or the angle of a waist that shouted Kitty.
People who would never be caught stepping foot in here, who would look down on me for my presence on this dance floor.
But mostly it was Gabe. Gabe’s hand brushing along my shoulder, Gabe’s lips quirking up in a quick glimpse of a smile as he indulged a speech from me about how Squeaky totally preferred chicken with thyme to chicken with rosemary that I knew was ridiculous but that I felt comfortable making anyway because I knew he wouldn’t think I was ridiculous for it.
Gabe’s eyebrows rising, impressed, as I told him about the newest initiative I was doing to help people and use everything I’d been given to make the world better.
I took another gulp of champagne. A group of girls my age materialized before us, big smiles on their faces, phones in their hands, all gesturing toward me. I didn’t need to be able to hear them to know what they were asking for: a picture.
Millicent flicked her hand at them like they were flies.
They raised their phones and took pictures anyway, giggling as they ran off.
Great. Now everybody would see those pictures and think all of the rumors were true.
Pomona Afton, seen partying without her poverty-stricken boyfriend.
Pomona Afton, out frittering away her money instead of helping some other poverty-stricken kid go to school.
Pomona Afton, her head empty, as always.
I tossed back the rest of the champagne and threw myself from the booth, nearly falling over as I turned to extend a hand toward Millicent and Coriander. Great. Hopefully somebody got a photo of that too. Ideally with my underwear showing. “Let’s dance!”
We stumbled onto the dance floor. The music swept me up, thumping so loud I felt it through my whole body like a heartbeat, vibrating through my muscles and relaxing them better than the best massage (okay, not the best massage, but that one had been deep underground in a Turkish cave and helped along by earthquakes, an experience I was not looking to repeat anytime soon).
I shouted along the lyrics to some pop song from a few years ago remixed into something edgy and new, throwing my arms up in the air and shaking my body until sweat dampened the back of my neck.
Scream-singing made me feel free, cleared my mind, forced me to be in the moment.
Let me forget everything about the article, the photos, Gabe.
God, I’d missed this. This was the first moment without that nagging thought of what will they think? hovering in the back of my mind. That was why I’d always loved clubbing, and why I loved it now.
I’d changed so much. Why was that same thought still there?
A very damp man was dancing up to me, his smell sharp enough to cut through the general funk of sweaty bodies packed into a small space.
I grimaced and danced away. Where was I?
It was hard to remember over the thump-thump-thump of the bass, the chorus of people yelling lyrics around me so that we all felt like one glorious organism.
Oh yeah. That was exactly where I’d been.
Millicent and Coriander danced up to me.
Each grabbed one of my hands and swung it, and even with all I’d been feeling toward them lately—the annoyance, the frustration, the itch to get away—it was so nice to be here with them in this place, in this time, in this era.
“I love you guys!” I yelled. They didn’t yell it back, which, rude.
Though maybe it was that they hadn’t heard me. “I missed this!”
I had no idea how long we danced for, because the songs never really ended, only morphed into new songs.
There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but I couldn’t think too hard about it.
I just danced and danced and danced until my lips were dry and my throat was sore.
Once I could no longer ignore the demands of my body, I shook my way off to the side and flopped, exhausted, back onto the cushioned bench surrounding our table.
I’d had enough alcohol for one night, so I poured myself a glass of water.
Then poured myself another glass when I realized I’d accidentally poured myself the spicy water.
No, that wasn’t right. Carbonated. That was right.
The effects of the drug were finally wearing off, leaving my mind a little jumbled.
But not too jumbled to remember what I’d said and thought on the dance floor.
How much I’d missed this. I hadn’t let myself go clubbing at all over the past year, worried about what people might think.
If they’d assume my new leaf was equally as tawdry as the old leaf.
But now, here I was, still worried about what people would think.
Why? What was the point? I’d been so worried about what my sphere would think, then what my new sphere would think, then what Gabe would think…
… that I’d forgotten to ask myself what I thought.
Why couldn’t I be a person who was determined to do good in the world who also liked to go dance and party sometimes?
Because I enjoyed all of those things. I should be able to do all of those things.
Why couldn’t I be a person who liked doing important, serious things and also sometimes going clubbing without being judged?
Maybe because I couldn’t do anything without being judged. Even when I’d done everything right, Kitty and Libby and them had still snubbed me. And if that was the case, what if I just… stopped caring about what they thought?
I sank back into the cushion, gobsmacked. I could just stop caring. I could do the best I could and, if that got me smack talk from my new sphere or my old sphere or the public, so what? What did it matter? I’d know I was doing my best. I’d know I was doing what mattered.
I almost felt like I was going to cry.
“It’s soooo hot in here,” Millicent said, sliding into the seat beside me. Coriander slumped into the bench on my other side, sandwiching me between them.
Maybe they didn’t quite fit into my new world. Maybe they weren’t the kind of friends who would help me change the world for the better, or enrich my mind. But they were really good and fun at clubbing, and we had a long history together. Maybe that could be enough.
I leaned in and gave Coriander an impromptu hug. “I’m glad I came out with you tonight.”
She responded by bursting into tears. I would’ve been alarmed, except that Coriander was excellent at bursting into tears.
She did it when somebody shoulder-checked her on the sidewalk because she was staring down at her phone, taking up the whole walkway, or when it looked like somebody might beat her in tennis—basically, whenever she wanted to make someone feel bad.
How long would it work? I wondered. Everybody felt bad for a sobbing teenage girl.
Nobody pitied a sobbing middle-aged woman.
Anyway, I sat for a moment, waiting for her to get the worst of it out. Once she was sniffling and dabbing at her flawless mascara with a tissue plucked from her black leather The Avenue clutch, I said, a little wary, “Why do you want me to feel bad for you right now?”
Coriander sniffled again, dabbing at her cheek. Upon closer reflection, it was hardly wet. Okay, now I was more than a little wary. She’d definitely done something bad and didn’t want me to be angry. “Cor?”
Millicent’s hand alighted on my bare arm like a butterfly. “We only did it because we love you.”
“You did it?” My mouth dropped open. “You killed Conrad Phlume?” Images flashed through my head: Coriander, furious about my tricking her into wearing ugly glasses; Conrad taking a swipe at Millicent’s boob or something; the two of them losing it and shoving him off the landing.
“What?” Coriander squawked at the same time Millicent cried, “Oh my God, no!”
So much for that. I thought I’d be disappointed once again at not finding the culprits, but instead I found myself relieved. Having one friend go down for murder was more than enough for one lifetime, thank you very much. “Then what are you talking about?”
Coriander’s lower lip pushed out. I really hoped the tears weren’t about to restart. “The mean posts about you. And also the mean article about you. We were the ‘anonymous sources.’ ”