her

and it starts out with a celebration, or a celebratory toast at least. Because Myrna's cousin Tracy is in town for the weekend and has just gotten an entry level job with an accounting firm nearby—it's a low-paying job, with little chance of advancement and a desk not even made of real wood—but it's a job, still, a real one with salary and retirement plan and dental.

So we unscrew the bottle of $15 champagne and pour out three glasses between us. They're not wine glasses, because Myrna and I still don't have jobs—not even the kind that don't offer dental, not even the kind that barely offer minimum wage. They're plastic cups that we bought from a garage sale two years ago, when we were still living in a broke-up house with two other members of our old band, which was (ridiculously) called End of Nowhere.

The three of us, with smiles stretched across our faces, stand in the fluorescent light of our kitchen and drink from our plastic cups. We all look garish in this light, in these costumes—but it's garish in a mostly hot way and not in a scary way. We're going to a party tonight, at some house, for Halloween.

"Who's playing?" Myrna asks, scraping her over-hairsprayed short crimped hair behind her ears.

"If you keep touching your hair it'll ruin the effect," I tell her.

She rolls her eyes and I can see where the eyeliner is smudged and imperfect. Myrna is trying to be Madonna, circa 1983 ("Lucky Star" video) and she barely pulls it off. She barely pulls off Madonna Mallrat Groupie.

"Whatever, don't avoid my question," she says, her eyes becoming rat-like and glowy. I know what she's trying to do.

I keep my cup of champagne close to my face to minimize the amount of time I have to spend between raising the glass and drinking from it.

"Well, it's a stupid question because you know who's playing."

"I don't," Tracy says suddenly.

Tracy is unoriginal as a witchy slut or a slutty witch or just a girl wearing a cut-up black dress and slightly too-dark foundation.

"They're not even good," I say. "Two of their songs have the word 'abyss' in it."

Tracy's look is a blank, which doesn't surprise me.

Myrna half-smiles and her drawn-on mole disappears in a crease of her cheek. When she starts talking again, it is smudged and I have to fight from laughing.

"Someone's bitter," she says.

Tracy's blankness turns into confusion. She looks like a beginning drama student trying to act out emotions that are too complicated for her.

Myrna talks to Tracy, but keeps her eyes on me saying, "She tried out for lead singer of that band last week and didn't make the cut. She's still a little hostile about it."

"I never really cared," I say, looking beyond them both, looking through the blinds of the window and pretending I see something there, "I was just bored."

"Oh, really? Then why did you sleep with the lead guitarist?"

I laugh because it's supposed to be a joke, because Myrna's trying to be clever and show off in front of her newly employed small-town cousin. And I guess it works, because Tracy is looking at me with wide ex-high-school-vice-president-eyes, and I start to feel a little taller, maybe because of her awe or maybe because of the champagne.

But we wind up getting to the party a little late because it takes awhile to kill off the bottle of champagne, and it takes even longer for Myrna to finish telling Tracy the story of her most recent breakup (which I swear took less time actually occurring than it takes her to retell). And by the time Myrna parallel parks her Impala two blocks away from the party, I am actually starting to feel nervous to walk into this house and have to face the band that rejected me after four grueling auditions.

Because the truth is that they don't entirely suck, and I haven't been in a real band in three months, and I did want this, I really did. I step out of the car and adjust my wig in the passenger side window, then turn around and start walking deliberately to the party. It's always important to be the first person through the door.

The door of the house is open, and music is coming out, but it's not live music, just a stereo. There are some sad-looking attempts at Halloween decorations; two strips of orange crepe paper hang from the doorway and several more are scattered along the cement front porch. A plastic pumpkin sits upright on the front step, half filled with rainwater and cigarette butts.

I walk in through the front door and look past the heads of everyone in the living room, scanning slowly for members of the band. I see Myrna beside me and then she is waving to someone on a couch—I can't tell who it is because he has a Richard Nixon mask on his head. She goes over to him, and I follow her, hating that I haven't been able to see someone I know first.

While we're talking to Richard Nixon, who turns out to be a sweaty-armed kid from Myrna's psych class, a short kid in a tux comes up to me and sells me a red plastic cup for five dollars. Tracy searches through her purse but pulls out only credit cards. Myrna pretends not to notice, so I offer to buy Tracy's cup.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I ask the short kid.

"OO7," he says, pocketing his cash. "What about you?"

"Nancy Spungen. As in, Sid and Nancy."

"I thought she was black, with kind of crazy hair," he says to me. Someone pushes into me from behind and I find myself uncomfortably close to his shoulder pads.

"No...I think you're thinking of Tina Turner."

"No, I don't think so..." he says, but someone waves him down to buy a cup and he walks away.

I reach up and adjust my wig again. Long platinum blonde pieces fall down my back and scratch the skin between my shoulder blades.

Tracy goes to fill my beer up at the keg and doesn't come back for fifteen minutes. I get tired of following the inane conversation between Myrna and Richard Nixon, and I turn to the kid next to me who looks vaguely familiar. He's wearing a trench coat and is growing the beginnings of a scruffy beard to hide what looks like some unfortunate acne at the base of his ears. Still, he's cute, in a lanky way.

Tracy comes back with my beer. I am annoyed because I have to work her into the conversation. The kid looks up and starts talking to her and I edge closer to him. He glances as me and I suddenly recognize him as someone who sold me pot at a party once. I smile back at him and tip back my beer.

I finish my beer and then another and make room for Tracy to squeeze onto the couch next to me. She holds up her cup and I hold mine up next to hers. Her face is round and shiny and I can't help smiling.

"Cheers," she says.

"To your new job—to becoming a real person," I say to her.

My drink is halfway to my mouth when she says, "and to your musical career!"

I nod, but can't look back at her. I stand up and make my way across the twisting random people to be in any area that isn't where I am.

I spot the keg, a dirty silver drum set up on wooden blocks like an altar, and I make my way towards it when someone steps in front of me.

It's him. He's looking straight at me and I panic, but manage to speak first.

"Well, hello there. Fancy seeing you here," I say.

"Yeah," he says, looking down into his drink, "well yeah, we're playing tonight."

"Yeah, I thought I heard something like that."

I'm suddenly angry for being so uncomfortable. I knew I would see him here, I knew I would see the whole band here, and I came prepared. I'm not going to let them think that they bothered me. I try to throw my head back, and stand taller, but my wig gets caught in between my fingers and slips sideways. I turn awkwardly to adjust it, and I am glad that he's fixing his eyes on his shoes and not on me.

"Where's your costume?"

"This is it. I'm the guitar player," he says. I can't tell if he's flirting with me or not and I'm thinking of what I can say that will prove I don't care, that, that I don't need his stupid band. His eyes shift about and I wonder if he's thinking about what we did, that time in the van. Suddenly I can't get this image of him out of my mind. I can see him, groggy in the dark and struggling to get his shoes off. And I was telling him how it didn't matter, but he wasn't listening, he just kept pulling and pulling at his laces and they weren't budging so he eventually just reached down and grabbed them and yanked, almost sending his elbow straight into the side of my nose.

I look at his shoes, they are the same pair of shoes, the same black laces with a red diamond pattern.

"So I take it you found a new lead singer?"

"Um...yeah," he says, and runs a hand through his hair. He's looking past me, and I realize this whole conversation is pointless, crazy pointless.

"Okay, well, see you around sometime," I say, and brush past him to get to the keg.

I come back to the couch and Myrna's doing shots with Richard Nixon and someone wearing a potato sack for a shirt. She offers me one, and I grab it from her hand and swallow it without thinking and she laughs. It burns but I force myself not to make a face and I hold the shot glass out for more. To my right Tracy is sitting on the lap of the kid in the trench coat. That was fast. Or maybe not. I try to remember how long I was having a conversation with the guitarist for.

I try to sit back on the couch and fall onto it instead, but swing my legs up so it looks like I did it on purpose. I don't know how long I sit there, watching Myrna talk about nothing, seeing Tracy's eye's get shinier. Myrna sits down next to me with a bottle of Bud Light, and I take a sip from it. I rest my head on her shoulder and we start to laugh. Tracy comes and sits cross-legged on the floor, facing us.

"How can you tell if you've been roofied?" she says, her mouth a straight line.

I start to laugh and can't stop laughing and Myrna is laughing too, and part of my wig gets caught in her mouth and we laugh some more. Across the room, I see the guitarist walking away from a girl in a nurse's outfit. The girl looks small and out of place in her little costume and bright red heels. Her ears stick out excessively from her head, and she looks like a little mouse in red high heels. It's so funny to me, and I can't stop laughing. Myrna asks me what's funny, and I point to the girl, and try to say "mouse," but I can't, and I can't even explain why it's so funny. Myrna laughs anyway and we keep on laughing until I can't breathe and it hurts.

Somehow I have another beer. I can't remember how long I've been here, on this couch, but it feels like a long time. I hear a screeching and recognize the noise; it's a microphone. The band has started to play in another room. I get up and try to grab Myrna by the elbow but she's deep in another conversation again and doesn't even look at me. I walk towards the noise and swerve my drink around people who get in my way.

A crowd is gathering around the band and they start their first song, a song I know because I learned it for the audition. I raise my head above the crowd to see who's singing. It's a small Asian girl I've never seen before, wearing a plaid skirt and a torn black AC/DC shirt. Her voice is strong but flat on the high notes, and I know I could have sung it better. I know I have sung it better. I know it should be me up there, on the cheap wooden platform covered with loose

Then I'm walking back, back through the bodies with no faces and faces with no bodies and I'm out the door where it's cold. I drop my empty cup into the plastic pumpkin on the porch and pass a girl with butterfly wings crying into a phone. The music is following me, following me out into the street, and it's getting louder when I know it shouldn't be. As I pass cars on the street, I stop and tap on them with my hands, tap to the rhythm and hum under my breath. I get to Myrna's car and see my reflection in the car window again. This time I barely recognize myself, with the long straggling wig and smudged darkness under my eyes. It takes three tries, but I open the car door and crawl into the back seat. There's a rushing in my ears, and for a few moments I think it's still the music. But there's no noise out here except passing cars and the occasional shout that seems to come from all directions. The top of the car seems to be pressing down on me and I stretch myself out but get nowhere. I close my eyes and try to think of a song to sing, of a place to go but I get nowhere. I know I want something but I can't remember what it is and all I know is that I'm never going to, never getting it, never getting

him

I feel like shit already and when the burning liquid goes down my throat my only thought is that it can't get any worse than it already is right now. Rog slams his empty shot glass on the table and I do the same, brushing my hand against a puddle of spilled liquid and wiping it off on my shirt.

"Alright, let's go," Rog says, picking up his drumsticks and drumming me on the shoulder.

"Right behind you," I say, but my feet won't move.

"Come on, kid, it's just a house party," he says, backing out the door. He screams at the stairs to bring the others down.

"Yeah."

"We've done bigger than this."

"Yeah."

"She'll be fine," he says, and my head twists quick on my neck as I look at him. But it takes me a second to realize that he's not talking about Amy, that he still doesn't know anything. He's talking about Katrina, and here she is, coming down the stairs now in a little schoolgirl skirt and spiked hair.

"You look like one of Gwen Stefani's Asian backup dancers," Rog says to her, and it's true. She looks like someone trying too hard.

"I didn't know you were a Gwen fan," she says back, stealing a drumstick from his hand. She walks past him and out the door. He laughs, raises his eyebrows at me and follows her out. The other guys start coming down now, and I think it's a good idea to take one more shot for the road.

I see the singer girl the second I walk into the party, sitting on a couch and looking bored. She's wearing a wig, but there's no mistaking her. I duck out of the room before she can see me and start to look for Amy. It's a costume party, and even though it's only eleven and we don't start playing for another hour, everyone looks overly excited and cartoonish, somehow.

I duck into different rooms of the house and pass Gilligan, Freddy Kreuger, Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction. No Amy. Maybe she knows already. Maybe she figured it out and won't come. How could she figure it out?

I remember when I asked Amy out, two years ago maybe. I remember that we were on a field trip downtown for a marketing class, and I asked her to ditch out with me and go to a club where a band was playing. I didn't thinks he would go, straight A student with her hair in a perfect little bun, but she said yes, she looked at me with clear eyes and said yes and we went and had more fun than I could remember having in a long time.

I'm standing in line for a drink at the keg when I feel three quick pokes on my shoulder.

"How could you do that?" Someone says hot and screeching in my ear. I turn around and see Amy's friend Casey, her face plastered over in glitter.

My gut sinks and I tell myself not to panic.

"Do what?" I ask.

"You know what. Amy's my friend. I thought you were too," she says, then turns around before I can reply. Her butterfly wings slap me in the face and a piece of glitter lands in my eye.

So she knows, she has to know. My eye starts to well up hotly, and I blink viciously to get the glitter out. I pick up a shining silver toaster from the counter top and hold it up to my face, see my one bloodshot eye.

I set the toaster back down and see a lone plastic cup sitting on the counter. It doesn't seem to belong to anyone, so I pick it up nonchalantly and fill it up with keg beer, swallow it down, fill it up again.

"Whoa, take it easy," a voice says. I turn around and see Rog. "We're on in forty-five."

"Yeah, okay."

"What happened to your eye, man?" Rog says. He doesn't wait for me to answer. "That chick's here&mdas;hthe singer one."

My gut twists. I decide it's probably not a good idea to leave the kitchen, and prop myself up against a corner by a window while Rog fills up a cup and walks away.

I think about a night with Amy, after I had just broken my arm from a stupid failed skate jump. She sat cross-legged on the couch next to me, using different colors of permanent marker to write band names onto my cast. We just sat together like that, all the time when I wasn't up to going out and couldn't play the guitar for three months and she gave me her lucky shoelaces to make me feel better. She never complained, just rented my favorite movies and watched The Daily Show two times a day.

Then I see her, through the window. She's sitting outside, dressed in white. Her head is down, so I can't see her face, but I can tell by the movements of her shoulders that she's talking. I don't know the person sitting next to her. He's holding an acoustic guitar.

I decide to make my way to her, I have to see her. I step across the greasy linoleum tiles of the kitchen and don't look where I'm going or who I'm passing. I sense someone blocking the doorway in front of me and I look up. It's the girl, the singer. The blonde wig against her face is disconcerting; her gray eyes are steady and stare me down. I can sense that she wants a confrontation. She wants to know why I never called. I can't deal with this right now, that I know.

She says something in a light voice, but her eyes are a cocked weapon. I mutter back, I want this to be over. I can't stop thinking about that night, about the pointless senselessness of it all. About how I called Amy on the phone after and listened to her tell me a joke her professor had told in class. I thought about how this girl could wreck everything.

The girl's voice is icy casual and I can't take this a second more. Did she tell Amy? The kitchen I'm standing in is too bright. It's too small. Finally, the girl's done talking and I'm done forcing out meek answers. I try to push my way to the back door of the house, but there's too many people. I turn around and make my way to the front door, drinking from my cup along the way, trying to look casual. I pass Katrina, who's laughing too loud. She's nervous. Once outside, I walk quickly around the house in the cold air to the backyard, but she's gone. I can't see her, can't see the guy with her or his guitar.

I take a cigarette from the pack in my pocket and light it quickly. I think about that night again, and try to remember what I had been thinking, but nothing comes to me. There's nothing there. I know the set's starting soon, so I turn around to go back inside.

I see her right when I step in the door. She's standing alone, staring into her drink. Her face is a blank. I walk up to her and notice that she's at eye level. She's wearing heels, and her eyes are level with mine. I see them and I know she knows.

"I won't do this here," she says, in a breaking whisper.

I don't know what to say to her. I don't know how to fix anything. From my right I see Rog, trying to get my attention. He's motioning me into another room. I remember again that I have to play.

"It wasn't anything," I say.

She's miles and miles and miles away.

"I love—"

Her head snaps back up. Awareness. "Leave. You have to leave now."

My feet move. I leave.

In the next room, we take shots for good luck before we start to play.

"You 'right?" Rog asks. "You look like hell."

I nod and start testing out the guitar. Katrina takes her place on the front of the stage and her hands are shaking. I look out into the crowd for Amy's face, but she's not there.

We start playing and I'm surprised that my hands can still go; that I'm not even caring and they still know what to do. I look up and see the singer girl in her stupid wig staring at me from the back of the crowd. I can see the entire figure of her body, glowing black against the dingy wall of the room. I suddenly imagine myself grabbing her, throwing her across the room. I've never hated anyone the way I hate her, staring at me, not looking away.

After the set, I grab Drummer Dan's half-finished bottle of Captain's and walk away. He calls after me, but I push my way through the thick mass and the smoke. I have to find Amy. I see flashes of white all around me—angels, Marilyn Monroe. Not her.

I step outside, drinking from the glass bottle. Amy is nowhere. Her house isn't far away, I have to walk to her house. I cut across the front yard, crunching tripping over leaves. There's bits of smashed pumpkin across the sidewalk. I'm passing by parked cars and darkened houses, counting how much longer until I get to her house. I come up to a silver car and see its back door is slightly open. Inside, I see a figure, curled across the dark seat. It's the singer girl. Her mouth is open, her wig is loose and I can see the dark roots of her hair spreading across her forehead.

I throw down the empty bottle and wait for it to shatter on the curb. It bounces and rolls under the car, motionless. I start walking, now only for the purpose of walking. I'm getting away from her, from the mess in the backseat of the car. I can't remember ever wanting her. I don't want her. What I do want, I want, what I want is

an entirely separate her

I can't walk in these stupid shoes. Casey is making us walk to the party because she got a parking ticket last weekend and had to use part of her iPod fund to pay for it. So now we have to walk the half-mile from our house to this party, which wouldn't ordinarily be a big deal except that I'm wearing these stupid shoes for God knows what reason.

"I hate these!" I yell out for the hundredth time. Casey and Ashley are walking a few feet in front of me, they come back and each take one of my elbows.

"You look hot, though," Casey says.

"That's funny. I didn't know stumbling was hot."

"Oh, it most definitely is," Ashley says. It's strange to be almost as tall as Ashley, who usually towers over me. I have to be walking on at least four-inch spikes.

When we get to the front yard of the house, which is all lit up from the inside and dotted with the silhouettes of people, Ashley retrieves our pre-mixed vodka and cokes from her oversized purse and hands them to us.

"No one's driving tonight, so I expect no holding back!" Casey yells. She's looking at me. Casey and Ashley each grab one of my arms and pull me into the house, laughing.

I feel out of place the second I walk through the door and I wish I were in my normal shoes, and I wish I could just find Craig, who's been moody and quiet since his band had to drop their old singer. I wish I could just watch his set and then leave with him and go home and watch "The Exorcist" on cable.

We stop walking and stand in a corner of the living room, surrounded by people who all seem abnormally short. I drink my drink, probably too quickly to compensate for the discomfort in my shoes, the tingling in my calves, the overall out-of-placeness I feel. Casey's phone rings with the polyphonic sounds of Beethoven and she answers with a loud screeching hello and clamps her hand over her free ear. It takes four seconds for the muscles on her face to mutate into abnormal shapes. Ashley and I exchange glances and both lunge for the phone.

"Give it," Ashley says, but Casey twists away and stomps into the next room.

"It really is getting sad," Ashley says.

I nod, but find nothing funny in Casey's current manic-depressive state.

"She's really shaken up," I say.

Ashley rolls her eyes. "She's always shaken up. God, Ames, it's been two months since they broke up."

I sip my drink. "It was a bad idea to come tonight." Ashley doesn't seem to hear me or doesn't want to. I look down again at my stupid nurse's uniform, borrowed from Ashley's little sister, and the fishnet stockings Casey made me wear.

"Drink up," Ashley says. She's already scanning the room for potentials. I look down at a blister forming on my right heel and wonder if anyone will notice if I just take my shoes off altogether.

"Uh-oh," Ashley says under her breath. "Slut incoming."

"What"

"Shhhh."

A girl I've never seen before is walking towards us. She has short crimped hair and a mini skirt on, and is waving her arm loosely at Ashley.

"Hey! How are you?" She asks, stopping one foot away from us. I back a few inches towards the fake-wood-paneled wall.

"Doing good," Ashley says in a bright voice. "How are you?"

"Oh, fine, just on my way for another drink," the girl says, holding up a plastic cup. Her arm moves too quickly and some liquid from the cup falls over onto my shoes.

"OhgodImsorry," she says.

"Oh don't worry about it, they're not even mine," I laugh.

"Myrna, this is my friend Amy," Ashley says.

Myrna's look of regret for spilling on my shoes melts away and she flings her cup carelessly once more as she smiles and yells a loud, "hi!"

"So," Ashley says, nodding her head slowly, "I saw you were over by that girl over there. I think she was on my floor freshman year." Ashley's pointing to a girl on a couch in a dull blonde wig and leather jacket, talking to someone in a trench coat.

"Oh, really?" Myrna says, "that's my roommate." She comes in even closer to us and trips a bit on the carpet. I know that if I look at Ashley I'll burst out laughing. Myrna lowers her voice conspiratorially and I cock my ear to appease her like I would when my nine-year-old sister tries to tell me a secret.

"She's totally bummed tonight because she didn't get into the band that's playing here, even though she slept with the lead guitarist."

I don't think I've heard right. I look at Ashley's face, and her mouth has dropped open; she looks like a fish.

I try to talk but my throat won't work.

"Wait, wait, what band?" Ashley asks.

"The one playing tonight," Myrna says. She's emptying her cup into her mouth, oblivious to our faces. "Don't tell anyone I told you, she would kill me if I told you." She makes a shrugging gesture and backs away. "See ya."

Ashley turns and grabs my arm.

"It's not true, Ames, she's a crazy slut," she says, "it's not true."

"No, I know, I…"

My vision is becoming blurry and I realize that I'm going to cry, which makes absolutely no sense. I blink quickly until the mob of Halloween costumes comes back into Technicolor focus.

"It can't…"

Ashley is looking down and biting her lip. A feeling grows stronger in my stomach, and I realize that it's something that's been there for a while, for longer than I can remember. Why does this make sense now, why is it all clear now? Because it all fits, all fits together.

"We don't even have proof yet," Ashley says in a low voice. She's blocking me from the crowd. She's afraid of a scene.

"Yet?"

The bottom falls out from underneath me. Actually, it's one of my heels, which has twisted under the weight of my ankle and slipped to the right. Ashley catches me. I can't believe this is happening here, I can't believe this is happening now, on this random night in someone's living room where I've never been and never will be again, with some guy two feet away from me talking loudly to his friend about the benefits of high-definition TV. It's all so cheap, it's all so pointless. It all makes sense. I didn't even get to walk in on them, or throw a drink in his face. But it's all happening here, in this crowd of people where I can't even react and where Ashley's looking at me like she's afraid I might, which just makes it all the more true, it's true. I know then, because of the anti-climactic quality of this moment that it's all completely true.

"I have too…I have…"

"Let's go outside," Ashley says. And she's leading me by the elbow again through a door and outside where we sit on the railings of a wooden fence.

"I'm so sorry Ames," she says, holding my hand.

I don't want her there, so close to me, I don't want her looking at me like an invalid train wreck.

"I'd just...um, like to be alone for a second, okay?" I say, and I hate the way my voice sounds so small. Ashley nods and stands up.

"I'll go find Casey and get us some more drinks," she says and walks away.

I feel light, and unreal. The railing under me is hard and as I move to adjust myself on it, I feel a sharp jab in my hand and pull it back up, complete with a splinter. I open my mouth, but can't even swear, can't even rail at God for the splinter in my hand. I pull it out and then hold up the pop bottle to my lips and drink it down. The hollow feeling in my stomach is growing, but now it's warm, too, warm down my throat.

There are a few people in the backyard, and I think about how stupid I look, sitting alone on the fence, fighting from crying. I hate that I'm the girl fighting from crying. I close my eyes, but get a flash of an image- the platinum blonde hair on the couch, and him, and him. I know I have to stop this, I have to get out, I can't see them, I can't see him.

Someone sits down next to me. It's a largish guy with a dark greasy wig, clutching onto a bottle and a battered guitar.

"I know what'll cheer you up," he says.

I don't want to talk and give my hurt-girl voice away.

"Neil Diamond."

I smile.

"Well, Neil Diamond and Mr. Daniels." He offers me some of his drink and I grab it from him and take a few deep gulps. The hollowness in my stomach becomes full of prickling warmth again.

"Well, I've never seen a nurse do that before," he says, smiling. He starts to strum on his guitar, and he plays a song that sounds familiar, that sounds like something my mom used to listen to while vacuuming the house on Saturday afternoons. I get another flash image of blonde hair and finish off his drink.

Neil Diamond talks to me for a while until I realize I have to go to the bathroom. I stand up and politely tell him thank you and walk away. Once inside, I run up the stairs quickly to find a bathroom. It's open and I shut the door covered with a Family Guy poster and look at myself in the mirror. I look ridiculous, like someone who isn't me at all. The bright lipstick that looked funny when I left the house now looks matted and cracked. I put my face closer to the mirror and it looks orangey-yellow tinted. I step away from the mirror and my face looks more blue and tired. It's hard to immediately make out the shapes of the bathroom and it hits me that I'm drunk. My stomach feels hollow and I try to remember if I had dinner or not. I want to curl up on the bathroom floor and stay there with the awful familiar shapes and the brightly colored poster, but I make myself turn the door handle and step outside.

I want to find Casey or Ashley—I want to leave. I come down the stairs and have to pause for a minute in the living room of the house. There are so many people.

And I see him, sudden and random, with his stupid somber looking face and his torn jeans, the ones he once left at my place for two months, the ones we had a little fight over because I fixed them with patches and then he tore them out, and he's coming straight for me. I can't, I know I can't do this now. All of my breath is leaving my body and I fight to stand up.

"I won't do this here," I say, and I am talking on the energy of pure liquor fumes.

He flinches a little and looks hurt, and I want to spit on his face for being the one who looks hurt, for coming up to me here, for letting me find out here in front of all these strangers. I lift my head away and I want to spit at him for still wearing the face that just yesterday I could tell whatever I wanted, whatever I happened to be thinking.

"It didn't mean anything," he says, which isn't an apology at all. I stare at him blankly, at the face I used to know so well that may as well be a mask now, a plastic Halloween Craig mask.

He opens his mouth and out comes his same voice, the voice he has used to tell me he loves me a thousand thousand times.

"You have to leave," I tell him, I can barely get the words out, "now."

His beery breath shakes onto me and he walks away. I close my eyes and remind myself of what just happened, that it's all real. When I look up the first face I see is hers. She's red-faced and laughing, twisted up and laughing hard, pointing, laughing at me. She's laughing at me. I'm frozen still and there's nothing I can do. I don't know how long I stand there before I decide that I need the safety of the bathroom again, that I need to be alone and in the bright light again.

I turn and walk up the stairs and it takes me awhile to reach the top. I try to remember how much I drank, because I know I'm drunker than I probably should be. I reach down and take off my stained red shoes and throw them down the stairs. They bounce and clunk down. One makes it to the bottom, one stops on the third step up with its heel caught in the banister.

I start to head towards the bathroom, but someone's in my way. It's Neil Diamond, and he's smiling.

"Just the nurse I was looking for," he says. He's holding another drink, which I take from him and start drinking. I can't even tell what it is.

"The nurse knows what she wants," he says.

I reach up then and put a hand that doesn't feel like mine but is mine on each side of his face and draw him down and kiss him. I haven't kissed a stranger in months, no, years, and I'm shocked by how cold and wet his lips are. The unfamiliarity of lips, that not all lips are the same, that not all lips are Craig's lips. He picks me up by the waist, but my eyes are closed, my eyes are closed and I can tell we're moving, but it's a sense that feels far away. I am disconnected from the laws of gravity.

Then we're lying down, and it's a struggle to keep up. But he's in control now and I don't have to do anything, I don't have to think anything. He's heavy on top of me and I give up trying to move or act anything. The room is dark and I can just feel his dark wig against my neck and see the ceiling behind him. The hollowness is gone, all that's left is his heavy weight on me and the swirling dark and the ceiling. While he kisses me I try to remember what his face looks like but I can't. I can't think anything, can't remember anything, and then, and then