I remember it was snowing. When I met my best friend’s friend earlier. They were outside her building smoking cigarettes and I was stopping by. She introduced us,
“Ava, meet Eva.” She snorted at that.
I could tell right away something was off with Ava. Anita had asked her to hold her water bottle while she fished in her bag for a cigarette for me, and, and there was something about the way she was holding it. As if at any moment someone else would offer to hold it, and bear the burden themselves. Her arm outstretched in front of her, as if she was already handing it away. And her whole body was so tense. And her voice when she accepted was very thin, reedy. She stood with the obvious hope that someone else may take up the harrowing task of carrying her friend’s water bottle. This was probably the closest I ever came to understanding her.
We all walked up the narrow stairs to Anita’s place while she told me about the pregnancy scare she was having. Not the first, but I couldn’t blame her. She was a girl with a lot of love to give. We followed Anita to the bathroom and I leaned on the heater while Ava busied herself fixing her hair. Anita made quick work of peeing, and then inserting the stick. We waited the minutes in silence.
I pondered the quickness with which life could be created. Meaningless smear of cock against opening and then…Unbidden images were coming to mind. Of cum smeared along the walls, along every surface it seemed there was sweat, discharge, menstrual fluids. I could feel the remnants, the echoes, all the unseemly, grisly forces which had once been here. All of a sudden I was disgusted, and felt like throwing up. I held Anita’s hand anyway.
We all studied the end of the stick. The test was negative. My breath came easier. Ava started laughing, and then Anita joined in.
We went to a party that night, that’s the last normal thing I ever really did in my life. Went to a party. Sounds pretty shit when you say it like that. Anyway, it was at this guy’s house. Anita had been seeing him on-and-off for a few months. Nothing serious. Well, besides the potential pregnancies. The air smelled like a childhood cold. The house was engulfed in warmth, even from a distance. I could see people weaving in and outside, sans jackets. Music blared through the speakers and I wondered which of the neighbors would be the first to crack.
He met Anita at the front door and they made out, sloppily. Ava let out a boisterous whoop and pranced into the house, heading towards what must have been the kitchen. The house was messy in the way you’d expect, but I could tell it was happily lived in. Red, fizzy liquid sloshed in plastic cups as Ava returned, thrusting one of the drinks in my direction. The red substance went down smoothly and I smacked my lips, already my body beginning to dance. We swayed there, in the doorway, the three of us. Back and forth our bodies swayed, Anita shaking her ass and Ava and I just floating through the air. And then everything just, stopped. I could tell I wasn’t the normal level of drunk, surmising that Ava must have dosed our drinks. With what, I never found out.
Then it was only Ava and I dancing. I spun around, searching for Anita but she was gone. And I realize now that I really, really should have looked for her, but at that moment I was too far gone to care. People were frozen in place, once gyrating bodies now still. Ava grabbed my hand and pulled me into a spin. We join hands and swing our arms over our heads in the same direction, twisting our bodies and spinning as all little girls had once done as kids.
The Stillness was thick, though not as silent as I’d have expected. Sweet somehow. Thick, and sweet in the way the Great Molasses Flood must have been. Sticky, sickeningly sweet syrup spilling into the streets and suffocating, strangling, the passersby. Hasty in its indifferent violence, it rages down your throat, and melds itself to your organs, to your veins. Until every particle of your body has been replaced with the thick, sugary substance.
Yes, an important distinction, I think. That this absence of time was sweet, and it reminded me of the сгущенка I used to gather on a spoon and drizzle back into the can. Only to see the wonderful patterns the condensed milk made as it fell home.
Ava was going through everybody’s pockets. She seemed only to be interested in the illicit narcotics in the party-goers possession, disdainfully tossing anything else she found. I had this niggle in the back of my mind as though I was forgetting something important. Though for the life of me I could not remember what it was, only that whatever it was, had left an impression somewhere, a dent in my brain, that made it very hard to focus on what Ava was telling me. And then as suddenly as I had almost remembered, I instantly forgot, joining Ava on the couch instead to indulge.
The hours passed, or I suppose, rather, that they didn’t. I couldn’t tell the difference, but Ava probably could. We did all the uppers first, and when the itchy come-down started, we topped up with the downers. My eyes were struggling to process my surroundings. It was as though I was back in high school, smoking a joint in a sunroom in the summer, rays of light filtering through the windows and filling the room with a soft, glowy haze. I was seventeen different kinds of fucked up and even God herself couldn’t hold back the smile peeling my lips apart, the peals of shrieking laughter bubbling up inside of me. It was always going to end like this, a negative pregnancy test and a red drink. I feel like I’ve forgotten something.
The days passed much like this, or I suppose, rather, that they didn’t. It was a blur of empty mansions and stolen ball gowns, garish makeup and lots of sledding. We stole cars and I drove us around. Ava didn’t know how to drive but she begged me to floor it. I think we both just wanted to feel something. Once, we were sitting outside on a park bench, smoking cigarettes. I hadn’t seen a soul besides Ava since…since it all stopped.
“I don’t like this anymore.” I breathed.
“Did you know, that’s the first time I’ve heard you say something like you really mean it? Thank you.” I never saw her again, she snuck out while I was sleeping and disappeared. I remember that just at that moment, on the bench, it began to snow again.
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