“You have goose bumps,” Jordan whispers.
“I’m cold,” I say.
“Why are you with that loser?” says Vaughn.
“Any second now,” Amir says, “Vaughn’s going to start talking about how he can bench-press him.”
“I looked him up once,” Kayla says. “He’s beautiful.”
“You looked up my boyfriend?” Tami says.
“No,” the girl says. “I mean, yes. I’m sorry.”
“I have to piss,” Esteban says, standing up, then wobbling.
“You don’t get to talk about Ash,” Tami says to Vaughn in a calm voice.
“I think I’m going to go,” I think I say, but no one can hear me.
“But I don’t understand!” he says. “What do you even see in that guy? He’s just . . . limp. It can’t just be that his family has money. Your family has money. You don’t even like him. You think he’s pathetic. You—”
But then Tami punches him in the face, with a closed fist, and the sound of impact reverberates. We all just stare, in total silence, as the tableau unfolds in front of our eyes—Vaughn’s hand reaching for his cheek, the tears welling in his eyes, the blood seeping out of his nose and dripping onto the wood floor.
“Darling,” Tami says calmly. “Go get some paper towels. I don’t want the blood staining the bamboo.”
She looks at me and smiles, and I get the strange impression that she’s done all of this for me.
Esteban sits down again. Tracy stumbles into the kitchen for paper towels. Amir just keeps saying “Damn” over and over again. Kayla reaches into her purse and starts poking around on her phone, like she suddenly realized she had some important correspondence to conduct.
“No phones,” Tami says. “You know that. No pictures of me and no pictures of her.” She glances in my direction. “You know what’ll happen if any photos of us get online. Our lawyers will destroy you.”
Lawyers? I don’t know what she told them, or if anyone’s buying it, or why she’s doing it. But I do know Tami gets bored easily. This could be some new game for her that she’ll lose interest in any minute now—selling me to strangers like I’m someone and seeing if she can get away with it.
Maybe the glimpse of her I thought I saw in the car was just a trick of light and shadow.
But then she walks over to where Vaughn is kneeling on the floor, trying to hold a wad of reddening paper towels to his nose while helping Tracy smear the blood drops on the floor. Tami puts her hand on his shoulder, gently, and looks down at him with the closest thing I have ever seen to tenderness on her face. He tilts his head toward the touch, already forgiving her.
Vaughn looks up for a moment and our eyes connect, and I see his humiliation flare, I see this giant man made suddenly small, and I realize no matter how big he gets, even if he becomes a star fighter and makes a bunch of money, he will still be this guy on his knees wiping up his own blood.
He will never end up with Tami, not for real. Maybe he and Ivy are alike in that way. They were both born on the outside of this world, and no matter how hard they try, they will never really belong in it as anything besides entertainment.
And what does that mean about me?
I stand up and the apartment swirls. We are so high up, higher than humans were ever meant to be. Our bodies are not made for sky.
Tami doesn’t even bother watching as they clean up the mess. She’s making herself another drink. She doesn’t ask anyone else if they want one. I have lost track of how much she’s had to drink tonight. How is she still upright? How is she still so in control?
I grab my purse from the table by the front door. The gold pill sparkles inside it.
I walk over to the window to tell her I’m leaving, but before I have a chance to speak, Tami says to me, “You know these would be your people if you weren’t so special.”
She says “special” like a curse. I have no idea what she’s talking about. How am I special? Because by dumb luck I was adopted out of poverty?
“How does it feel to be so loved?” she spits, then she walks away, down the hall, and closes a bedroom door behind her.
If I could fly out that window, I would.
But instead, I have feet. I have gravity that does not know how I got here.
All I want is the ground. I want what is beneath the street and sidewalks. I want the soil to fill in the holes burrowed inside me.
This is the part of drinking that happens after the split second of warmth and invincibility: want, want, and more want.
9
There is a hallway. An elevator. A street. A car. Nodding off in my sunglasses in the middle of the night, in a blurry daze at the public ferry terminal with all the other people on their way to a hangover, going home with their dresses slightly rumpled, walking barefoot with their heels in their hands.
* * *
• • •
I type “freedom pill” into my phone.
* * *
• • •
I wait for the boat. I am made out of waiting.
* * *
• • •
Maybe I am not in the elevator alone. Maybe Jordan the junior real estate agent gets there just in time, just before the doors close, and we go down to the ground together.
* * *
• • •
The only life Tami knows is one of wanting something and getting it.
* * *
• • •
Freedom: It says something about clinical trials. Something about researchers wanting to find a way to help people live without shame. Rape and abuse victims. PTSD. Cult deprogramming. Drug addicts and alcoholics. Victims. Survivors. People who need real help.
* * *
• • •
The night is cool. Maybe it sobers me up a little. Maybe I’m thinking a little more clearly.
I have never asked myself what I want.
* * *
• • •
Freedom: Trials stopped when people showed signs of not wanting to distinguish between right and wrong. Not that they lost the ability, but that they didn’t care.
* * *
• • •
What do I want?
* * *
• • •