The next morning, I woke up back in the past. That was when my quest for the pills began. I had no idea how hooked I became. Over the course of a year, I lied and stole and did things I later regretted. If pills hadn’t been easy to come by in Manhattan prep schools, there’s no telling how far I might have gone. Until the very end, no one suspected a thing. My grades remained reasonable, but everything else went to hell. I stopped talking to my friends. I only showered when my mother yelled at me. Still, no one ever guessed I was doing drugs until the day I popped a few pills too many and almost died. And still, my mom kept insisting it wasn’t an overdose. If an EMT with a syringe of naloxone and a healthy disrespect for authority hadn’t chosen to ignore her, my body would be buried next to my father’s.
I spent my sixteenth birthday in rehab. There, the images returned with a vengeance. All the pictures I’d tried so hard to erase played nonstop in my mind. At first, I still didn’t understand what I saw. Then a bubbling, boiling rage began building inside me. It was toxic waste, and I had no idea where to store it. I didn’t even know what it was.
I passed the following summer in a lovely psychiatric facility in Virginia. I’d been off drugs for months at that point, but my mother thought it was best to keep me under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Eventually the people at the psychiatric facility told her I had to leave. When my mom picked me up in August, she informed me I’d soon be going back to school. Not the same school, of course. After all the drama, she just couldn’t face the old teachers and parents. So she’d enrolled me in a different school on the other side of Central Park. As if that were far enough away to start a whole new life.
It wasn’t. Everyone knew. It was as though my “condition” had been announced over the loudspeaker on the first day of school. No one was terrible to me. I was a curiosity—like a goat with two heads or a kid with a face tattoo. Most did their best not to stare, but I could always feel eyes on me when I turned around. My mother said they all stared because I’d finally gotten pretty. It was such a backhanded compliment that I figured it might be partly true. Still, “pretty” didn’t explain why people seemed to find the back of my head so damn gorgeous.
Then one day my life suddenly changed. It was noon on a Monday, and I was eating a sandwich all by myself when suddenly the king of the whole damn school sat down beside me. I thought Daniel was handsome and charming, but I wasn’t interested in a boyfriend. I was focused on my schoolwork. I’d had tutors at rehab, so I wasn’t that far behind. Still, I couldn’t screw things up again. College was my only escape plan. My mother insisted I stay in the city and go to Columbia, which was fine with me. I knew she’d never deign to set foot in Morningside Heights.
I tried to keep Daniel at bay, but he refused to give up. He sat with me at lunch every day. He brought me iced coffees in the afternoon and walked me across the park. He said he was happy to just be friends. Everyone else at school took their lead from him. People began to say hello to me in the halls. I don’t think I knew how much I’d missed all of that. I stopped resisting. I jumped right in. I took Daniel’s persistence as a sign of sincerity. It never even occurred to me that it might be a game.
We’d been hanging out for a few months when he announced he was throwing a party. His parents would be out of town, but they’d given their permission. I’d bought a dress for the occasion and thrilled my mother by finally having my brows done. I remember looking in the mirror before I left and actually understanding why someone might find me appealing.
There were at least fifty people from school at the party, and they all had their phones out. I’d bet thousands of photos were taken that night. Everyone was drinking out of camping mugs to disguise the liquor inside them. When Daniel handed me a mug, I took it for the worst reasons. I didn’t want to disappoint him.
I took a couple of sips just for show and then dumped the rest into a plant as soon as no one was watching. When I put the mug down, Daniel invited me out to the terrace that wrapped around his apartment on the eighteenth floor and overlooked Central Park. He’d told his guests that the outdoors was off-limits, which made perfect sense. The last thing anyone needed was a drunk teenager plunging eighteen floors to her death. When he opened the door, I understood the rule was just an excuse to keep the balcony empty. He’d saved the space just for us.
I remember standing at the railing with Daniel, looking out over Central Park. The windows and glass doors must have been soundproofed. I couldn’t hear the party raging inside. When Daniel leaned down to kiss me, I felt my legs wobble. I thought maybe I was just overwhelmed. Then my knees buckled, and Daniel caught me before I fell. It seemed sweet for a moment—until I tried to thank him and realized I could barely talk.
There were fifty people on the other side of the windows, but it was dark outside and they were all having fun. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass and saw myself hanging limply over Daniel’s shoulder. A group of girls were posing on the other side. There were multiple cameras aimed right at me. Someone must have seen something.
Daniel carried me to the far end of the terrace, away from the party and back into the apartment through one of the rooms that had been declared off-limits. I was dumped down on a bed in what I now know was his parents’ bedroom. I’d had my little Chanel purse strapped across my chest. I remember feeling one of the chains pop as he yanked it off. Then he pulled down my underwear and pushed up my dress. He probably assumed I’d chugged the whole drink. If I had, I would have been catatonic. My head was swimming, but I was still capable of thought. And I was thinking about fucking killing him.
I’d spent years swallowing rage. When it rose to the surface, I’d gulp it back down. A molten lake had been growing inside me. The pressure was building. Cracks and fissures were forming. That night it broke through and I finally erupted.
I lurched upward and shoved Daniel off me. He flew backward and landed with a crash, hitting his head on the edge of a bureau. The element of surprise had made it possible, but when I rose to my feet, I felt power coursing through me. I walked over to where he lay with his head in his hands, and I kicked him. It felt so good that I did it again. And again. And again.
There are plenty of pictures of me emerging from the bedroom, looking like a crazed junkie. I froze when I saw everyone. I’d forgotten where I was. There are big parts of that evening that are still a blur. I can’t remember what happened next, but there’s video of the entire incident. Daniel limped out of the bedroom with my purse in his hand. Both sides of his face were badly bruised. I stood there, panting like a rabid beast and swaying drunkenly in my heels as Daniel handed me my purse and planted a sad little kiss on my cheek. Then he asked two of the guys there to escort me downstairs and told the rest of the crowd that he needed an ambulance.
I don’t recall getting home, but somehow I managed to take off my dress and crawl into my bed. The next thing I knew, my mother was shaking me awake. The police were there to see me. Inside my bag they found a bottle of pills with his dad’s name on the label.