PHANTOM VIBRATIONS. I keep feeling it, keep reaching for it, imagining June calling. Chelsea.

It's dead.

Nobody is calling you, Nola.

It's blindingly bright, burning my vision blurry. I wince as I skitter up Gates. "June," I hiss under my breath. "Bitch better be so fucking hungover."

Bitch, I woke up in a bathroom in Bushwick. Chelsea.

Ignoring a sickening stab in my gut, I watch a J pull in overhead, rickety, screeching across a cloudy sky. Somebody shoulders by, and I lurch, buckling off-balance before I catch myself dizzily.

I don't remember seeing her, June.

I don't remember anything.

I don't remember.

Everything is spinning softly.

My heart kicks up.

"What the fuck is..." I keel over, glaring at a curb, a hand on my head, furiously. Trash scuffing as I scrabble to stay upright. Lightheaded. No. No. "What the... fuck am I doing, Chelsea?"

I don't have a Metrocard. No ID. Nothing but a dead iPhone.

Up. I hop the turnstile tiredly. My knees burning. Up. I reach the platform uneasily. My body churning. Stop.

It's a clunky halt, tripping up, as I wait for a J. Déjà vu at its finest—a sloshing jolt I know by heart. I'd been here, I'm always here, and I always feel sick.

The J is a wild elevated journey in Bushwick. It's my Line, I'd decided: a hot June day when I happened to be on a high-jacked J. People could choose a certain song—an assemblage of songs—to identify backwards decisions—a so-called Soundtrack of Your Life. New Yorkers look back, too, but identify with a certain subway, an era off an L or an M. Wild Years. When I discovered Broadway in Brooklyn.

It helps fade a fog off, lolling, slick with sweat as I blink... blink... blink... and I'm on a J, yeah, pressed against a metal door. a dead end, when I really feel a throb intensifying in my skull, pummeling down to my shoulder blades in a ripple of harsh, heavy pangs. Drowsy. Everything slow-growling on a J.

What am I doing?

The air is thick, and I can't breathe; I can only choke on a bitter aftertaste of bile, flooding my throat with every jerk I ride out in dark discomfort. My ribs ricocheting off a door handle, rankling unlocked, shifting slightly. There are shoulders and elbows and legs, in jackets and jeans, pushed up against bloody clothing—a Killer Cheerleader?

Ha. Funny.

Reaching up, I dig my fingers into a clump of crusty hair, and I hear myself hiss. Pain rockets across my forehead in constellations, sparking as I lurch, clawing it back, seeing my own bloody fingers again again again... My hand planted on a window, off-balance, off-kilter, a cloudy lens; foggy glass, bleeding red off my warped reflection, vividly violent against a ghostly grey complexion.

TRUTH IS NEVER TRUTH

Oh, how fucking poetic. There's always something satirical, politically-charged, graffiti scratched and scrawled across Brooklyn, always a Shakespearean dagger. Heartbound. Breathless. Pissed off in the damp, dirty air plaguing a J. Why?

What am I doing, Chels?

Why do I always...

Chelsea. Chelsea. Chelsea.

TRUTH IS NEVER TRUTH

My teeth grinding. I cinch his loose denim jacket around my body. It overlaps, barely concealing my bloody skirt, but I suppose I'd always admired New York City for its disinterest, its blatant disregard for anything.

Nobody gives a fuck. I could be screaming, sobbing, or stripping; I don't know if anybody would care. Besides, New Yorkers aren't thrown off by a little blood. Everything goes.

My head is spinning, pounding.

My wrist stings.

We'd been, fleetingly, a Cher and Dion, a Clueless duo in New York City: jokes I can't quite remember, long-lost ideas of matching ink. Both named after neighborhoods in Manhattan. But Chelsea...

Lights flickering.

Remember.

Everybody looking down at an iPhone. Unwritten Rules of NYC. Chelsea and I laughing, on a Friday night, a Saturday morning, or some surreal haze in between, stragglers and drunks on an L.

I swallow thickly. I cough it out awkwardly.

Lights flickering, flickering, flickering, drawing my gaze up to its cracked plastic casing overhead—fleets of fried flies; dead bugs crunched in crevices, piling in corner-heaps; dots dancing across my vision, blooming and... darkening...

Blackouts.

It's too hot.

Heat hangs as I sulk away, gripping a pole to steady myself. The J sputters, slows, grating to a halt, and I shuffle out at Myrtle, slipping a hand into my pocket, grabbing my iPhone—

Right. Dead.

♛

"June!" I crash into the apartment clumsily, dragging, slamming a grimy forearm against her bedroom door. "Ay, cabrona, I'm alive, if you care," I snap, half-jokingly, as I pass by, sling my own bedroom door open. My wrist is raw, swelling, infected pinpricks of india ink; bloody fingerprints on a doorknob. "Hey! Did you see Chels last night, June?"

Nothing.

My head swivels. I look at her door again.

Her bedroom is seemingly... quiet.

Normally, June is blasting Drake or giggling on Tik Tok. Normally, June is dying to gossip about Chelsea.

Oh... kay. Probably passed out, I guess. Whatever.

It's got to be... eight in the morning.

Instinctually, I reach into my pocket before I remember again.

It's dead, Nola.

It's fucking muscle memory, Nola.

Dropping onto the edge of my bed, I plug my iPhone in, glimpse its delayed blip, a dizzy spell catching up quickly. My gaze jackknifing in odd directions: a pile of open books, strewn inside-out clothing, lipstick-stained filters of stubbed cigarettes—all my little shit I can't clean up. Everything always smells faintly of smoke, a heady, lingering scent I've never been bothered by. Inhaling. Exhaling. Breathing... deeply.

Fuck.

When I stand, I sway again. My hand jumps, fingernails flaking off dry blood from my neck, prodding at a slick knotted lump—I think I hit my head pretty fucking hard, Chels.

Oh shit Nola you fell in The Keep tripped in Hell's Kitchen collapsed in a bathroom hit your head against a bench a sink a bar stool found you lying half-conscious awake drunk cryin—

Chelsea always knew what happened: an ugly co-dependency I'd forgotten.

Nobody is up yet. I wrap my wrist in cellophane shakily, in a dirty, cluttered kitchen, dinly lit, a slat of grey cutting through a curtain, laying flat in front of my bloody Doc fucking Martens. Panic buckles my knees, and I land on my ass, snarled, wrenching them off. Clu-Clunk.

I feel myself stand, aching, padding into a dark bathroom. In a trance, stripping a denim jacket, a pinching crop-top, a skirt, ripping my fishnets off—a dirty heap of clothes I remember being clean.

My panties are damp.

Sweat. Cold.

The door is ajar. I'm falling, but I don't; a curtain crinkling, a hand grasping, a palm pressing against cold tiles, my forehead following heavily. My vision skewing. Water gashes across my bare shoulders, icy, and I jolt, flinching away.

What am I doing?

Lately, I wake up asking myself, "What am I doing?" Sometimes I have to ask myself on top of a jarring, "What did you do last night, Nola?" Real American Psycho: College Girl Vibes.

Only you're not in college anymore, Nola. Madura de una vez, Nola.

Had I really seen Chelsea? Why had Chelsea showed up at The Love? How? When? Did June tell her where we were going? Where the fuck did June go?

Foggily, I buff off a layer of skin, rusty, glittery soap-scum swirling over a clogged drain. I grind back a low whimper as I prod at my head, picking at gnarls of damp hair, untangling a tenderness. Drowsily, I dry myself off, in a limbo, plucking my drenched panties from the bottom of the bathtub, rinsing my throat of Newports. I drag myself into my bedroom, dropping my Halloween costume, kicking its blood-stained remains into a corner; I'll deal with it... later.

Okay— It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

¿Entiendes, Nola?

Never. Again.

Bzz zzz. I go rigid when I hear it, zeroing in—a cord coiling up from an open outlet to an ashy windowsill. Bzzzzz. It doesn't stop vibrating. My iPhone.

I grab it, glancing briefly. 848. 848 is... I don't know.

Not New York. Not June or Chelsea or Guillermo. Not... anybody. I let it fizzle, pop up a brand new notification: (2) Llamadas Perdidas. 848-301-7947. Twice? My brows furrow as I squint—848? What? Where is...

Bzz.

Thumbs blurring.

0-8-1-7

Bzz.

Again.

Bzz zz.

Again. Again. Again.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

Eventually, I'll be locked out of my own iPhone.
I nearly growl, digging up an old MacBook Air and switching plugs, iPhone going dark, dark, dark. It'll disable if I keep going, I know.

Somebody had changed its Passcode. Somebody who'd... known...

You, Nola?

God. Fuck. My head hurts. I sit back slowly, heavily. Restore.

Frustration gnaws deeper and deeper as I fight with my fucking iPhone. It darkens, and when I tap again, I don't... I don't get it. My heart clobbering up my throat forcefully. (2) Llamadas Perdidas sitting atop a blurry photograph of us—Chelsea and I in an East Village dive a few years ago, hips to hips, all glassy gazes and loose grins.

Had I changed it? Had I... What am I doing?

help i'm

Chelsea had my iPhone. Chelsea is fucking with you, Nola. Okay. Later, Nola.

A yellow sliver of a charging battery, looming tauntingly. 30%.

Everything so ingrained in my brain—I unlock my iPhone and open Instagram anyway.

Frozen. Static. Useless. A thin red strip hovers at the top: Sin Conexión. Our internet is absolute trash. I sigh, attempting a scroll, but Instagram bumps back up, and I'm stuck staring at Stories, laid on a black background, pulsing below, below, below...

Loading. Loading. Loading.

Later? Yeah?

I close it, opening Spotify. On a band I've never heard of: ANOCHE. 187 oyentes mensuales. Latin Punk, supposedly. Local to Brooklyn. Its Instagram. Probably played at The Love. Okay. Chévere. Nothing else loads.

So... I try again. Instagram flashes, before plunging into a dark feed of dives, refreshing. Chelsea had posted at Otero-Mesa; I'd recognize its smoking area in my sleep. Outdoors, a constellation of string lights as a backdrop, in a slinky dress, Chelsea Rae is posing. Dim. Blurry. Always. Her soft grin and a lazy lift of a glass, as if caught off-guard by such a meticulously planned candid. It's all natural to Chels.

891 Me gusta
chelseainchelsea being a bit of a groupie but i get free drinks! i can't say i don't love it—and him ❤️
Hace 10 horas / 10 hours ago

Swipe. Alex on a makeshift outdoor-stage, in a bar backyard I know on the edge of Ridgewood. Backlit by an eerie pink glow, sweaty, nearly swallowing a microphone, belting silently. Otero-Mesa.

Calm. Down.

Lying back, I tap on her—before I fall headlong into a self-dug Rabbit Hole of Chelsea Rae. I usually have to scroll pretty far, lurk pretty hard, to find anything on her IG of us. It'd been a while since I'd been featured on—in?—her Grid.

Every Friday, I used to scour her Instagram for anything I didn't remember. Snapshots for The 'Gram.

Her and I in a grimy haze, Marilyn Monroe-esque in Midtown. Her and I in a sooty candlelit booth whispering over an ashtray, a lá a cocktail of French noir films Chelsea always loved. Or I'm pounding back a shot, and Chels is drinking, knuckling a bottle of Smirnoff, holding up a finger, laughing, her red-eyed gaze, so white-girl wasted I almost laugh. I barely remember any of it. Models and Bottles. Party Girls.

Stop, Nola.

Chelsea and I... in a daze, blitzy-ritzy-ditzy, swaying in a poorly lit bar in Soho. How could I forget? But as I scroll, scroll, scroll, and I find us again and again and again, I bury a flurry of reactions to it, to her, to us, deep, deep, deep down on her Instagram. @lasolanola across a fleet of old posts, and others: others I don't recognize, in and out, a blurry, dark background for @chelseainchelsea on any Friday in Manhattan.

Chelsea came to... Bushwick?

I don't...

I can't keep...

Ping!

Fuck. It pops up so quickly—an Airdrop Request. Blurry. Dark.

Accept.

Us. It is blurry, dark, so... jarring, caught by shaky hands in stark shadows, but Chelsea looks... beautiful. I'm clinging to her, glittery skin, a dizzy grin, drunk or high, so fucking faded, but Chelsea is lighting a cigarette in a noir-ish blur, pale skin black fingernails a smeared stamp a silvery-azul flash in her closed fist—

TRUTH IS NEVER TRUTH

Her gaze is glassy, bloodshot—

Wait.

Airdrop.

Slowly, I peer up at my (empty) bedroom, holding my breath, listening, for June or Chelsea... or... or somebody close enough to Airdrop. My chest knotting up. My head spinning and spinning and spinning. Her blonde hair tousled around a black set of bunny ears; a bow-tie choker above her strapless cleavage, Classic Playboy Bunny on Halloween. Lights flickering in fluttery blinks. Blackouts.

No.

Remember.

Slowly, I peer down, a fleeting look at my crumpled costume, a blindingly hazy veil of bloody-pink, and I know, I know before I look again, I'm wearing it—Killer Cheerleader?

Halloween.

TRUTH IS NEVER TRUTH

I'd been with Chelsea.

Her arm wrapped around my waist, as if I'd been falling. Probably. Always.

Chelsea will know.

Instagram reloads on her, and I—

"Nola!"