Moving to the Big Apple marked the first of many firsts. First cab ride. First apartment. First roommate. First night out in Manhattan.

That night, Jon-Michelle and I took the L train (another first) into the city. On the subway platform, people couldn't take their eyes off of Jon-Michelle. She wore a tiny black wraparound dress and stilettos, legs up to her neck. She walked ahead with an air of indifference, her eyes staring straight ahead with a sort of blank purpose. I marched in step, trying to keep up while sneaking sideway glances at my own reflection that coasted by in the train cars that passed.

My hair was in a hobo side braid (thank you, my friends at Teen Vogue, for the step-by-step how-to) with a fringe of bangs framing my face. I wore my favorite quilted leather miniskirt, a hand-me-down from my cousin, who worked at a boutique in Philly. The skirt was adorable, with patches of suede and rawhide, but it was so short that you could see my thigh gap when I stood still. My dad would have killed me had he known that I was walking through the subways of New York City, nearly at midnight, in a twelve-inch skirt that barely covered my butt.

While stepping off the train at Union Square station, we were flashed by a man urinating in our path.

"Asshole!" Jon-Michelle spat at him in disgust. Fear being my immediate response, I worried that the man would yell back or lurch at one of us as we passed, but thankfully he didn't. He didn't even notice us.

We arrived at our destination, a club in the meatpacking district of Manhattan, at 11:45. There was no sign to mark out the old, abandoned warehouse. People just knew where to show up. I worried that we (meaning "I") would be caught trying to get into a club that served alcohol. Having never been invited to drinking parties (much less had a "beverage") in high school, I wasn't quite sure how to appear nonchalant about the whole thing.

"Are you sure I can get into this place?" I asked.

I held my breath while a cop car slowly crept by us with the driver, a face like a beaten-up boxer, threw us a suspicious glance.

Great. What would my parents say about my next first: First arrest?

"You sure about this?" I said to Jon-Michelle, panicking.

She laughed. "You're so cute."

"What?"

"Catherine, models never get carded in New York. We basically have a free pass."

A few minutes later, her friend Theo, a DJ, showed up with a few other guys. Jon-Michelle greeted them with double-cheeked kisses before introducing me.

"S'up," one said, with a nod of the head. I gave him a half-hearted smiled, trying to appear nonchalant, like I try to break into nightclubs all the time.

We walked around to the back of the building, where a man was peering out of a contraption that looked like it belonged in the front of a depression-era speakeasy. Theo waved and the man opened the door for us, pointing to a doorway at the end of a pitch-black corridor. We walked in single file, struggling to see a foot in front of us, before we reached the doorway, illuminated by a red glow from within.

The door opened and I was blinded by the saturation of color and light. When my eyes adjusted, it felt like stepping into an exotic wonderland. There were vines climbing up to a 50-foot-high domed golden ceiling. Red and purple satin draperies hung from rafters, falling into lazy piles on the floor. People lounged on velvet couches, topped with beaded silk throws and overstuffed pillows. The floors were busy with oriental rugs and ornately woven mats of gold and silver. As we moved through the room, off to a dimly lit spot in the corner, I felt like a coveted concubine floating to my master's chamber by way of magic carpet. Candles spotted the room like jeweled confetti and gave everyone an unearthly glow.

Our table was stacked with crystal ice buckets overflowing with champagne and bottles of vodka with impossible-to-pronounce Russian names. Theo opened the first bottle of bubbly and poured it into a crystal flute. "Cheers" he said in his British accent, handing a glass to me.

"Oh, I'm fine. Thanks." I said, shaking my head and still feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing.

"Oh, Catherine, relax." Jon-Michelle said, taking the glass out of his hand for herself. "You'll be fine. I promise."

I looked around and realized that the place was packed. It was probably silly of me to think that anyone was watching what I was doing. Besides, I didn't want Jon-Michelle to think she was rooming with a total dork, either...

"Ok," I said. "Maybe just one glass."

I held onto the drink for a while before tasting the bubbly, clear substance. It stung my tongue and left a metallic aftertaste like days-old ginger ale. This was what everyone was raving about? I didn't like it, but, not wanting to appear more out-of-place, I drank it anyway, feeling the cool liquid burn my throat as it made its way down.

Nearby, a man with a sitar and a synthesizer conjured up music that married ethnic chants with techno beats. The bittersweet wail of a woman at a microphone and the constant pound of a far-off drum drove Jon-Michelle onto the dance floor.

"Come on" she said, grabbing my hand.

After a couple of seconds out on the floor, Theo appeared with more drinks. I took one and gulped it down quickly, just to get it over with. His friends joined us and one of the cuter ones, Vincent, handed me another drink. He slipped his arm around my waist.

Vincent had thick blond locks that fell down over his ears and stuck to the nape of his neck. I could see beads of perspiration dotting his cheeks and could smell the soap on his skin, the alcohol on his breath. He pulled me closer as more people crowded the dance floor. The room around us became heavy with sweat and fatigue. I tried to get rid of my drink, but the dance floor was so packed with bodies that I couldn't move. Vincent tipped the glass to my mouth and I swallowed.

As the dance floor got smaller, people pushed from every direction. I felt skin on skin: slippery, warm, and wet. Ahead, in a panel of mirrors, I saw Vincent and me, with my long brown braid whipping around, spiraling through the flashes of light. I watched myself in the middle of the chaos, suddenly part of this harem of the exquisite, the elite. Vincent put both arms around me, pressing me close, and we spun around and around. This is it. This is what it's like to be young and beautiful in the greatest city in the world. I closed my eyes, and let the music move through me.

When I opened my eyes, people with glow sticks were spinning all around us. The room turned with them, faster and faster, crowding us. Bumping us. I began to feel dizzy, hot, suffocated. I needed to stop, to breathe. But my body wouldn't stop; it just kept moving with the music. I jerked around, turning with the room and getting dizzier and sicker with each revolution.

That's when I saw her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl standing on the periphery. She was watching me. She was alone. Abandoned, like a sulking child on a subway platform. She watched me as I passed her by, over and over, with every rotation.

"Who's that?" I yelled to Vincent over the pounding music, pointing in her direction. She was staring at me.

Vincent looked around. "Who? Where?"

He didn't see her."Come on, don't stop," he said, pulling me closer. "Why aren't you dancing?"

"I don't feel good." I pushed him away and turned to leave. But the girl was there, standing next to me. I turned around, but she was there, too. Her glare seared into my brain, a pain shot to my temples. My eyelids flickered; my head throbbed. Fighting off the nausea, I tried to focus on her blurry image. Her hair dangled in strings, covering her eyes. We stood, face to face. She looked unsure, afraid. Who was she? What did she want?

I reached out to touch her, and my hand hit the glass. Startled, I looked up and pounded my fist into the mirror. She stood, there, before me, but also in every mirror, every pane of glass, every doorway, every flash of light, cloned in multiples.

It was me.

I pushed through the crowd. Faces came toward me in peculiar shapes, people yelled, the room spun on its side like a top. In the hallway, on the way to the bathroom, I kept bumping into walls that turned at odd directions, like a maze of uneven corridors in a haunted house. Was this what being drunk felt like?

The small mint green tiles on the floor of the co-ed bathroom reminded me of the old showers in my junior high school that no one used anymore. I found myself down on the floor, looking hard at those tiles. I tapped my finger on a whole row of them. They were ice cold. I almost pressed my hot face against them, but I didn't dare because the girls who came in to fix their hair were watching me.

I pushed the stall door open and walked in on someone. No, strike that. I pushed the door closed because the people who walked in on me were saying, "Are you all right?"

Hoping that they wouldn't see me, I closed my eyes really tight. But the girls kept laughing and I wanted to see what was so funny, but I didn't dare get away from the toilet because I was throwing up. I watched as the crystal vomit flew like a waterfall over my chin and into the white basin. I tried to be quiet, but I couldn't help it. My boots made black streak marks on the floor. I was crying when I felt the sticker stuck to the back of my thigh. It was spongy and foamy. I pulled it off to see its two little green men with exaggerated eyebrows and mischievous grins smiling up at me. Now they were dancing on the green tile, mocking me, these little leprechauns. Where did they come from? A hand reached under the door and grabbed the dancing men off the floor.

"This yours?" I was looking down at a brown pair of sneakers with bright orange laces. With all of my strength, I pushed the door open and saw a blurry, long-limbed figure towering above.

"Those things can really mess you up."

It was a man's voice.

"You all right?"

"What things?" I asked, wiping my chin with my sleeve.

"Lucies." he said.

I squinted, feeling like my eyes were going to fall out of my head from the shooting pain in my temples. "What are they?"

"You know, Lucies ..." he motioned with his hands, waving the two little men through the air. I looked up at him. The green tile from the ceiling began dripping down onto his head. It ran down the side of his face like green Elmer's glue.

This is not happening. This is not happening.

"An LSD patch," he said under his breath, while peering down at me in peppermint camouflage.

Ohmygod.

"Hey, are you all right?"

Ohmygod.

"You OK?"

"Um..." I looked up with apprehension, relieved to see that he was himself again. "Yeah, I am now...I think." He helped pull me up. I staggered, feeling like my legs were coming unhinged at the joints.

"Guess that's not the kind of trip you were looking for." he said.

I shook my head. "Not sure where I got that..."

"Take this," he said, handing me a Dixie cup of water.

I drank three cups and walked over to the mirror. My braid had fallen out and now was just a sweaty, knotty, mangled mess. I combed my fingers through it and wiped the mascara from under my eyes. I always cried when I threw up. When I was little, my mom used to pat my back and stroke my head when I was sick. It was the only thing that would make me stop crying.

I turned to face him, seeing him clearly for the first time. Shaggy, chin-length hair. Big eyes. Rough skin. Five o'clock shadow. Beautiful teeth. "Thanks..."

"Seth," he interjected. Smiling shyly now, looking more like a boy now and less like a man. "I'm friends with Theo. He sent me in to see if you're all right."

 "Oh, umm, where's Jon-Michelle?"

 "She's already wasted out there."

"Well, uhh thanks. You really didn't have to help me out. I'm really fine," I said, trying to sound put together. My eyes brushed the floor; I finally felt a wave of embarrassment.

"Hey, listen, don't worry about it. My friend once got screwed up on one of those things and he was fucked up for days."

I wanted to respond, but my stomach kept churning. I lunged towards the sink. "Sorry," I said, "I'm..."

His fingers, gently touching my hairline, gave me goose bumps. I didn't get sick; I was just horrified. What an introduction.

In the cab, on the way home, we had to pull over a few times so I could throw up again. We had all crammed into a cab: Jon-Michelle, Theo, Vincent, Seth, and me. I remember thinking that, on a normal occasion I would have been mortified that four new people I barely knew, two cute guys included, were watching me puke my brains out. But right then I was so sick that I didn't even care.

***

I awoke parched and shivering on the daybed in the apartment. My tongue felt like sandpaper. Ashtrays and empty beer bottles were scattered on the floor below me. I picked up a water bottle and chugged. My head was still throbbing, but at least I was no longer seeing double. The window in the kitchen was wide open, letting in a cool rush of air. It was pitch black, except for a red light coming from the alarm clock. It said 4:59.

"Jon-Michelle?" I called out, feeling strangely vulnerable. I paused to listen and heard music playing, voices coming from outside.

"Jonnie?" I yelled again, using the nickname she'd insisted I call her. I was suddenly feeling a bit abandoned and also a tinge jealous, like I was missing out on something.

"Yeah, girl, we're up here," she called out. I poked my head out through the kitchen window and looked up. She was standing about twelve feet above me, on the roof.

"Are you feeling better?" Jonnie asked. "Come up, we're hanging out. The view of Manhattan is amazing from here."

A little hesitant, I climbed out onto a rickety fire escape and clung to a rusty ladder that led to the roof above our apartment. The sky above was clear and black, except for a few twinkling lights that lined the Williamsburg Bridge, a few blocks ahead. A gust of wind hit me and spread a rash of chills down my arms and legs. It was Aug. 31st, what would have been the last day of summer vacation. A knot of fear tightened in my chest.

Everyone was lying on a torn-up stretch of Astroturf. The stench of marijuana crept up over the building, stinging my nostrils. It was my first time ever seeing that stuff. I peeked out of the corner of my eye, pretending not to look, and saw piles of little green leaves, all shriveled up, on white rolling paper. There were a few lighters lying on the ground.

"You want some?" Theo asked.

"No thanks," I said, pretending like it was no big deal. Like I had been around that stuff a million times before.

"Man, that really sucks what happened to you tonight," Theo said, taking a drag off his joint.

"I bet someone slapped that patch on you on the dance floor. I've heard of that happening before," Jon-Michelle said.

I looked at Vincent. He didn't seem to be too concerned about my wellbeing.

"There's some crazy shit that goes on out there," Theo added, quickly.

"Yeah, man," Vincent shook his head in agreement, pursing his lips. I looked at him, but he averted his eyes.

Jon-Michelle motioned for me to join her on a lawn chair and whispered in my ear. "Sethie took good care of you."

"Really?" I said, still trying to remember what happened after the cab ride home, but nevertheless feeling slightly flattered by his chivalry.

"He carried you up to bed and tucked you right in. I think he even gave you a goodnight kiss," she said, loud enough for him to hear.

Seth looked up. "Nope, sorry ... I save those for when a girl is actually conscious," he said, his grin exposing a crooked little smile.

My cheeks burned. He was adorable. My knight in shining armor.

I laid my head down on the rough mesh, and my gaze met the Manhattan skyline, beyond the bridge. The lights glowed like a child's Lite-Brite, with yellow, orange, red, and green dots. It was my first moment of clarity.

All those lights, at my command.

 With one finger, I chose which light to turn off and on. I closed my left eye and held up my thumb, covering the Empire State Building, the United Nations, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Then I held up the palm of my hand and cupped the island of Manhattan. It was there, within my reach. I closed my palm and tightened my fist. 

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