CHAPTER ONE

The room was dark. Not dark enough that you couldn't see the figures moving through the shadows, but just enough to make bringing each face into focus difficult.

Providing a dim radiance—and the only source of light for the event—a long, thin strip stuck loosely around the length of the papered walls.

It was an epidemic of teenage fever, with every square inch of the apartment housing an overflow of people, music, and clear liquor bottles.

There was something so mesmerizing about watching the chaos unfold. I couldn't get my blurry eyes to look away. I was surrounded by a hurricane of colors and sounds, each begging for my attention.

Most days, I didn't appreciate my youth. A lot of the time, I was too focused on the usual trials and tribulations of growing up.

But when my eyelids were heavy on my face, the night's end was nowhere in sight, and everyone was gathered together for the same reason—it made me hate the future.

Because I know that chaos will never taste as satisfying as it does at eighteen.

*

There was only one lightbulb screwed into the light fixture above the bathroom sink. I questioned if the trip up the stairs was real or just a figment of my imagination, but since I was now sitting with my legs stretched on the dirty floor, I had no choice but to believe that it happened.

Except I wasn't alone this time; she was sitting beside me.

Her cherry-red hair clouded my peripheral vision, each strand especially vibrant given my current state. There was a blunt propped between her index and middle fingers, the end flickering every time she brought it back to her lips.

Neither of us said a word; truthfully, I wasn't sure that we could. But it didn't seem to matter. The bass of the loud music coming from downstairs carried the conversation.

So it stayed like that—two girls sharing silence and a blunt on a dirty bathroom floor—for what seemed like a lifetime.

After a while, I started to feel like I had fallen down the rabbit hole. The stained tiles taunted me as they grew from their normal size to extremely large over and over again.

My chest made slow, still movements, pushing out and then in with every breath. Following the same rhythm as the tiles in front of me. Logically, it made sense that my body presently existed in the small, cloudy room.

But the way the high settled into my brain, made everything feel too complex for just one existence.

Time hadn't moved downstairs. Everything was the way we left it when we finally returned—the pandemonium was as lively as ever. It was hard to see as I moved through the shadowed tones of black and white; thankfully, I had a sea of short red locks to guide me through the storm.

When we finally stopped, there was a boy with shaggy brown hair standing opposite us. He had a twenty folded in the palm of his hand, and she pulled a small plastic baggie from the pocket of her jeans.

I kept a fair distance from the exchange. There was no substance in the world  that could completely free me from feeling out of place.

Another hour passed, I think. Everything moved differently in a fixed state. The alcohol was starting to go down like a glass of water, and I knew what that meant for me. Except, I didn't want to stop because I was afraid of things going quiet again.

Here, right now, everything is rapid. Drinks being spilled onto the hardwood floors, couples making themselves at home on the furniture, voices getting louder as faces got redder. I had the night and all of its possibilities. But when the mayhem dissolved, all I had was hurt.

So I stayed until I felt numb, so numb that I didn't feel the tears streaming down my face. It was the kind of crying that went unnoticed.

I watched as the room continued to move while the people moved with it. Nothing stopped; life carried on.

Most things in the three-dimensional world follow the same principle: what goes up must come down. And I did.

The silence was so loud. If the midnight air held even the slightest breeze, my boiling skin was unaffected. I knew I was outside, but I couldn't remember leaving the party.

"Just hold on, I'm calling Nathan." A familiar voice echoed from behind me while a pair of hands worked to pull pieces of hair out of my face.

My chest hurt from the heaving, and the grass in front of me was coated in the contents of my stomach. I used the cuff of my sleeve to wipe the corners of my mouth, the taste of stomach acid lingering on my tongue as I remembered all of the decisions that led me to this moment.

I did this to myself; I knew that. What we did was selfish.

The light on the front porch wasn't the usual shade of incandescent yellow; instead, the bulb had been traded out for one that glowed a purple hue onto the wood.

It was the last thing that I saw before the world went spinning—the hard ground, kind enough to cushion my fall.

One last quiet breath left my lungs as the stars in the night sky shined their persistent light on me. I told so many lies that I didn't know what the truth was anymore. But I can't help but hold onto my secrets—even if they are killing me.

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