AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m panicking. My voice is high-pitched. I start to sweat a little, even though I’m shivering.
“Don’t be such a baby,” she says. “You can just sit with me. For a little while.Please.”
I shake my head.
“Fine.” Her voice has changed. It’s harder. “Be that way. I thought you were my friend. I thought we made up. I thought you, of all people, would at least hang out with me.”
“Charlotte, I don’t want to get in trouble.”
She waves a hand. “Oh, please. You’re the baby of the group. You had some slips, but they aren’t going to kick you out or anything. They didn’t even kick you out after you attacked me! You didnothingcompared to what people have done here to get kicked out. You have two days. Trust me. I’m lonely. I just want someone to talk to. I’m getting out tomorrow. I’ve put up with a lot of bullshit here and I deserve this.”
She walks away from me and sits on the ground, puts the bottle in front of her.
“I don’t care. Just go. It’s not even my thing, you know. Drinking. So it’s not a big deal. I haven’t done any of the stuff I wasn’t supposed to while I was here, so what rule am I really breaking anyway?”
She shoves her back against the wall of the pen, kicks a boot against the ground.
“I just want someone to talk to. You don’t have to do it. I won’t make you. What, you can’t even, like, be around it?”
I’m looking at the bottle. It’s not vodka. It’s something else, something brown. She unscrews the cap and takes a long drink. She coughs a little.
Then she closes her eyes and leans against the wall again.
I can see what’s happening inside her from the outside. The way her shoulders loosen inside her parka. The muscles of her round face getting softer. I can feel the warmth spreadinginside her as whatever it is makes its way around. Probably a little sizzle in her mouth.
My face gets hot. I…think I can taste that sizzle, too.
“No one understands what it’s like, you know? I mean, people who aren’tus,” she says quietly.
I’m being pulled in a thousand different directions. Seg. Two days left here. Made it through Fire, the last thing. The very last thing. Didn’t I do everything they wanted? I did make it. I did last. Doesn’t that prove that nothing is really wrong with me, if I could make it through? And if I did make it through all these days, well, I can do it out there, too. I’ll just have to be careful.
But right now, right here, it’s righthere.
My brain says:Stop thinking, Bella.
And that is the only thing I hear, because my heart is eerily silent.
I walk to Charlotte in a kind of vibrating fog, each part of me alert and focused. I’m me, but not me. I am just a thing who wants one thing.
I understand what Fran was talking about in group now, when she had all those months and one day she went down an alley like in a dream and ended it all.
—
I cough. Charlotte laughs. My mouth feels singed; a thousand sparks go off in my throat and everything lands inside me with a fiery explosion of pleasure and heat.
—
“What did I do,” I say. “What have I done.”
Charlotte laughs. “It’ll go away after a few more. That’sthe nice thing. It makes you feel bad at first, but then it takes it away. And isn’t that the best thing, when all the bad goes away?”
—
Yes.
—
The goats eye us curiously. Charlotte pulls out her phone. Giggles over videos. Texts her friends. Shows me memes.
