Was it a dream?

Dirty Hippy's hand finds mine the moment my parents' car pulls out of sight and we join the kinds we pretend not to know outside the food court, lighting up Turkish Golds and cigarillos, popping tiny yellow pills into our mouths and waiting for the caffeine to kick in. 

We enter the mall and her hand leaves mine, instead sliding around my back and resting at my waist where she digs her nails in until the tiny indentations they leave turn spotty and red with blood. She tugs me into Hot Topic and puts me in pleather pants that make my ass disappear; she calls me her dyke and hits me with a poorly-made imitation bullwhip while we wait in line for me to purchase the pants. 

At home that night her hands tug my shirt over my head, leaving me in my bra and the pants she picked out for me as she tugs me onto my waterbed. I bury my face in the place where her neck and shoulder meet and am overwhelmed by Red Jean No. 5 and the faint remaining scent of nicotine and pot from our earlier excursion to the mall. 

My room is insanely hot and I don't know if it's us or the ineffective space heater on my bedroom floor. My hand traces the barely-there muscles of her stomach and as I try to kiss her, she turns away from me, telling me she can't do that because she's not gay. 

I can still taste the margarita on her lips from last weekend as I fall asleep staring at her shoulders.

The spiral.

Dirty Hippy begins dating a boy with greasy black hair and I begin to scream. 

I drag a utility knife across my wrist, my arm, the places where my ribs are closest to kissing the air (I have stopped eating and they look as though they are trying to escape the stretched white skin holding them prisoner) and I am screaming "LOVE ME LIKE YOU LOVE HIM!" My mother sees the crusty, scabbed lines and does not say a word; her eyes are filled with wet denial and I smile at her as I get on the bus to drive to the zoo, the white fishnet on my arms creating peppermint swirls on my wrists. Nothing is wrong, I tell her. Nothing is wrong.

I hold her when we go to sleep in spite of him and I am screaming "I AM SO MUCH BETTER FOR YOU!" The girl with the Egyptian eye tattoo who I have come to love (for being cool) and hate (for replacing me in the Hippy's hierarchy of friends) calls me an emo cunt when I am not around and Dirty Hippy tells me we can't do that anymore.

I take ten, eleven, twelve caffeine pills at night before heading to the mall for the ritualistic drug-addled Friday night escapades and and vomit in sterile whiteness of a downstairs Macy's restroom and I am screaming "I DO NOT WANT THIS!" That night, when I am puking and sobbing and shaking and pulling out my hair in clumps, is the first  night Dirty Hippy will understand what she has done to me, what she has reduced me to. What I have allowed myself to become.

I drink two bottles of Robitussin and I am screaming "I AM TRYING TO FORGET YOU!" Technicolor swirls and fuzzy edges allow me to be happy in spite of myself in twelve hour spans where nothing hurts and I no longer want to die. The next day, I realize I can live without her, without the coma her fickleness has put me in. I throw away my stash of drugs, alcohol, and the utility knife. I begin to shake without the chemicals that have sustained me. I panic for days, stretching into one, two weeks. I hurt. I begin eating again - not much, but anything is a step up - and the dark circles under my eyes begin to fade, ever so slightly.

A year later, I cut off all my hair and take off my braces. I begin listening to angry punk bands with names like "Discharge," and "Crass," as well as bands with electronic bass beats with names like "Combichrist" and "VNV Nation," (Victory! Not Vengeance!).  My jeans get tighter, my belts get pointier, and I have food fights with new people like Egg and Thom York and Myra and a boy we call "Patches" for the patches sewed onto his pants at lunch as we mock the hirsute boy ("Wolf Man,") and the boy we think has leprosy ("Patch Adams"). I am screaming "I HAVE FORGOTTEN YOU. I AM FINE."

Killed over Avignon.

I'm drunk and surrounded by Michael Cera circa Juno clones and barely-dressed girls. My cowboy boots are just slightly too big and I trip over myself and opposing scantily-clad traffic as I walk up the steep, unstable stairs from the apartment basement to the ground floor in search of a seedy bathroom, the floor of which is covered in piss and vomit and - oh Christ, is that blood? is that a fucking tampon?- Lord knows what else. I wait in a line behind the Pope and roast in the Hellish humidity generated by hundreds of bodies rubbing up against each other.

I consider the number of people who are probably unknowingly contracting a disease or infection as yet another Michael Cera clone eases up behind me in the line. He attempts to Make Small Talk, which I can tell from the hesitation seeping out of his eyes like so many embarrassed tears that this is a feat requiring great effort on his part. I gratify him with response until the bathroom door opens and I realize I'm next as the Pope glides past me. 

As I leave the restroom, I nod to Michael Cera and scurry back into the basement to find myself alone in a sea of bunnies and ironic New Jersey kids dressed as guidos. The people I came with are gone.

Outside it is cool and smells of exhaust and vomit. It's better than the heat and sweat of the party house and I take a moment to feel some semblance of cleanliness in the crisp October air. I find a group of kids I don't know and ask if they are headed in the direction of Broad Street; they nod in the affirmative and I join their group, accepting gum from a boy I don't know dressed as Harry Potter. 

And suddenly, they are gone and I am on Broad Street with no one else in sight. The parties have not ended yet and this portion of the street is eerily devoid of life, save for the cars ad busses whizzing past, their lights blinding and dizzying in my drunken stupor. I get my bearings on campus, though I am barely hanging on to them, and stumble in the direction of the end of campus, to the two towers I've come to call home. 

Inside and safe on my floor, I encounter the people who abandoned me and fling questions only to be told it's my own fault. I return to my room and find the tiny, plastic case filled with guitar picks and two tabs of acid wrapped carefully in tin foil - I consider my ability to make this night better or, potentially, worse as I hear screaming outside my door. 

I throw open the door and a boy I have come to hate is standing with a boy I have learned not to trust are screaming lyrics at each other, the latter slumped against the wall across from me. I do not have any grasp of the situation until I realize I've suddenly cleared the three-foot gap between us and am yelling at the top of my voice, shoving him with a palm closer to the wall. Before I know what's happened, one of the boys from the floor is throwing me back in my room and dragging the other two away.

I sit on the floor and cry until five in the morning. The next day, I am a shell and hushed whispers succeed my every move. I become a ghost, remembered passively. I become the Dead Man in Yossarian's tent, gone before I'd ever been given the chance be there.