Out of Order (5 page)

The second one didn’t feel as good as the first. It went away faster, didn’t bring the same elation, the same floatiness that I was craving. I wanted to transcend time and space; Kate’s fingers in my hair felt good, but not
amazing
.

We took another hit, chasing that first good high.

We each did a line instead of a dab the fourth time, drawn with Kate’s bank card and snorted with a rolled-up twenty dollar bill just like in the movies. That was it—we were out of cocaine. She’d only stolen a couple of grams from her brother’s stash.

“My face is numb,” I said, twiddling my thumbs. I had a pain behind my eyes that I couldn’t blink away, like the beginnings of a headache. “Is your face numb?”

“A little,” Kate admitted, rubbing the raw skin just under her nose. Her cheeks were still flushed, her eyes a little wet. She’d done more than me, having started before she came over. She leaned in and rubbed the tip of her nose along my cheek. “Yeah, numb.”

I hummed in response, tilted my head to catch her lips in a kiss. Kate kissed back eagerly, her mouth slick against my own, a little sloppy. Our teeth clacked against each other in a way that might have been painful, but I didn’t feel it. I was floating again, so good.

Kate pulled away, glassy-eyed. “Totally numb,” she said, blinking at me slowly. “I barely even felt that.”

“I felt it,” I said, bumping my nose against hers. She kicked out a leg and knocked over the wastepaper basket beside the toilet.

“Oops,” she giggled.

I kissed her again, wrapped my arms around her. She went with it, stopping to laugh a little and then sucking greedily on my tongue. I felt higher off of her than I had on the first hit of cocaine.

We ended up horizontal on the bathroom floor, my head on her arm. I rubbed my numb nose into the crook of her elbow, feeling blissed out. We’d only kissed, but it felt like so much
more
than that. I’d kissed people before, boys, but it had never felt so good.

“Your arm is so soft,” I said, licking at the blue veins visible through the pale, thin skin of her elbow. “And you taste
so good
.”

“Thank you,” Kate laughed, pushing my bangs off my forehead. “I’m tired.”

“Me too.”

We closed our eyes, but couldn’t find sleep. “I can’t sleep here,” I said. “Let’s go to my bed.”

“You propo—prop—prop’sitioning me?” Kate said, a slur on the edge of her voice. “Because I wasn’t actually going to sleep with you. I was joking before. I didn’t mean it.”

I tried not to feel disappointed. “No,” I said. “Not sex. Just sleep.”

“
Sleep,
” Kate groaned, following me out of the bedroom, a little wobbly on her feet. “That sounds
so good
.”

We lay down in my bed together and pulled the blankets over us. I commandeered her arm, holding it hostage, cuddling with it shamelessly.

“Your arm is so soft,” I said again.

We lay in quiet companionship as the minutes ticked by, trying to sleep. It seemed impossible. My mind kept racing, despite being exhausted.
A side effect of cocaine, probably
, my brain supplied.

“Are you gay?” Kate asked after a while. She sounded startled by this revelation, as though I hadn’t been waxing poetic about Jennifer Lopez’s butt for the past two years.

I wanted to say something like, “Bisexuality is a thing, y’know,” or something snarky and funny that I could play off as a joke if she was suddenly put off by my honesty, but instead I pretended to be asleep and held onto her arm. The high was nearly gone and reality was settling in again. My own anxiety wound tight in my chest like a spring at full tension.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. I just pretended.

“N
INE
ONE
one, what is your emergency?”

I was still kneeling in Kate’s blood. It was hot and sticky, soaking through my stockings, thick and heavy. I made to stand up, put my hand on her arm to give myself leverage—her arm was still warm, still so soft. It was just like I remembered from a thousand little touches, friendly encouragements, and that night on my bathroom floor.

I gagged.

“Four people are dead,” I said. There was a lump in my throat I couldn’t swallow past. I spoke around it, croaking and broken-voiced. “Four people have been murdered.”

“I’m sorry, did you say that four people are dead? What is your location?”

“We’re at Sparky’s. Sparky’s Diner,” I specified, choking a little on my own tongue. It was too heavy in my mouth, too thick; I couldn’t breathe around it.
Kate sucked on my tongue enthusiastically, making a little kitten noise in the back of her throat
—I gagged a little and tried to push myself to my feet again.

“I’m dispatching help to your location.”

“He had a shotgun,” I said. “I hid in the bathroom.” I cleared my throat. The 9-1-1 operator probably couldn’t hear me, and they needed to know what was happening. These conversations were recorded. “I was hiding in the bathroom,” I said a bit louder, finding my voice.

“Are you hurt? Is anyone hurt?”

“They’re
dead
,” I said. “He blew their brains out. He didn’t find me—I was hiding in the bathroom.”

I stood up, finally, and stumbled toward the bathroom door again. My own watery pink footprints—toilet water and blood from
his
shoe prints, smudged together—led the way.

I walked into the first stall, fell to my knees, and puked.

J
ESSA
HELD
my hair as I vomited. It was violent and repetitive, the sound of my retching, but Jessa was unfazed. “Just get it all up.” I let loose a pitiful moan and then threw up another few teaspoons of seafood. “All of it, there you go.”

“It’s so bad,” I sobbed, trying to resist the urge to lay my head on the side of the toilet bowl. I could practically
feel
the cool porcelain against my hot cheek—Abort! Abort!
Germs
!

I threw up again, hard, wrenching my stomach.

“Oh God, it tastes so bad,” I groaned, spluttering and spitting.

“Why did you
eat
it, then?” Jessa asked me imploringly, tightening her grip on my hair. My neck was aching so I went with her pull, unwrapping myself from around the porcelain throne.

“It didn’t taste bad when I ate it! Well, maybe a
little
off, but it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet! You’re supposed to pig out!”

Jessa clicked her tongue at me. “Well, that’s what you get, then. For your gluttony, I mean. This is your punishment.”

“Please don’t preach at me right now. I feel like all my intestines are coming out of my
mouth
,” I whined, spitting again. I grabbed a handful of toilet paper and wiped the vomit off my chin for the third time, tossed it into the bowl, and flushed.

“I wasn’t preaching,” Jessa said, sounding mildly offended. She usually sounded vaguely offended, so we had all learned to ignore it. “I respect the fact that we don’t believe in the same God. All cultures are beautiful.” She paused. “I was just
saying
.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed off from the toilet. “I think I’m done,” I said. “I think it’s all out.”

“Oh thank Jesus,” Jessa said, letting go of my hair and getting to her feet. She offered me a hand up, and I took it. “It’s over?”

“Yeah. It was just a little bad shrimp or something. I’m okay.” I sighed and wiped a shaky hand across my forehead. “Christ, I’m sorry. This probably isn’t how you wanted to spend your Valentine’s Day.”

Jessa shrugged and went to wash her hands. “Not really, but it’s okay. What are friends for, if not to hold your hair while you vomit the entire contents of the North Pacific?”

“The
entire
contents of the North Pacific?” I echoed, laughing a little. “Isn’t that a little extreme? It was a couple of shrimp.”

“It was practically the whole shrimp ring, so no, not an exaggeration. Besides, did you see the size of the chunks you were blowing? You practically swallowed those things
whole
—hey, are you okay?”

My stomach turned over, and I shook my head. “Nope.”

And then I was back on my knees in a flash, throwing up nothing but bile. I felt Jessa’s hands on my hair a moment later, pulling it out of my face and out of the path of my puke.

“Let it all out. Just get it all out,” she said soothingly, starting to rub my back again. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have… brought it up.”

I heaved again while she laughed daintily at her own pun.

I
COULD
hear the tinny, distant voice of the 9-1-1 operator through Ricky’s iPhone, which I had dropped next to the toilet, asking me what was happening. I heaved again, harder, when I tried to say something.

I half expected Jessa’s soft, well-manicured hands to gently grab my hair to keep it out of the line of fire, but no helpful hands came. I threw up the soda I had sipped while we ordered and what was left of my prom dinner; I’d had the chicken. It did not taste as good coming back up as it did going down, and it hadn’t been great in the first place.

The world faded in and out of blackness as I rested my head against the toilet seat. I had neglected to put it up in my rush to empty my stomach.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and whispered, “Jessa?” but the sound came out garbled and wrong.

“Where are you hurt?” asked a deep, masculine voice. I was moved gently from my position draped over the toilet to one sitting against the wall by a handsome paramedic with dark skin and warm brown eyes.

“I’m not,” I said, batting his hands away. “I’m not hurt. It’s not my blood.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“It’s Corey. Corinna Nguyen.”

“What day is it, Corinna?”

“It’s June twenty-sixth. Wait. It’s after midnight. It’s tomorrow now.”

“Why are you all dressed up?”

“It’s prom night. Look, I’m fine, okay? I’m fine.”

The paramedic shined a light in my eyes, ran his gloved hands down my arms and over my stomach. Once he was satisfied that I wasn’t bleeding from a hidden gunshot wound, I was wrapped in a bright yellow blanket and led from the bathroom.

It was like a real scene from
CSI
. Another paramedic, a young woman with red-blonde hair like Ricky, was bent over Kate’s body.

“I already checked for a pulse,” I told her as the male paramedic led me away. “I closed her eyes.” The smeared bloody handprint on her arm and the prints my stocking knees had made in the blood pool showed where I had knelt.

The hand on my back became firmer as the male paramedic pushed me harder. “Come on, let’s get you to the hospital.”

“I told you, I’m okay.” We were out of Sparky’s; a police officer held the door for us. Another was unrolling a yellow line of police tape:

DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT

The male paramedic helped me into the back of the ambulance. “You’re not okay, you’re in shock,” he informed me calmly, climbing in behind me and forcing me to sit down. “Do you feel faint? Cold?”

“Yeah.” I wrapped myself a little tighter in the blanket. My hands felt numb, and my lower lip was shaking. “I guess.”

“The police are going to question you once we get you to the hospital and get you cleared,” the paramedic said. “So steel yourself. It’s going to suck major balls.” I managed to quirk my lips up in half a smile before they fell again.

The female paramedic appeared and got into the ambulance across from me. The doors were closed, the driver signaled, and we were off.

“We’ll call your mom when we get to the hospital,” the female paramedic said. The ambulance rocked a little. They didn’t have the sirens on. I wasn’t enough of an emergency.

“Who’s going to call Kate and Jessa and Ricky’s parents?” I asked, shooting the woman a glare. Hair color aside, she was nothing like Ricky. I would have done anything to wrap my arms around Ricky or Kate or Jessa right about then.

“The police will take care of all that stuff,” the male paramedic said in what was probably supposed to be soothing but instead sounded condescending.

“I know their parents. I should be the one to call. Do you have a phone? I had Ricky’s but I left it in the bathroom.” I held out a hand and looked between the startled paramedics. “I
need
to call them, okay? They know me. They’d want to hear it from someone they—from someone who—my friends are not statistics!”

“Of course not,” the male paramedic cut in quickly. He glanced at his colleague. “I’m sure the police will handle everything with the level of sensitivity this kind of situation requires.”

“They deserve to know
now
. Right now, they think their children are alive, and they’re
not
, okay? I
need
to call them, okay? I
need
to!”

“She’s hyperventilating.”

“Panic attack? Treat for shock.”

“Corinna, look at me. I’m going to put this oxygen mask on your face, okay? Don’t fight me, it’ll help you. Okay? Okay.”

My fingers tightened in my shock blanket, and my eyes rolled back in my head.

“S
HE
WON
’
T
come out of the closet,” Ricky said plaintively, wobbling her lower lip at me. “My poor, poor, lesbian pussy… cat.”

I rolled my eyes and got down on my hands and knees. “First of all, it’s not a closet, it’s a cupboard. Second of all, ha-ha very funny.”

“I thought so.”

“Of course you did.” I peered into the space under the O’Briens’ bathroom sink. All I could see of the cat was a pair of unblinking yellow eyes. She was buried all the way in the back, between stacks of fluffy towels.

“I bet it’s warm under there,” I sighed, rubbing my bare arms. There was gooseflesh under my fingertips; I felt jealous of the cat.