*
VICTOR hated loud music almost as much as he hated crowds of drunk people. The party had both, and was made more insufferable by Victor’s own sobriety. No booze. Not this time. He wanted—needed—everything to be sharp, especially if he was going to do this alone. Eli was still, presumably, at the apartment, carving up his skin while he assumed Victor was in his room, sulking or studying or both. What Victor had actually been doing was climbing out his window.
He’d felt fifteen again, a kid sneaking out to a party on a school night while his parents sat in the living room and laughed at something mindless on the TV. Or at least, Victor imagined this was what it would have been like had he needed to sneak out. Had anyone ever been home to catch him at it.
Victor moved through the party largely unnoticed, but not unwelcome. He earned a few second glances, but those were mostly because he rarely made an appearance at these kinds of events. He was an outsider by choice, a good enough mimic to charm his way into social circles when he wanted, but more often than not he preferred to stand apart and watch, and most of the school seemed content to let him.
But here he was, winding his way through bodies and music and sticky floors, the epinephrine pen tucked into the inside pocket of his coat, a small Post-it affixed to it that read Use Me. Now, as he found himself surrounded by lights and noise and bodies, Victor felt as if he’d wandered into another world. Is this what normal seniors did? Drank and danced with bodies interlocking like puzzle pieces to music loud enough to drown out thoughts? Angie had taken him to a few parties freshman year, but those had been different. He couldn’t remember anything about the music or the beer, only her. Victor blinked the memory away. Sweat coated his palms as he took a plastic cup, and dumped the contents into a withering house plant. Holding something helped.
At one point he found himself on the balcony, looking down at the frozen lake that ran behind the frats. The sight made him shiver. He knew for optimum results he should mimic Eli, re-create the successful scenario, but Victor couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that. He had to find his own method.
He pushed off the banister, and retreated back into the house. As he continued on a circuit through the rooms, his eyes flicked around, appraising. He was amazed at how myriad the options for a suicide were, and yet how limited the options for one with any certitude of survival.
But Victor was certain of one thing: he wasn’t leaving here without his turn. He wouldn’t go back to the apartment and watch Eli joyfully saw at his skin, marvel at this strange new immortality he hadn’t even tried that hard to find. Victor wouldn’t stand there and coo and take notes for him.
Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick.
By his third lap around the house, he’d scored what he considered to be enough cocaine to induce cardiac arrest (he wasn’t sure, having never engaged in that kind of activity). He’d had to buy from three separate students, since each only had a few hits on them.
On his fourth lap around the house, while working up the nerve to use the cocaine, he heard it. The front door opened—he couldn’t hear that over the music, but from his place on the stairs, he felt the sudden burst of cold—and then a girl squealed and said, “Eli! You made it!”
Victor swore softly, and retreated up the stairs. He heard his own name as he wound through the bodies. He broke through and reached the second-floor landing, then found an unoccupied bedroom with its own bathroom at the back. Halfway through the room, he stopped. A bookcase lined one wall, and there in the center, his own last name leapt out at him in capital letters.
He pulled the massive self-help book from the wall, and opened the window. The sixth book in a series of nine on emotional action and reaction hit the thin coat of snow below with a satisfying thud. Victor shut the window and continued into the bathroom.
On the sink he set his things in order.
First, his phone. He punched in a text to Eli but didn’t hit Send, and set the device to one side. Second, the adrenaline shot. He’d be up to temperature, so hopefully a single direct injection would suffice. It would be hell on the body, but so would everything else he was about to do. He set the needle beside the phone. Third, the coke. He made a neat pile, and began to separate it into lines with a hotel card he found in his back pocket, a relic from the winter trip his parents had dragged him on. Despite an upbringing that would have driven most kids to drugs, Victor had never been much inclined to do them, but he had a good idea of the steps, thanks to a healthy diet of crime dramas. Once the cocaine was in its lines—seven of them—he pulled a dollar from his wallet and rolled it into a narrow straw. As seen on TV.
He looked in the mirror.
“You want to live,” he told his reflection.
His reflection looked unconvinced.