“He’s not even that bad,” Kieran rolls his eyes and starts the car, backing out.
“He looked up Tessa’s skirt with a mirrored pen yesterday, I totally saw it.” Red-dress girl nudges green-dress girl, who must be Tessa, because she meekly withdraws into the seat. Red-dress flashes a smile at me. “Hi, I’m Livy.”
“Isis,” I say, and look at Tessa. “Did you report him?”
Tessa shakes her head, not meeting my eyes. Livy scoffs.
“You know campus won’t do shit about it. They take reports and then file them away in a huge cabinet that no one ever touches. I’ve seen it. You might as well go scream at a brick wall.”
Tessa finally looks up, voice meek. “Even if I do, they never believe girls. They’ll ask me what I was wearing. It won’t be his fault. It’ll be mine.”
I ball my fists. Kieran sighs in a weary, resigned way.
“Das not fair,” Ulfric, with his distinctly Swedish(?) accent, frowns. “In Denmark, my old university fire all creep.”
He punctuates the word ‘fire’ with a savage karate chop to the air.
“Yeah, well, welcome to America,” Livy shrugs. “Land of the free to harass girls and home of the brave on the outside, cowardly on the inside.”
“Professor Summers, huh,” I whisper. Kieran flashes me a warning look.
“Don’t you dare.”
“What?” I play innocent.
“I know it was you who put the spaghetti in Sarah’s purse last week,” he adds.
“You did that?” Livy leans forward and laughs. “Holy shit, Tess, she’s the one who messed up Sarah’s purse!”
I gasp. “How dare you accuse me! Slander, slander I say!”
“You smelled like sauce for four days after that,” Kieran offers irrefutable evidence. I smile.
“When you put it that way, you make me sound so bold. Possibly even…saucy.”
There’s an awkward silence in the car. Ulfric groans.
“You like pranking people who you think deserve it,” Kieran says. “And you’re thinking of pranking Summers.”
“What kind of outlaw do you peg me for, sir? Look at me! There’s no way I could ever think up something brilliant like rolling dung bombs under office doors or coating toupees with Crisco or putting spiders in desk drawers.”
There’s another silence.
“Or eyedrops. Replaced with pepper spray.”
Livy makes a thoughtful, approving noise. Kieran sighs and pulls into the parking lot of a flashy club with a neon sign that reads The Back Door, and we all pile out. Livy grabs Tessa’s arm and skips ahead. Ulfric looks at me like I’m a hungry tiger.
“You are very scary woman,” he says.
“Coming from you, Leif Candecapitateyouwithmyforearmson, that means a lot,” I pat his arm.
He looks appropriately offended. “I have never decapitate any people!”
“You should try it. It’s very relaxing.”
“When you’re done planning rampant murder,” Kieran drawls. “Let’s get some drinks.”
“How could we forget our Viking priorities?” I slap Ulfric on the back. “Booze first, blood second, boobs third.”
“Boobs first, booze second, blood never,” Ulfric corrects.
“Ahhh, don’t be such a stickler, Ulfie. The gods demand revelry! Onward to Valhalla!”
Like all people who’ve had the extreme luck to meet me in this lifetime he looks bewildered, but he follows me anyway into the booming club. We flash the bouncer our IDs, and he looks at Tessa’s a little longer than he needs to, and then he squints at one of my (many) fake IDs.
“Vanessa Gergich?” He asks. “And you’re thirty-three?”
I start to sweat. This is the one downside of twelve fake IDs.
“I’m very healthy?” I offer. “I eat my vegetables. I moisturize. I moisturize constantly.”
“She’s with me,” Kieran leans in. The bouncer glances between us, then sighs.
“Alright, Kir, but if she f*cks up I’m telling the cops it was you.”
Kieran flashes him a smile, and pulls me past the bouncer and towards the bar.
“One rum and coke for the lady,” He yells over the music, then turns to me. “That’s what you like, right? I’ve seen you drink it a bunch.”
“Yessir,” I nod. “But you don’t have to buy me anything, I’m a strong, independent –”
He shoves the chilled glass in my hand and slides a five across the counter to the bartender. I swirl it a bit, checking for dense foam that would indicate a dissolved pill. I mean, I trust the bartender, and Kieran. Sort of. But you can never be too careful. I sip slowly, and we stand like that, watching the writhing masses in short skirts and button-down t-shirts grind on each other. Tessa is dancing with Ulfric, still a little shy but smiling more now. Livy is grinding on some Italian-looking guy four years too old for her. The smell of sweat and cologne practically chokes the air. Strobe lights pierce our eyes and poke holes in our patience for Top 40 music.
“Is this just…” I pause and listen to the speakers. “Is this just someone saying ‘ass’ on repeat?”
Kieran stops, looks up, and starts laughing. “Holy shit, you’re right. What’s happened to music?”
“Money,” I say. “Money happened. But personally, I blame spandex and autotune and Yoko Ono.”
He laughs. Livy detaches her ass from Italian-guy’s crotch long enough to walk over to us, breathless and smiling.
“Hey, you guys. Come over here.”
We follow, curious, as she leads us to the bathroom hallway, covered in graffiti and bits of toilet paper. Livy pulls something out from her bra. She presses one into Kieran’s hand, then mine. It’s a small white pill shaped like a playboy bunny.
Kieran quirks an eyebrow. “Where’d you get these?”
“Heather, duh.” Livy huffs. “She was practically handing them out like candy at the house.”
“Is this what I think it is?” I ask.
“Molly?” Livy asks.
“Illegal?” I stress.
“Chill,” Livy rolls her eyes. “It’s just one tab. It’s not gonna kill you. And Heather always buys from a reliable guy, so nothing weird’s in it.”
Kieran pushes it back at her. “I-I can’t. I’m DD tonight.”
“It’s in and out of your system really fast,” She insists. “Like, way less time than booze.”
“Seeing giant red elephant monsters isn’t my idea of a good time.” I glare at it, but Livy smiles and pats me on the shoulder.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s not a hallucinogen. It’s really safe, I promise. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
I stare at the white pill. Nameless’ ugly words rear their head in my head.
‘Someone like that would never want someone like you.’
‘…he put you back in your place.’
“And maybe he just doesn’t want to f*ck a ruined girl.’
‘No one else is going to want you.’
‘No one else is going to want you.’
I put the pill on my tongue and chug the last sip of my coke, drowning the words in their tracks. Kieran swallows his, too. I head to the dancefloor and wait to die. Or have a good time. Whichever comes first. Kieran shadows behind me, dancing with me, and even if he’s a little stiff in the legs and too white-guyish in the sense all he does is rock a little on his feet, I still catch myself smiling. Life’s been shitty, but dancing has always been good to me, for me. I can just drift, and think about nothing and everything with the music keeping the darkness at bay.