Ecstasy

Zara

September fades into October.

I see Alex sometimes around campus, laughing and joking with his friends. I see him at lunch when I meet Kylie. He looks my way sometimes, but he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t wave.

We haven’t spoken since he left the beach house.

Dwight drove me home. Asked me about Alex. I didn’t tell him anything.

I hear about Eli, but I guess our schedules don’t line up because thankfully, I don’t see him. I hear he’s done really well at all of his matches. It’s all I hear of him.

Praise.

He doesn’t try to contact me.

I guess the game the three of us played really is over.

No one won after all.

Sometimes, I’ll rub my thumb over my hip, and I’ll remember it.

I remember his words from that time he came to my apartment, “Those scars are beautiful, baby girl. “

I guess I really was just a distraction for him. A game for him to play.

Now, Jax and Kylie and my professors are the extent of my social interactions, and I avoid the latter as much as possible. I go to class, slink out, do my work in an Adderall-induced haze, glug down cough syrup and go to sleep.

I’m responsible though. Wednesdays I don’t take anything. Wednesdays are to reset.

Wednesdays are fucking trash.

I also try to get to the little park that edges campus every day. The weather is turning cool, and it’s nice being outside for it.

A few of my old friends from ECU text me sometimes, asking me to come down for parties. I still don’t have a car. Or a job. I still don’t want to get one.

I’m doing a paper on Epictetus, a slave-turned-philosopher who said, “You ca

I don’t know shit.

I’m not learning.

Seems like a good Stoic philosophy, always being open to wisdom because you know nothing. Turns out, though, it’s not helpful in my everyday life. I don’t think I’ll ever learn.

Two Fridays before Halloween, I shoulder my bag after leaving a seminar on ancient Greek philosophy, hands jammed in the pockets of my black and white zebra-striped hoodie. A gift from my mother that I actually really love.

We’re talking again, and she seems happy.

That’s good, I guess. But I kind of just don’t care about much of anything. The high I felt after that night with Eli and Alex before it all went to shit, it’s long gone. And not even the drugs can get it back. But I keep doing them anyway, hopeful they’ll spark something in me.

I’ve got my hood over my head as a light mist descends upon campus, and I’m not really paying any attention to where I’m going, just staring at my black wedged boots, when I almost walk right into a fucking light pole.

I lift my head up, startled and glancing around to make sure no one saw me. The campus is dead. It’s four in the afternoon, which means most people are probably on their way to their parties or games—there’s a home game tonight, based on all the Caven blue I saw around campus—and no one gives a shit about a girl almost walking into a pole anyway. I wonder if Alex is happy to be playing again.

I push him from my mind as I stare at the light pole, really seeing it for the first time.

There’s a sheet of paper taped to it and I stare at it for far longer than I should.

It’s Riha

The photograph is black and white, but I know that long, shiny hair of hers is brown. I think her eyes were blue or maybe they were green, or maybe I really don’t know at all. She’s smiling, dressed in her blue and orange cheerleading uniform, kneeling on one knee with her pom poms in her hand.

There’s some loopy type that just says, “Live life to the fullest!”

I want to rip the paper down, but that seems mean-spirited. I guess it is. I guess I am, but staring at her, alive, makes me think of her, dead, and that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Makes me think of Alex’s words, too. “If you touch her, I swear to God, Riha

Why didn’t I tell the cops that? I don’t know. I’m sure it doesn’t matter. I’m sure he wouldn’t hurt anyone.

He stopped Eli. That night, and the one at the beach. He stopped him.

And as far as I know, he and Eli still live together. They were able to push me aside and become bros again. Yeah.

Alex Christian Cardi is not the murdering type.

But sometimes I still get sent that video of him yanking down my bikini top, the gloating smile on his face, the way he bent his head down to my neck. My wide-eyed stare, like I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

Mainly because I didn’t.

I remember his words to me, too, before he pushed me in that pool, when I told him I was too drunk to swim. “Yeah, here’s the thing, princess. You should’ve thought about that before you put Jamal’s dick in your pretty little mouth.”

Eli did way worse, but I don’t think of him.

He was a distraction too.

I scuff my shoe against the brick walkway, still staring at that piece of paper. A girl died in a pool and I found her, and I feel nothing.

Maybe I think she got lucky, really.

Death is the easy way out.

If that Narcan hadn’t been administered because a sober girl at the party I went to in the spring was paying attention, I would’ve gotten to taste it too. To drift off into a beautiful oblivion.

It would’ve been all over then. I’d have never met Alex or Eli. Never fucked up their worlds. Hell, maybe Riha

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I tear my eyes away from the picture.

I pull my phone out, glance at my text. There’s an earlier message from Mom. I’m meeting her for di

Him: Wa