I am supporting the ghost of Jackie’s body and doing math. How many drinks has she had? Three? Four? We are curved together over the lip of the trash can as she empties her stomach. Her bile smells sweet and acrid, the desiccated remnants of a mango-pineapple mixer. A cup of ice water sits, sweating and futile, on the floor by her feet. Her skin is shiny and leached of color, amplified by the artificial lights in the windowless bar bathroom.
Earlier there was a man, tall and insistent. Men are always like this around Jackie— long-stemmed preening flowers eagerly bending to hog her light. He had brought her an offering, a delicate, thin plastic shell full of ice and liquor. I had held it for her as she twirled around the bar’s dance floor and then placed it ceremoniously back in her palms, thinking nothing of it. Laughing, even.
Now, I am calculating my complicity in her probable drugging. We’ve been in the bathroom for over an hour and she oscillates between leaning back against the cool dingy tile and clinging to the rim of the trash can, the black plastic liner slick with her sweat. Jackie is insistent that she doesn’t want to go to the hospital and I am reluctant to rip another shred of autonomy from her. I have become guardian of the damp feather that is her body. All of our energy, our concentration, is going into keeping her awake.
When we finally leave it is a long, slow climb from the angry pit of the basement bar. Jackie is doing most of the work, each step a deliberate, desperate push. I am soothing her as she whines, though I couldn’t tell you what either of us said. As we ascend, I look for the man that did this to her. I am scared to find him, scared not to find him.
Why don’t they write more survival stories like these? It’s all men and bears and wilderness. Never two girls trying to survive one night at a bar, clawing onto consciousness. Death feels so much closer here than it does in the woods.
As I drive back to my house, Jackie tells me, I just need you to go slower on the straight parts and faster on the turns. She cannot even open her eyes, but she is telling me how to drive. This is the joke we will tell when we try to soften this night. We will excise our terror, play up the absurdity of this moment. We will laugh as though it is funny, as though we were having a really good time. But for now, I am parking and prying my hands off the steering wheel and Jackie is vomiting into the gravel that is my driveway.
Inside, glittering clothes are stripped from our bodies and left in sweating piles. I sprawl on the living room floor next to her makeshift bed, nursing her. I feed her bits of popcorn piece-by-piece and watch her throat carefully for each swallow. I am both desperate to sleep and desperate not to.
I think often about how the word roofie does not portray its violence, how quickly control can be ripped from your body without your consent. She has been poisoned, I think. Except poisoning belongs in fairy tales and there are no heroes here, just two girls suddenly aware of how frail our bodies truly are.
The next morning, the view outside my house is filled with raucous twenty-somethings dressed in the trappings of nationalism, off to celebrate their freedom with fireworks and hotdogs. In my apartment, Jackie is Googling the side effects of GHB and Rohypnol. The circulating air is clicking on and off, muting and unmuting the sound of her crying. I am cleaning to keep myself from saying I’m sorry, it’s not your fault, I’m sorry, it’s not your fault, over and over and over again.
The day oozes on. Jackie’s body is as much hers now as it ever was and I am struck all at once by her aliveness. She is sprawled on an air mattress, wearing nothing but a bright yellow t-shirt, a pair of red Calvin Klein underwear, and oversized orange sunglasses. Slats of sunlight stream in through the windows and illuminate her. I tell her I’m snapping a photo and then one becomes twenty becomes one hundred. With each photo, we turn the scene of the crime into our own art display.
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Rachel Nevada Wood is a queer writer, librarian, and Midwesterner with a deep and abiding love for the word ‘y’all.’ She writes about the intersections of asexuality, intimacy, and desire. Her previous work has appeared in Cleaver and 100 Word Story. You can follow her work on Instagram @rachelnevadawood
Artwork by Dinty W. Moore