Nobody in Particular(84)

I remember the moon that night. It hung low in the sky, a rich yellow so warm it was golden. A path light moon, Mum used to call it. She was superstitious about path light moons, always insisting they brought terrible things with them. I happen to think Mum is completely right to be superstitious about path light moons now, though that night I was only passingly aware.

“I know you’re upset with me, Rose,” he said.

“I’m not—”

“You are. We’ve been friends for long enough.”

Had we? We were childhood friends, certainly, but we hadn’t felt like friends recently. For at least the past year, Oscar had been far more Molly’s friend than mine. They spoke every day—often on the phone. They sat together at school games—and though I was usually with them, it was always on the outskirts. A couple of times, they’d even gone to see a movie or out on a coffee date without me.

“Why would you think I’m upset?” I asked him.

“You’ve been upset with me for months,” he declared. “I think you’re jealous I’m closer with Molly than with you.”

Not quite. Rather, I was unhappy with how much her friendship with Oscar seemed to be changing Molly, in a way that felt a lot like being left behind. Molly was growing less interested in having fun and breaking rules, and more preoccupied with filming herself and discussing online influencers I’d never heard of. My pride wouldn’t allow me to admit that, so, instead, I shrugged.

“I’m coming tonight,” he told me. “You and I are going to spend some time together, and we’re going to work through this weird tension. I’m not gonna let you go all ice queen on me, okay?”

“He didn’t want to come out that night,” I say out loud to Molly. “He did it because he thought he needed to appease me.”

He felt that way, because I had been diligently building a wall between him and me for months. I wasn’t giving him the silent treatment. It was more that there stopped being anything in me to give to him, other than resentment, or jealousy, or hurt. I didn’t want him near, chipping away at my friendship with Molly, or telling her that my lifestyle—our friends’ lifestyle—was toxic. For the life of me, though, I didn’t know how to tell him that without simmering over and bursting out with rage and pain. Hence, the wall.

“I know, Rose,” Molly says softly. “He told me that.”

And I suppose she understands, better than anyone, how my coldness cost our friend his life. Because if I had simply found a way to manage my feelings, there wouldn’t have been tension to begin with. If I’d explained to the two of them that I felt abandoned, perhaps they would’ve found a way to draw me back in. If I had even assured Oscar in that moment that he didn’t need to attend a party he had no interest in to win my affection, he might have stayed home with Molly.

But I didn’t want him and Molly to stay home and talk about how glad they were they could enjoy themselves without drugs and alcohol, unlike me. I dearly wanted Molly to come out with us that night, and if Oscar came, Molly would come. And so—

“We all split off when we got to the party,” Molly says. “I think you, Eleanor, and Alfie went off first. I was with the others in the backyard for an hour or two, and Oscar was drinking like he wanted a hangover. Then at some point he went to the bathroom and he didn’t come back.”

My memories become blurrier around this point. I think, by then, it was just Eleanor and me. We’d taken something—I still don’t know what, exactly, because it never mattered to me what I experienced back then, as long as it wasn’t reality. Euphoria, hallucinations, relaxation, oblivion—it was all equally appealing.

I can see Oscar making his way through the crowd, and his eyes lighting up when he spied Eleanor and me on the couch. He sat between us and showed us several pills “some guy” had given to him. We pressed further until we established who he meant—Etienne.

“We’ve bought from him more than once,” I told him. “His stuff is trustworthy.”

He took a pill in front of us, and I remember hoping he would enjoy it, and want to come out with us more often. And that Molly would follow, and we might all become equally close, like Eleanor, Molly, and me were. Perhaps, I thought, nobody would be left behind after all.

“I think he found Eleanor and me after that,” I tell Molly now. “He had some pills with him. I told him I’d taken pills from Etienne before.”

Molly looks at me, unblinking. “Did you lie?”

“No.”

She shrugs, resigned and slow. A “what can you do?” sort of shrug. As though it were all unavoidable. As though I didn’t have opportunity after opportunity to stop things, and save him. As though I didn’t waste each one.

The memories are harder to grasp after that. The lights became blurry, dancing across my vision in a melting, warping effect. The people around me seemed to move in stop-motion. By my side. Then over there, ahead of me. Then gone altogether. I moved, too—sometimes of my own accord, sometimes when someone dragged me by the arm. Eleanor. Alfie. Harriet. I drank things as they were handed to me, and threw my arms around anyone close enough to reach, and I floated by the ceiling and I sank below the ground.

Molly fiddles with the cuff of her sock. “I noticed he didn’t come back, but I figured he was talking to you, or Alfie, or somebody. But eventually I got worried and I went to look for him.”