A thumping bassline echoed through the stairwell of my walk-up. I’d felt it from the moment I opened the gate to our complex but had assumed that Tom had decided to throw yet another unsanctioned rager and paid it no mind. But when I reached the second landing, Tom’s place was conspicuously quiet. I continued up the stairs, confirming what I had already figured to be true—the music was coming from my apartment.
Chill, I told myself as I dug through my pockets for my keys. Nia probably decided to come by and forgot to tell you. You locked the door when you left. There’s definitely not a serial killer crouched behind your couch right now, and he’s definitely not using the music to cover up your screams—
My door swung open, revealing, to my astonishment, Michelle.
“She’s here!” she shouted, dragging me by my arm into my own home.
I stared at the state of my living room in shock. My coffee table was crowded with booze and bags of chips; the TV was on and blasting Fifth Harmony’s “Work from Home” at top volume. And even more shocking—my sister was sitting on the arm of my couch, dressed to kill in a shimmering mini dress and slurping a drink through a straw. Just as I was getting my bearings, Nia popped out of the kitchen and shoved a cup into my hands.
“What is going on?” I sputtered. I noticed then that Michelle was dolled up as well, her eyes smoky with eyeshadow and hair curled into waves. Nia too, in a mustard yellow bodycon that looked suspiciously like my freakum dress in a different color.
“It’s a Friday, and you have tomorrow off,” Nia declared. She and Michelle shared conspiratorial grins. “We know because Michelle checked your schedule.”
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” Michelle piped in. “And lately, Angie? You’ve been boring as fuck.”
I dropped my backpack at my feet, shaking my head in disbelief. An irrational part of me felt irritated—But I have to get through thirty questions today to get to a thousand questions by the end of the week!—but I shoved that feeling down deep and decided to be grateful instead.
“So I’m being ambushed,” I said. I took a hesitant sip of my drink and immediately made a face. “Jesus, Nia, what is this, gasoline?”
“Never mind that,” Nia said. She raised her glass high. “Bottoms up!”
I forced myself to chug my drink at the same time as Nia did, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand in disgust.
“Tabs,” I said, directing my attention to my sister, who was swinging her legs idly and looking up at me with cartoonishly innocent eyes. “I thought you were the responsible one now! You were in on this?”
Tabatha shrugged, twirling her straw around in her Solo cup.
“It’s not a big deal.” She took a sip. “We’re just going out.”
I laughed helplessly, offering no resistance as Nia and Michelle pushed me into my room, threw my second-sexiest dress onto my bed, and stood watch by the door as I changed into it and applied my makeup. They snapped their fingers to hurry me along, singing off-key to Lady Gaga and dancing furiously all the while. Before I could finish getting ready, they had already called a rideshare, barely waiting for me to swipe my gloss over my lips to loop their arms through my elbows and yank me down the stairs.
The line into Untitled, my kidnappers’ chosen dance bar, was halfway down the block by the time we arrived, but the bouncer took one look at Tabatha and waved us inside. After weeks of solitude, the body-shaking noise, flaring strobe lights, and stale, hazy gusts of artificial fog were overwhelming, like all my senses were being bum-rushed. On either side of me, Michelle and Nia were hype, bouncing up on their heels as Desiigner’s “Panda” blasted through the speakers. We beelined for the sparse dance floor, trying not to trip in our heels, giggling at no one in particular.
When was the last time I’d gone out with the girls like this, not as part of a medical school mixer, or after a medical school exam, or following a medical school formal, but just for the fun of it? Years, I realized. I felt like a newborn fawn, my dancing knock-kneed and clumsy, as I tried to will my body back into its old motions. The strobe lights flashed across our faces, catching them in brightly colored snapshots. At some point, Michelle ran to the bar and came back with four shot glasses tucked between her fingers, and we drank and were merry.
An hour or so into our revelry, the first few notes of Juvenile’s “Back Dat Ass Up” blasted through the speakers. Nia and I whipped toward each other in recognition.