* * *
THAT NIGHT, WE BUILD A huge bonfire, so big that as I stand next to it, watching the flames crawl up toward the sky, I’m actually a little afraid.
I imagine an ember, a spark, catching the leaves overhead, fire leaping from branch to branch, all of Meroe Island instantly aflame.
The image is so clear that I can almost see it, which is when I know that I am really fucked up.
I stay away from drugs for the most part, but after a day where my nerves felt like they had been scraped over barbed wire, oblivion had sounded nice. The thick, sweet smell of hash hangs over all of us, and my limbs are heavy with it as I flop onto the sand next to Brittany.
Or who I think is Brittany.
But it’s Amma, her eyes dark and shining in the firelight.
“You,” I say, studying her, and her eyes seem even shinier all of a sudden, like she might start crying.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “About Nico. I … I told you he reminded me of Sterling, and I was telling him about everything, and it just happened, and—”
“Sterling?” I giggle. “Your dead boyfriend was named Sterling?”
I don’t know why that’s suddenly so funny to me, but it is, Amma and Sterling, like something out of a WASP fever dream, and I fall back on the sand, helpless with laughter.
“You clearly have some kind of rich boy fetish,” I tease her, once I catch my breath. She gives a little sheepish laugh and lies down next to me.
“This is weird,” she says, and then raises her voice, shouting, “This is weird!”
That makes me laugh even more, and I look up at the sky, too, the stars tilting and swirling around us. “Everything here is weird!” I yell back, and then I feel like I’m laughing too hard, like at any moment, it will give way to tears.
I don’t want to cry, so I stand up, pulling Amma to her feet, too, our hands sweaty as we clasp each other, turning in a slow circle.
Can’t I forgive her? Haven’t I done the same thing to Eliza? And how can it matter when we’re here in this place where nothing is real?
Across the fire, Nico sits alone, and Jake is sitting there with Eliza, and it’s just like our first night all over again—except I had been with Nico, and Jake was just the cute guy with the nice girlfriend, and how did it all get so fucked up so fast?
Amma pulls away from me, giggling, collapsing onto the sand, and suddenly Eliza is there, too—how did she move so fast? Wasn’t she just sitting with Jake? But no, now Brittany is standing in the shadows, while Nico takes another hit from the joint Jake is holding.
Time is both slowing down and speeding up, and I’m happy and sad all at once. I take the joint Eliza offers, sucking more of that thick, sweet smoke into my lungs, the hash and the pot blending to make everything hazy.
I stumble back from the fire, my eyelids heavy as languor slips through me. Everything is heavy now, and I lie back down, the sand cool against my hot skin.
I smoked too much, I think distantly, feeling tired and strange all of a sudden, my arm too heavy to lift, my heels digging holes into the sand.
The sky is still spinning.
I look over to my right, and even that feels like too much effort, like my head has been replaced with a heavy stone, lolling on my neck.
Nico is there at the edge of the jungle, his body limned in firelight. I’m not mad at him anymore, and I want to tell him that, but I can’t open my mouth, can’t do anything but lie there as Nico splits into two people, two shadows.
Two Nicos.
That will make things easier. Amma can have one, and I can have the other.
The thought makes me laugh, or it would if I weren’t suddenly feeling so sleepy.
The two Nicos hover on the edge of my vision, but I see now that one of them is smaller, skinnier.
Not two Nicos. Nico and Brittany.
I blink. No, not Brittany. It must be Amma because they’re kissing now, the shadows blending into one.
In the firelight, Amma’s hair looks darker, and I see Nico’s hands come up, like he might push her away.
But they only flutter there for a moment, and then he’s holding her, and they’re still kissing, and I shut my eyes, not wanting to see.
When I open them again, both Nico and Amma are gone.
BEFORE
Amma peels the label off a bottle of beer in a bar in Canberra, and wonders how she let shit go this far.
Chloe and Brittany are sitting at another table, a booth near the back, with a bunch of dudes in striped shirts and fraying khakis, and Amma knows it’s going to be another night of watching the two of them flirt and preen and laugh, and in the morning, there will be rolls of cash in their bags that they’ll insist they got from an ATM, or a watch that must’ve fallen in there or some other stupid shit like that, and they’ll give each other those knowing looks because aren’t they clever, aren’t they smart, and isn’t Amma just so trusting and naive?