The Next Best Thing: Part II

Thirty-Four

Rae

I flew off the radar soon after Zoe left. I was getting tired of being holed up in that shit apartment surrounded by bullshit positivity and those two happy souls.

I was over being babysat, over being doted over like a stupid baby and their disrespectful suicide watch. I was old enough to be responsible for my own actions. I just didn't need them.

Nala arrived in town just in time for Halloween, the only holiday she cared to celebrate.

She was a devout Pagan, something her Orthodox Jewish parents didn't completely understand but accepted nevertheless.

Nala had always been an outcast, a misfit in her family, not belonging anywhere except in school. We met in our all girls prep school at the back of the bleachers where I found her listening to death metal on her iPod.

"Mrs. Darcy thinks I'm possessed and I'm probably going to hell. Might as well quicken the process," she had said to me, making a great impact on my life.

I vowed to be her friend, her only true friend who completely understood and accepted her. When she was called to the principal's office for inappropriate dress code, I'd rip up my stockings as well and apply dark lipstick on my lips to get in trouble with her.

I was her alibi when she snuck out of the house to streak in the Hudson and dance with the stars.

I drove her to the hospital to get her stomach pumped after she swallowed whole prescriptions of pain medication and I flushed out her coke when she went on a bender.

I was her friend when no-one liked or gave a rat's ass about her. Now I needed her to be mine when my life was literally falling apart.
She drove us out of the city to an abandoned Connecticut mansion, eerily decorated with the gory figures and explicit symbolisms of the holiday. Knee high grass and overgrown shrubbery surrounded the place, allowing for a haven of many serpents and sneaky reptiles.

The front door opened into hazy clouds of choking smoke, the potent, bitter smell of ganja and fine white powder lining the valuable furniture lost in such a dump.

It was being separated by shiny black American Express cards and snorted through hollow Benjamins stacked on the edge of each table like a deck of playing cards.

"You said you wanted an escape," she whispered into my ear and pecked my lips. "This is the fucking best place to escape. No Guantanamo Bay shit up in here. You're free, baby!"

I had never attended any of the parties she threw in the many abandoned warehouses her real estate overlord mother had access to. They were characterised by the best drugs, unsafe and unsolicited sex, hypnosis and sharing of unsterile needles provided by her dubious acquaintances.

By day, she was a straight A student with poor social skills but by night, Nala adopted a sadistic and criminal persona. But she was still my friend. Wasn't she?

She shot up, her pupils dilating and her eyes rolling back into her skull. "I love you so freaking much, Rae! Thanks for being my bad bitch for once. I know you think I'm embarrassing but I don't have a fuck to give.

Here, I'm the boss, the fucking head honcho and I don't take anyone's shit. Especially from your stuck up friend Zoe," she spat. "I don't get why you hang out with them, Rae. You're my friend. They don't get you like I do. They don't love you like I do."

Was I supposed to be feeling comfortable?

"Zoe's a good person and she's my friend. Can we just not get into this? We're supposed to be having fun," I dismissed her, walking over to one tatty couch stained with familiar white stains and cigarette burns.