20 Million Tiny Particles

9. The Second Diamond Party

I said yes without hesitation when Sheridan invited me to the next party. I was lounging in the fake living room at the back of the shop, sipping on my second diamond drink of the day, the last of my sample packet -- Onyx Acai. The name didn't make any sense, and frankly it didn't taste that good, but I'd started getting used to the mid-morning buzz it gave me after my coffee wore off.

Miss Lavonne appreciated it too. I'd just finished organizing a bunch of old invoices that we'd been putting off. She told me I was looking chipper. I told her, "I've been feeling good lately," which was a half lie, maybe three-quarters.

I was scrolling Instagram when I saw Sheridan's name appear at the top of the phone screen. Not a text, a Facebook invite. (We'd since become online friends.) "POWER HOUR DIAMOND PARTY" read the event invitation headline in all caps. Diamond emojis, flex emojis -- the works. Whether it appeared to the reader as annoying or inviting, these girls sure knew how to draw the eye.

"Hey girls!" the body of the event description read. "Join us for an extravagant evening of fitness, fun, and free-spirited fellowship with your favorite gems." A winky face. I RSVP'd "yes."

The event was Friday night. I'd told Mariah I would do something with her this weekend -- the usual routine of driving out of city limits to the nearest Target, roaming around for half an hour, getting dinner (usually Chinese) and riding around listening to music in her car (nicer than mine). We hadn't set a date, so I figured she wouldn't mind pushing to Saturday.

I hadn't told Mariah I was still hanging around with Sheridan. It's not like I wasn't allowed to have other friends or interests. She was about to up and leave for her summer program anyway, and then for good for college in the fall. It was best we started seeing other people.

A few months back, in the Before, Mariah had been pressuring me to join her at school in the fall. I hesitated, even then, unable to make a decision. I'd put out applications everywhere, at least to appease her, my guidance counselor, my parents, my sister, anyone who asked. It was the question of the century, where I would spend the next four years, what I would do with my life now that I had some sort of a choice. But I didn't really know then, and I certainly didn't know now.

The truth was that Before, I liked my life -- I knew my life. Was that so bad? To be content in my little town, sitting in the fake living room at the back of the store, helping Miss Lavonne arrange old dolls and dusty furniture? Couldn't that be a job, a goal, a life?

And there was the other concern, of what might happen to her if I left her alone in the dust of Sweet Nothings, just her and dad and the piles of things and liquor bottles in the bottom of the freezer. Who would make things okay if not me?

But then she wasn't there. And the life I had planned to sink myself deeper into wasn't at all what it had been.

After it happened, people stopped asking about the college thing. But I knew I had to make a decision.

I had been accepted several places but delayed acceptance. For at least a handful of schools, the final deadline was the end of July. Believe it or not, there are plenty of indecisive kids out there like me. So I had another month or so to put it off.

The goal was to forget. Let the deadline date slip up on me and roll off like a bead of sweat. And Dad might wake up one day in October and say, "So I guess you're staying, ain't you, Jule?" And I'd say yeah and we'd keep on going and I wouldn't have to think about what I'd do next because for the next forty years, this would be it.

It's not that I wasn't ambitious -- or at least, maybe I used to be. I didn't really know anymore. There was something else, too, the thing that kept me up at night even when I wasn't yet haunted by Mom's old voicemails or Bryce the Great's social media or Sheridan, certainly.