Pretty Girls Don't Eat Bread

5. It's Just Coke

6.11

After returning back, we face another difficult decision of who's going to sleep where. I get to choose one of the three mattresses on the floor. We lie down on its vertical side so there's room for everyone. I take up the spot on Jade's left and when I see that Hayden is still standing in the middle of the room I grab Rich's knee asking him to lie down on the other side of me. Being the gentleman that he is, he obliges, but I can't avoid his scornful laugh. If I had to describe my struggle to sleep, I would compare it to trying to have sex with a flaccid penis. We have the means for it, they're just completely incompetent to do the job. The mattress is hard as a rock and impersonally cold to lie on, the plastic cover sticks to my cheek like the world's shittiest condom. My nose and hands are freezing, so after a while I take them out of my sleeves and put them on my stomach under the coat. I snuggle my face against Jade's back to get just a little warmer.

I had salmonella back when twelve, and was up all night vomiting. I kept praying for it to pass and thought I would never experience anything worse, but this has definitely surpassed all my past experiences.

"Dora?" Jade's sleepy voice wakes me up from partially drifting off.

"Huh?"

"You're waking me up with you shaking."

"Oh. I'm sorry," I mumble, still shaking, now from just a little further away from her. Great, so now I've lost the heat source as well. My neck hurts from the constant tension and I have never felt more miserable. Moreover, in the grave silence I can hear every step up the stairs, every elevator ride, and I keep imagining someone unlocking the door and finding us here, like a bunch of cockroaches occupying someone else's property. I have never been more excited to come back home. I open my eyes when hearing some clanking in the kitchen. I'm exhausted but I can't lie here like this any longer. I carefully get up without disturbing the others and crampingly walk across to the other end of the flat. Tom's drinking straight from the two-litre Coke bottle wearing only the Eminem t-shirt I saw at the beginning of the evening and his pants.

"Good morning," he greets me, and I smirk.

"Not for everyone."

"Come on!" he whines softly. "You can sleep in your bed at home, but you can only experience this kind of adventure with your friends," he replies full of enthusiasm, all traces of despondency gone.

"Sure, call me Dora the explorer," I answer sarcastically and Tom smirks at me, but gets a little more serious straight afterwards.

"I'm sorry for the hiccups, honestly. But it turned out pretty well in the end, didn't it?"

"Well, I don't know about that," I say and Tom laughs through his nose. I lean against the structure that I assume will form the kitchen island when finished. Tom briskly turns around the kitchen counter and keeps moving around mysteriously.

"What are you doing?" I ask finally. "Aren't you cold?"

Tom turns back to face me and smiles slyly. "No, do you want to warm up?"

"How?" I ask skeptically, watching Tom rummage through his pants pocket. His hands are dirty, I don't think he washed them once through the whole evening.

"A little breakfast," he finally answers and places a small transparent bag with white powder on the kitchen counter. The smile on my face freezes still.

"What?"

Without answering, he pours a small amount of powder onto the shiny black surface of his phone screen. He pulls out a membership card from the Vans store and neatly shapes the pile into a sharp single line.