Silver Stilettos

18 | you have been my friend

"Emily!" I called out, fighting to keep the edge from my voice. "I'm going home!"

Lenox's face popped into my vision. For such a slim girl, she loomed like a blimp in the foyer, one hand tossed out as if to prevent my leaving. Her lips were pulled down into a sullen frown and her wild blond hair fell into her eyes, covering half her face. "No!" she explained. "Why?" Her fingers tightened around the stem of her champagne glass until I saw her knuckles go white.

"I just...I..." Flailing, I stared at her, silently willing her to make it easy for me.

"You look incroyable!" she pronounced in a poor French accent, placing both hands on my shoulders. Before I knew what she was doing, I was tugged back into the living room.

Smoke danced through thin fabric and twined around even thinner bodies. A chill took hold of me and for a moment, I couldn't breathe. My classmates looked like ghosts dancing in the breeze, ephemera of a bygone era, dust to dust. The saliva tasted like ash in my mouth.

These are dead girls.

The music changed, turned into a swinging tempo. Lively jazz belted out of the speakers and the girls all squealed. Another tug and Lenox had me dancing around the living room with her. Her hands wrapped around each of my wrists and she shouted, "Don't let go!"

She began to spin again, throwing her head back, exposing her neck. Discoloration marred her throat, the tell-tale merlot blot of a day-old hickey. My body felt leaden while my head came undone, disconnected from my body. Round and round Lenox spun, and me with her.

"Ring around the rosy!" someone called.

Ashes, ashes, they all fall down.

"You're going to make her sick." Hands settled on my waist, stilling our concentric circles.

My shoulder blades grazed the softness of a chest and I immediately stiffened.

"Dom," said Lenox. She dropped my hands like they scalded her. "You came."

"I was invited, wasn't I?"

As I turned, I was unsurprised to see the look of bland indifference on Dom's face. Our eyes met. Hers were ringed with black smudges. The purple beneath her eyes could have been makeup, but I saw the red zig zags of stress in the whites of her eye and suspected that Sleeping Beauty hadn't been getting enough rest.

It was the same strained, desperate look I'd seen Kiran wearing on a Saturday morning after having spent the entire night listening to him curse at his television screen and his foreign opponent in equal measure.

"Mayuri," Dom acknowledged. "You're looking a little green."

I caught the censure in her voice and bristled, breaking eye contact. I hoped she meant green from dizziness and not green with envy.

"When did you get here?" I asked.

Dom glanced at her fingernails, running the pad of her thumb against each of the stiletto points in a slow, sawing motion. "Just now. Saw Emily leaving."

"She left her own party?" Lenox's voice seemed shrill. "To go where? Why?"

"Do I look like her mother?" Dom raised one eyebrow. "I parked behind your car," she added to me.

"Let's get you a drink," said Lenox to the room at large. She could have meant me or Dom. Then she tipped her glass to her lips and tossed back the champagne. As she lowered the glass, she wet her bottom lip. Maybe she meant herself.

"That's okay. I don't"—Dom almost sneered—"drink".

"Dom," came Baron's voice from behind us, "thought I heard your buzzkill voice." Hands shoved deep in his pockets, he walked into the living room. Ignoring the delighted gasps of the tipsy girls in the room, to Lenox he said, "I think I will have a drink, thanks." When she didn't move right away, he made an impatient noise. "Well, go on."