We take a taxi to the after-hours, five of us piling into the back seat of a rusty Toyota while the cabbie frowns in the rearview mirror because we only need to go a couple of blocks down Ste-Catherine, into the Gay Village.
The biggest after-hours nightclub in the city is sandwiched between a drugstore and a massage parlor with a ten-foot photo of a hairy-chested man in the window, leather straps across his torso. I'm still buzzed from all the vodka-RedBulls (don't hold the vodka)—at least I didn't pay for any of them myself. As long as you don't pay for your own poison, you don't have a substance abuse problem... right?
I don't know who came up with that rule. Probably Maryse.
There's five of us, but I'm the only one who gets carded. Well, I'm also the only one to show up at a nightclub in running shoes. I show my ID and the door guy glances from the mousy-haired girl in the picture to me and back. Other than my hair, my features are suitably generic so I could be almost anyone. But it seems to convince him, because he lets me through.
The inside of the club is pitch black, roaring with the beat of techno music that makes my bones vibrate. Blue lights line the ceiling and walls, and strobes fill the space with photo-flash light in rhythm with the music.
It's the perfect place to lose yourself.
For now, though, I only seem to lose my friends. I turn around and they're gone, melded into the crowd that thrashes and jumps like an amorphous mass, a living sea of hands and hair and sweat.
I need at least three drinks in me before this place starts to become appealing.
So I break Maryse's cardinal rule, go to the bar, and ask for a vodka on the rocks. Only to be told they don't serve alcohol at this hour, would I like a bottle of water?
I wouldn't like a goddamn bottle of water. I'm jittery, shaky, annoyed, and way too sober for my own good. I storm to the bathroom, where I gulp cold tap water free of the $5 charge until my teeth hurt. Then I pretend to fix up my makeup in the mirror and wait for the solution to present itself.
And it does, not two minutes later. The girl is wearing one of those baggy hipster dresses that show off not just her black bra straps but her entire bra, and the slight overflow of back fat above the strap. She squints at me with her fraying false lashes.
"You holding?" I ask. I feel foolish and part of me is ready to be laughed at, but she gives a curt nod followed by a hand gesture that transcends all languages. I fish twenty bucks out of my purse. She snatches it out of my hand and squirrels it away in her cleavage, from where, a second later, a tiny plastic bag emerges. It's hot and sweaty when she presses it into my hand. Ew.
Then, as quickly as she appeared, she's gone. I dump out the lone pill and hold it up to the light, as if I could somehow tell if it was legit. Then I hear voices, someone in one of the stalls flushes, and I know I need to think fast. So I gulp the pill, wash it down with another blast of chlorine-flavored free water, and that's that.
No going back.
Out in the main room, I collide with Maryse, who must have found something of her own to take the edge off because her eyeballs are like pools of motor oil. She and the others drag me along with them into the center of the dance floor.
The crowd sways and thrashes and jumps. I don't even need to move, the dozens of bodies pull me along like a tide. I wait for the drug to start seeping into my limbs, to smooth out the edges of the world, but all I feel is the same weird, giddy hollowness. When I stop to look at my hands, they're shaking—or maybe it's just the strobe.
When I look up, the strobe flashes again, but this time, it's like one of those horror movies. You know the ones. Lightning flashes and—dun dun dunnn!—there's a silhouette in the window, raising a machete. Those movies where the slut always dies first.
Except there's no thunderstorm and no machete. But the face that I see in the crowd is imprinted upon my retinas as if seared in with a photo flash. I squeeze my eyelids shut and it's still there.
My eyes fly open just in time to see her turn away and vanish in the crowd.
I breathe in till my lungs are about to burst. My head is a balloon straining toward the ceiling and my spine the fragile thread keeping it grounded.
I push past two drunk girls in miniskirts and go after her. It's hard to see a damn thing, and I don't even make it off the dance floor before I lose her. Panting, I stop and look around, shielding my eyes from the merciless strobe light.
I can't see her anywhere.
Fuck, maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe that pill was shit and it's making me hallucinate, and before the night is out I'll be in the bathroom trying to peel my face with a razor to get out the bugs crawling underneath my skin.
A shudder courses up my spine. Everything is becoming more fluid, the music thrums in my bone marrow and my heart rate falls into rhythm. When I step forward, I realize I can't feel my feet, like I'm floating a few inches above ground.
Not good.
Someone yells my name. The sound is fuzzy, faraway and distorted; confused, I spin around. Even in my flat-soled Converse, I'm wobbling.
She's there. And it's her, the long dark hair, the dark eyes. It's not a trick of the imagination, it's Elizabeth —her face zooms into focus so fast it's dizzying. She grasps my shoulders and I don't even have the strength to raise my arms to throw her off. I just stand there and stare at her dumbly.
Her lips move. Alaska , I read. It's like she isn't even surprised to see me.
That thought snaps me out of it, at least a little bit. I push her away, even though I'm the one who stumbles back. "What the hell?" I yell over the music. "Are you following me? God, you're such a creep."
"Alaska." She holds out her hands. Her expression is hard to read because of the strobe.
"Leave me alone!"
"I think we need to talk. Come on." She reaches out to take my arm, but stops herself, and her hand hovers awkwardly over my shoulder. Good, 'cause if she touches me I think I might break it. Well, at least I'd try. Instead, she motions for me to follow her and starts toward the back of the club, hesitantly glancing over her shoulder every couple of seconds.
I don't move. She can force me to follow her if she wants, but I sure as hell won't go after her like an obedient little lamb. Who does she think she is? A part of me is boiling with rage, the other is scared shitless. She followed me here. She followed me. Where else has she followed me?
My heart starts to hammer and my palms get sweaty. Except it's not like the normal fight or flight thing. My heart is a fist pummeling the inside of my sternum, like it's trying to bust through. And sweat runs down the groove of my spine, collects in beads on my forehead and upper lip. It's cold and clammy even though the place is like an oven. My ears start to ring until it drowns out everything but the pounding bass.
My fight or flight reflex—in this case flight, it seems—finally kicks in. I turn around and elbow my way toward the red light reading SORTIE behind me, to the coat check, to the exit.
No one looks at me twice. Some people are making their way up the stairs, overdressed girls and guys with spiked douchebag hairdos. The girls curl their lips in disgust and press themselves into the wall as I pass by.
I read it in their glitter-fringed eyes: strung out junkie trash.
I wonder how many of them puke their guts out on the sidewalk at three-thirty AM four nights a week.
The air outside turns every single drop of sweat on my skin into an ice crystal. My teeth clatter like crazy, completely out of my control. I wrap my arms around myself and rub my forearms, which seem to be going numb too.
Nice going, Alaska. Or was it Sky? Which one of you bitches was dumb enough to pull something like this?
The street is empty except for some of the after-hours club's patrons smoking outside the entrance. I look around for a cab, but there isn't a car in sight. The post-club rush on a Thursday night ended a long time ago.
"Alaska!"
I swing at her blindly and she catches my arm. I spin around, trying to free my wrist from her grasp, but she's holding on. She's hurting me. I think. She would be, if I could feel a damn thing. "Are you okay? You don't look good."
"Y-you," I manage. I finally get my teeth to stop clattering, but it's still not quite enough to speak. "Wh-why are you f-following me?"
She curses in French. "I wasn't following you."
"Like hell."
"There's one after-hours in this city open on a Thursday. So what were the odds." She looks angry, like she has any right to be angry. "I'm human too, Alaska. I go out. I drink sometimes. Sometimes I even take questionable substances." I decidedly don't like the way she's looking at me.
"What did you take, Alaska? Are you alone?"
"My f-friends are inside." I dig my fingernails into my elbows. Skin yields to the sharp edges of nails, but it's the only thing I can feel, like sinking my fingers into modeling clay.
She glances over her shoulder. The breeze messes up her dark hair. She's wearing a simple black shirt that's unbuttoned at the top and I can see her collarbone.
"Inside?"
I manage a nod.
"Well, if I go get them, are you going to bolt?"
I glower at her.
"Who am I kidding," she mutters.
I try to say something, but not a sound comes out. The street ripples and sways. Lanterns that line the street bleed multicolored light as they swing back and forth.
My knees hit the pavement. That, I can feel. Oh boy, and how.
Far, far overhead, I hear Elizabeth let out an alarmed exclamation, followed by every unrepeatable word in the French language. Then a dark shape blocks the bleeding lights. She kneels next to me. It takes me a beat to realize she's patting my back.
"Alaska," she murmurs. "Hey. Hey, look at me. I said look at me."
She takes hold of my chin and tilts my head up, but instead of seeing her face like I expected, I just see a blur like a screwed-up photo.
"Whoa, whoa." She mutters something else, again in French, but it can't be very nice. "Focus. Look at me."
I blink in confusion, swept up in a sudden wave of dizziness. I have to close my eyes. Why am I here? I want to sleep.
I want her to leave me alone.
She's shaking me. My head lolls and I see the sky and the lights again. And then the earth falls away and I'm floating, floating. My neck hurts so I try to raise my head; my temple rests against something soft, soft but warm. I hear a rhythm of a heartbeat, fast and steady.
I feel like a baby in a womb, weightless, senseless. But safe.
Like it's okay to sleep.