Frenzy

by V. J. Chambers

  I wanted to experience it all. I wanted to live, really live, to feel everything that I could possibly feel.

  And taking the ecstasy at the party?

  Well, I might have lied to myself and told myself I’d done it because I wanted a fresh start, and I wanted new experiences.

  But the truth was, even though I’d never done that drug before, and even though I’d never hooked up with some guy I’d only known for a few hours, there was nothing fresh or new about my actions tonight.

  What I’d done was the same thing I’d been doing for months. I’d jumped in feet first to whatever destructive activity I could find.

  Apparently, I was on the highway to hell, and it wasn’t even paved with good intentions. It was only paved with my own stupidity.

  Shit.

  And it was just icing on the cake that Wyatt happened to be Jill’s ex.

  Of all the fucking guys that I could have picked to get busy with, it had to be the ex-boyfriend of the only friend I’d made thus far? Of my roommate?

  Like Jill was going to forgive me for that.

  She probably hated me for taking Cori’s spot in the room, anyway.

  Cori.

  Man, what the hell was up with Cori Donovan?

  Why did everyone keep talking about her? Where was she? Why hadn’t she taken her damned money with her wherever she went?

  Everyone seemed obsessed with her. But from the sound of it, she was just a slutty chick who dealt drugs. It seemed like everyone should hate her.

  But no one did. Not really. Jill missed her and wished she was back. Parker was worried about her. And Wyatt…

  Wyatt didn’t even want to touch me after he found out that I was sleeping in her old bed.

  He seemed like a really nice guy. Really sweet, able to spout poetry while he was on drugs. And his hands…

  He had hands like magic.

  But he was Jill’s ex-boyfriend. He was off-limits.

  I took a shaky breath and walked even faster.

  I’d do better. I wouldn’t let my fresh start be a repeat of all of my previous mistakes. I’d knuckle down and focus on school.

  No boys.

  No drugs.

  No drinking.

  No drama.

  * * *

  Jill shook a pill into my hand out of a vitamin bottle. “Five HTP. It’s a direct precursor to serotonin,” she told me. “It helps with the bad comedown, because it can help you replenish what you lost.”

  I popped the vitamins into my mouth and swallowed them with some orange juice.

  “And we can smoke a bowl if you want,” said Jill. “Always mellows me out.”

  We were in the dorm room. Parker was asleep in Jill’s bed. He was snoring a little bit.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to do any more drugs.”

  “Weed’s not really a drug,” said Jill. “It’s practically legal.”

  “Except that it’s not,” I said.

  “Whatever.” She shrugged. “I’m smoking some. You can have a little if you want.”

  I sighed. “You’re being so nice to me.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I feel bad that we ditched you.”

  “You didn’t. I ditched you guys.”

  “I should have waited for you while you were in the bathroom,” she said. “You didn’t know anyone. It was my responsibility, and you were fucked up on E, and I abandoned you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Really. Trust me, I…”

  She patted me gently on the head. “Hey, hey. You’re fine. It’s just the comedown. It’s easy to get a little depressed and down on yourself afterward. You just dumped out a month’s worth of serotonin in a night. Go easy on yourself.”

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t handle how sweet she was being to me. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I took a deep breath. “Did you get that text I sent you?”

  She wrinkled up her nose. “Text?”

  “Yeah, I texted you that I met a guy and not to wait for me. Did you get it?”

  “I haven’t looked at my phone in… forever,” she said. “No. What guy?”

  “That’s just it.” I rubbed my face. “Look, I swear I didn’t know. I hung out with him, and he seemed cool, and I was rolling, and everything was cool. And he was so… And then I mentioned your name, and…”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You aren’t making any sense.”

  “I messed around with Wyatt.”

  She drew back.

  “I didn’t know he was your ex,” I said. “I didn’t find out until after. And I’m so sorry. I know that’s not cool. Generally, I would never do that. I consider you a friend even though we just met, and I wouldn’t go there. Not with someone else’s, you know, old boyfriend.”

  Jill got up. She went over to her dresser and picked up her glass pipe and a lighter. She lit it, sucking on it as she walked back over to me. She held the smoke in, grabbing me by the elbow and leading me over to my side of the room. She let the smoke out. “Don’t be silly.”

  “What?”

  She pulled me down onto the bed, sat down next to me, and handed me the bowl. “Take a hit.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Take a hit.”

  I did as she suggested. The minute the marijuana filled my lungs, I started to feel calmer. Sleepier.

  “I don’t care what you did with Wyatt,” she said. “Wyatt and I are over.”

  I blew out the smoke. “But you were with him. And I had no right—”

  “Look, maybe back at Princeton, you had the luxury of ignoring boys because someone you knew had slept with them. But here, it’s a really small town. It’s a really small college. So, if you hang out for a little while, you’re going to end up hooking up with somebody’s ex. Don’t worry about it.”

  I handed her back the pipe. “Really?”

  She lit it, nodding.

  I bit my lip. “You’re not mad?”

  She blew out smoke. “I’m not mad at all.”

  I took another hit. “I thought you would be.”

  She yawned. “Well, I’m not. Of course, there is the fact that Wyatt is a fucking dick.”

  “He is?”

  “Yeah, that boy is all about feeding you lines, you know? He acts like it’s all special between you, and then you find out that he said the same shit to every other girl.”

  “He did?”

  She nodded. “Oh yeah. Did he tell you about how you and he were all connected because everything is made of stardust?”

  “Um…” I looked down at my bedspread. “Maybe he said something like that.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “Just one of his many little scripts that he uses to get lucky with a girl.”

  “Well, we didn’t have sex or anything,” I said. “I mean, we did pretty much everything else, but we didn’t actually… you know…”

  “Believe me, you’re not missing anything.”

  Lines? Scripts? He’d said all that stuff to other girls?

  But he’d seemed so sincere.

  You know, maybe Jill was just pissed at him because of the fact he’d cheated on her.

  Of course, the fact that he’d cheated did not actually make him sound like a very nice guy.

  I flopped back on my bed. “He seemed so awesome.”

  Jill made a sympathetic face at me. “You were rolling. Everything seemed awesome, didn’t it?”

  It had.

  And in the stark light of morning, everything seemed like shit.

  “Hey, get some rest,” she said. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

  But the weed had kind of brought the ecstasy feeling back a little bit, making my heart pound. I lay awake, morning sun washing over me, bright through the blinds.

  My mattress was a little hard.

  It took forever to fall asleep.

  * * *

  I squinted at my schedule. It had been two days since I’d done the e
cstasy, but I still felt a little blah. Today was the first day of classes for the spring semester, and I was having trouble figuring out where I was supposed to be.

  Even though Keene had a small campus, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the building codes on my schedule. Did that BH refer to Biller Hall in front of me? Or was it Busch-Height Hall, which I’d passed on my way here?

  “You lost?”

  I looked up and was surprised to see Levi from the party. He was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt, even though it was thirty degrees outside. His eyes were bloodshot.

  He grinned. His teeth were white and even and straight. “Hey girl.”

  “Hi,” I said. “Uh… Jill said you didn’t go here. She said you were a townie.”

  “I go here,” he said. “Okay, so last semester, I dropped all my classes after midterms because I was failing them all, but I’m still enrolled or whatever.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You lost?”

  “I just don’t know what BH means.”

  “Right on, right on.” He pointed. “You’re looking at it.”

  “Biller Hall?”

  “Yeah.” He stretched the word into several syllables.

  “Okay, thanks.” I started for the building.

  “Hold up,” he said. “You enjoy yourself this weekend?”

  “Sure.” I didn’t really want to talk about doing drugs right before class. It didn’t seem right, somehow. Some things should be left outside of academia.

  “Good stuff, huh?”

  “I guess. I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

  His grin widened. “Right on.”

  “Thanks for your help.”

  “Look.” He took me by the arm.

  I shook him off. “You have a thing about grabbing me, don’t you?”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. I was only going to say that I know it’s none of my business, but someone like you can do a heck of a lot better than a loser like Wyatt Gibson.”

  My stomach tightened into a knot. “You saw me with him?”

  “Everyone saw you guys,” he said. “You were making out with him on the dance floor.”

  “Everybody was making out on the dance floor.”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, probably none of my business.”

  “Probably not.” I pushed past him and headed to class.

  * * *

  “Molly?” Wyatt stood in the open doorway to his apartment. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I found myself gaping at his bare chest, which still looked really good to me.

  I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d come by his house. Part of me was hoping that if I saw him when I was sober, I’d realize he was ugly and awful, and I’d know that the only reason I’d been attracted to him was because of being high.

  But here he was, half naked and handsome, and I felt drawn to him, just the way I had before. He was an attractive guy. And I still felt like we’d connected the other night. Not just because we’d made out, or we’d taken off our clothes. It had felt like something bigger than that. Something real.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” He closed the door behind himself and joined me on his stoop.

  “Um, I wanted to apologize for running off on you on Saturday morning.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. The cold air made goosebumps appear on his bare flesh. “It’s okay.”

  “I thought that you’d be off limits because you were Jill’s ex-boyfriend or whatever, but she said she didn’t care, and…”

  He wasn’t looking at me. “Okay.”

  “Well, I thought…” I felt like an idiot. “We didn’t exchange phone numbers or anything, and if we wanted to… to, like, hang out or something, then…”

  He looked up at me. “Right. Uh, my phone’s inside. You got yours?”

  I took it out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  He pressed buttons, staring intently at the screen. Then he handed it back. “So, I called my number with your phone. That way I have your number.”

  “Good,” I said. “Good thinking.”

  He looked down at his shoes.

  I put my phone back in my pocket.

  We stood there for a minute.

  “Uh, so, it’s cold,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “You don’t have to stay out here or anything.”

  He reached back to open the door. “It was good to see you again.”

  “You too.”

  But he didn’t look at me as he disappeared into his apartment.

  * * *

  “Oh my god, Molly, I can’t believe you just left me with them,” said my sister Lauren’s voice in my ear. I was sitting in my dorm room with my math textbook open in front of me. First day of classes, and I already had homework.

  “Are they fighting again?”

  “Yeah. Dad just went on some big overnight trip to get away from her. Now I’m stuck with her, and she won’t get out of bed. She lies there and complains about how much her head hurts and makes me bring her pills and vodka.”

  I winced. “Sorry.”

  “She’s really bad,” said Lauren. “I’ve never seen her this bad.”

  “You have to get her to go to therapy,” I said. “You know that’s what she needs.”

  “Molly, she won’t get out of bed.”

  I toyed with the pencil I’d been using to do math problems. “Well, maybe you should ignore her. Don’t come in the room when she yells for you. Don’t answer your phone if she starts calling you.”

  She sighed. “She always puts me on a guilt trip when I do that. She goes on and on about how I don’t love her.”

  “Ignore her,” I said. “She’s sick.”

  “She’s not sick,” said Lauren. “She’s throwing a tantrum.”

  “Lauren, she’s our mom. You shouldn’t say stuff like that about her. Besides, she’s depressed because of what I did, and it’s not really her fault.”

  “Seriously? Are you forcing her to stay in bed and drink too much?”

  “Well, I’m not forcing her to do anything, but what I did has affected her life.”

  Lauren was quiet for a minute. When she did speak, her voice was softer. “Hey, look, Molly, what happened with Heidi was an accident. I know that you blame yourself—”

  “It was my fault,” I said.

  “I know that mom blames you too,” she said. “But she’s wrong. You need to forgive yourself. Move on.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So, um, how’s the new school?”

  “Okay, I guess,” I said. “My roommate seems cool.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cute guys?”

  “Um…” Man, I didn’t want to tell my little sister about all the drama I’d already managed to get myself into. “Maybe.”

  She groaned. “Do not tell me you are still hung up on Duncan. I thought you promised me that you were over him.”

  “I’m not hung up on Duncan,” I said. “Duncan made his choice. He didn’t choose me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The phone was ringing.

  Not my cell phone, but the phone in the dorm room. It was Thursday, and I’d been here for almost a week, and I’d never heard the actual phone ring before.

  Jill wasn’t around. She spent a lot of time with Parker and not a lot of time in the room, so I often had it to myself. The phone was on her side of the room. It was a purple cordless phone, and when it rang, it sounded like the bell in my old high school.

  I got up and went over to the phone. I picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Cori?” The voice on the other end was deep and male. It sounded almost distorted, like he was talking with a mouth full of rocks or something.

  “Um, no, Cori doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “She doesn’t?”

  “No, she left. I took her place.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Uh…” Should I tell this pers
on my name? “I’m Molly.”

  “Molly Colligan.”

  Fear jolted through me. “How do you know my name?”

  “I know things,” said the voice. “I know that you were at a party at Guy Bancroft’s house on Friday.”

  I clutched the phone. “Who is this?”

  “I’m a… friend of Cori’s.”

  “Well, Cori skipped town. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “You have my money.”

  I swallowed. “What?”

  “Cori owed me a lot of money,” said the voice. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with her to get that money back.”

  I hung the phone up. Shit.

  It rang again.

  I stared at it.

  Oh my fucking god, what had I been thinking? I should never have taken that money out of the room. Cori was a drug dealer. No wonder she had all that money. And I had no idea what kind of people she might owe money to.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  The phone was still ringing.

  I picked it up and hung it back up again.

  It was quiet.

  I’d been using that money. Not all of it, of course, but beyond buying E at that party, I’d bought food and a new pair of jeans in town one day in between classes. I’d figured that Cori hadn’t needed it. I’d figured that she’d been a really loaded drug dealer and that she wouldn’t miss that money.

  The phone rang again.

  I snatched it up. “Hello?” I whispered.

  “Molly,” said the same voice.

  Oh, shit. “Cori’s gone, okay? She’s gone. You’ll just have to find her or something.”

  “You were waving that money around at that party at Guy’s house. You have my money. And I want it back.”

  “Um… I kind of spent some of it.”

  “All of it?”

  “Well, no. A little bit. Less than a hundred dollars.”

  A sigh. “Okay. Well, I want the rest of it. It’s mine.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know you.”

  “Come to the parking lot behind the art building on campus at midnight tonight,” said the voice. “Bring what’s left of the money.”

  There was a click. He’d hung up.

  * * *

  I considered my options.

  I didn’t have a lot of them.