Frenzy

by V. J. Chambers

  “And you never saw her?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Were you angry with Cori?”

  “Angry with her?”

  “Jill said that you hoped that things might get serious between you and Cori, but that Cori wasn’t interested.”

  “That what Jill said?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Like I said, Cori and I hooked up a couple of times. But it wasn’t, like, a thing. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “So, you weren’t angry with her?”

  “What’s your deal, Molly? Why you bringing this up?”

  I took a breath. I realized that my body was trembling. My pulse pounded out a scattered rhythm just under my skin. My mouth felt dry, and I was still too warm.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry if you thought that things between us were going to be serious. You trying to say you’re angry at me?”

  I took a few staggering steps to the wall and leaned against it. I shut my eyes. “No,” I said in a quiet voice. “Just… just leave me alone.”

  He cocked his head. “Hey, seriously, you don’t look so good.”

  “Go away,” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “Whatever.” And he left.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I leaned against the wall, struggling to keep my breath steady. My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. It was racing really fast. It almost hurt.

  I was beginning to feel a little panicked.

  I shut my eyes, taking deep breaths. I needed to calm down. I just needed to calm down.

  So, Wyatt didn’t feel anything for me at all. So, he thought I was an adorable one-time thing. Big deal. I could deal with that.

  Except I’d never really dealt with it before.

  Duncan had been my first kiss. My first everything.

  So, I realized, I’d never really been rejected before.

  It hurt.

  And the fact that my heart was beating so fast, well, that wasn’t helping either.

  “Molly?”

  I opened my eyes to see Levi’s face.

  “Hi,” I managed.

  “You all right?”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you get a pill from that O’Shaunessy guy?”

  O’Shaunessy? Like those O’Shaunessys? “I don’t know. Jill bought them.”

  “It was probably cut with something. Usually speed. Your heart beating really fast?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How long ago did you take it?”

  “I don’t know. A couple hours?”

  “Yeah, you might be right around the peak.” He pulled me away from the wall. “You feel nauseous? You think you can throw up?”

  I made a face at him.

  “Okay,” he said. He reached into his pocket and came up with a baggy full of pills. He fished one out. “Here, take this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s something to knock you out,” he said. “When you wake up, everything will be out of your system, and you’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know if I—”

  “Trust me,” he said. “You take that, and I’ll drive you to your dorm, all right?”

  I bit my lip.

  And then I took the pill.

  * * *

  I sat down hard on my bed. “It feels kind of like a waste of perfectly good E.”

  Levi folded his arms over his chest. “Not perfectly good. It’s cut with god knows what.”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to fall asleep and miss it all.”

  “Miss your heart racing out of your chest and making you feel ill? Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me.”

  “Maybe not.” I looked down at my hands. “Hey, what about Jill?” I had completely forgotten about her.

  “I told Jill I was taking you home,” he said. “I offered to give her a ride, but she said she’d rather stay at the party. She told me to tell you to feel better.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Did she seem like she was freaking out? We took the same pill.”

  “I couldn’t tell,” he said. “Sometimes it affects different people different ways.”

  “I feel bad for leaving her.” I yawned.

  “You need to lie down,” he said.

  “I need to put on my pajamas before I lie down,” I said.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay, well, I’ll get out of here, then.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to be by myself. Go over behind the partition, okay?”

  “I guess I could stick around for a little bit.” He wandered over to Jill’s side of the room.

  I hopped off the bed and went to my dresser. I got out my pajamas.

  His voice floated over to me. “I know you just discovered molly, but you should be careful, you know?”

  I yanked my shirt over my head. “Careful?”

  “Yeah. It’s really not a good idea to do it so often. Your body doesn’t replenish your serotonin stores that quickly. It takes about a month.”

  I tugged on my pajama t-shirt. “You’re a drug dealer. Don’t you want people to buy your product as much as possible?”

  “Well, I’m almost out of product anyway. The stuff that Cori sold me is running out. And besides, I’d rather have people do ecstasy consistently and come back for more than get burned out on it and stop doing it entirely.”

  I wriggled out of my jeans. “You can get burned out on it, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It makes you really depressed if you do it too much. You need to be careful.”

  I pulled on my pajama bottoms. I yawned again. “I’m starting to feel really tired.”

  “Good.”

  I dumped my clothes in the hamper. “Okay, I’m changed. You can come back over here.”

  He appeared around the partition. “You know, maybe I’d prefer it if you didn’t do it at all.”

  “Didn’t do ecstasy?” I furrowed my brow. “You serious?”

  He didn’t look at me.

  “You know, I’ve never seen you high. Do you do it?”

  He shrugged. “I have.”

  “But you don’t anymore?”

  “You know, it’s just good sense when you’re selling something not to get hooked on it.”

  “Ecstasy isn’t chemically addictive,” I said.

  “There are other ways to get hooked on things,” he said. “The fact is that it feels so good, it’s almost impossible not to get hooked on it, you know?”

  “I’m not hooked on it.” I flopped back on my bed. I yawned. “I can stop anytime.”

  “Maybe you should.” He was standing over me.

  I peered up at him. “You know, Jill was right. You really are attractive. You’re a very”—I yawned again— “very nice-looking guy.”

  He laughed, embarrassed. “Yeah, whatever. Are you okay? Can I go?”

  I rolled over onto my belly. “What? You want to leave me? I thought we were friends, Levi.”

  “And I thought you were bribing me to help me get a meeting with Professor X. I thought this was, you know, a business relationship.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Do you even have relationships that aren’t about business?”

  “Sure I do.” But he still wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  I rolled back onto my back. I began to peel the covers aside.

  “Let me help.” Levi tugged back the sheets and comforter.

  I crawled under them. I yawned again. It felt good to close my eyes.

  “You know Wyatt’s a jerk, right?” he said softly.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  He pulled the covers up to my chin. “You’re going to be okay, Molly. Just go to sleep.”

  I yawned again. Everything was dark and warm and comfortable.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I still don’t see why we had to go to the play,” said Levi as we made our way down the aisle of the theater.

  “We have to talk to Kelly Willow,” I said. “She
was the understudy, but now that Cori’s gone, she has the lead.”

  “Yeah, but couldn’t we have just showed up after the performance and waited by the stage door or something?”

  “Didn’t you like the play?”

  “I don’t like that Old English stuff,” he said. “I couldn’t understand anything they were saying.”

  “It’s Early Modern English,” I replied. I had learned that in my literature class last fall. “And I didn’t think it was that hard to understand. Besides, Shakespeare is good for you. It’s culture or whatever.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go find her.”

  “I don’t even see why I have to be here.” But he hurried after me.

  “Because,” I threw over my shoulder, “I need someone else to hear what’s going on and process it. Two heads are better than one.”

  * * *

  The dressing room had very low ceilings. There were no light bulbs all around the mirror, which sort of disappointed me. I thought that mirrors dressing rooms should be surrounded by light bulbs.

  Kelly was using a baby wipe to get stage makeup off her face. “So, why are you guys here again?”

  “Just wanted to ask you a few questions about Cori Donovan,” I said. “Did you know her?”

  “Sure,” said Kelly, “but not very well. I saw her for the first time at callback auditions, I guess. Didn’t really see her much after that.”

  I sat down next to Kelly. Even though there weren’t light bulbs around the mirrors, there were still a lot of mirrors, so my reflection was everywhere. I couldn’t help but smooth a few flyaway strands of hair out of my face. “Would you say she was a good actress?”

  Kelly shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know, it might be rude to speak ill of the dead or whatever.”

  “Actually, I’m curious about your real feelings,” I said. “I never met her, so I’m trying to figure out who she was.”

  Kelly scrubbed at her lipstick. “To be honest, I didn’t really think she was that great. I was kind of annoyed when she got the lead.”

  “You wanted the lead?”

  “I did. I wanted to be Rosalind.”

  “And now you are,” I said.

  “Well, yeah.” Kelly narrowed her eyes. She looked back and forth between me and Levi. “Hey, are you guys accusing me of something?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Just trying to understand. You’re a senior, right?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “And you’ve been part of the department since you were a freshman?” I asked.

  “Right,” she said. “And I always get bit parts. Or don’t get cast at all. And when I got this—female understudy—it was like a slap in the face. I’m going to graduate with an acting degree, and then I’m going to try to go out and get actual roles. But when I can’t can’t even get cast in a show at my own college, well, it tends to make me wonder if I have any talent at all.”

  “So, you resented Cori?”

  “Cori?” She shook her head. “I didn’t really know her. I resented Professor Henderson. He’s the one who cast this play. I’ve been working with him for years. He made it seem like I had to pay my dues, you know, and that when I became a senior, I’d get a chance to have a real juicy role. But then he gave my role to a freshman.”

  Levi spoke up. “I bet that pissed you off.”

  We both turned to look at him. He’d been quiet up until now.

  “I mean, it would piss me off,” he said.

  “Hell, yeah, it pissed me off,” said Kelly. “I mean, I’d waited for a long time for this. I’d had a lot of insecurities, worrying that I wasn’t good, and I’d been through a lot of disappointment. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I wasn’t going to get to do the role. And the truth is that acting is really fun, and that’s the only reason I ever wanted to do it in the first place. Because it’s fun. In the end, I don’t really care about anything else. So, it kind of sucked that this fun activity was being taken away from me.”

  I nodded. “So it was kind of lucky for you when Cori disappeared.”

  “Are you kidding? No way,” she said.

  “No way?”

  “You even know what it’s like to be an understudy?”

  I bit my lip. “No?”

  “Well, understudies come to watch rehearsals, and we’re supposed to take notes on all the blocking and memorize the lines and be ready to go on at any time.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But no understudy actually does that,” she said. “I mean, I maybe came to half the rehearsals. And I never bothered to memorize the lines. So when they came and told me that they couldn’t get hold of Cori, and that I was going to have to go on for her in two hours, well, that was basically the worst day of my life.”

  I hadn’t been expecting that. “You weren’t prepared.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I had to do the first three performances with a script. And I basically didn’t go to classes and didn’t sleep until I had memorized all of the lines. It was really terrible. I can tell you, I hated Cori right then, because I thought she’d just run off. When I found out what happened to her, I felt kind of bad for being so pissed at her, though.” She regarded herself in the mirror, checking to see if there was anymore makeup on her face.

  I got up. “Well, thanks for your help, Kelly.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Levi shot me a questioning look. “Are we leaving now?”

  “In a minute.” I turned back to Kelly. “Um, can you think of anyone who was angry with Cori? Anyone she was fighting with, or who might have had a grudge against her?”

  Kelly raised her eyebrows. “You guys playing Nancy Drew?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “Can you think of anyone?”

  Kelly considered. “Um, I remember seeing her and Jonah King arguing about something before break. Jonah plays Orlando. Cori was totally his fag hag.”

  “Oh,” I said. “The guy playing Orlando was gay? I would never have guessed.”

  “That’s why they call it acting,” said Kelly.

  * * *

  “Fighting with Cori?” said Jonah. “She was my best friend. My very best friend. I didn’t fight with her.” He stood in the doorway to his dorm. He lived across campus in one of the apartment-style dorms. Unlike the place where Jill and I lived, these had their own kitchens, living rooms, and bathrooms. Upperclassmen got first dibs on them, so it meant that freshmen usually ended up in the traditional-style dorms.

  “That’s not what Kelly Willow says.” I was standing outside his door, along with Levi, who kept complaining that he was useless, and I could be doing this without him. “She says she saw you guys arguing before break.”

  Jonah looked very confused. “I’m telling you, we never fought. We were tight. She was my best friend.”

  “Was she?” said Levi, who looked annoyed. “Because I hung out with her a lot, and she never talked about you.”

  Jonah eyed Levi, pursing his lips. “You. I’ve seen you with her before. You one of the many guys she was sleeping with? Because she might have made you think you were special, but trust me, honey, you weren’t.”

  Levi rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t sleeping with her. I worked with her.”

  “Oh,” said Jonah in a different tone of voice. “You’re Levi the drug dealer.”

  Levi relaxed. “She talked about me?”

  Jonah nodded. “Sure did, honey. Not all the time, but sometimes.” He shook his head. “Mmm. You are just as luscious as she said you were.”

  Levi rubbed his head, messing up his hair, as if that was going to make him look less attractive or something.

  I smiled. “Um, can we come in?”

  “Sure.” Jonah moved away from the door.

  Levi went in ahead of me, and I followed him.

  The door opened into the living area of the dorm, the same as all the other apartment-style rooms. There were two gray co
uches, one on either wall. A small flat screen—dorm sized. VH-1 was playing in the background. The wall was papered in Broadway posters—everything from Phantom to The Lion King to Cats.

  Jonah snagged the remote. He flipped off the TV and tossed the remote onto a coffee table that was littered with an overflowing ashtray and a bunch of fashion magazines. He sat down on one of the couches and gestured for us to sit down across from him.

  We did.

  Jonah took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “So, what are you doing here?”

  “We wanted to ask you about Cori,” I said. “You swear you never argued with her?”

  Jonah blew out smoke. “No. Never.”

  “Okay, can we go then?” Levi asked me. He looked uncomfortable. I wondered if it was because a gay guy had found him attractive. Sometimes guys got really weird about that stuff.

  Jonah smoked thoughtfully. “You know, I think I know what Kelly’s talking about.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, Cori and I were playing around backstage after opening night once, and Kelly was hanging out. Cori and I were throwing diva fits—fake diva fits—for fun. One minute we were yelling, the next we were laughing.” He crossed his legs. “But it wasn’t a real argument. I couldn’t be mad at that girl.”

  Man. Another dead end.

  Levi gestured with his head towards the door.

  I sighed. This whole investigation thing was going badly. It always seemed so easy on TV. They’d talk to a few people, and someone would say something that led them to another clue. And then another. And then they’d solve the whole thing.

  But life wasn’t like television. I knew that.

  “Look, I can prove it,” said Jonah, getting up. He walked out of the living room and came back holding a vase of silk flowers. “Cori got these opening night. She got lots of flowers, and she couldn’t take all of them home, so she gave me these to hold for her. She told me that she’d want them back eventually, so I shouldn’t throw them away or anything.”

  Levi didn’t look impressed. “I don’t see how that proves anything.”

  “It proves that she wasn’t angry with me,” said Jonah. “She’d never have given me these flowers otherwise.”

  I stood up. “He’s right.”