Katie Lowe - The Furies

Robin bounded over and poured herself a drink, topping mine up with a large slug of rum as she did so. ‘You like?’ she said, grinning.

‘Yeah, it’s cool,’ I lied, lifting the mug to my lips. The liquid was hot and searing; a rancid, chemical smell. I lowered the cup without swallowing, relieved to find her attentions elsewhere.

‘I love university parties. Not exactly the height of sophistication, but it’s nice to be around adults for a change.’ I searched her face for the irony absent from her voice, and nodded, solemnly, suppressing my own opinions on the matter. ‘Listen, I know it’s not normally your thing, but … Do you want one of these?’ She opened her palm, revealing a couple of white pills, their texture dusty, imprinted with a flower.

‘If it’s an aspirin, then definitely,’ I said, drily.

‘No pressure. It’s just … I thought I’d offer, so you don’t feel like you’re missing out.’

The boys roared again, now hurling bricks of soap and sopping balls of toilet paper out into the street below. The princess returned, tapped her friend on the shoulder, and gave her a weak kiss; the swaying girl still swayed, and the talking boy still talked.

I took the pill from Robin’s outstretched palm, and held it, nervously, in my own. I felt Robin wrap her arm around my shoulder with something like tenderness. ‘If you don’t like it, all you have to do is say you want to go. That’s it. If you feel weird, we’ll go straight home.’ The press of her, the promise, was enough: I swallowed the pill, washing it down with the searing, sour drink.

For the next fifteen minutes, I felt nothing, though I shuddered at every suggestion of warmth, every heartbeat a portent of doom. I had heard the stories of otherwise well-behaved teenagers who had died a sudden death from their first encounter with drugs, and imagined the cold words of the coroner’s report. My heartbeat quickened and slowed, the sense of panic rising and falling as I remembered, somehow, to breathe.

Still nothing, one moment of nothing after another, a nothing hollow with anticipation, until all at once a panoramic, gorgeous fullness burst around me, the air syrupy, the people diaphanous, unreal. I felt suddenly detached, watching the students around me, each with their own unique preoccupations and ideals, and felt a sense of oneness, an appreciation of other subjectivities beyond my own. Potent chemicals and sweat-ravaged debauchery: the source, no doubt, of the open-minded idealism for which students are known.

I turned to Robin, wanting to tell her everything – not only of this moment, but my whole life story, every secret emotion I had ever held in my heart, all the things I couldn’t say – only to find her seat now taken by the boy from the eighth floor, whose name I could no longer remember. Had he told us? I wasn’t sure.

‘How did you get here?’ I asked, reaching for the arms of the chair in an attempt to still the roiling room.

‘The stairs,’ he said, flatly. ‘Have you … Are you drunk?’

‘That sounds like something I am,’ I said, the words nonsense, confused. I felt a burning heat in the palms of my hands, and released the chair from my vice-like grip.

‘Little more than drunk, judging by those pupils,’ he said, leaning in towards me.

I pulled away. ‘It’s none of your business.’

He winced. ‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry,’ I muttered. I looked for Robin, scanning the room for the red glow of her hair. I saw her, back with Andy, who sat on the floor while she straddled his shoulders from the bed above, leaning over him occasionally for a kiss, her hair falling in strings down his chest, his fingers clutching at them, possessively. I felt sick, overwhelmingly sick, and looked down at the space between my knees, where the lines of the carpet curved and swelled like the roll of the sea.

‘Do you want some water or something?’ I’d forgotten I was being watched. I turned to him, slowly, feeling my neck and jaw tense, tongue thick in my throat.

‘Please.’ I felt both brimming with life, and horribly close to death. ‘It’s so hot,’ I said, as he handed me a plastic cup filled with dirty, bruised ice.

‘Sip it,’ he said, not letting go of the cup. ‘Don’t gulp it, or you’ll throw up.’

‘Okay,’ I said. The syllables sounded wrong, almost like a sing-song. ‘Okay, okay, okay,’ I said, impressed by the cadence of the letters. He laughed, took a step back, as though unsure of himself; then paused for a moment, and sat back down, slowly sipping his drink. I felt a swell, another flush of love for the people around me, and, in the moment, this stranger, who had come to me with iced water and kind words. ‘Thank you,’ I said, with what I hoped was a smile.

‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Would some fresh air help?’

‘I’m not … I’m not going anywhere near that window.’ I heard the words slur a little as I spoke, returning with a perfect echo.

‘Oh god, no. You’re absolutely not going near any windows, or sharp edges, or anywhere without childproofing.’

‘I’m not—’

‘I don’t mean that,’ he said, catching my meaning before I could finish my sentence. ‘I just mean you don’t need to worry. You can’t get in much more trouble than you already are.’

He extended a hand, and pulled me up towards him. Grateful to escape, I stumbled with him into the corridor, where the bright lights and lurid posters swam kaleidoscopic above the stained tan carpets and beaten, grey walls. Stumbling down the stairs, I felt the glow of the fluorescent lights, switching on and off rhythmically as though time had slowed to accommodate their usual invisible flicker.

The words on the posters followed me down the stairs – Dance Society Meet next week, Mason Hall, 5pm; Basketball Tryouts Tuesday – shorties need not apply!; Kafka’s Metamorphosis :: Auditions Monday!!! Occasionally I felt a rumble of doubt, the same hot sweat rising from the soles of my feet to my chest, but the feeling disappeared as soon as I had identified it, the memory delirious and fleeting.

As we reached the ground floor, the rhythm of the music echoing from above seemed still as loud as it had been in the dorm room. I put my hands over my ears, my head aching; Tom stopped as we rounded the corner, and put my hands back by my sides. ‘Act normal,’ he whispered, and walked me past the security guard (though the caution was unnecessary, he now absorbed in a tattered paperback with no interest in the activities of the students who occasionally disturbed his reading). I thought of Robin as we left the building. She’ll be fine , I told myself. And then, a little bitterly, she said she’d stay with me, and she didn’t, so it doesn’t matter anyway.

There is something enchanting about fresh air when intoxicated; though remaining steady in it is a skill I have yet to master, even now, when the mood of a long night strikes and I wander these old streets, unseen and unheard, after a night at home sipping a rich wine and, on occasion, taking some strange combination of powders and pills. Nowadays, of course, these are more likely to be opiates or sedatives prescribed by my friendly and dutifully sympathetic family doctor; still, that feeling always reminds me of this night, when the air was hazy and alive with a kind of magic.

Outside, the sky had cleared to black. As I looked up, he steered me around the slick of washing powder and soap thrown from the floor above, and we walked in silence towards the lake, around which student halls were arranged. With hindsight, ‘lake’ is, perhaps, a little too grand: the light of day would reveal it to be little more than a large pond, surrounded by concrete walls on all sides. As we approached, a flock of birds burst into flight, disappearing into the infinite darkness above.